Watercooler Stories - November 23, 2007
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Nov. 23
'Brainwashed' mayor resigns
CENTERTON, Ark., Nov. 23 An Arkansas mayor who says he was abducted and brainwashed by Satan worshipers has resigned from office.
Centerton Mayor Ken Williams announced Wednesday he would leave the post he was first elected to in 2001, KHBS-TV, Fort Smith, Ark., reported.
Williams said he was born Don LaRose and was working as a preacher in Indiana with a wife and two children when he was abducted and brainwashed by Satanists in the 1970s.
He said he fled to Arkansas after his family was threatened.
"I had no choice. The choice was to watch my family killed before my eyes or go with these people, and I chose instead to run," Williams said.
He said he became Ken Williams in 1980 and had forgotten about his previous life until five years of shock treatments and a recent injection of truth serum revived the memories.
He told KHBS he would remain with his current wife in Centerton, living under the name Ken Williams.
School teacher admits to life in porn
ROME, Nov. 23 An Italian schoolteacher has revealed her secret after-hours life as Internet porn star Madameweb.
Anna Ciriani, who teaches Italian in the northeastern town of Pordenone, said her work as a teacher is impeccably professional, complete with modest clothing and a serious attitude, The Independent reported.
However, as Madameweb, Ciriani is the star of a number of hardcore videos that are spread over more than a dozen Web sites.
Although her identity was well known before she publicly admitted to her double life on her blog, public criticism had been sparse until she traveled last month to Germany for the 11th Venus-Berlin international pornography fair.
News of her performance at the fair -- and the subsequent creation of YouTube videos that depict her walking the streets and riding a bus in the nude -- have drawn fire from some colleagues.
"Each of us, outside work and in our private life, is free to do what he or she wants, free to take whoever one wants to bed," a male coworker of Ciriani's, who identifies himself only as Fabio, wrote on his blog. "What perplexes me is that Madameweb has a job in which, unfortunately, the private life matters -- a lot. It matters for the families, it matters for the school."
'Nincompoop' is Britain's favorite word
LONDON, Nov. 23 A British survey has found "nincompoop" is the nation's favorite word of the 16,500 entries in the Cambridge Dictionary.
The survey of more than 2,000 Britons found 13 percent of respondents chose "nincompoop" -- which likely derived from the Latin "non compos mentis," which means someone not of a sound mind -- as their favorite sounding English word, The Daily Mail reported.
The poll, commissioned by Ubisoft, makers of the language computer game "My Word Search," found "love" was the second most popular word among those polled and "mum" was third.
"The results demonstrate our passion for language and the sentiment we attach to words such as love and mum," Ubisoft spokesman Mike Masuku said. "It also highlights how narrow most people's vocabulary has become."
"Gaming offers a fun way to learn," he said. "Users of every age can benefit from learning new words and their meanings without feeling they are being preached to or patronized."
10-pound hairball in woman's stomach
CHICAGO, Nov. 23 Doctors at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago said they have removed a 10-pound hairball from an 18-year-old woman's stomach.
The doctors said Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine that the previously healthy woman had told a team of gastrointestinal specialists she had been experiencing pain, abdominal swelling and vomiting after eating -- and weight loss of 40 pounds over the course of five months, CNN reported.
Drs. Ronald Levy and Srinadh Komanduri said a scope lowered through the woman's esophagus revealed "a large bezoar (hairball) occluding nearly the entire stomach."
"On questioning, the patient stated that she had had a habit of eating her hair for many years -- a condition called trichophagia," the doctors wrote.
"It seemed like she'd been doing this for several years," Levy said in an interview with CNN.
The doctors said the 10-pound hairball measured 15 inches by 7 inches by 7 inches when it was removed.
The patient reported one year after the treatment that the pain and vomiting had subsided and she had regained 20 pounds. The doctors wrote the patient also "reports that she has stopped eating her hair."
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