Here are some profoundly absurd bits of news (courtesy of world magazine):

Parking power trip
British parking attendants are so zealously enforcing a zero-tolerance policy that it's sparking a public backlash. The New York Times reports that Nadhim Zahawi was ticketed for illegally parking his motor scooter after it was strewn across the street after a traffic accident. As one of London's parking attendants wrote the $180 ticket, Mr. Zahawi sat in a nearby ambulance receiving treatment for a broken leg.
Another man stopped to ask directions from one attendant -- and was promptly ticketed by another. And one former traffic warden, Samson Adeyemo, says he was fired because he only gave out 12 parking tickets a day. The Times reports that parking officials now outrank telemarketers in surveys of the British public's most reviled workers.

Dead zone
Construction workers in Tokyo knew a building they were preparing for demolition was old and decrepit, but what they found must have surprised them. In a forgotten apartment, workers discovered a skeleton reclining on a futon still wearing pajamas.
The man, a former construction worker himself, died 20 years ago and was found near a newspaper dated Feb. 20, 1984. Neither his family nor his employer had inquired after he went missing. One elderly neighbor said he didn't even know the apartment existed.