12/27: Indian woman hugging
 

http://cellar.org/pictures/indianhugger.jpg

CharlieG, did you say you used to work with Buck Wolf? This is one of his, pointed at from his weird news stories of 2001. A lot of those I've already highlighted here, but somehow this one was missed. Even though the story is old, the sentiment will never die: Indian woman Mata Amritanandamayi was on a US hugging tour. She would hug people for 18 hours a day. People would wait in line for quite a while for their one-minute long hug. It's estimated that she's delivered 20 million hugs. Now that's some good work.

Hehehe. I can't help but grin looking at this. On a stupidly boring day at work, this delivered what I think to be my first smile. Thanks. :)

Buck Wolf
 

Yep, I work with Buck, sort of. He's in .COM, I'm in the NON .COM, I'm in IS. He used to share floor space with us. Haven't seen him in a while - I hope he made it through the layoffs

I'm sure he did - the story that pointed to this older item was a "best of 2001" sort of thing that included his own byline.

He says that the wierd and wacky news went away for a few weeks after 9/11, and then by mid-October they started up again. Doesn't sound like someone who's not working stories!

It's interesting because I saw the same thing - there weren't many IotDs that were worthy for a few weeks, and then they started to trickle in again, and now they're plentiful.

Man, Buck Wolf always had interesting stuff. I remember hitting ABCNews.com every week looking for that. It didn't even jog my memory until I read over it again. I found that to be the best part of ABCNews - there was always something really cool in there.

Does anyone else think that a minute long hug from a complete stranger is kind of long?

Well, yes. A minute long hug with someone you know can be pretty long too. Especially if they're stinky. :)