| T.R | Title | User | Personal
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| 29.1 | | IJSAPL::ANDERSON | Like to help me avoid an ulcer? | Tue Jan 14 1997 13:59 | 120 |
| 29.2 | | IJSAPL::ANDERSON | Like to help me avoid an ulcer? | Wed Jan 22 1997 08:01 | 133 |
| 29.3 | | IJSAPL::ANDERSON | Like to help me avoid an ulcer? | Mon Jan 27 1997 08:30 | 130 |
| WEIRDNUZ.465 (News of the Weird, January 3, 1997) by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORIES
* The township supervisors in East Marlborough, Pa., proposed an
ordinance in November to ban offensive smells within the town,
requiring that a panel of people who possess "ordinary and reasonable
sensibility" be convened to determine which odors are not acceptable.
The issue arose when one supervisor complained about the smell from a
Chinese restaurant.
* On December 5, for the 17th consecutive year, hundreds of Thai men
underwent free vasectomies to honor King Bhumibol Adulyadej, 69, on his
birthday. The day-long festivities included free food and drink and a
condom-inflating championship. The king has been praised by
family-planning organizations for cutting Thailand's population growth
rate by two-thirds over the last 25 years.
* The Sanctity of Heterosexual Marriage: In September, Painesville,
Ohio, judge Fred V. Skok issued a marriage license to Paul Smith and
Debi Easterly, even though he was aware that Paul describes himself as
a lesbian, usually dresses in women's clothes, and is on a three-year
regimen toward a complete gender change. Judge Skok, mindful that he
could not under Ohio law approve a female-female marriage, merely
required a doctor's certificate that Paul currently still has male sex
organs.
COURTROOM ANTICS
* In the Tasmanian Supreme Court in November, Martin Bryant pleaded
guilty to the April murders of 35 people at a tourist attraction in
Port Arthur, Australia, but he couldn't stop laughing. Wrote the
Associated Press, "Bryant laughed so much he had trouble saying the
word 'guilty' and had to be hushed by his own lawyer." And convicted
child molester Francis Robinson, 76, at a September bail hearing on a
charge of sexual abuse of an infant in Markham, Ill., had to be
admonished by the judge because he chuckled while prosecutors described
how Robinson allegedly fondled the girl.
* In October, a court in Kerrville, Tex., granted Darlie Router's
request (she's on trial for the Susan Smith-like murder of her two
small children) to have her hair done in jail at taxpayer expense.
Router had convinced the judge that if she arrived for her trial with
dark roots, the jurors might infer that the reason she hadn't taken
care of her hair was because she is locked up, and thus they might not
give her the presumption of innocence.
* At an October re-trial in Leeds, England, jurors took about an hour
to acquit police officer Andrew Whitfield, 30, of stealing a calculator
worth about $4. The cost of the trial, plus the original mistrial,
plus keeping Whitfield on paid suspension for 14 months as required by
law, was about $158,000.
* In September, Barbara Monsky filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in
Danbury, Conn., against local Superior Court Judge Howard J. Moraghan
for permitting his dog to roam the courthouse, especially since
Moraghan should know that the dog habitually sticks his snout under
women's skirts and allegedly did so to Monsky. Monsky's attorney,
Nancy Burton, said the dog had sniffed her, also. Burton analogized to
the traditional "one free bite" rule for determining whether a dog is
legally "vicious," arguing that Moraghan long ago knew that the dog had
had his one free sniff.
* Rodney L. Turner, 55, called his office on October 2 in Kansas City,
Kan., and said he wouldn't make it to work that day, as a result of his
2 a.m. arrest for DUI that resulted in his detention until 5 a.m.
Turner, a lawyer, is a part-time municipal judge and on October 2 had
been scheduled to hear a full day's docket of DUI cases.
COMPELLING EXPLANATIONS
* At the trial in his racial harassment lawsuit against Pitney Bowes in
Los Angeles in September, black salesman Akintunde I. Ogunleye
testified that he had been addressed by one co-worker as "Akintunde,
ooga-booga, jungle-jungle." The co-worker, who is of French-Canadian
ancestry, later testified that he was misunderstood, that what he said
was "Bonjour, bonjour." The jury awarded Akintunde $11.1 million.
* In September, Roy T. Moore was convicted of exposing himself while
seated in his car at a gas station in Goderich, Ontario, despite his
explanation that what a witness saw was actually only a half-eaten
cookie from a bag he was holding in his lap. The judge refused to
admit the cookie as evidence but did allow Moore's lawyer to wield a
tape measure to illustrate to the jury the size of the alleged cookie.
* Philippines army logistics officer Brig. Gen. Rolando Espejo told a
senate hearing in Manila in September that the 4,500 weapons captured
in coups against then-President Corazon Aquino have been stolen from
two armories and can never be recovered because all documents referring
to them are missing. The general said the documents were all eaten by
termites.
* Orlando, Fla., Juvenile Court judge Walter Komanski was caught by
office workers making printouts of pornography in the courthouse in
October and of keeping pornographic videos and magazines in an office
cabinet. He said he kept them at work only because he had teenage boys
at home and that, as a responsible parent, he didn't want them to find
his stash. Also, he said he had surfed Internet sex sites only to
research how to restrict them from his kids. (He was reassigned to
finance cases.)
* According to a report in the Wilmington (N. C.) Morning Star in
November, a dog was briefly, though improperly, admitted to the local
Kenan Auditorium with its owner to take in a performance of the opera
The Barber of Seville. (The owner took the dog away after it started
to bark.) Manager Don Hawley said one of his staff members had allowed
the woman to bring the dog in after she said she was hearing-impaired
and that the dog was a "hearing-ear dog." In retrospect, said Hawley,
"That was silly."
* Singer Stevie Nicks's lawyer told the Internal Revenue Service in
November that the reason she spent (and tax-deducted) so much for
clothing in 1991 was that she had to throw away each outfit after one
use because of "the energy levels of her performances and the heat
generated on stage from lights and physical exertion."
UPDATE
* Imprisoned Kentucky child molester Lou Torok announced in July 1995
that he had persuaded the governors of six states to proclaim October 7
of that year as "Love Day." Despite the attention that Torok's
petition drew from News of the Weird and other news outlets at that
time, Kentucky Gov. Paul Patton okayed the "Love Day" designation again
for October 7, 1996 (though he later said he should not have). Torok
complained that America is "not a forgiving country" and said that he
is "in a cesspool of negativism [in prison] and is just "trying to make
the world a little better."
To send mail and messages to Chuck Shepherd, write
[email protected] or P. O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg FL 33738.
|
| 29.4 | | IJSAPL::ANDERSON | Like to help me avoid an ulcer? | Mon Feb 03 1997 07:27 | 132 |
| WEIRDNUZ.466 (News of the Weird, January 10, 1997) by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORIES
* Can't Hold It In: The school board in Durham, N. C., suspended a
substitute teacher at Hillside High School in November after she
urinated into a trash can during class, allegedly because of a medical
condition. And 5th-grade teacher Dow Ooten, 36, was suspended in
Charleston, W. Va., in December after he brought his soiled trousers to
a school board meeting to show what he was forced to do because the
faculty restroom door was locked. And in November, a similarly-soiled
Tom Pak won a $45,000 settlement from Los Angeles County, whose
property tax office clerks made him wait at a desk, without a restroom
break, in retaliation for his having arrived 15 minutes before closing
to make payments on more than 200 properties.
* Latest Ear Technology: In November, police in Independence Township,
Mich., arrested a 45-year-old man and charged him with peeping into
windows at the Clarkston Motor Inn, basing the arrest on the earprints
he allegedly left on the windows. And one month later, in Vancouver,
Wash., Judge Robert L. Harris ruled that the prosecutor could use an
earprint found on the bedroom door of a murder victim in the trial of
his suspected killer.
* Actress Anya Pencheva announced in November a plan to divert her
fellow Bulgarians' attention from grim economic problems: She would
have a plaster cast made of her breasts, to display in the National
Theater in Sofia. Said Pencheva, "It is a pity to focus everything on
[budget cuts] when there are such beautiful breasts around."
THE CONTINUING CRISIS
* According to a September report in Toronto's Globe and Mail, the
University of Toronto's medical school employs actors and other people
for $12 to $35 per hour to be practice patients for its students. Bob
LeRoy, 45, commands the top pay because he is a rectal-exam patient.
Said LeRoy, "I always hope the student with the biggest finger goes
first."
* The Wall Street Journal reported in September that about 100
"laughing clubs" had sprung up in India in the last year based on the
philosophy of Dr. Madan Kataria, who says the ancient yoga breathing
and laughing exercises can help people shed inhibitions, build
self-confidence, stop smoking, alleviate high blood pressure and
arthritis, and stop migraine headaches. After conventional stretching,
adherents engage in silent laughs, out-loud laughs with their lips
closed, and the roaring "Bombay laugh." Dr. Kataria worries only that
some day, the government might try to tax laughter.
* Suicide Chic: A September story in London's Sunday Times described
Venice, Italy, as a new trendy site for unhappy Europeans' and
Americans' suicides, inspired by the movie "Death in Venice." (About
50 people attempted suicide in the past year; all but a half dozen were
unsuccessful, usually because the canals into which they leap are
deceptively shallow.) And the San Francisco Examiner reported in
September that 11 people in the previous 18 months had rented handguns
at local gun ranges and killed themselves on the premises.
* According to an August dispatch by Britain's Guardian News Service,
the family of Chiang Kai-shek (the Chinese ruler who was chased out by
the communists, to Taiwan, in 1949 and who died in 1975) is growing
weary of the "temporary" storage of his skeleton in Taiwan, where it
has been kept in preparation for its triumphant return to the mainland
upon the fall of the communist government. According to practitioners
of the art of feng-shui, the spirits are upset that the skeleton is
kept in a box in the living room of the family estate instead of being
buried in China.
* Students rioting in August at South Korea's Yonsei University
apparently found weapons in short supply and used whatever was
available. When police finally quashed the protest, the geology
department faculty discovered that about 10,000 rare rocks, collected
over 30 years and considered irreplaceable, were missing. A few were
recovered from the streets, chipped or broken.
* In September, David Cook of Caledonian University (Glasgow, Scotland)
told the British Psychological Society's annual conference that his
three-year study shows that politicians have significant behavior
patterns in common with criminal psychopaths. Cook said that criminals
were relatively easy to analyze but that he did not have as much data
as he would like on politicians: "[They] don't like to be studied."
* In October, Miss Canada International, 20-year-old Danielle House,
was removed from further competition after being charged in St. John's,
Newfoundland, with punching out her ex- boyfriend's current girlfriend
in a bar. Ms. House said she had been in counseling recently for "low
self-esteem."
* In Santa Fe, N. Mex., Christine Bodman announced in November that a
group of massage therapists has formed the Massage Emergency Response
Team to minister for free to stressed-out firefighters, police
officers, and paramedics.
* Latest Bobbittizations: On the evening of November 17, Ms. Renu
Begum, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Ms. Raquel Nair Lucio, in Tiete,
Brazil, at about the same hour on the clock (but 10 time zones apart)
severed their respective husbands' genitals in jealous rages.
* In August, a federal judge in Springfield, Mo., dismissed the lawsuit
of Jennifer Stocker Jessen, now 24, who had claimed that repressed
memories of childhood abuse by her step-grandfather returned to her in
1988. The triggering mechanism, she said, was her hitting an opossum
in the road with her car.
THE WEIRDO-AMERICAN COMMUNITY
* In September in East Orange, Vt., Christie's auction house sold
almost $2 million worth of automobiles (including 33 Stutz Bearcats)
that belonged to eccentrics A. K. Miller, who died at 87 a few years
ago, and his wife Imogene, who died in 1996. The couple left millions
more in gold and silver and other valuables but lived like paupers,
sometimes eating dog food or bread made of flour they had swept off the
floor, sometimes shopping at yard sales, sometimes dressing in rags.
As treasurer of his church, Mr. Miller had once refused to accept a
small increase in electricity rates and converted the entire church to
kerosene lamps. The Millers paid property taxes but no other ones, and
the federal and state governments are now claiming $8.2 million.
NO LONGER WEIRD
* Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now
occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation:
(13) The gun expert who accidentally shoots himself while demonstrating
safety techniques, as did Constable Randy Youngman, who took a shotgun
blast in the leg while teaching a safety class in Medicine Hat,
Alberta, in December. And (14) the periodic warnings about global
warming caused by excessive methane production by flatulent livestock,
as was announced in a European Commission strategy paper released in
November in Brussels.
ADDRESSES: To send mail and messages to Chuck Shepherd, write
[email protected] or P. O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg FL 33738.
|
| 29.5 | | IJSAPL::ANDERSON | I feel all feak and weeble, doc | Mon Feb 10 1997 06:23 | 129 |
| WEIRDNUZ.467 (News of the Weird, January 17, 1997) by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORIES
* The New York Police Department disclosed in December that it has been
stepping up the enforcement of a little-known ordinance that makes it
illegal for a subway passenger to occupy more than one seat (such as by
putting a package or his feet on an adjacent seat), even if no one else
is in the car. NYPD said more than 31,000 summonses (carrying $50
fines) were issued in 1996, compared with 1,800 in 1993.
* After a trial in Alesund, Norway, in December, a 34-year-old man was
sentenced to 12 years in prison for repeatedly molesting seven boys he
was baby-sitting. Before now, no child molester in Norway had ever be
sentenced to longer than six years, and no one has ever been sentenced
for longer than 21 years for any crime.
* Balaclava Blues: Police in Grand Rapids, Manitoba, in December said
a woman, who had chased down a thief who had stolen her group's bingo
receipts, ripped off his balaclava and discovered it was her
15-year-old son. And Barry George Paquette, 40, was arrested in
November for the robbery of a convenience store in Edmonton, Alberta--a
collar made easier because he was halfway through the robbery before he
realized he had forgotten to pull down his balaclava. (He halted the
robbery momentarily to pull it down, but the store's surveillance
camera had already captured his face clearly.)
THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT
* In October, veteran San Francisco beauty-salon owner Carla Blair
opened another one, a full-service salon called "Crossers," catering
exclusively to cross-dressing men. Blair said she got the idea when
she sensed more and more men were not being taken seriously at women's
clothing and cosmetic counters. (She said the big tip-off for her was
the number of men who claimed to be looking for something for their
wives and habitually said, "She's about my size.")
* Janet Merel of Deerfield, Ill., recently introduced Diet Dirt
(sterilized soil that can be sprinkled over french fries, cake, etc.,
to make them taste repugnant). Order $10 bags from 1-888-Diet Dirt.
