Lead Stories
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In a 1999 episode of The Simpsons, Homer spreads plutonium on the fields at his father’s decrepit farm and inadvertently creates “tomacco,” a mutant hybrid of tomatoes and tobacco whose fruits are filled with foul-tasting but incredibly addictive brown goo. Inspired by the show’s antismoking slant, 53-year-old Rob Baur of Lake Oswego, Oregon, has tried to grow such a hybrid by grafting a tomato plant onto the roots of a tobacco plant–and he’s succeeded, sort of. Analysis has determined that only the leaves of his plant, not its fruit, contain nicotine. In January Baur announced that he’d auction off the fruits on eBay.
After the Drug Enforcement Administration destroyed his home lab near Roanoke, Virginia, in October and falsely accused him of manufacturing methamphetamines (the charges were dropped in December), 78-year-old Ariel Alonso lamented to reporters, “How do I get my…dignity back?” What Alonso was actually making (with partner Jonathan Conrad) was a selection of botanical and alchemical elixirs that sold for $20 to $40 a dose, including the “fluid of life”–Conrad says it’s “what stuff inside of cells is made of” and that it can cleanse people internally and build new tissue, though by his own admission it’s made from potassium chloride, sea salt, and white grape juice.
Conditional Love
In Colorado Springs, Colorado, the 48-year-old father of a high school basketball player was charged with assault for allegedly biting two referees in an on-court brawl after his son’s team lost. In Longview, Texas, crude oil bubbled up from the toilet and sinks of Leila LeTourneau’s home, covering the floors (authorities speculate it came from an old well that hadn’t been properly plugged). And two Cubans who’d tried to make it to Florida last year in a 1951 Chevy pickup they’d converted into a pontoon boat (the coast guard turned them back) tried again with a pontooned 1959 Buick carrying four other adults and five children (they were again turned back).
