• Overlooked by the roundup of "state fair" foods listed in News of the Weird two weeks ago was the debut in June, at California's San Diego County Fair, of the deep-fried Slim-Fast bar. A 200-calorie "diet bar" is breaded in pancake batter, fried, dusted with powdered sugar and drizzled with chocolate. [Huffington Post, 6-8-2015]
• ( A woman in a suburb of Beijing filed a lawsuit against the China Dragon Garden graveyard recently over her shock to find that not only was her own name affixed to a headstone in gold lettering but about half of the 600 plots were eerily marked for prominent (and still living) people to move into. It was a marketing plan, according to cemetery workers, to convince customers of the upscale neighbors (such as basketball star Yao Ming) waiting for them in the afterlife. (China's aging population, and Beijing's land scarcity, have driven up prices, intensifying competition and corrupt practices, according to a Los Angeles Times dispatch.) [Los Angeles Times, 7-23-2015]
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