* Sherry Dubois and Peggy Freemark recently opened a licebusters
business in Barrie, Ont., to pick through people's hair for $30 per
hour, which they say is a bargain because nonprofessionals miss about
half of any resident head lice. Lice has become a major problem in
school because infested kids sometimes purposely share their hats to
pass lice to classmates so they can get a few days off.
* A December Associated Press dispatch touted the male baldness remedy
of cosmetic surgeon Anthony Pignataro of West Seneca, N. Y.:
hairpieces with tiny gold screws that snap on to titanium sockets
implanted in the top of the skull, which fuse to the bone in about 12
weeks. Pignataro said he has about 100 customers and got his idea from
what he said were commonplace (in his profession) snap-on eyes, ears,
noses, and fingers.
* The Chicago Tribune reported in October on Woodland Hills, Calif.,
sculptor Mark Maitre, who for two years has been creating casts of body
parts of his clients (many of them Hollywood celebrities) at $1,500 to
$4,000 per product, which includes mounting on marble. Actress Marlee
Matlin had her breasts cast into a bust for her husband, and another
celebrity had the small of his back and his buttocks cast into a fruit
bowl.
SCHEMES
* Huntsville, Tex., prison inmate Steven Russell escaped in December
when he walked past guards after having colored his prison whites with
a green marking pen so they resembled hospital scrubs. He was soon
recaptured. However, David A. Neel, 48, serving a life sentence at a
prison in Point of the Mountain, Utah, did not even make it out the
gate in his December escape attempt because a guard thought something
looked funny about the United Parcel Service box into which Neel had
had himself sealed.
* In James City, Va., in September, Robert Pablo Montez, 46, at first
showed up at the public assistance office with dark glasses and a white
cane, claiming to be blind, but left when a social worker told him he'd
need a doctor's certificate. A week later, he returned minus the cane
and glasses and soon was arrested when he threatened to blow up a
social worker's car if she didn't sign him up.
* Ronnie Wade Cater, 39, was arrested in Hampton, Va., in October and
charged with calling in a bomb threat. According to detectives, he was
sitting at a bar, drunk, and had the idea to tell police there was a
bomb at another bar, hoping to divert enough officers to that bar so
that he might drive home undetected. However, probably because he had
been drinking, he lingered on the phone a little too long while talking
to the dispatcher, and the call was traced.
* In St. Paul, Minn., in December, well-to-do dentist Gerald Dick, 58,
his wife Gretchen, 56, and their two adult children were charged with
receiving up to $250,000 in stolen luxury consumer goods that they had
allegedly "ordered" from a personal shoplifter who was given detailed
lists of which upscale goods to procure. (In a refreshing departure
from suspects' usual denials, Mrs. Dick was reported to have said to
the police, "You caught us red-handed. Now what?")
* In September, Texas-based Electronic Data Systems (the company
founded, and later sold, by Ross Perot) won the contract to collect the
unpaid parking tickets for the city of Madrid, Spain. A few weeks
later, the city treasurer accused the company of creating as many as
73,000 bogus tickets in order to collect more money on its contract.
UPDATE
* Michael Anderson Godwin made News of the Weird posthumously in 1989.
He had spent several years awaiting South Carolina's electric chair on
a murder conviction before having his sentence reduced to life in
prison. In March 1989, sitting on a metal toilet in his cell and
attempting to fix his small TV set, he bit into a wire and was
electrocuted. On January 1, 1997, Laurence Baker, also a convicted
murderer once on death row but later serving a life sentence at the
state prison in Pittsburgh, Pa., was electrocuted by his homemade
earphones as he watched his small TV while sitting on his metal toilet.
UNDIGNIFIED DEATHS
* Wilmetta Billington, 68, an inveterate collector of trash, which she
stored in her home in Metropolis, Ill., asphyxiated in December when
she stumbled and fell into one of her many stacks, causing debris to
fall on top of her. So jam-packed was the room that it took
authorities 20 minutes to unstack the debris from the top of her body.
And British tourist Stephen John Pepperell, 39, lost his balance as he
was tossing a melon off a second-floor balcony into a trash can in
Nicosia, Cyprus, in October and fell to his death.
ADDRESSES: To send mail and messages to Chuck Shepherd, write
[email protected] or P. O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg FL 33738.
|
| 29.6 | | IJSAPL::ANDERSON | I feel all feak and weeble, doc | Tue Feb 18 1997 07:41 | 130 |
| WEIRDNUZ.468 (News of the Weird, January 24, 1997) by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORIES
* The Brooklyn, N. Y., organization Shalom Bayis ("Household Peace" in
Hebrew) closed down its 24-hour mistress hotline in January after an
unfavorable New York Daily News story. A Shalom Bayis spokesman said
the hotline's purpose was to place its 40 volunteer mistresses with
unsatisfied husbands in order to stop the "plague of divorce" menacing
Jewish couples. Although Shalom Bayis claimed to take no fee for its
services, it did admit that after the Daily News story, most of the
hotline callers were single men and happily married men who just wanted
sex.
* One Man, One Vote: Because of an obscure state constitutional
amendment that few voters and politicians noticed, the terms of office
of the four incumbents on the Loretto, Ky., City Council automatically
expired in November without their having had an opportunity to campaign
for re-election. Travis Greenwell, 23, voting by absentee ballot, was
perhaps the only person in town (population 800) who read the voting
literature and thus cast the only votes in the election. For the four
slots, he wrote in the names of his mother, his uncle, a friend, and a
local character who runs a hardware store. (All except the hardware
store guy declined to serve.)
* Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Phoenix, Ariz., cosmetic surgeon Steven
Locniker, on the lam for avoiding child-support charges, was arrested
in September after he called attention to himself as Cosmopolitan
magazine's "Bachelor of the Month." And Thomas Georgevitch, 22, on the
lam for impersonating a police officer, was arrested in Bay Shore, N.
Y., in October after a detective heard him call in to a radio station
to make a song request (Johnny Rivers's "Secret Agent Man"). And Tom
Tipton, 63, wanted on two warrants in Minneapolis, was arrested in
November when a sheriff's officer recognized his name as the man
singing the national anthem before the Vikings-Broncos game.
THE LITIGIOUS SOCIETY
* Chris Morris filed a $1 million lawsuit against the state of Michigan
in November, claiming that he caught a cold in the rotunda of the state
Capitol while viewing an art exhibit there earlier in the year.
* Dale L. Larson's $41,000 trial-court award was upheld by a Wisconsin
appeals court in October, which agreed with the trial court that the
Indianhead golf course in Wausau was 51 percent responsible for
Larson's needing nine root canals and 23 dental crowns. Larson tripped
on his golf spikes and fell hard on his face on a brick path outside
the clubhouse, and he argued that he wouldn't have fallen if it had
been a smooth concrete sidewalk rather than a brick path. The trial
court had found that only 49 percent of the accident was due to
Larson's having consumed 13 drinks that evening, which left him with a
blood-alcohol level of 0.28 90 minutes after the fall.
* Andrew Daniels filed a $500,000 lawsuit against M&M/Mars Company and
an Cleveland, Ohio, retailer because one of the M&M Peanuts he bit down
on had no peanut in it, and as a result, his teeth bit through his lip,
which required his hospitalization and various surgery bills. One
claim against the retailer is under the legal theory of "failure to
inspect" the candy.
* In August, Julie Leach filed a lawsuit in Macomb County, Michigan,
seeking at least $10,000 from the owners of a beagle named Patch, which
Leach said was constantly enticing Leach's German shepherd Holly to
chase him. In 1995, during one of Patch's escapades, the pursuing
Holly was run over by a car and killed. Leach says Patch's owners
should pay for permitting their dog to harass Holly.
* Jamie Brooks, 18, filed a $5 million claim against Kiowa County,
Okla., in June, asserting that it is the county's fault that she became
pregnant six months earlier while housed in the jail awaiting her
murder trial. She said the father is inmate-trusty Eddie Alonzo, who
had access to the hallways and who she said impregnated her through the
bars of her cell.
* In July Alex Alzaldua filed a $25,000 lawsuit against Dennis Hickey
in Raymondville, Tex., alleging injuries caused by his "suddenly
without warning" having tripped over Hickey's dog in the kitchen of
Hickey's home. According to the lawsuit, Hickey should have warned
Alzaldua that he was walking around in the kitchen "at his own risk"
and that Hickey had failed to warn Alzaldua of "the dog's propensity of
lying in certain areas."
CLICHES COME TO LIFE
* Trucker Franciszek Zygadlo was committed to a mental institution in
Rochester, N. Y., in November after he led police on a 280-mile,
high-speed chase in his trailerless cab through three states in
September. According to police, after finally driving the truck into
Irondequoit Bay, Zygadlo ran toward the officers and proclaimed himself
a hero for defusing a bomb on the truck that he said would have
exploded if he had ever slowed to less than 40 mph.
* On October 17 firefighters took two hours to extinguish a fire at the
Cal-Compack Foods plant in Las Cruces, N. Mex., that started when a
silo full of red chile powder grew so hot that it began to smolder.
* In August, the Caron family of Sandown, N. H., was granted an
extension of time to file a quarterly federal tax return after they
discovered that their home had been ransacked by the family's pet pygmy
goats while they were on vacation. Among the items the goats had eaten
were toilet bowl cleaner, a lampshade, a telephone directory, and all
of the family's income tax paperwork.
* Jeen Han, 22, was charged with conspiracy to commit murder in Irvine,
Calif., in November, against her twin sister, Sunny. According to a
police lieutenant, the "evil twin" was angry that the "good twin" had
snitched on her regarding stolen credit cards and thus wanted to kill
her and assume her identity.
THINNING THE HERD
* In November, a 60-year-old Polish man in the village of Kosianka
Trojanowka, identified only as "Czeslaw B," was accidentally shot to
death by two homemade guns he had mounted on his garage door to ward
off trespassers (just 2 of 28 booby traps in his house). And in
Slidell, La., in December, Jason Jinks, 20, decided to open his car
door and back up at 25 mph in order to look for his hat that had just
fallen off; when he hit the brakes, he fell out on his head and, three
days later, died.
CONTEMPORARY WISDOM
* Veteran Belleville, Ill., jail inmate Kelvin Lewis, asked by the
Belleville Journal in January to evaluate the jail's new black-and-
white, thick-horizontal-striped uniforms, graded them an 11 on a
10-scale: "I like their style. The younger generation will like [the
rolled-up cuffs]."
ADDRESSES: To send mail and messages to Chuck Shepherd, write
[email protected] or P. O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg FL 33738.
|
| 29.7 | | IJSAPL::ANDERSON | I feel all feak and weeble, doc | Mon Feb 24 1997 06:21 | 137 |
| WEIRDNUZ.469 (News of the Weird, January 31, 1997) by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORIES
* Clarence Mulloy, weary of doctors who don't keep their appointments,
filed a lawsuit in November against one of them, Dr. Lawrence Amato of
Round Lake Beach, Ill., and won $10 plus court costs. Mulloy claimed
that Dr. Amato once canceled merely because his nurse was away and he
didn't want to have to hook Mulloy up to a heart monitor all by
himself.
* In December, McDonald's opened restaurants in its 100th country,
Belarus, amid about 4,000 eager customers and 500 protestors, and a few
days later, in its 101st, Tahiti. According to New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman, no two countries with McDonald's restaurants
have ever gone to war against each other--because, as Friedman
theorizes, countries prosperous enough to support a McDonald's are
surely stable enough to resist most provocations.
* Texas A&M student Jonathan Culpepper and his fraternity Kappa Alpha
were indicted in College Station, Tex., in December on a criminal
hazing charge because of a severe "wedgie." The grand jury found that
fraternity members lifted a candidate, unnamed in news reports, off his
feet by the waistband of his briefs, causing the man to require the
surgical removal of a testicle.
CAN'T POSSIBLY BE TRUE
* The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported in December that a female
inmate at the Yell County Jail in Dardanelle had been receiving regular
shipments of methamphetamines via Federal Express. Jail officials had
finally become suspicious and obtained the necessary search warrant to
check her frequent deliveries.
* During the Christmas Handicap race at a track in Melbourne,
Australia, the horse Cogitate threw its rider and bumped the horse Hon
Kwok Star sending Hon's jockey, apprentice Andrew Payne, into the air.
To break his fall, Payne grabbed the neck of Cogitate and then climbed
into the stirrups and rode that horse across the finish line (though
the official records would show that both horses were disqualified).
* The Miami Herald reported in September that David McAllister, 77 and
blind, a nursing-home invalid in North Miami Beach, Fla., receives
daily visits from Chris Carrier, 32, who reads to McAllister from the
Bible. Their only previous relationship occurred during a few days in
December 1974, when McAllister kidnapped young Carrier at a bus stop
and left him for dead in the Everglades with cigarette burns on his
body, icepick holes in one eye, and a gunshot wound that left him blind
in the other eye. Said Carrier, "I don't stare at my . . . potential
murderer. I stare at a man, very old, very alone and scared."
* In November, ballroom dancing champion Michael Keith Withers was
convicted in Perth, Australia, of the attempted 1994 murder of his
wife-dance partner, Stacey Larson. He had said it was an accident, but
the jury found that he had doused her with gasoline (set aside to use
in a Whipper Snapper lawn trimmer he had borrowed from a neighbor) and
set her afire, burning 70 percent of her body. Larson testified that
she had not seen Withers since the incident, but under
cross-examination finally admitted that she had slept with him 15 times
since then, and another witness said Larson had bought Withers
Christmas gifts in 1995, including his very own Whipper Snapper.
* Results of a University of Minnesota study, announced in July and
pertinent to the dispute between large animal feedlots and their
neighbors who object to the smell, showed that home values nearer the
feedlots were higher than those further away. (No explanation was
given by researchers, but some experts interviewed by the Minneapolis
Star Tribune said increased employment opportunities at feedlots had
driven up demand for housing.)
* A 1985 lease fixed the annual rent the U. S. pays for its Moscow
embassy at 72,500 rubles. That was worth about $60,000 at the time,
but now with nine years to go on the lease, the devaluation of the
ruble has reduced the rent to the equivalent of $22.56 a year. In
August, the Russian government stepped up its demands to renegotiate,
but the U. S. continues to resist.
INEXPLICABLE
* The New York Times reported in December on a Jordanian company that
employs veiled Palestinian women stitching together women's exotic
underpants for Victoria's Secret stores and catalogs. Adding to the
irony is that the products, which in 1997 will also include brassieres,
are sold with a "Made in Israel" label in order to take advantage of
Israel's favorable trade status with the U. S.
