Lead Story
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In May the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported on proanorexia Web sites that encourage the worship of eating disorders as embodied in a quasi-deity called Ana. The sites contain Ana prayers, Ana psalms, and Ana commandments; one provides instructions for building an altar to Ana and signing a contract with her in blood. One version of the Ana Creed reads in part: “I will devote myself to Ana. . . . No one else matters; she is the only one who cares about me and who understands me.” Said one young woman, a Minnesota college freshman, “Ana is definitely a higher power, not higher than God, but higher than myself.” A doctor recalled an incident in Arizona where a 13-year-old anorexia patient he was attempting to treat suddenly spoke “an incantation, like a hex, as if to scare me off.”
Restaurant magazine published its annual list of the world’s best restaurants in April; ranked number one for the first time was the Fat Duck, located in the countryside west of London. Singled out for praise were its “sardine on toast sorbet” and “leather, oak and tobacco chocolates.” The Guardian subsequently reported that in 2004 health inspectors had found three of four samples taken at the Fat Duck to contain unsatisfactory levels of bacteria and advised that staff do a better job of washing hands and equipment; after making some changes in the kitchen, the restaurant was retested and pronounced “satisfactory.”
Least Competent Criminals
In March in Hong Kong a 21-year-old man, reportedly upset about a recent breakup with his girlfriend, responded in a manner familiar to readers of News of the Weird: he tossed everything but the largest furniture and appliances in his 35th-floor apartment out the window. No injuries were reported. Also in March in Gang Mills, New York, Billy Abbey, 31, became the latest person to apparently sleep through a police standoff. When he woke up around 11:30 AM, he seemed unaware that law-enforcement officials, summoned by neighbors’ reports of a disturbance, had surrounded his house about 11 hours earlier and had been trying via megaphone to persuade him and his eight-year-old son to come out.
