[People with issues got me this week :-(]
--
-Time flies like the wind. Fruit flies like a banana. Stranger things have -
-happened but none stranger than this. Does your driver's license say Organ
-Donor?Black holes are where God divided by zero. Listen to me! We are all-
-individuals! What if this weren't a hypothetical question?
steveo at syslang.net
Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird (.785)
WEEK OF FEBRUARY 23, 2003
LEAD STORIES
Though state tax revenues are shrinking nationwide, Kansas reported in January
that taxes paid on marijuana sales were up 5 percent and taxes paid on cocaine,
methamphetamine and other hard drugs were up 20 percent. As other states do,
Kansas sells revenue stamps (in denominations from $10 to $1,000) that dealers
are supposed to affix to the drugs in order to sell them. Even though such
sales themselves are illegal, law enforcement agencies are forbidden from
accessing information on the sellers (and if they did, any conviction would
probably be tossed out, as based on unconstitutional self-incrimination). A
Revenue Department spokesman guessed that most people who buy the stamps are
merely collectors. [Wichita Eagle, 1-26-03]
A January Wall Street Journal report described "dB Drag Racing," a "sport" in
which the winning car is not the fastest but the one with the loudest stereo
system, but ordinary urban street cruisers are not in these drivers' league. In
the "Extreme" category, cars are completely rebuilt and powered with enough
juice to operate several private homes. Extra-thick glass and concrete poured
into the floor and doors keep the sound inside, where the measurement takes
place. Last year's winner, from Germany, registered 177.7 decibels. [Wall
Street Journal Online, 1-26-03]
War News
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wrote to Yasser Arafat deploring
public bombings, at least when the bomb is delivered (as one was on Jan. 26 in
Jerusalem) on a donkey. (Said a PETA official, "It's not my business to
(comment on) human wars.") And to help the U.S. military, a Las Vegas porno
distributor offered 500 videos free of charge (except for postage) to
servicemen as thanks for their sacrifice. And in Cebu, Philippines, in
February, a German man, Frank Oesterle, was detained by police after knifing an
American tourist at a bar; they were arguing over their respective countries'
views on imminent war in Iraq (i.e., U.S., fight; Germany, don't fight).
[Washington Post, 2-5-03] [PRNewswire, 1-29-03] [(Philippine) Daily Inquirer,
2-3-03]
Can't Possibly Be True
Allison Adams, 23, a veterinary technician for Wildlife Rescue in Austin,
Texas, warms up traumatized baby animals (squirrels, kittens, rabbits, etc.) by
putting them in her bra (while she's wearing it), according to a profile in the
Austin American-Statesman in January. Her report: Squirrels are the hardest;
possums the easiest; she's done it about 75 times; no, they don't itch; her
fiance is OK with it (even though he was deprived of a hug once because of
"hissing possums"). [Austin American-Statesman, 1-7-03]
Gloria DeFrancesco, 61, filed a lawsuit in Akron, Ohio, in December against TV
evangelist Ernest Angley, alleging that the muscle men who surround the stage
during his healing sessions roughed her up in August 2001 while she was
accompanying her 94-year-old, wheelchair-using, generously tithing mother to be
cured. DeFrancesco said she was struck, grabbed and pushed by six men,
resulting in a detached retina and other head, nose and body injuries that
required hospitalization and surgery. [Akron Beacon Journal, 12-4-02]
According to trial coverage in the Omaha World-Herald in October, the
prosecutor of accused Omaha sexual assaulter Akhiktemelo Braimah said that DNA
evidence indicated that the probability of another "African-American" besides
Braimah having committed the assault was "1 in 30.3 sextillion" ("303" followed
by 20 zeros). (30.3 sextillion represents 5 trillion times the number of people
of all nationalities on Earth right now and 303 billion times the likely number
who have ever lived.) (Braimah pleaded no contest two days later.) [Omaha
World-Herald, 10-1-02]
The BBC reported in January that Holger Voss has been ordered to court in
Muenster, Germany, accused of breaking its law against "glorification of a
criminal act." According to a complaint to police, Voss had written on an
Internet message board, "Congratulations to the murderers of (Sept. 11)." Voss
told a BBC reporter that he obviously meant to be sarcastic, but court
spokesman Juergen Wrobel said that would be for the court to decide. [BBC News,
1-7-03]
Freshman Missouri state Rep. Cynthia Davis, at a legislative orientation
session in December in Jefferson City, took her turn at learning how to preside
over debates and interrupted Rep. Chuck Graham, who had the floor. According to
a report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Davis recited the rule that members
must be standing in order to speak and that Graham was thus out of order, in
that the veteran legislator Graham has been in a wheelchair for 21 years, the
result of a car accident. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 12-11-02]
People With Issues
Retired pediatrician Alva J. Hartwright, 63, pleaded guilty in February to
sexually assaulting two boys, age 11 and 14 at the time, by giving them enemas
(part of a 30-year pattern, said prosecutors, of administering enemas to as
many as 40 boys). When police arrested Hartwright at his home in June in
Morrisville, Pa., they found "feces everywhere," with "so much feces in one
room (that) it was impassable," said an officer. Also found were "thousands" of
photographic images of boys receiving enemas, all of which, insisted
Hartwright, were "medically necessary" and not sexually gratifying to him.