* In December, Frederick Lundy was to report for a court hearing in
Akron, Ohio, in which he had been told: Plead not guilty to a parole
violation and be released until trial, or plead guilty and go to jail
immediately. Lundy pleaded guilty and was abruptly led away. That
decision could be explained, perhaps, by Lundy's desire to get on with
his punishment. What was not explained was why he had come into the
courtroom under the circumstances with 41 rocks of crack cocaine in his
pocket, which were discovered in a routine, pre-incarceration search.
* In November at the Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque, Anthony
Valencia and Fitzgerald Vandever, both age 20, were arrested and
accused of roaming the Intensive Care Unit, looking to steal patients'
food off warming carts. (Said a hospital spokeswoman, "Actually, we've
got some pretty good [food] down there."
* In December in London, England, the first fraud cases against the
parent company of Hoover vacuum cleaners went to trial, four years
after the company's disastrous giveaway campaign in which it promised
two free air fares with all vacuum cleaners, which retailed for as
little as about $165 in Great Britain. The company sold over a half
million units during the campaign and has so far paid out about $72
million in airline tickets to about a third of the purchasers.
UPDATE
* In 1995 News of the Weird listed four cities in which entrepreneurs
had begun businesses to fly couples around for an hour so that they
could have sexual intercourse while airborne. In December 1996 several
homeowners near Van Nuys (Calif.) Airport complained vociferously to
the Los Angeles Daily News that one of the four, Mile High Adventures
(whose flights now start at $429), flies so frequently and low that
they are extremely irritating. Said one homeowner, "What people do in
their own bedroom is their business. What they do over our heads is
the community's business."
THE WEIRDO-AMERICAN COMMUNITY
* In January, disbarred Parsonburg, Md., lawyer Paul Bailey Taylor, 61,
finally snapped after years of erratic behavior and barricaded himself
inside a church, armed with a rifle, for five hours before police
convinced him to surrender. When he was working, Taylor ran his law
practice from the bathroom of his unheated rural trailer, where he had
set up a desk over the toilet so that he could sit for long periods of
time because of an intestinal disorder. A social worker once described
the place as "clean," in that Taylor's 12 cats were neatly housed in
cardboard boxes and his legal papers were filed in an orderly fashion
in the bathtub.
ADDRESSES: To send mail and messages to Chuck Shepherd, write
[email protected] or P. O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg FL 33738.
|
| 29.8 | | IJSAPL::ANDERSON | I feel all feak and weeble, doc | Mon Mar 03 1997 06:47 | 131 |
| WEIRDNUZ.470 (News of the Weird, February 7, 1997) by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORIES
* An ancient fear of penis-shrinking sorcery periodically surfaces in
Ghana, the latest instance in December. Mobs beat seven men to death
in Accra and injured others in Tema, all on rumors that the men had the
power to make others' genitals disappear by a mere touch. Police said
the rumors were spread by criminal operatives so that crowds of
hysterical men would gather, making it easier for the criminals to
pickpocket wallets.
* Japanese researchers at Tokyo University and Tsukuba University said
they will begin in February testing a project to surgically implant
microprocessors and electrode sets, and eventually microcameras, into
American cockroaches for a variety of possible missions, including
espionage surveillance and searching for victims in earthquake rubble.
The equipment, which can also receive remote-control signals to command
the cockroach's movements, weighs a tenth of an ounce, twice a typical
roach's weight but still only a tenth of what it potentially can carry.
* In December, the Idaho High School Activities Association rejected a
proposal by the superintendent of public instruction for
extracurricular firearms competition in junior high schools. But in
January in neighboring Wyoming, a House committee approved a bill that
would lower the minimum age for big-game hunters to 12.
SEEDS OF OUR DESTRUCTION
* The New York Times reported in January that the Taliban movement in
Afghanistan is presiding over such a bankrupt economy that a viable
career field now has men (women are forbidden to work at all) raiding
cemeteries of human bones, which are then sold to dealers in Pakistan
as animal bones to be fashioned into cooking oil, soap, chicken feed,
and buttons. Skulls must first be broken up to preserve the ruse that
only animal bones are involved.
* Recent Inappropriate Nudity: In September, dozens of schoolteachers
from the state of Bihar stripped in front of the Indian parliament to
protest low wages. And the Defense Intelligence Agency, in a memo
disclosed by the Washington Post in October, reported the emergence of
a Liberian leader known as "General 'Butt Naked,'" "from his propensity
for fighting naked," which he "probably believes terrorizes the enemy
and brings good luck." And Meaux, France, high school philosophy
teacher Bernard Defrance was suspended in January for his pedagogical
game in which he removes an article of clothing each time a student
stumps him with a riddle (sometimes losing everything).
* In a July soccer game in Tripoli, Libya, a team sponsored by the
eldest son of Muammar Qaddafi suffered a questionable referee's call
and began beating the official and the other team. After spectators
jeered, Qaddafi and his bodyguards opened fire on them, and some
spectators shot back. The death toll was somewhere between eight and
fifty, including the referee, and Muammar Qaddafi declared a period of
mourning, the hallmark of which was that Libyan TV was to be in black
and white only.
* Role Model Gains: In October, Marcia Fann, 37, won the prestigious
Bass'n Gal Classic Star XX bass-fishing tournament in Athens, Tex.
Fann cheerfully discloses that she was formerly a man, having been
surgically changed sometime in the 1980s.
* In December, the entire 300-man paramilitary police force of the
83-island, South Pacific nation of Vanuatu was arrested for kidnaping a
visiting Australian official in order to increase its leverage in an
overtime-pay dispute with the government. The force had been suspended
in November for kidnaping Vanautu's deputy prime minister for the same
purpose, and in October, several members of the force had kidnaped
Vanautu's president and held him for almost a day before releasing him
because of the populace's seeming indifference.
* A July Wall Street Journal story reported that the city jail
(capacity 134) in the Seattle suburb of Kent, Wash., does a brisk
business charging petty criminals from around the state $64 a day to
serve their sentences of up to 40 days in comfortable settings.
Reservations are recommended, and the policy is cash only.
* A United Nations spokesman in Sarajevo disclosed in November a recent
marital quarrel that escalated out of control "in classic Bosnian
style" and reflected the war-saturated quality of life. During an
argument, the wife of Pero Toljij fled to a neighbor's home, but Toljij
chased her with a bazooka he happened to have on hand, fired at her,
missed, and hit the couple's own house. He was arrested.
BOTTOM OF THE GENE POOL
* In October in Massapequa Park, N. Y., four men, ages 19-21, intending
to follow a recipe in the Underground Steroid Handbook, failed to wait
patiently until the Drano-like concoction had reached a satisfactory pH
level to make it milder. The four were hospitalized with bad internal
burns, and the concoction also burned rescuing police officers when the
four men vomited on them.
* In November in Santa Maria, Tex., Luis Martinez, Jr., 25, was stabbed
in the neck with a broken bottle by his uncle, allegedly to punish
Martinez for not sharing his bag of Frito's. In October a 20-year-old
man was hospitalized in Guthrie, Okla., after encouraging his friend
Jason Heck to kill a millipede with a .22- caliber rifle; after two
ricochets, Heck's bullet hit the man just above his right eye,
fracturing his skull.
* Phillip Johnson, 32, was hospitalized in Prestonburg, Ky., in
December with a gunshot wound just above his left nipple, which he
inflicted upon himself because, as he told paramedics, he wanted to see
what it felt like. When the paramedics arrived, said the sheriff, they
found him "screaming about the pain, over and over."
I DON'T THINK SO
* David S. Peterson filed a lawsuit against New Mexico Gov. Gary
Johnson in August for racketeering, seeking three times the sum of
money that Peterson had given his girlfriend to buy him clothes but
which she had lost gambling at an Indian tribal casino. Peterson said
Gov. Johnson was so much a supporter of the Indian gaming industry that
it was his fault Peterson was out the money.
NO LONGER WEIRD
* Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now
occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation:
(15) The burglar with poor planning skills who attempts to enter a
building after hours through a chimney or vent and gets stuck, as
Baltimore, Md., police say Dwayne Terry, 33, did at a convenience store
on Christmas morning. And (16) certainly the thousands of times a year
(about 50 the past year in Fremont, Calif., alone) that trial-bound
defendants and others cheerfully place their belongings on the X-ray
machines at the entrances of courthouses, only to have their illegal
drugs detected.
ADDRESSES: To send mail and messages to Chuck Shepherd, write
[email protected] or P. O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg FL 33738.
|
| 29.9 | | IJSAPL::ANDERSON | Spring has sprung! | Mon Mar 10 1997 07:42 | 137 |
| WEIRDNUZ.471 (News of the Weird, February 14, 1997) by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORIES
* Still More Italian Justice: In November, a judge in Rome ruled that
a 24-year-old man was entitled to live with his mother even though she
doesn't want him to. Said the woman, "If he comes home then I'm
[leaving]." In a 1996 case reported by the Associated Press in
December, Italy's Supreme Court refused to convict several of a
6-year-old girl's relatives who had had sex with her, citing the
strangeness and "particular[ity]" of the family environment. The court
said the family's ordinary relationships were wild, "dominated uniquely
or almost always by instinct."
* In January, Jack Petelui, 43, claiming to hear God, stripped down to
his underwear, climbed the ornate facade of the Ansonia Hotel in New
York City, resisted police efforts for more than an hour to talk him
down, and finally jumped. Cynical New Yorkers were said to be
astonished at the dozens of bystanders who were actually yelling "Don't
jump!" (Petelui was spared serious injury when he landed on a police
department rescue airbag.)
* Life Imitates Crime Movies: In January, six inmates, including two
convicted murderers, tunneled out of the maximum security state prison
in Pittsburgh, Pa., 15 feet below ground, using tools from the prison
machine shop. And in January, the Banco Credito Argentino in Buenos
Aires was robbed of about $25 million by a gang that had made a
165-foot-long tunnel under a street over the previous several months.
It was Buenos Aires's 55th tunnel-related bank robbery since 1990.
POLICE BLOTTER
* Police in Allentown, Pa., discovered in September that a man who was
recently arrested at the bus station with 280 small bags of heroin in
his luggage had chewed off the skin of seven fingertips after being
jailed. Said a police sergeant, "It certainly is a strong indication
that somebody somewhere is looking for him."
* Armed and Dangerous: A man robbed a variety store in Guelph,
Ontario, in December wielding only a three-foot-long tree branch. And
in Columbia, Mo., in December, Eric O. Criss, 31, fortified only with a
socket wrench, failed in his alleged attempt to rob a grocery store.
And in Calgary, Alberta, in December, a man brandishing only a bottle
of household cleaner robbed a Bank of Nova Scotia.
* A 21-year-old, allegedly intoxicated man was spotted by police on an
Austin, Minn., street in January urinating on a car but was let go with
a warning when he persuaded police it was his own car. A few minutes
later police returned and arrested the man for DUI, having figured out
that he was urinating on the car's door lock to melt the ice so that he
could get in and drive away.
* Roger Augusto Sosa, 23, was charged with burglary early on Christmas
morning in Chevy Chase, Md. Scott Kane and his wife had heard a
prowler in the house and called 911. Despite the clamor of several
squad cars arriving and seven officers rushing into the living room
with guns drawn, Sosa by that time reportedly was seated under the
tree, blissfully opening the Kanes' presents.
* In October in Great Falls, Mont., Tina Rae Beavers, 19, was arrested
on the lawn separating the jail and the courthouse and charged with
indecent exposure. According to a sheriff's deputy, she was
energetically complying with her jailed husband's request to remove her
clothes, lie down in the grass, and make suggestive movements so that
he could see her from his cell window.
* Slaves to Love: In December in Hong Kong, Yuen Sai-wa, 33, pleaded
guilty to bank robbery but said the only reason he did it was that he
felt challenged to keep his girlfriend, who was about to leave him.
And in San Diego, Calif., in January, Michael William Smith, 26, and
Danny Mayes, 20, were charged with arson for fires they said they set
at the behest of Tammy Jo Garcia, 27, who they said became sexually
aroused by the fires, to their benefit. (She was also charged.)
GOVERNMENT IN ACTION
* The New York Daily News reported in January that a fire hydrant had
recently been installed at the busy intersection of Tremont Avenue and
Boston Road in the Bronx but that it was installed in the street, five
feet from the curb, requiring all traffic to go around it. A city
spokesman said the hydrant was installed properly and that eventually a
sidewalk would be built in what is now the curb lane, but because of
engineering delays and bad weather, construction has not yet been
scheduled.
* Helen Stanwell, a 23-year-veteran park ranger in Seattle, Wash., was
suspended for 6 days in November because she worked after hours without
pay to help a historical society member look for a local site. (It is
illegal in Washington to work more than 40 hours without claiming
overtime.) And in January, Wallingford, Conn., city employee Millie
Wood, 72, was suspended for one day because she voluntarily trimmed the
town's Christmas tree during Thanksgiving holiday. (It is illegal to
be in the building after hours.)
* In March Amy Howe, 25, was the victim of a hit-and-run driver in
Washington, D. C., and suffered a broken leg. Three witnesses
immediately supplied police with the car's tag number, and shortly
afterward Howe's husband used public records to identify for police the
car that was assigned that tag. In September 1996, upon inquiry by the
Washington Post, a police spokesman said that despite having the
pertinent information virtually handed to it, the department was only
then almost ready to begin its investigation.
* In October, the Associated Press uncovered several military
construction projects that continued to be fully funded by the Pentagon
long after the facilities on which they are housed had been designated
for permanent closing. Included were a $5 million Navy chapel in San
Diego, a $3 million Army classroom building near Chicago, a $13 million
Navy dining hall in Orlando, and a $5 million Air Force fire station
and training facility in Indianapolis. Said a Navy spokesman in San
Diego, "[The taxpayers] are going to have to pay for it anyway, so why
not complete [it]?"
* The town of Colma, Calif., just south of San Francisco, has a
population of 1,000 in an area of about 2.2 square miles, but
three-fourths of the land consists of cemeteries in which a million
people are buried. In October citizen Robert Simcox announced he would
gather signatures to secure a ballot referendum for 1997 that would
impose a municipal tax on the dead, in the form of a levy on cemetery
owners of $5 per grave per year.
