My favorite this week is "People different from us." :-{
--
-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 (.786)
WEEK OF MARCH 2, 2003
LEAD STORIES
In January, the engineers and hobbyists of Utah's Salt Lake Astronomical
Society told reporters they were planning to air-drop bowling balls, at very
high altitude, to check out their impact when they land on the salt flats, to
simulate the impact of meteorites. The society said it had been frustrated that
it could not find any meteorites so far and had been wondering whether they had
disintegrated or been pulverized on impact. Two days later, the U.S. Bureau of
Land Management, citing the many people engaged in work projects on the salt
flats, said it was a bad idea to be dropping bowling balls around them. [Salt
Lake Tribune, 1-10-03; The Observer (London), 1-26-03]
In December, Texas murder defendant Leonard Rojas' time for appeals ran out,
and he was executed. Sixty-eight days later, three members of the state's
highest court for criminal cases explicitly concluded that Rojas' appointed
lawyer was woefully incompetent and that the court's majority had ignored that
incompetence while Rojas was still alive. The lawyer, David K. Chapman: had
never handled a death-penalty case, failed to investigate Rojas' case, rarely
met with Rojas, admitted he missed filing deadlines (one of which barred Rojas
from any federal appeal), and had had his license suspended three times by the
Texas Bar (once during the time he was representing Rojas). [Austin
American-Statesman, 2-14-03]
Readers' Choice
The race-discrimination lawsuit of two black sisters (Grace Fuller, 48, and
Louise Sawyer, 46) against Southwest Airlines is scheduled to go to trial in
Kansas City, Kan., in March. The sisters' entire case is that a white flight
attendant, in a hurry to get passengers seated, recited Southwest's version of
a rhyme that has a racist history: "Eenie, meeny, minie, moe / Pick a seat, We
gotta go." The sisters felt degraded and believe they are due some money.
[Associated Press, 2-10-03]
Nation at War
Most recent antiwar demonstrations have been by clothed people, but since
November, nude demonstrations against an invasion of Iraq have taken place in
Marin County, Calif. (200 women at three sites); near West Palm Beach, Fla. (23
people); Byron Bay, Australia (700); and New York City's Central Park (30, in
the snow). And the U.S. Navy announced in February that it is way short of
"morticians" and is willing to pay sign-up bonuses of $6,000 (but denied the
job search was related to Iraq). And according to Britain's The Sun, both
George Bush and Saddam Hussein recently ordered the same $975 handmade shoes
from the Milan, Italy, shoemaker Vito Artioli (Bush in size 10, Saddam 9 1/2).
[San Francisco Chronicle, 1-12-03; Tampa Tribune-South Florida Sun-Sentinel,
2-15-03; New York Post-Reuters, 2-9-03; New York Post, 2-8-03] [Ottawa Citizen,
2-5-03] [Newsweek, 2-17-03]
The Litigious Society
In February, a 23-year-old woman who had once changed clothes in the office of
a talent agency in Brighton, Mich., while a hidden video camera was running,
convinced a jury that that one humiliating experience was worth $575,250. She
said that the incident was so severe (even though she had not sought counseling
or taken medication for it), she had lost all trust in people and would have to
give up on being a model. [Ann Arbor News, 2-8-03]
Anne Stanley filed a lawsuit in Westmoreland County, Pa., in December, asking
$90 million as her compensation for a period of time when she was unsure
whether or not she had received a deadly infection. A defective bronchoscope
was allegedly used on her at Latrobe Area Hospital in January and June of 2001,
and one of the things that this particular defect (loose valve) permits is for
bacteria to form in a pocket that cannot be reached by sterilization equipment.
[Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1-2-03]
High school senior Brian Delekta filed a lawsuit in February against the
school system in Memphis, Mich., alleging that he actually did A-plus work in
one course but only received an A for it, and that his average should be even
higher than it is (and Delekta was ranked first in his class by the end of his
junior year). The course at issue here is a "work experience" course in which
he served as a paralegal in a law office and did a fine job, according to his
supervisor. That supervisor happened to be his mother, Diane, who said she
meant that he did A-plus, not A, work. [Minneapolis Star Tribune-AP, 2-6-03]
The 3rd Baron Mereworth and dozens of British nobles told reporters in January
that they planned to sue Britain in the European Court of Human Rights because
the Blair government had ousted most of them in a 1997 reform of the "upper"
legislature, the House of Lords (which had long been criticized as a mere
social club of aristocrats). (Lord Mereworth, for example, inherited his title
last year upon the death of his father, who spent 70 years in the House of
Lords without ever participating in a debate.) [St. Petersburg Times-AP,
1-17-03]
Something Else to Worry About
In her Daily Telegraph (London) column of Jan. 16, Medical Editor Celia Hall
reported that a family doctor in western England has been summoned to a formal
hearing before his local primary-care trust because he refused to certify a
male patient for a Pap smear to screen him for cervical cancer. The man
sincerely believes he is a hermaphrodite, but his doctor said he can find no
evidence of that (and in fact, the man once fathered a child). At least one
colleague suggested appeasing the patient, which the doctor said he might do if
someone would teach him the procedure for performing a cervical smear on a
34-year-old male. [Daily Telegraph, 1-16-03]
People Different From Us
Kenneth Patrick Porche Jr., 22, was arrested outside the ladies' room at
Dillard's department store in Houma, La., in January, carrying four plastic
bags of urine and several empty bags labeled with descriptions such as "old
woman." Police said they believed that Porche would enter a stall, disable the
toilet's flush mechanism, and line the bowl with a plastic film to catch the
urine, before hiding away in an adjacent stall. After a woman used the toilet
and left, Porche would collect and bag the urine from the plastic film. Since
Porche's behavior was difficult to characterize, police charged him under the
catch-all "criminal mischief." [Houma Today, 1-30-03]
Least Competent Criminals
Two women were arrested in February and two men were being sought by police in
a failed counterfeit-check scheme in Hickory, N.C.; they were busted because,
despite using elaborate computer software to publish bogus checks, none of the
four noticed that they had spelled the payer Broyhill Furniture's name as
"Boryhill Furmiture." And according to authorities in Winona, Minn., in
February, Carl Fratzke defrauded seven people of a total of $200,000 in a bogus
investment in gloves; Fratzke (not a very sophisticated investor, himself) then
immediately fell for one of the myriad Nigerian scams, blowing the entire
$200,000 (plus $550,000 of his own money). [Excite-Associated Press, 2-12-03]
[Winona Daily News, 2-11-03]
Recurring Themes
News of the Weird has several times reported on Postal Service letter carriers
who get so far behind on their routes that they believe their only way out is
to destroy their many bags of backlog. In January, two Immigration and
Naturalization Service supervisors in Laguna Niguel, Calif., were indicted for
allegedly ordering subordinates to shred their office's 90,000-document backlog
(and to continue to shred incoming paperwork so that the office kept current).
[New York Times, 1-31-03]
Thinning the Herd
Motorist B.J. Justin Lundin, 20, stopped his car in the middle of a two-lane
road near Weatherford, Texas, in January, got out, and attacked the driver
behind him in a fit of road rage over the driver's having earlier objected to
Lundin's tailgating; Lundin was then accidentally struck and killed by another
car trying to get around the two cars. And retired Belgian engineer Louis Dethy
was accidentally blown up in November by one of the 19 deadly booby traps he
had rigged in his home near Charlerois to prevent his ex-wife and 14 children
(with whom he was feuding) from legally taking ownership of the house. [Fort
Worth Star-Telegram, 1-8-03] [National Post-Sunday Telegraph (London),
11-11-02]
Also, in the Last Month ...
A worker at the Brown-Forman Distillery sent 1,800 gallons of tequila into the
sewer system when he mistakenly unloaded one tank into an already full one
(Louisville, Ky.). Circus clown Gavin Riley, 37, was jailed for two years for
beating up his girlfriend because she declined to go watch him perform
(Newcastle Upon Tyne, England). Entomologists explained that warm weather was
the reason that hordes of cutworms and army worms were slithering across
northwestern New Mexico, covering roads and invading homes (but not to worry,
in that they would turn into moths in a few weeks, anyway) (Shiprock, N.M.).
[WAVE-TV, 2-10-03] [Daily Telegraph (London), 2-6-03] [Associated Press,
2-3-03]
Thanks this week to Phil Parker, Stuart Johnson, Tim O'Boyle, Mark Seibel,
Jules Siegel, Steve Astbury, Kristin Hirschfeld, Jennifer Bale-O'Connell, Steph
Pederson, Jim Saunders, Seth Hawkins, Michael Sansur, Noah Meyerson, Trevor
Rook, Lisa Moore, Jason Blomer, and Brian Jeffiers, 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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