[Allentown Morning Call, 2-7-03]
Least Competent Criminals
Tyrone Jermain Hogan, 20, pleaded guilty in Los Angeles in February to
attempted carjacking, six months after trying to steal a van that unbeknownst
to him at the time was carrying a martial arts team visiting from Florida
International University; the students, said their instructor, held Hogan "like
a pretzel on the ground" until police arrived. And Edgar A. Brown, 27, was
arrested in Worthington, Ohio, in January and charged with robbing the First
Merit Bank; police were tipped off after Brown paid his electric bill at a
Columbus store using red-stained $50 bills. [CNN.com-AP, 2-7-03] [Columbus
Dispatch, 1-30-03]
Our Civilization in Decline
In a still largely underreported 1996 study by St. Louis University (revealed
by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in January), researchers concluded that at least
40 percent of Catholic nuns in the United States have suffered either sexual
abuse, sexual exploitation or sexual harassment, with nearly half of the
instances perpetrated by priests or other nuns. The results were published in
two obscure journals in 1998, but the study's sponsors otherwise squelched the
news out of a desire not to harm the church's then-still-virtuous reputation.
[St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1-5-03]
Updates on News of the Weird Stories
The late composer John Cage's "As Slow As Possible," now being played once,
lasting 639 years, at a church in Halberstadt, Germany, has so far taken 17
months just to get the organ's bellows inflated and now will take 18 months
more just to play the composition's first three notes, according to a February
BBC report. And former stockbroker Warren D. Matthei, 51, who has sat in jail
in Philadelphia since 1996 rather than pay his first wife child support that
now amounts to about $350,000, declined federal judge Jerome Simandle's offer
of release in January, claiming that he did not want to put pressure on his
82-year-old mother (who would have to sign over a security interest in her home
as a condition of release); Matthei lived it up in Europe with his second wife
but then inexplicably returned home in 1996. [BBC News, 2-5-03] [Philadelphia
Inquirer, 1-7-03]
Readers' Choice
The burglar who apparently broke in to the A Little Bit of Country western
emporium in Mineral Wells, Texas, on Feb. 8 was arrested shortly after the
store opened at 9 a.m., in one of the state's easiest collars: He had fallen
asleep on a bed in a furniture showroom. It was an interesting caper: A few
coins (the only money on the premises) were scattered on the floor; he had left
his gun in the store's restroom; and anyway, of all the places in town, he had
picked a store owned by the wife of the Palo Pinto County district attorney.
[Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 2-9-03]
Also, in the Last Month ...
A disabled woman, noticing a fire in her apartment but having no telephone,
alerted neighbors as best she could by firing several gunshots through a wall
and out a window (Omaha, Neb.). State Sen. Ben Robinson introduced a bill to
require restaurants serving barbecue meat to supply cloth napkins (which he
said a campaign donor had asked him to do 15 years earlier) (Oklahoma City).
The tourist director in the nation of Liechtenstein (60 square miles,
population 33,000, between Switzerland and Austria) said corporations
interested in holding conferences there would be allowed to rent the entire
country, with the cooperation of all local officials. [Omaha World-Herald,
2-9-03] [KTUL-TV-AP, 2-5-03] [CNN-Reuters, 2-7-03]
Thanks this week to Dennis Lindsay, Mike Mendenhall,
Kevin MacDougald, Web Freeman, Donnie Goettel, Mark Evans,
Jim Mohr, Joe Pat Clayton, Tom Coan, John Woods, Tom Kasper, Kenneth Moose,
Debbie Cousins, Migsy Smith, Mike McNeill, Michael Justice, Kevin Lapointe,
Alan Fagan, Jeff Brandt, Brian Jeffiers, Chris Turner, Jeff Josephson, Debra
Bramow, Nancy Riggins-Hume, Skip Munger, Kristin Johnson, Peter Norquist, Glenn
Birkemeier, Brennan Neville, William Ellis, Thomas Shultz, Douglas Drummond,
Camille Donoghue, James King, Amy Bene, Mark Seibel, Loren Collins, Chuck
Baker, Matt Jennings, and Seth Hosmer, and to the News of the Weird Board of
Editorial Advisors.
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or
[EMAIL PROTECTED] or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)
COPYRIGHT 2003 CHUCK SHEPHERD
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