UPDATE
* In August 1996, News of the Weird reported on a group of New York
City police officers who had availed themselves of expensive and hokey
tax-resistance kits that would allow them to be regarded as nontaxable
aliens while still being law- enforcement officers. Six subsequently
pleaded guilty, but in January 1997, in the first case to go to trial,
Officer Adalberto Miranda testified that he owed no tax because New
York was merely a geographic area, not a government entity, and a short
ways into his testimony, Miranda took it upon himself to disqualify
Federal Judge Denny Chin because Chin seemed "upset" and then to
"arrest" Chin from the witness stand and to give Chin his "Miranda [no
relation] warning."
ADDRESSES: To send mail and messages to Chuck Shepherd, write
[email protected] or P. O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg FL 33738.
|
| 29.10 | | IJSAPL::ANDERSON | All that sheep tupping worked! | Wed Mar 19 1997 07:22 | 131 |
| WEIRDNUZ.472 (News of the Weird, February 21, 1997) by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORIES
* The Associated Press reported in January on the three-year-old
anti-smoking policy of Kimball Physics of Wilton, N. H., which not only
forbids lighting up at work but subjects each employee and visitor to a
sniff test of his breath and clothing performed by receptionist
Jennifer Walsh. Those with an odor so strong that it is likely they
smoked within the last two hours or so are not allowed in.
* In February, Schenectady, N.Y., patrolman Robert J. O'Neill
reportedly retired. He had been on sick leave since 1982, at full
salary that now has reached $508,000, because of psychological problems
related to his Vietnam Marine experience that allegedly made him a
danger to the public.
* Modernday Stagecoach Robberies: Reuters news service reported in
January that the 400-mile route from Moscow to St. Petersburg, Russia,
is being worked by gangs of armed thieves who rob and hijack cargo
trucks. And in August on the runway at the airport in Perpignan,
France, gunmen halted a taxiing Air France airliner that had just
landed with 167 passengers and stole moneybags containing about
$800,000.
CULTURAL DIVERSITY
* In a November Associated Press dispatch from Payiir, Sudan, a
reporter described the local competition among unmarried Dinka men to
gorge themselves (and refrain from exercise) to become fat, which is
regarded as a way to win females because it demonstrates that the man's
cattle herd is large enough for him to consume extra milk and meat.
The typical Dinka is tall and reed- thin--former basketball player
Manute Bol is a Dinka--and some men gain so much unfamiliar weight so
quickly that they have been known to topple over.
* The hottest selling computer software in Japan in November was a
"love simulation" game in which boys try to get a virtual 17-year-old
girl, Shiori, to fall in love with them. There is even a magazine,
Virtual Idol, devoted to supplying fictional biographical tales of
Shiori and other virtual girls. Wrote one young man, Virtual Idol "is
just the right kind of magazine for a person like me who's not
interested in real girls." By January, several news services had
reported on an equally popular Japanese computer craze, the Virtual
Pet, a $16 electronic "bird" the size of an egg that responds to
nurturing instincts in many teenage girls. By pushing buttons, the
owner can feed it, play with it, clean up after it, and discipline it.
* According to an October Associated Press story, young mothers in
large Japanese cities have adopted the city park as a forum for vying
for status. Some young mothers interviewed claimed they were "scared"
to take their toddlers to the parks (to make their "park debut")
because of the established cliques of mothers who dominate the
facilities. Guidebooks teach the proper "park behavior"; department
stores feature the proper "park clothing"; and a recent satiric movie
depicted a park ruled by 50 authoritarian mothers.
* In Singapore, which is so pristine that even public gum-chewing is
illegal, police expressed concern in February about the recent crisis
of apartment-dwellers in high-rise buildings who casually toss their
belongings out the window. Fifty-one people were arrested last year
for throwing objects ranging from TV sets to tricycles to flower pots.
* The Times of London reported in December that Bombay (whose name was
recently changed to Mumbai) became the first city in India to ban
public spitting, which the reporter described as "one of the two most
ubiquitous of male habits" in India (the other being public urination).
According to the Times, "Boys barely old enough to walk can be heard
practicing guttural sounds, which is regarded as macho."
* A September Los Angeles Times story described what Argentine writer
Tomas Eloy Martinez called the country's obsession with "emotional"
necrophilia toward its prominent citizens. Frequently, corpses of
luminaries such as Juan Peron are dug up and either celebrated or
desecrated, to excite national pride. (The hands of Peron's corpse
were sawed off by a zealous grave robber in 1987 and have not been
recovered; last fall, a judge ordered Peron's body to be disinterred
yet again so that a DNA sample could be taken as evidence in a woman's
claim that she is Peron's illegitimate daughter.)
* According to a June China Daily story, 40 million Chinese live in
caves, but many are leaving for regular houses, putting a strain on the
available arable land in some areas. Thus, architects working for the
government are designing futuristic cave homes in Gansu, Henan, and
Shanxi provinces to encourage the cave dwellers to stay put.
ANIMALS
* A team of Chinese surgeons from Zhengzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, and
Shenzhen reported in January that, in a 17-hour operation three months
earlier, they had reattached an elephant's trunk that had been severed
in an accident and that the elephant was now feeding itself again,
though the trunk was 16 inches shorter.
* In October, Annie Wald and a partner opened Total Dog, Los Angeles's
first canine fitness center. For a fee of up to $800 a year from
owners too busy to walk their dogs, the pooches work out on treadmills,
in swimming pools, and on an obstacle course, and massages are
available.
* In August firefighters in Kelso, Wash., listed the official cause of
the fire at Matthew Gould's home as Sadie's playing with matches.
Sadie, a 5-month-old German shepherd mix had probably gnawed into a box
of matches but failed to drool enough to douse the sparks. And in
Spencer, Ind., in December, James E. Baker was shot in the heel by his
Akita, Boo Boo, which had jumped on the trigger of a 20-gauge shotgun
on the floor of Baker's pickup truck as he sat in the driver's seat.
UPDATE
* In December 1996 News of the Weird reported that Los Angeles County
authorities had decided not to charge Texan Robert Salazar in the death
of his employee Sandra Orellana, who fell from an 8th floor hotel
balcony railing on which the two were, according to Salazar, having
sex. In January, after dropping mannequins from the railing to see
how they fell and examining the wounds on Ms. Orellana's body, the
county coroner called the death a homicide, and police sought Salazar
for more questioning.
CRIES FOR HELP
* In an eight-day period in January in towns less than 100 miles apart
(Bakersfield and Fresno, Calif.), police found the corpses of elderly
mothers that continued to be treated as integral parts of the family by
their adult sons. The Bakersfield woman, who died at age 77 around
September, was thought by her son to be merely "demonically depressed"
and therefore liable to wake up at any minute and thus had been propped
up on the sofa.
ADDRESSES: To send mail and messages to Chuck Shepherd, write
[email protected] or P. O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg FL 33738.
|
| 29.11 | | IJSAPL::ANDERSON | All that sheep tupping worked! | Mon Apr 07 1997 07:36 | 129 |
| WEIRDNUZ.473 (News of the Weird, February 28, 1997) by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORIES
* In January, the owners of KZZC-FM, Tipton, Calif., ended 18
consecutive months of being an all-"I Heard It Through the Grapevine"
station, playing various versions of that song all day, 7 days a week
(except once, when it played the Eagles' "New Kid in Town" for a whole
weekend). The station was pending sale, and the owner needed just to
keep the frequency occupied, but negotiations dragged on much longer
than expected.
* Life Imitates Lawyer Jokes: Because of overcrowding at the
Chilliwack, British Columbia, courthouse, jury selection in a January
manslaughter case was removed to a local community center, but because
of other court business taking place there, jury- selection was further
removed to the center's men's room. Said prosecutor Henry Waldock,
"When you start holding hearings in a bathroom, I fear it may diminish
the respect for the justice system in the eyes of the public." And in
Miami, Fla., the gargoyles on the 24th floor of the Dade County
courthouse have been suffering since November the dreaded
swallows-at-Capistrano-like invasion of several thousand migrating
vultures.
* The Associated Press reported in January that many handicapped and
deformed kids from the village of Murshidabad, India, were being sold
by their parents to middlemen who would place them in Saudi Arabia
cities as street beggars. For those who didn't have such children but
still wanted a piece of the action, the traffickers took on private
investors, offering a 50 percent return within a few months.
COMPELLING EXPLANATIONS
* David Schames, a founder of the Association of Coupon Professionals,
explaining to columnist Martin Sloane in November why so many companies
have switched from overseas processors to prison-labor processors:
"Employee stability is always an issue overseas, but most of the
inmates [working for coupon companies] are serving long terms."
* Palm Harbor, Fla., elementary school teacher Patricia Locke beat a
DUI rap in November, and was reinstated by the school board as a
result, when she argued successfully that the reason she appeared
disoriented while driving was that a silicone breast implant ruptured
and poisoned her nervous system.
* In December, Dr. William D. Cone, 71, went on trial on 19 counts of
sexual assault in West Plains, Mo., allegedly committed against a
37-year-old female patient. According to the patient, Cone's
"re-parenting theory" of counseling (i.e., regressing the patient to
the age when parental flaws are prominent and then overcoming them)
required him to play the role of her mother and to allow her to suckle
him to compensate for her not having been breastfed.
* A state Appellate Division court In Albany, N. Y., ruled in January
that a trial judge was correct in denying as irrelevant the request of
accused rapist Edward Hendrix Jr. to enter into evidence the size of
his penis. Hendrix said he thought that size was an important
consideration to the issue of whether the woman consented to sex.
* Darlie Routier, recently convicted in Kerrville, Tex., of murdering
her 5-year-old son, but indignantly insisting that she is innocent:
"If I had [killed him], I would be the first person to stand up and
say, 'Oh, my gosh!'"
* In October, a University of New Hampshire business major, in a letter
to the school newspaper, blamed his recent drunken driving on a police
crackdown on underage drinking in the University's home of Durham.
Because he has to drive to another city to drink, the student wrote,
"[I] can expect to be doing a lot more drunk driving."
SMOOTH REACTIONS
* In November in Lancaster, Pa., comedy club customer Judy K. Strough,
seething at insults about where she is from (Arkansas) by comedian Al
Romero, walked to the stage and slugged him. Two weeks earlier,
comedian Timothy Ward filed a lawsuit in New York City against Prince
Ranier of Monaco, who Ward says slapped him during a 1995 show in which
he was making fun of the Prince's son's bald spot.
* In December, Bowling Green (Ohio) State University instructor Patrick
Stearns, 32, was suspended after allegedly punching a 25- year-old
student who showed up late for Stearns's class. And in January, the
Medical Board of California issued a public reprimand against Dr.
Edward A. Thistlewaite of San Marino, Calif., for slapping a 9-year-old
boy he was treating for Attention Deficit Disorder.
* In September, world-renowned composer Jon J. Polifrone, 59, sent a
letter to 2,500 colleagues in classical music announcing he was
abruptly quitting the business and limiting the availability of his
work, solely because administrators at Virginia Polytechnic Institute
(where he is a professor) told him he needs to spend more time on his
teaching. (Colleagues interviewed by the Roanoke Times said the VPI
review was merely a suggestion and that he was not in danger of losing
his job.)
* In October in Leonia, N. J., Maria Graef became so enraged that her
next-door neighbor's sprinkler was forming a puddle in her yard that
she rammed his garage with her car and then barricaded herself in her
home for 20 hours in a standoff with police. After attempting several
schemes to get her out, police got the idea to turn on Graef's own
sprinkler, which enraged her so much that she came running out of the
house in her nightgown and was captured and charged with several
crimes.
UPDATE
* In June 1996 News of the Weird reported that the federal government
had indicted the sellers of a box with a car-radio- antenna-like device
(the Quadro Tracker) that was being sold as a divining rod, for up to
$8,000 each, to school officials and small- town law enforcement
officers as an aid to finding illegal drugs. The FBI showed that the
Tracker was merely a piece of plastic (and besides, it had been offered
to golfers as a device to help them find lost balls). In January,
after a trial in Beaumont, Tex., the sellers were found not guilty of
fraud.
UNDIGNIFIED DEATHS
* Weight Problems: In January, Michigan state security officer Canute
Findsen, 43, was shot to death in Lansing by fellow officer Virginia
Rich, 51, but then he shot Rich to death just before he died; police
believe Rich was upset that Findsen had made one comment too many about
her being overweight. And in January in Providence, R. I., Ricardo
Guerrero killed himself rather than face prison for shooting and
wounding Johanny Urbaez at a nightclub; according to police, Urbaez had
precipitated the incident by referring to Guerrero as "fatso."
ADDRESSES: To send mail and messages to Chuck Shepherd, write
[email protected] or P. O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg FL 33738.
|
| 29.12 | | IJSAPL::ANDERSON | All that sheep tupping worked! | Mon Apr 07 1997 07:45 | 134 |
|
WEIRDNUZ.474 (News of the Weird, March 5, 1997) by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORIES
* In 1978 the Oakland Raiders' Jack Tatum made a "clothesline" hit on
New England Patriots' receiver Darryl Stingley's neck, causing
permanent paralysis. At the time, Tatum arrogantly defended the play
as legal and warned other opponents that they could expect the same.
In January 1997, Tatum applied for disability benefits of $156,000 a
year from the NFL Players' Association, pointing to the mental anguish
he has suffered having to live with the incident. (The $156,000
"catastrophic injury" category is the NFLPA's highest; it is the same
category that Stingley is in.)
* Dick Shields made the Pittsburgh, Pa., newspapers on his 75th
birthday on January 11 for his remarkable recuperative powers. Among
the medical traumas from which he has recovered: in a coma near death
for a week after a burst appendix; three times a broken neck (once
while falling out of bed during recuperation from a previous broken
neck); a broken back; triple-bypass heart surgery; a grapefruit-sized
blockage of a blood vessel; a fungus that ate the skin off his feet;
and duty during World War II that included hand-marking of active
mines. Said Shields, apparently without irony: "I'd have to say I've
been truly blessed."
* Beyond Fingerprints and Earprints: Lavelle Davis, 23, was convicted
of murder in Geneva, Ill., in February. Prosecutors showed how Davis
and an accomplice rehearsed the murder at the scene just beforehand,
including how the accomplice placed duct tape over Davis's mouth just
as they would later do to the victim. Davis was linked to the crime
scene when his lip prints were found on the piece of tape.
THE CONTINUING CRISIS
* Member of the First Husbands Club: In October, welfare workers found
a 50-year-old man living alone in a cave in Ifsahan province in Iran.
According to the workers, he had moved there 30 years ago when his wife
dumped him.
* Reuters news service reported in October that seven women and eight
newborn babies were being held in the King Baudoin Hospital outside
Kinshasa, Zaire--some for as long as three months--because they could
not pay their maternity bills. Said a hospital official, "We are
obliged to use unusual means to force the patients to find the money."
* In January, the wife of Dr. Michael Baden--he is the head of the New
York State Police's forensics unit--filed papers in her divorce action
against him in New York City. (Baden testified on behalf of O. J.
Simpson that the victims' knife wounds probably were caused by more
than one assailant.) According to his wife's papers, Baden once
performed a pair of autopsies on the couple's dining room table, once
asked her permission to impregnate his girlfriend, and once told her he
could kill her and make it look like a natural death.
* In October, a court in Fort Worth, Tex., awarded former patient
Jeannie Warren, 23, $8.4 million in her lawsuit against the now-defunct
Psychiatric Institute of Fort Worth because of its "rage reduction
therapy." The treatment involves restraining the patient and creating
a rage "in a controlled and loving environment," said the Institute, so
that any underlying anger will be exposed. Warren said that, in two
dozen lessons, Institute personnel pinned her down, punched her in the
abdomen and ribs, and demanded continually to know what she was angry
at. Said Warren, "I couldn't think of anything except, 'You!'"
* Pro wrestler Don Harris, 36 (6'6", 275 lbs.), who with twin brother
Ron performed as the Bruise Brothers, went to trial in Nashville in
January in his lawsuit against plastic surgeon Glenn Buckspan. Harris
had wanted his pectorals tightened but wound up with misplaced nipples
such that he now says he is mortified every time he takes his shirt off
in public and now wrestles only in a vest.
* The University of Arizona turned down a $250,000 scholarship gift in
November that was to be available to female American Indians.
Four-year Sally Keith scholarships would be given on the basis of
personality rather than grades, and preference would be given to
virgins, a point that caused the University to balk because, said a
University official, "We can't dictate morals."
* A woman in Seoul, South Korea, identified only as Mrs. Lee, age 35,
was granted a divorce in November on the ground that her husband
frequently called out his mistress's name while asleep, and made what
were described as "diverse" expressions used in lovemaking but which
Mrs. Lee said he had never used with her.
* Taking "Amateur Night" Too Far: In Betulia, Colombia, an annual
festival in November includes five days of amateur bullfighting. This
year, no bull was killed, but dozens of matadors were injured,
including one gored in the head and one Bobbittized. Said one
participant, "It's just one bull against [a town of] a thousand
morons."
* Randy Farmer of a Houston, Tex., suburb was one of the millions of
people around the world who felt compelled to welcome in 1997 by firing
off a few gunshots just after midnight. Farmer shot at a backyard
tree, but then the gun jammed, and he went back inside to unjam it. He
mishandled his gun and accidentally shot and killed his 7-year-old
daughter. Said Farmer, "God had a hand in this. He had to. It was
like God called my baby home to be with him, and God used me as a tool
to bring her to him."
* On February 21, the Court of Appeal of Singapore ruled that oral sex
is illegal as a substitute for "natural" intercourse but permissible if
it is merely foreplay leading to such intercourse. The ruling came as
part of a decision against a 47-year-old man who had convinced a
19-year-old woman that the only way to disgorge poisons in her system
was to perform oral sex on him.
THE WEIRDO-AMERICAN COMMUNITY
* Buffalo State University professor Scott Isaksen, 44, was arrested in
December, allegedly in connection with his coursework, which is
described in the University's bulletin as "original thinking" and
"approaching situations with innovative techniques." According to
police, he had given a truant male student the option of writing a
paper on stress or actually meeting with Isaksen in private for a
series of stress exercises, and the student chose the latter, which
included allowing Isaksen to handcuff him and to put a rope around his
neck in a motel room.
UPDATE
* Convicted child molester Lou Torok, who made News of the Weird in
1995 from his Kentucky prison cell for persuading several governors to
declare Oct. 7 as "Love Day," has written a "powerful new screenplay,"
he says, about the Salem witch trial. "One of the main characters, who
is believed to have innocently incited the famous trials and eventual
hangings of 19 accused witches, is a Carib Indian woman from Barbados,
modeled after the personality of Whoopi Goldberg." Torok also says he
is working on a second script, "The Burley Boys," "the story of
comedian Bob Hope's sponsoring a home for troubled boys in Cincinnati."
ADDRESSES: To send mail and messages to Chuck Shepherd, write
[email protected] or P. O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg FL 33738.
|
| 29.13 | | IJSAPL::ANDERSON | All that sheep tupping worked! | Mon Apr 07 1997 07:53 | 135 |
| WEIRDNUZ.475 (News of the Weird, March 14, 1997) by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORIES
* Medical Breakthroughs: In February, surgeons removed a cataract from
the eye of the National Zoo's 6-foot-long Komodo dragon "Muffin" in the
hope that she could better see how studly the male "Friendty" was and
thus would mate with him. And in January, doctors in Johannesburg,
South Africa, performed spinal surgery on a 10-foot-long python, which
had been run over by a car. (Contrary to what one's eyes tell us, the
python has 306 vertebra and 268 ribs.) And in Jackson, Mich., in
February veterinarian Timothy England fitted a stray rooster with
artificial legs after he had to amputate his natural ones because of
frostbite.
* Gas in the News: Janesville, Wis., police responded to a 911 call in
December over a domestic disturbance begun, said the wife, when the
husband inappropriately passed gas as they were tucking their son into
bed. And in January in Perth, Australia, John Douglas Young, 47, was
convicted of a child-abuse charge for attempting to hire two boys for
$5 each to pass gas in his face so that, according to the man, he could
later masturbate to the "mental picture" of the encounter. (Young's
unsuccessful defense was in part to recite a long list of movies,
literature, and TV shows in which gas-passing was a popular theme,
e.g., "Benny Hill.")
* In March, Ms. Nadean Cool won a settlement of $2.4 million in her
lawsuit in Appleton, Wis., against her former psychotherapist Dr.
Kenneth Olson. She claimed that he had first persuaded her that she
had a Multiple-Personality Disorder (120 personalities, including Satan
and a duck) and then billed her insurance company for "group" therapy
because he said he had to counsel so many people. (Olson, seeking
greener pastures for his psychotherapy business, had since moved to
Montana.)
CREME DE LA WEIRD
* In October, the Washington Supreme Court reversed on a technicality
the conviction of Benjamin R. Hull, who had been found guilty of
defrauding the state worker compensation office. Hull admitted that he
gpt a friend to help him blast a hole in his left leg below the knee
with a shotgun, but insisted it was not to get compensation (he
received $96,000) but because the knee has been so painful to him since
1973 after it was injured in an accident. (Five years earlier, he had
tried to take the leg off with a chain saw, but got only part-way
through because the saw kept malfunctioning.)
* In January, the Australian Medical Journal reported a case of lead
poisoning by an electrician who chewed electrical cable to satisfy his
nicotine urge when he was forced to work in no- smoking buildings. The
man said he chewed almost a yard of cable a day for nearly ten years
because it had a sweet taste, especially near the center.
* Larry Doyen, 22, was hospitalized in December after chaining himself
to a tree just outside the town of Mexico, Maine. He was rescued by
the state Warden Service after spending two weeks with the tree. It
was the third time he had done that in recent months.
* In November, a 50-year-old man was arrested in Albuquerque, N. Mex.,
on a complaint by his 13-year-old stepdaughter that he made her perform
a series of bizarre acts written out on index cards and which were
supposedly to toughen her in her quest to get a learner's driving
permit. According to the complaint, the girl was allowed to drive the
truck until the man turned up an index card with an instruction, which
she had to follow before driving some more. Among other things, the
cards called for her to pour shampoo and dirt into her hair; wear a dog
collar; do sit- ups; stand naked in the glare of the truck's
headlights; and stand tied to a bar and with a ball in her mouth.
FEUDS
* Continental Airlines filed a lawsuit in November in Newark, N.J.,
against Deborah Loeding, who the airlines said endangered passengers in
order to get revenge on her ex-husband/pilot. Ms. Loeding had baked
him some bread, but unknown to him, had laced it with marijuana so that
he would fail the airline's drug test and get fired, which did happen,
although he was later reinstated when Continental learned what
happened.
* In October, a judge in Baton Rouge, La., abruptly called a mistrial
in the 8-year-old lawsuit filed by Mary Ann Turner, now 56, against
ex-husband (and anesthesiologist) Alan Ostrowe, proclaiming that her
testimony was overly theatrical. According to Turner, when she was
hospitalized for birth-canal surgery in 1972, Ostrowe, without her
permission, persuaded the surgeons to remove her clitoral hood because,
according to the couple's eldest son, his father needed to "control my
mother's sexuality in order to compensate for his sexual inadequacies."
* In Jakarta, Indonesia, in January, Reuters news service reported that
a 29-year-old woman, upset with her unfaithful boyfriend (identified
only as Tu), went to the crowded karaoke bar where he works and
released a half dozen cobras onto the premises.
FIRST THINGS FIRST
* On an Israeli TV program in January, Hamas militant Rashid Saqqer,
who was captured by the PLO last year before he could carry out a
scheduled suicide bombing in Israel, waxed rhapsodic about his love of
soccer. He said he was such a fan that "I couldn't [kill myself] in
[an Israeli] soccer stadium. Yes, they are Zionists [and] unbelievers.
But I couldn't do it [there]."
* According to Vladimir Zelentin, 40, testifying in January in New York
City against his cousin Rita Gluzman, 47, Rita planned the murder of
her husband, talked Zelentin into being the hit man, and calmly bought
all the murder supplies at Home Depot. However, according to Zelentin,
when he went to light up a victory cigarette in her kitchen after the
ax-slaying, she screamed at him, "No smoking [in here]!"
* The New York Times reported in November on the project by the
Picatinny Arsenal in Rockaway Township, N. Y., to create more
environmentally friendly bullets while still maintaining the bullets'
killing power. (Three years ago, the federal government closed a
nearby firing range because spent, leaded bullets were contaminating
the soil so as to endanger people and animals.)
UPDATE
* In 1995 the Brazilian government's AIDS-awareness campaign made News
of the Weird because several men named Braulio had complained publicly
of their humiliation that the main character in the advertising
spots--a talking penis--was named Braulio. In January 1997, the
campaign re-emerged with the main character an unnamed,
variously-costumed turkey (which is itself a double entendre).
LEAST COMPETENT CRIMINAL
* In January, Michael Coulter, 32, was arrested for shoplifting in
Cookstown, Ireland, having made off with shoes, socks, and boxer
shorts. Coulter was not difficult to spot during his getaway. He is
reported to be the tallest man in Ireland, at 7- foot-5. Said one
officer, "Everyone knows him, and you can see him coming a mile away."
ADDRESSES: To send mail and messages to Chuck Shepherd, write
[email protected] or P. O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg FL 33738.
|
| 29.14 | | HLSW01::ANDERSON | Now noting in colour!" | Mon Apr 14 1997 08:38 | 128 |
| WEIRDNUZ.476 (News of the Weird, March 21, 1997) by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORIES
* Former Gotti crime-family hitman Sammy "The Bull" Gravano cooperated
on author Peter Maas's Gravano biography, "Underboss," to be published
in April. Despite the fact that Gravano's testimony helped send Gotti
to prison for life without parole, and 36 others to the slammer, and
despite the fact that he admits to making 19 hits for the Gotti family,
Gravano reportedly quit the Witness Protection Program and said he'll
take his chances on the street. Though he had plastic surgery after he
went underground, he agreed to show off his new face in the book,
perhaps, said Maas, because the recently divorced Gravano would like to
hear from any interested ladies.
* Unclear on the Concept: The Multnomah County, Ore., school system
was scheduled to begin in March test-marketing the idea of paying
parents of chronic truants to help their kids get to school ($3 if they
stay the whole day, $1 for a half day). And in February, the
University of Maryland's Student Honor Council, crusading against
academic dishonesty, offered local-merchant discount cards to students
who pledged in writing not to cheat. (Said a critic, "By the time you
get to bribing, you're already pretty far gone.")
* Despite a lengthy development period and a year on the market, the
Reebok shoe company realized only in February that its new line of
Incubus athletic shoes for women was named for a mythological demon who
raped slumbering females. And Walgreen's drug stores distributed
discount-coupon books nationwide in February to honor Black History
Week; among the product specials was skin-bleaching cream directed to
the African-American market.
FAMILY VALUES
* In Woodbridge, Va., in January, a 35-year-old woman was charged with
sexual abuse of her son, age 9, and according to police, she also
arranged at least one sex instruction session between herself, the son,
her daughter, 15, and her boyfriend, 34. According to the boyfriend,
she was motivated by wanting to spare her kids from having to learn
about sex on the street. (A year ago, she became a grandmother as a
result of the boyfriend- daughter liaison.)
* Raymond Taylor was sentenced to 40 years in prison in El Paso, Tex.,
in March after his conviction for attempted murder of his ex-wife.
According to trial testimony, Taylor ordered his two kids, ages 10 and
12, to set his ex-wife's house on fire and instructed them how to do it
and how to disable the home's smoke detectors.
* Parenting License Revocations: According to police in Cairo, Egypt,
Ibrahim Mohei Eddin, 40, pushed his 7-year-old son under a moving train
and left him for dead at the behest of his brand-new, 23-year-old
second wife. (The boy survived, but lost both legs.) And in January,
in Williamsport, Pa., David W. Crist, 38, was convicted of pushing his
deaf 9-year-old daughter into an oncoming truck in order, said
prosecutors, to collect on an insurance policy. (He is also charged
with trying to electrocute another daughter in 1990 and hiring a hit
man to kill his brother in 1982, all allegedly for insurance money.
Both kids survived; the brother didn't.)
IRONIES
* In October, Richard E. Clear, Jr., 32, was arrested in Tampa, Fla.,
for shooting his gun toward a neighbor who had complained about Clear's
barking dog. Clear runs a martial-arts studio and advertises his
experience in "stress management."
* In October, the Des Moines Register reported that Daniel Long, 35,
had been fired from his job as a greeter at a local Wal- Mart.
According to records in the state unemployment appeals agency, Long had
called one customer a "snob," told another she had to be "smarter than
the cart" to get two carts unstuck, and called another a "fat
elephant."
* In November, retired police department custodian Jay Pfaff, 73, was
fired from his job as school crossing guard because, said a police
spokesman, "a number of parents" complained that they were
uncomfortable because he was too nice to their children.
* Sascha Rothchild, 20, known on campus at Boston College for her
trademark five-inch-high platform shoes, clomped hurriedly down the
platform at Providence (R.I.) Station in December and leaped unsteadily
for her just-departing train. She slipped and suffered a broken
pelvis.
PEOPLE IN THE WRONG PLACE AT THE WRONG TIME
* In October, sewage truck driver Ricky Walter, 19, collided with
another vehicle in Waukesha, Wis., pinning Walter inside and sending
his load directly into the cab of his truck. Walter was forced to
marinate for half an hour before rescue workers got to him.
* In Lincoln, Neb., in February, two men attempted to shoplift shoes
from an Athlete's Foot store, but a clerk and the manager ran them down
outside. Clerk Dave Olson is captain of the University of Nebraska
men's track team, and manager Robb Finegan is an Olympics-class
marathoner. And two weeks earlier, near Warsaw, Poland, highway
robbers forced off the road a car in which the coaches of the
Belarussian and Russian biathlon (skiing and shooting) teams were
riding. Following right behind, however, was the teams' bus, and as
all of the athletes grabbed rifles, the robbers quickly scurried away.
* On September 29 in rural northeast Vermont, the car in which Michael
O'Keefe, 44, was riding was hit by a 700-lb. moose. O'Keefe was taken
for treatment of cuts and returned to the road a few hours later in his
own truck, which was then hit by another moose.
UPDATE
* In 1995 News of the Weird reported that the European Court of Human
Rights had agreed to examine whether Britain's assault convictions
against three men for engaging in consensual sado- masochism orgies (in
which severe pain was inflicted on the genitals of apparently grateful
recipients) were oppressive. In February 1997, the Court decided not
to intervene, saying Britain had a right to protect its citizens from
themselves, analogizing to the requirement of motorcyclists to wear
helmets.
THINNING THE HERD
* Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed in February in Selbyville,
Del., as he won a bet with friends who said he would not put a revolver
loaded with four bullets into his mouth and pull the trigger. And in
February, according to police in Windsor, Ont., Daniel Kolta, 27, and
Randy Taylor, 33, died in a head-on collision, thus earning a tie in
the game of chicken they were playing with their snowmobiles.
ADDRESSES: To send mail and messages to Chuck Shepherd, write
[email protected] or P. O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg FL 33738.
|
| 29.15 | | IJSAPL::ANDERSON | Now noting in colour!" | Mon Apr 21 1997 09:04 | 127 |
| WEIRDNUZ.477 (News of the Weird, March 28, 1997)
by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORIES
* In February, a California Court of Appeal upheld the 1995 ruling of a
judge in Marin County that admitted to probate the will of Sam
Zakessian, leaving $2 million to his girlfriend rather than to
relatives. The lower court was persuaded that scribblings on a 4"x 4"
piece of paper contained the deceased's instructions, despite their
being hard to read in the first place and then overwritten with what
appear to be obliterations. The court said the overwrites were Mr.
Zakessian's initials written 21 times (some rotated, some sideways,
some upside-down), three different dates (one sideways over three lines
of text), and two signatures written diagonally. The appeals court
conceded that the will "is not easily described."
* In March, the New York Times reported on a recent spate of what it
called really bad Japanese TV shows, among them one in which
bikini-clad young women attempt to crush aluminum cans by squeezing
them between their breasts and another in which a young child was
brought on stage and told that his mother had just been shot to
death--for the purpose of seeing how many seconds would elapse before
he started crying. Said a leading TV critic, "The more nonsensical
[the programs] are, the more interesting I find them."
* The Los Angeles Times reported in February on a dramatic business
success: the astute marketing decisions by Colombian drug cartels to
increase their market share in U. S. heroin sales. The cartels at once
reduced price, to bring in more retail customers, and increased
quality, so that HIV-phobic customers could achieve an adequate high by
smoking rather than risk disease from injecting with sometimes-dirty
needles. The U. S. government estimates the Colombians have now
captured two-thirds of the East Coast market despite producing only 2
percent of the world's heroin.
OBSESSIONS
* Larry Bottone, a coach, teacher, and private tutor of kids for almost
20 years in Norwalk, Conn., pleaded guilty in October to a charge of
child pornography based on a videotape of himself with a teenage boy.
According to the police, other videos showed Bottone whipping nude,
blindfolded boys, sticking objects under their fingernails, and rubbing
their bodies with hot olive oil. Bottone contended that he was
conducting serious research into how much punishment someone could
endure when asked by an authority figure.
* Jason Christopher Zepeda, 19, in a holding cell following his arrest
for graffiti vandalism in Fremont, Calif., in February, was re-
arrested when sheriff's deputies noticed on a TV monitor that he was
writing his name all over the walls of the cell.
* Michael Ronson, 23, was sentenced to five months' probation in
Brantford, Ontario, in October for violation of a previous probation by
again smearing an unsuspecting woman with shaving cream. He is once
again forbidden to possess any "compressed-air- impelled shaving cream
container."
* Carlton Bradley, 56, was indicted in November in Plattsburgh, N.Y.,
for stealing underwear from a certain neighbor woman. According to
police, over a three-year period and stealing one item at a time, he
had amassed 42 bras, 41 pairs of underpants, and 14 negligees.
* In a radio interview in February, a woman in London, England, said
treatment at the Great Ormond Street children's hospital had finally
cured her 7-year-old son of his three-year habit of eating nothing but
jam sandwiches (strawberry or raspberry, on white bread). His fear of
other foods was such that he would tremble and sweat and become
nauseous at the sight of them.
* In February in Charlotte, N.C., skydiving instructor J. C. Cockrell
lost by default a lawsuit filed by a former student, Erin Crabtree, 21,
who had accused him of fondling her breasts during a tandem jump in
which he is harnessed to her and she must hold on to the parachute
lines above her head.
NOT MY FAULT
* In February, credit union manager Cathleen Byers, charged with 83
counts for embezzling $630,000 over a six-year period, told a Eugene,
Ore., jury, through her lawyer, that her hands may have taken the money
but that her "heart, mind, and spirit" were innocent, because some
other personality within her did it. According to the prosecutor, only
a handful of multiple-personality cases have ever been diagnosed in
Europe, versus "tens of thousands" in the U. S.
* Kurt Irons, 28, was arrested in December in Wausau, Wis., and charged
with vehicular homicide. Reportedly, Irons was driving a stolen truck
and had been drinking and crashed head-on into another truck, killing a
37-year-old woman. According to the Marathon County Sheriff's report,
Irons was surprised that he was arrested, saying, "Dudes, it's just a
girl, man. It's a girl, nothing but a girl."
* Jeremy Dean and his parents, of Burney, Calif., filed a lawsuit in
January against Shasta County for at least $700,000 for Jeremy's total
disability that resulted from a car crash. Dean and some friends had
been out drinking. Dean was in the back seat of a car and had stuck
his head out the window to vomit just as the driver veered off the road
ramming Dean's head into a tree. The lawsuit claims that it was the
county's fault that the tree was so close to the road.
* In November, Gallup, New Mexico, high school football player Gilbert
Jefferson, 18, was arrested after he reacted to his ejection from a
game (two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties) by tackling a referee,
causing the man to flip over and land on his head, knocking him
unconscious. Four days later, Jefferson's mother Darlene told
reporters it was the referees' and coaches' fault: "[Gilbert] has no
bad temper. My son has never been that type of boy." It's just that
he "was tired and frustrated."
CAN'T POSSIBLY BE TRUE
* According to a recent Walt Disney World newspaper advertisement, an
Ashland, Ohio, couple, Bill and Vicky Meredith, have been journeying to
the park since 1974 and spend 10 days of every month there, staying in
the same room at the Caribbean Beach Resort.
UNDIGNIFIED DEATH
* According to police in Dahlonega, Ga., ROTC cadet Nick Berrena, 20,
was stabbed to death in January by fellow cadet Jeffrey Hoffman, 23,
who was trying to prove that a knife could not penetrate the flak vest
Berrena was wearing.
ADDRESSES: To send mail and messages to Chuck Shepherd, write
[email protected] or P. O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg FL 33738.
|
| 29.16 | | IJSAPL::ANDERSON | Now noting in colour!" | Mon Apr 28 1997 08:29 | 130 |
| WEIRDNUZ.478 (News of the Weird, April 4, 1997) by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORIES
* Saddam Hussein filed a libel lawsuit in February in Paris against the
magazine e Nouvel Observateur for its September 1996 story in which he
was described by other Arab leaders as stupid and incompetent and
referred to, among other things, as an "executioner," a "monster," a
"murderer," "a perfect cretin," and a "noodle."
* In March, a judge in York, Pa., sentenced a woman to a first-
offender rehabilitation program for assaulting her 10-year-old son by
giving him what she called a "titty twister." According to a police
report, she asked the boy, "What's worse than a tornado?" and then
pinched and twisted his nipples, causing soreness and noticeable
damage.
* In February, the electric co-op in the Philippine province of Illocos
Norte shut off power to the refrigerated crypt of former president
Ferdinand Marcos because his wife, now a member of the legislature, is
about $215,000 behind in the electricity bill. The government will not
permit Marcos to be buried in Manila because he was suspected of having
appropriating billions of dollars during his 20-year reign that ented
in 1986. Shutting off power, said Mrs. Marcos, was "the ultimate
harassment, the harassment of the dead."
THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT
* Each December for four months, the Ice Hotel residential igloo opens
in the Lapland region of Sweden, housing about 40 people at about $130
a night for a double room, and with a bar, restaurant, conference
facilities, and a bridal suite. Room temperatures range from 27-45
degrees F, and sleeping bags are used, cushioned by spruce boughs and
reindeer skins.
* According to a trade association of prostitutes in Harare, Zimbabwe,
massive layoffs in the economy have led to an oversupply of women
taking up prostitution and a reduction in men's spending power, causing
them either to ignore prostitutes or to visit bars only to drink and
flirt before going home to the wife. To save their jobs, the
association recommended in January that prostitutes raise their price
from about $2.80 to about $4.60 but also requested that wives loosen
the pursestrings to allow husbands to spend more when they go out.
* The Associated Press reported in February on the Time Machine lounge
in Tokyo, and the "relief room" at the Yamanakako resort, in which
stressed-out workers pay from about $80 to $125 for a few minutes of
satisfaction by smashing fake ceramic antiques in a museum-like sitting
room. Often, say the proprietors, the names of tyrannical bosses or
unfaithful spouses will be yelled out as the destruction takes place.
* A February Associated Press story described how two mid- career,
Berkeley, Calif., professionals (nurse Raphaela Pope, 52, and lawyer
Sam Louie, 36) became prosperous telepathic "pet psychics." Pope
charges $40 per half-hour by telephone, which sometimes includes
talking directly to the pet. Said one of her customers, "I learned
[from Pope] that Scarlette [the cat] thought I didn't want her around.
Scarlette changed immediately after talking [sic] to Raphaela, and
we're happy again."
* Locksmith Harley Hudson filed a claim for damages against the city of
Wenatchee, Wash., in November, saying that he is due about $250,000 in
damages for lost business because the friendly police department helps
for free motorists who lock themselves out of their cars. Hudson calls
this kindliness an "unconstitutional gift of public funds."
I'VE GOT MY RIGHTS
* In February, the Palm Springs (Calif.) Regional Airport Commission
issued hygiene rules for cab drivers serving the airport, including
requiring drivers to shower daily with soap, brush with toothpaste, and
eat breath mints. After vociferous complaints, the Commission softened
the specifics on "fresh breath" and "pleasant body odor." Said cabbie
Ken Olson to the Commission, "You're not my mother."
* Six nurses at a government health care for the disabled facility in
Barrie, Ontario, were fired in December for disobeying new countywide
rules that required them to provide sexual assistance to their patients
(e.g., helping them masturbate, positioning couples for sex, assisting
to put on a condom). In January, the agency said it would reconsider
the rules, but the women remain jobless and have filed a lawsuit.
* In November, the European Commission on Human Rights rejected the
appeal of Manuel Wackenheim, aka "The Flying Dwarf," whose stage show
was banned in France because it consisted of allowing customers to pay
to toss him around. Wackenheim said his show "is part of a French
dwarf tradition," but authorities said it "damages human dignity."
* According to an October Chicago Tribune report, Illinois and most
other states interpret the federal "motor voter" law to require mental
health agencies to help all clients register and vote in national
elections, even those with mental ages down to 5 or 6. The only ones
who cannot vote are clients formally declared by a court to be mentally
incompetent (about half of Illinois agencies' clients). One woman in
the Tribune story, now qualified to vote, took 20 minutes to write her
first name at the registration desk; another was registered despite the
fact that his only communication ability seemed to be to repeat the
last words he hears. Relatives fear the clients will be ridiculed at
the polls and that agencies' personnel, while "assisting" them to vote,
will simply complete the ballots as they wish.
* In February, the staff of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission
found that The Cafe, a gay and lesbian bar, had illegally discriminated
in an August incident in which a straight man and woman were ushered
out the door for smooching too heavily. According to a witness, the
bartender told the couple, "What you're doing is very offensive to
people here," even though gays and lesbians freely make out on the
premises. (The Cafe says it has since adopted a policy barring heavy
kissing by anyone.)
CHUTZPAH
* In November, attempting to influence an Arlington, Va., jury to give
him a light sentence for 20 counts of credit card fraud, Oludare
Ogunde, 28, at first asked for mercy but then said the jury should keep
him out of prison because if he were locked up, he would just teach
other inmates--the "hardened criminals"--how to commit credit card
fraud. "And," he reminded the jury, "we're trying to prevent crime in
America."
UNDIGNIFIED DEATH
* In February, Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed in Lompoc, Calif., as
he fell face-first through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he was
burglarizing. Death was caused when the large flashlight he had placed
in his mouth (to keep his hands free) crammed against the base of his
skull as he hit the floor.
ADDRESSES: To send mail and messages to Chuck Shepherd, write
[email protected] or P. O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg FL 33738.
|
| 29.17 | | IJSAPL::ANDERSON | Now noting in colour!" | Thu May 22 1997 08:24 | 112 |
| WEIRDNUZ.479 (News of the Weird, April 11, 1997) by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORIES
* The (Nashville) Tennessean reported in February on state government
engineer Ken Robichaux's lonely, 10-year crusade to wipe out both the
English system of measurement and the metric system, in favor of one
that combines weight, length, and volume into a single set of measures
denominated as (not surprisingly) "robies." (For example, 25 robies
could stand for any of 8 ounces, 1 cup, 250 ml's, 250 grams, or 250
cc's.) He said Al Gore, when he was a senator, once called his ideas
"intriguing."
* In Milwaukee, Wis., the family of Robert Senz demanded shortly after
his burial last July that Borgwardt Funeral Home dig up the body
because his wallet was missing. Sure enough, the wallet containing $64
and credit cards was still in Senz's pocket. In February 1997,
Borgwardt sent the family a reburial bill for $2,149, but then decided
the whole thing was the county medical examiner's fault and sent the
bill there, but that office has denied responsibility.
* In March, four strippers at the Scene Karaoke and Coconut Karaoke
bars in Pattaya, Thailand, were fined a total of about $80 for
indecency for an act in which live ducklings were placed inside plastic
"eggs" (with air holes) and inserted into the women's bodies so that in
the course of their routines, they would "lay" the eggs, which would
then "hatch."
OOPS!
* In February in Redwood City, Calif., Rachel Landa, 48, got out of her
van to pump gas, but when she realized the hose wouldn't reach, she
instructed her 14-year-old daughter to get behind the wheel and back it
up. By the time the girl wrestled the van to a stop, the mother had
been run over three times (broken ankle, foot, and finger), and the van
had crashed into a traffic signal box adjacent to the station.
* Latest Highway Truck Spills: Several hundred thousand apples near
Brighton, Mich., in November; a tractor-trailer full of Hills Bros.
ground coffee in downtown Louisville in December; a truck hauling
spaghetti sauce and ranch dressing (colliding with a truckful of
computers) on I-35 in Austin, Tex., in January; and during a November
ice storm, a tractor-trailer full of nuclear weapons near Brownlee,
Neb. (an accident kept secret for a month by the federal government).
* John O'Neill, 73, had to be rescued by firefighters in Huntington, N.
Y., in February after he wandered out of a bar late at night and
somehow got wedged between two buildings overnight. He was stuck so
tight that he had to be pulled out from above.
WELL-PUT
* A breathalyzer company executive testifying in a Knoxville, Tenn.,
DUI trial in September, disputing the defendant's contention that an
untimely belch yielded a falsely positive reading: "Belching? I
frankly have never seen a belch that brought alcohol up into the oral
cavity."
* Honduran Congressman Julio Villatoro, reacting in February to the
bigamy charge filed by his wife: "[I] have problems with my wife, even
though she knows a handsome man is not for one woman but for several.
God gave me a physique attractive to women, and I take advantage of
it."
* Employees who have become ill in asbestos-laden workplaces have their
own class-action lawsuit so lawyer Michael V. Kelley filed one in
January in Cleveland, Ohio, on behalf of employees in those workplaces
who are perfectly healthy (in case they someday become ill). Said
Kelley, "It's very pro-active."
* King Letsie III, 33, king of Lesotho, imploring other southern
African monarchs and dignitaries in December to help him find a wife:
"The pressure on me to find a wife soon is heavy, especially [from] my
mother." "[I] sometimes feel jealous when I see other leaders getting
partners with such remarkable ease."
RECENT CRIMINAL MOTIVES
* Kevin Carter, 21, and Michael Harrison, 26, were charged with murder
and armed robbery in Boynton Beach, Fla., in December. Motive: to
raise money to attend the police academy
* Darrel Voeks, 38, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in Appleton,
Wis., in December for stealing $100,000 worth of pigs from his
farmer-employer. Motive: to pay for breast implants for a stripper at
a club he patronized
* Michael Pollina, 26, pleaded guilty in Chicago in February to three
bank robberies. Motive: to pay for a lavish reception that he and his
fiancee had planned for their upcoming wedding
* Jack Swint, 42, pleaded guilty to passing bad checks in Roanoke, Va.,
in November (while he was awaiting trial on other bad-check charges).
Motive: needed to pay for counseling sessions to help him kick his
bad-check habit
UPDATE
* The famously dysfunctional Sexton family, headed by Eddie and
Estella, of Canton, Ohio, and Tampa, Fla., made News of the Weird in
1994 and 1996 based on almost unimaginable charges of incest, child
molestation, and murder. In March 1997, son Willie, 26, was found to
be "competent" after two years in the Florida state mental hospital,
and now will stand trial for killing his sister's husband (as allegedly
ordered by Eddie, who feared the husband would turn Eddie in for
killing the man's baby, whose crying annoyed Eddie). Ostensibly, the
dead baby was Eddie's own grandson, but according to trial testimony in
an case against Estella, the baby was actually Eddie's own son, the
result of a father-daughter coupling.
ADDRESSES: To send mail and messages to Chuck Shepherd, write
[email protected] or P. O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg FL 33738.
|
| 29.18 | | IJSAPL::ANDERSON | Now noting in colour!" | Mon May 26 1997 14:28 | 141 |
| LEAD STORIES
-- Family Values: In March the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported
that a local woman, 66, and her husband are searching for a surrogate
mother for their deceased son's sperm so that they can fulfill their
longing to be grandparents. And three days earlier, a Milan, Italy,
newspaper reported that a 35-year-old woman was three months' pregnant
with the fetuses of two couples, whose children she agreed to bear
because of a shortage of surrogate mothers. She said blood tests after
birth would determine which baby is which. (The Vatican and Italy's
health minister announced they were appalled.)
-- Life Imitates Monty Python: The Salem (Mass.) Evening News reported
in March on an incident in which Ms. Carmen LaBrecque, 51, had to
outrun a rabid skunk, which was literally snapping at her heels, for
15 minutes before an animal control officer arrived to shoot it.
Unable to slow down enough even to open her front door and get inside,
LaBrecque circled her yard 12 times, a foot or two in front of the
skunk. On one pass by her front door, LaBrecque's elderly mother
handed her a cell phone, which LaBrecque pantingly used to call 911.
-- In March, at the height of the civil unrest in Albania, when the
U.S. diplomatic mission was evacuating personnel for safety reasons,
The Washington Post reported that the State Department had just sent a
cable to the diplomats in Tirana reminding them of the department's
"(evacuation) policy for safeguarding of sterling silver flatware
(cutlery)."
** ** **
NEWS OF THE JUDGMENT-IMPAIRED
-- The public-service goal of an advertising campaign by England's
Children's Society was to enlighten people that child sex abuse could
occur in anyone's town and not just in notorious sex-tourist spots in
the Far East. However, its slogan, announced in billboards released in
February, came out this way: "Why travel 6,000 miles to have sex with
children when you can do it in (the English town of) Bournemouth?"
When questioned by a reporter, a society spokesman expressed pride in
the campaign and said it would be extended to Manchester and Leeds.
-- In January, motorist John Tanayo, 30, was stopped in New York City
and a search of his car turned up 573 pounds of cocaine worth about $5
million. He only drew cops' attention when, in traffic in front of a
police cruiser, he failed to signal a right turn.
-- A 38-year-old apartment building manager was arrested in
Whitewater, Wis., in January and charged with surreptitiously
videotaping a female tenant with a camera hidden in the ceiling of her
shower. The 20-year-old tenant had become suspicious because of the
fixture the manager had installed in order to disguise the lens: Why,
she thought, was a smoke detector placed in the ceiling of a shower?
-- The Robles family placed an ad in a newspaper in the town of Leon,
Guanajuato, north of Mexico City, in January, to the attention of
robbers who had been breaking into their house and stealing things. In
exasperation, but perhaps unwisely, the family begged robbers to stay
away, announcing that they had been cleaned out except for the TV, the
VCR and the refrigerator.
-- In November, Washington, D.C., inmates Antwan Hudson (drug charges)
and Kingsley Ellis (a Texas credit card fraud suspect), in a holding
cell, apparently thought they were each in less trouble than the other
and thus agreed to a scheme to swap identities for an upcoming court
appearance. Ellis was shocked to learn in court that Hudson was also
wanted on several more drug charges and for threatening his wife.
Hudson was even more shocked to find that Ellis was facing deportation
to Jamaica and thus blew the whistle on the scheme.
-- In a Virginia case reported in the December Mental Health Law News,
Susanna Van de Castle was awarded $350,000 against her
psychiatrist-husband, Robert, for malpractice. According to the
lawsuit, after having diagnosed her as suffering from multiple
personality disorder, he then married her and continued the therapy
but also sought deals for a book and a movie about her, in addition to
staging public lectures (charging admission) in which she was
showcased as his subject.
-- In November, Brownsville, Texas, insurance agency owner Raquel
Cantu Garza was charged with impeding IRS agents who had come to seize
her business on a tax matter. According to the prosecutor, Garza
instructed the two employees on duty at the time to leave and lock the
agents inside. When one agent pounded on the door to get out, a Garza
employee allegedly said, "Call a locksmith," and walked away.
-- In Guthrie, Okla., in October, Jason Heck tried to kill a millipede
with a shot from his .22-caliber rifle, but the bullet ricocheted off
a rock near the insect's hole and hit pal Antonio Martinez in the
head, fracturing his skull. And in Elyria, Ohio, in October, Martyn
Eskins, attempting to clean out cobwebs in his basement, declined to
use a broom in favor of a propane torch and caused a fire that burned
the first and second floors of his house.
-- Early New Year's morning, a 16-year-old girl in Kalamazoo, Mich.,
was arrested for erratic driving in a car she allegedly stole from
Patricia Conlon. The girl was unaware that the next day Conlon would
begin a term as county juvenile court judge. Also in Kalamazoo on New
Year's Eve, Derrick Demones Gunn was sentenced to one to five years in
prison for attempting to escape from a halfway house one day before
his original sentence was up.
-- In October, Heber C. Frias, 20, on the lam from a first-degree
murder charge in Florida, saw his freedom come to an end in an
Arlington, Va., 7-Eleven when he tauntingly stole a candy bar right in
front of a clerk, provoking a call to the police, who apprehended
Frias just outside the store.
** ** **
UPDATE
North Carolina state Rep. Henry Aldridge made News of the Weird in
1995 when he denounced state funding for abortions for rape victims as
unnecessary in that a woman who is "truly raped" doesn't get pregnant
because "the juices don't flow, the body functions don't work." In
March 1996, North Carolina House Speaker Harold Brubaker appointed
Aldridge co-chair of the Committee on Human Resources, which oversees
abortion funding.
** ** **
PERSEVERANCE
In March, Shulamit Dezhin, 82, passed her driver's test in Ashdod,
Israel, after 35 failures. She said she originally wanted to learn to
drive so she could get to Tel Aviv to visit her parents, but it took
so long to get her license that now they're dead. And in February, Sue
Evans-Jones, 45, of Yate, England, passed her driver's test after only
three failures. However, she had taken 1,800 lessons over 27 years
with 10 instructors, most of whom had told her she was such a bad
driver that she should not even attempt the exam. (Her
policeman-husband explained her problem to a reporter: The first
thought crossing her mind about crashing, no matter what the
circumstances, causes her to flail wildly at the brakes and steering
wheel.)
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St.
Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or [email protected].
COPYRIGHT 1997 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
|
| 29.19 | | IJSAPL::ANDERSON | Now noting in colour!" | Mon May 26 1997 14:37 | 147 |
| LEAD STORIES
-- The Times of London reported in March that when an employee of the
James Beauchamp law firm in Edgbaston, England, recently killed
himself, the firm billed his mother about $20,000 for the expense of
settling his officework. Included was a bill for about $2,300 to go to
his home to find out why he didn't show up at work (thus finding his
body), plus about $500 for identifying the body for the coroner, plus
about $250 to go to his mother's home, knock on her door, and tell her
that her son was dead. (After unfavorable publicity, the firm withdrew
the bill.)
-- In April, commenting on the breakthroughs in cloning, Ann Northrop,
a columnist for a New York lesbian and gay publication, argued that
cloning could give women total control over reproduction: "Men are now
totally irrelevant," she wrote. "Men are going to have a very hard
time justifying their existence on the planet." And a week later, two
Rutgers University researchers reported confirming that an
alternative nervous-system route to sexual arousal exists, from the
cervix to the neck to the brain, thus accounting for why some
spinal-cord-injured people can nevertheless have orgasms. One of the
researchers said it might thus be possible to induce orgasm chemically
by stimulating the specific neurotransmitter.
-- University of North Carolina law professor Barry Nakell, 53, a
nationally known expert on death-penalty law, was fired in February
after pleading guilty to shoplifting food and a book from a store in
Chapel Hill. He had also been charged with shoplifting in 1991, but
the charge was dismissed after he performed community service.
** ** **
GOVERNMENT IN ACTION
-- The Los Angeles Times reported in December that nearly 2,000
criminals, "hundreds" of them violent or repeat offenders, have
escaped in the last two years from a lackadaisically run work-release
program of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. In most cases,
inmates were merely asked if they preferred work-release, with no
examination of their criminal records.
-- In a September statement, Joseph Sniezek, an official of the
Centers for Disease Control's National Center for Injury Prevention,
lamented the serious injuries suffered by rodeo bull riders and
suggested a solution might be to require helmets.
-- In November, as part of a growing trend to micromanage school
curricula, the New York legislature required that all public school
students age 8 and above receive formal instruction in the Irish
potato famine of the 1840s. That follows a requirement that students
be given instruction weekly on how animals fit into "the economy of
nature." (New Jersey already requires instruction on the potato
famine, via amendment to its law requiring instruction on the
Holocaust.)
-- In January in an experiment to exercise better crowd control over
opposition-party demonstrations in Jakarta, Indonesia, the local
police chief put seven cobras in a glass case in front of the main
police station and said they would be used to intimidate protesters.
He said police would wave the cobras at the crowd, but it was not
clear whether officers relished handling the snakes in the first place
or that such crowds would allow the officers to get close enough for
the snakes to strike.
-- The National Wilderness Institute charged in January that the
Department of the Interior has failed to remove several plant and
wildlife species from the government's endangered list despite the
common knowledge that they (such as the "Maguire daisy") do not exist.
The government resists because it says it costs $37,000 to remove a
name from the list but meanwhile has added hundreds of new ones in
recent years.
-- The governing commercial body of Europe, the European Union, ruled
in February that despite a six-century tradition, wooden shoes
manufactured in the Netherlands would no longer be permitted in the
workplace unless they could meet the same standards as steel-toed
safety shoes. Shoe manufacturers warn that Dutch clogs might soon
disappear altogether. As one shoe executive said, "It would be like
Paris without the Eiffel Tower."
-- In December, the Canadian Defence Department issued a 17-page set
of guidelines for manufacturers who wish to compete for new contracts
to supply underwear to the military. Among the most challenging
requirements are that one pair must be able to be worn for six-month
stints in the field and that the garment must be invisible to
night-vision goggles so that a skivvy-clad soldier does not offer a
target to snipers.
** ** **
SEEDS OF OUR DESTRUCTION
-- The Sunday Times of London reported in December that 300 tons of
humanitarian aid from Western countries was sitting in Bosnian
warehouses because it is useless. Included were birth control pills
with an expiration date of 1986, weight-reduction tablets from
Britain, mouthwash from the United States, and chemical waste from
Germany. According to the Times, some war-zone drivers have been
killed transporting these supplies, and the German chemicals by law
cannot be returned, thus creating a hazardous waste disposal problem
for Bosnians.
-- The Associated Press reported in February on Ms. Myassar Abul-Hawa,
52, the first female taxicab driver in Jordan. Her business is brisk,
in part because some devout Muslim men ask for her by name to
chauffeur their wives and daughters so they won't be alone with male
drivers. (As is sometimes the case in the United States, Abul-Hawa
turned to taxi-driving when she could not put to use her degree in
English literature.)
-- In the last six months, several reports have surfaced from the old
Soviet Union countries that nearly bankrupt factories have been forced
to pay their workers merchandise instead of cash. Included were eggs
paid to farm workers in Klyuchi, Siberia; old train cars given to
railroad workers in Ukraine; salaries of from 33 to 42 brassieres a
month by an underwear factory in Volgograd, Russia; and, from another
Volgograd factory, rubber dildos (which are in surplus, according to
The Economist magazine, because the market has turned to electronic
vibrators).
** ** **
UPDATE
Carrying on a 40-year tradition, Filipinos in the village of San Pedro
Cutud recently conducted their Easter audience-participation
crucifixion ceremonies, with 12 volunteers nailed to crosses with
sterilized 4-inch spikes in a show of absolution. As News of the Weird
reported in 1990, for several years the Philippines Department of
Tourism was an official sponsor of the event.
** ** **
IDENTICAL ALL THE WAY
In March in Lipovljani, Croatia, twin brothers Branko Uhiltil and Ivan
Uhiltil, 57, committed suicide in separate incidents within hours of
each other, apparently with utterly no knowledge of each other's
plans. And in January, Jim Hare, 65, driving his identical twin
brother, Tom, near Bellefontaine, Ohio, lost control of the car, and
in the ensuing crash, both were killed instantly, at the same moment.
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg,
Fla. 33738, or [email protected].
COPYRIGHT 1997 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
|
| 29.20 | | IJSAPL::ANDERSON | Now noting in colour!" | Mon May 26 1997 14:45 | 143 |
| LEAD STORIES
-- In April, the town council of Cambre, in Galicia state in northern
Spain, voted legal, marriage-like status to nontraditional unions, but
the controversy was not over a same-sex couple. The precipitating
event was the recent nuptials of Daniel Pena and his sister Rosa Moya
Pena, who have lived together for 18 years and have kids aged 5 and
11. The council's decision provoked outrage almost everywhere else in
Spain.
-- On April 3, less than 24 hours before he was due to be executed for
beating three people to death with a bowling pin in 1991, Phillip
Wilkinson was taken off North Carolina's death row and sent for mental
evaluation because guards found two suicide notes in his cell.
(Apparently, prison officials believe that a person scheduled to die
the next day but who wants to kill himself the night before might be
insane and therefore cannot be executed.) And on April 1 in Texas,
convicted murderer David Lee Herman slashed his throat a day before his
scheduled execution, but he was patched up and, a day later, given his
lethal injection.
-- In April, Leslie Joseph Moran, 20, was sentenced to probation in
Regina, Saskatchewan, for shoplifting, but on condition that he dress
himself in other than designer-label clothing for the next two years.
Moran is said to find Nike and Chicago Bulls items irresistible.
** ** **
THE LITIGIOUS SOCIETY
-- Valerie Nicolescu filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police
Department in April for letting her son (one of the two heavily armed,
armor-suited men in that Feb. 28 bank robbery and shootout) bleed to
death by not giving him medical care soon enough after he was shot by
officers. (Nicolescu is also in court these days because police, in a
separate matter, found that a mentally retarded woman in her care had
been locked in a room in Nicolescu's basement along with several
toilet buckets.)
-- Chris Steen filed a $55,000 lawsuit against the town of Ipswich,
S.D., in February after he fell on a sidewalk that had rough edges. He
claims the town failed to maintain the sidewalk in good condition,
which is not an unusual claim except that Steen is the mayor of
Ipswich.
-- Carolyn Strauss filed a $1 million lawsuit against the New York
Lottery in March because she was offended by its Lotto subway
advertisements. Strauss is 5 feet 7 inches and weighs 200 pounds and
felt personally insulted by the ad that suggested the lottery was a
less onerous way to make money than marrying "the client's big-boned
daughter."
-- A 1994 lawsuit, filed by Judge Philip Espinosa, 44, of the Arizona
Court of Appeals against singer Barry Manilow, will finally go to trial
in September. Espinosa said he still has a painful ringing in his ears
from a Manilow concert in Tucson. He admitted that his wife was upset
at the lawsuit: "She loves Barry." And in February, a New York judge
tossed out the lawsuit by Clifford Goldberg against Motley Crue because
a 1990 concert was too loud, giving him a "searing pain" through his
ears. The judge said everyone at a Motley Crue concert knows it's going
to be loud.
-- Five people filed a lawsuit in March in Nagoya, Japan, against
Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto for about $950 in damages, claiming
that his support for smoking causes them mental anguish and deprives
them of the healthy life they are entitled to under Japan's
constitution. Hashimoto had promised the nation that since cigarettes
are heavily taxed, he would continue to smoke frequently while in
office.
-- In October, Kim Novacs told reporters she would file a $1 million
lawsuit in West Palm Beach, Fla., against an alligator that her
husband killed the year before. The 6- foot-long gator scared the
couple's little girl, causing Keith Novacs to shoot it, for which he
was convicted of poaching. Mrs. Novacs cited a 1993 Florida court case
in which an endangered species animal was the named plaintiff in a
case and argued that if such an animal can be a plaintiff, it can be a
defendant, with the state Game and Fish Commission liable for any
damages.
-- In January, Wayne Wooden filed a lawsuit in Indio, Calif., against
actress Nanette Fabray, and later in the month Evelyn Amato filed a
lawsuit in New York City against actor David Hibbard. Both plaintiffs
were seated close to stages, and the actors are accused of injuring
them as part of the play between actors and audience -- Fabray in a
musical revue and Hibbard in the Broadway show "Cats."
** ** **
GREAT TIME TO BE SILVER
-- A 20-year-old man and three teen-agers broke into the Moses Lake,
Wash., home of Dorothy Cunningham, 75, and Ms. Marty Killinger, 61, in
February, allegedly to rob them. However, both women happened to be
armed and drove the guys away with warning shots. The four were
arrested a short distance from the home.
-- The Associated Press reported in March that Mario Dulceno, 81, of
New Orleans believes he can continue his avocation as a stripper for
another "two, three years." According to the dispatch, "Although time
has wrinkled his skin, there's little flab, his legs are nicely
shaped, and he sports an even tan." Said a club owner, "The women went
crazy over him. I call him super Mario."
-- In Ashdod, Israel, a 93-year-old woman was arrested in March for
peddling heroin to police officers who had knocked on her door.
According to police, the woman's eyesight is failing, and she thought
they were her regular customers. And in Adrian, Mich., in January,
Lillian Howard, 84, was arrested for attempting to smuggle marijuana
in her underwear to her son during a visit to Gus Harrison Prison.
** ** **
LEAST COMPETENT CRIMINAL
Jeffrie Allen Thomas, 35, was arrested and charged with robbing a
Signet bank in Baltimore in April. An employee called police during
the robbery, and two officers on foot patrol arrived quickly to find
Thomas still in the bank, standing beside a teller's station counting
his money. (Thomas was also charged with robbing the same bank a month
before.)
** ** **
NO LONGER WEIRD
Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now
occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation:
(17) The burglar who sneaks into a home or building intending to loot
the place but who falls asleep before he can get to work, as allegedly
did Brian Hodgson, 28, who was arrested in September after the ceiling
at a Pompano Beach, Fla., McDonald's gave way, disturbing his slumber.
And (18) the family that leaves behind one or more members at a highway
rest stop and fails to realize they are short-handed until way down the
road, as happened in April to a 9-year-old boy whose father left him in
Lloydminster, Manitoba, and did not miss him until he got home to Red
Deer, Alberta, nearly 200 miles away.
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg,
Fla. 33738, or [email protected].
COPYRIGHT 1997 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
|
| 29.21 | | IJSAPL::ANDERSON | Now noting in colour!" | Mon May 26 1997 14:54 | 137 |
| LEAD STORIES
-- In February, Michael Knowles, awaiting trial in Virginia for
killing his wife, filed a $100 million lawsuit against advice
columnist Ann Landers, charging that she had defamed him by publishing
his letter on how tough the Internet can be on marriages. Wrote
Knowles: "Today is my wife's 44th birthday, but she is not around to
celebrate it. I took her life because of an affair that started on the
Internet." Said Knowles' lawyer Max Jenkins, who had pleaded Knowles
not guilty, the letter "hurts my case."
-- In March, the president of a demolition company said he was about
to hire a psychic to help explain the strange things being reported by
his workers tearing down the old Troutman's department store building
in Connellsville, Pa. He said doors were slamming without reason,
tools disappeared and turned up in unlikely places, and stuck, locked
doors spontaneously opened, among other things. At about the same
time, employees at the San Francisco Bureau of Building Inspections
brought in a Buddhist priest, a Catholic priest and a psychic to
commune with the building after several workers and family members had
recently been stricken with serious illnesses.
-- The Wall Street Journal reported in April on the growing academic
discipline of "whiteness studies," whose pioneering professors and
students met recently at the University of California, Berkeley. Among
the aspects under study: Spam diets, gun shows, and the white
dominance of shopping malls and the Internet. Said a doctoral student,
rejecting the suggestion that whiteness studies lacks seriousness:
"They said that about ... 'Madonna studies,' too."
** ** **
THE CONTINUING CRISIS
-- David Price, 34, serving life in prison in Edinburgh, Scotland, for
the 1984 rape-murder of his girlfriend on Valentine's Day, got a
chaperoned, one-evening pass in February so that he could go downtown
to the Demarco European Arts Center to attend the premiere of the
opera "Odyssey," which he wrote while behind bars.
-- In December, store manager Wiley Berggren was presented awards for
sales and productivity at a Southwest Convenience Stores company
dinner in Odessa, Texas. About two hours later, he was fired because of
his actions the night before: When three kids tried to steal a case of
beer and one of them attacked him, Berggren bearhugged the attacker to
the ground, thus violating the company's rule of not challenging
thieves.
-- In February, anesthesiologist Frank Ruhl Peterson, 45, was
sentenced in Hazelton, Pa., to 10 to 23 months in prison for severely
diluting the narcotics for 12 surgery patients, thus exposing them to
virtually anesthesia-free operations. According to police, Peterson
stole the drugs to feed his own habit and said he actually shorted
more than 200 patients.
-- In January, Ludwig Fainberg, the owner of the Porky's strip club in
Hialeah, Fla., was indicted as the middleman in various drug schemes,
including the attempted purchase of a $5.5 million, black-market,
Russian attack submarine by Colombian drug lords, who allegedly wanted
it to run cocaine into California.
-- Ireland's first legislation permitting divorce took effect Feb. 27,
but a man in Dublin apparently was so eager to shed his wife that he
petitioned a court in January for a divorce in advance, on the grounds
that he was seriously ill and might not live to see his freedom. (In
fact, he married again a few days after the court granted his
petition, and a few days after that, he died.)
-- In December, according to a Washington Post report, Greg Piper, the
owner of the Exposed Temptations tattoo shop of Manassas, Va.,
complained to his landlord in an industrial park that the newly arrived
next-door tenant, the Blessed Victory Pentecostal Church, was out of
place in the building and making so much noise with its music that it
was affecting his work. Said Piper, "(Tattooing's) like any kind of
art. You want to focus on the concentration and the client." In
January, the them-or-us dilemma was resolved when the church announced
it was moving.
-- The Associated Press reported in February on the egg collection of
wealthy businessman Ed Harrison of Los Angeles, who owns a skyscraper,
runs an oil company and manages real estate. He has more than 1 million
eggs from 3,600 species. "I've had plenty of people laugh at me," he
said, but collecting "took a lot of guts. I've swung down over cliffs
and risked my neck plenty of times (to steal eggs)."
** ** **
BAD TIMES FOR GOOD SAMARITANS
-- In January, Ron Seaward stopped, along with a police officer, to
help a driver whose car was in a ditch near London, Ontario. While he
was pushing that car out, two cars hit his truck, and as the officer
was writing up the report for Seaward's insurance company, he
discovered that Seaward's driver's license had expired (for which he
was later fined).
-- Trial began in March in the lawsuit of Linda Jean Schneider, 49,
against two physicians and the John Muir Medical Hospital near San
Francisco, for their negligence in actually saving her life: Schneider
has a slowly terminal, degenerative neurological disorder (Melas
syndrome) that causes seizures, and she had wanted to die, but the
doctors kept feeding and caring for her. She's now expected to live
another 15 years, though with a poor quality of life.
-- In December in Louisville, Ky., four men robbed the National City
Bank but were halted during their getaway by Danny Johnson at a store
next door and thus dropped the money and fled. Johnson, despite the
temptation to skim at least a little off the top to take care of his
Christmas bills, stood guard over all the loot until police arrived.
National City Bank people called Johnson three days later to inform him
that his loan application for $500, submitted before the bank robbery,
was denied.
-- The owners of the Garden Juice Bar in San Francisco told a state
labor official in February that on most days for the past year they had
provided neighborhood hanger-on (and perhaps homeless) Eugenia McCoy
free meals. However, in January McCoy filed a state labor claim that
she had not been paid for all the on-premises "work" she had been
doing, such as, for the last "40 minutes" of each "shift," standing
outside to make sure no one broke the restaurant's windows. Despite
the owners' vehement denials that McCoy ever worked for them, the
labor official set the matter for a formal hearing (largely because
she doubted that restaurant owners could be so generous).
** ** **
NAME IN THE NEWS
Hawaii's Big Island closed out its 1996 highway death toll at 35
(compared to 23 in 1995) on Dec. 26 with the one- vehicle crash in
Hamakua of motorcyclist Hy Hoe Silva, 41.
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St.
Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or [email protected].
COPYRIGHT 1997 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
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