--
-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 (.787)
WEEK OF MARCH 9, 2003
LEAD STORIES
University of California, Santa Barbara, researcher J. Gordon Melton's new
edition of the Encyclopedia of American Religion lists 2,630 denominations in
two dozen informal "families" (e.g., 116 Catholic flocks, "hundreds" of
Pentecostal flocks), according to a January Associated Press report. Among the
least mainstream: the (John F.) Kennedy Worshippers, the Nudist Christian
Church of the Blessed Virgin Jesus, the Church of God Anonymous, the Church of
the New Song (once offered porterhouse steaks for communion), and 22 that
believe in UFOs (including the clone-happy Raelians). [Associated Press,
1-31-03]
The British government proposed privacy-rights legislation in January that
would permit people to have sex in public restrooms as long as they could not
be seen by others using the restroom. The week after that, the California
Patriot (a publication of students at the University of California, Berkeley)
reported that a university-funded gay students' Web site was openly discussing
which restrooms on campus were the most hospitable for public sex (acts which
are still illegal in California). [Daily Telegraph (London), 1-30-03]
[California Patriot, 2-4-03]
America's Real Gun Problem
Some recent accidental self-shootings: Jason Gins, 19, Baton Rouge, La.,
January, in the genitals (gun stuffed in waistband during getaway from
robbery); Michael Bent, 30, New York City, September, hit an artery near the
groin (fatal) (fooling with gun in car while talking to his girlfriend); Randal
Lewis, 40, near St. Louis, September, in the head (fatal) (while demonstrating
to 12-year-old son how to unload gun); Robert E. Slay Jr., 55, Gonzalez, La.,
October, leg (trying on pants at an outlet store); Dr. Steve Kyplesky, 57,
Raceland, La., hand (fumbling with gun in his truck's glove compartment); Dale
B. Grimmett, 41, Ione, Wash., shoulder (pointed rifle at himself while cleaning
it); 15-year-old high school student, Detroit, December, leg (bent over to pick
up pencil in class). [The Advocate (Baton Rouge), 1-28-03] [New York Post,
9-30-02] [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 10-1-02] [The Advocate (Baton Rouge),
10-29-02] [WAFB-TV (Baton Rouge), 1-6-03] [Spokesman-Review (Spokane), 1-9-03]
[Detroit Free Press, 12-3-02]
Something Else to Worry About
In December, Robert John Cusack, 45, was sentenced to 57 days in jail for a
June smuggling caper on a flight to Los Angeles. He had four endangered
songbirds and 50 illegal orchids in his luggage, and when one bird flew off
down an airport corridor during an inspection, the agent asked if Cusack had
anything else. "Yes," he said. "I've got monkeys in my pants" (actually, two
endangered pygmy monkeys from Thailand, which Cusack dug down for and handed
over). [Los Angeles Times, 12-19-02]
People Worse Off Than Michael Jackson
Police in Lowell, Mass., said in January that dozens of young Asian women had
purchased sloppy breast augmentations, nose jobs and eyelid surgeries from a
Cambodian couple posing as doctors in a bloody "Frankenstein's workshop." And a
Venezuelan couple were sentenced to from two to seven years in prison by a New
York City court in December for injecting a rooster-comb derivative into the
faces of 20 women as cut-rate wrinkle-smoothers but which scarred them for
life. And authorities in Guadalajara, Mexico, arrested fake "Dr." Myriam Yukie
Gaona (a former stripper) in July for performing cut-rate plastic surgery on
"hundreds" of women, augmenting the breasts and lips of some with industrial
silicone and motor oil. [Boston Herald, 1-30-03] [New York Post, 12-19-02] [The
Guardian (London), 12-9-02]
Yeah? What's the Problem?
In February, the lawyer for former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke (who is to be
sentenced in March for defrauding financial contributors in order to feed his
gambling habit) appealed to the judge to send Duke to an upscale prison because
otherwise black inmates would tear him up. And Kenneth Hawthorn, a Jehovah's
Witness proselytizer, filed a lawsuit in Adelaide, Australia, against a couple
whose ram attacked him, battering him to the ground, as he approached the
couple's door. (The parties settled the lawsuit in January.) (Bonus detail: The
ram, since deceased, was named Shit for Brains.) [Newsday-AP, 2-13-02] [Herald
Sun (Melbourne), 1-23-03]
World's Greatest Lawyer
In Holmes County, Miss., in October, Mr. Chocwe Lumumba, Esq., earned an
acquittal for his client, former policeman Eddie Myers, having convinced the
jury that it was self-defense when Myers killed his sister-in-law (who was the
assistant police chief). Myers told the jury that, yes, he grabbed two
.40-caliber handguns and fired 36 shots, hitting the woman 14 times, and yes,
the victim's own handgun was found by emergency workers still strapped inside
its holster, but it was still self-defense. [Clarion-Ledger, 10-23-02]
Unclear on the Concept
In November, the Pentagon rejected a Freedom of Information Act request by a
reporter to see an internal training video, claiming that the law allowed it to
be withheld. The video is the 22-minute "Freedom of Information Act / The
People's Right to Know," which is utilized to teach Pentagon employees how to
carry out the maximum-disclosure purpose of the act. [Sarasota
Herald-Tribune-AP, 2-13-03]
Convicted sex abuser Daniel Ray Erickson (who once "purchased" a 5-year-old
girl whom he then molested) petitioned a judge in Brooksville, Fla., in
December to have his photo removed from Florida's sex offender Web site. "How,"
he asked, "can a guy get married and become a good, stable citizen if they're
putting your picture there?" (Indeed, he said, his previous girlfriend had left
him when she found out he was on the Web site.) [St. Petersburg Times, 12-6-02]
Boston City Councilman Felix Arroyo, who opposes war in Iraq, announced in
January that he was going on a hunger strike to protest U.S. policy. Arroyo
said he would begin a liquid-only regimen, but then limited that to daylight
hours (thus allowing himself dinner and, theoretically, breakfast), and later
qualified that to mean that he would only adhere to this hardship diet on the
second and fourth Fridays of each month. [Boston Globe, 1-30-03]
Things You Thought Didn't Happen Anymore
The men of the Messiah Lutheran Church in Ripon, Calif., voted 25-17 in
December to let women start voting on church matters, but that was still three
votes shy of the required two-thirds majority. And health researchers told a
conference in San Antonio, Texas, in January that they had treated a well-fed
college student who had come down with the old-time mariner's disease of scurvy
(absence of vitamin C in the student's steady diet of cheese, crackers, cookies
and soda). And a retired professor was appointed in November by the town of
Colwood, British Columbia, to find out why garage doors suddenly open,
sprinklers come on, TVs and VCRs start automatically, and one couple's
mechanical bed folds up while they're asleep. (Two new broadcast transmission
towers are the suspects.) [San Jose Mercury News, 1-18-03] [Reuters, 1-22-03]
[Canadian Press, 11-13-02]
A Woman With Two Problems
Authorities in Lincolnshire, England, are trying to identify the
60-ish-year-old woman who was admitted to Lincoln County Hospital in December,
suffering from amnesia but insisting she is Barry Manilow. The only things she
was carrying were several Manilow albums. [BBC News, 12-20-02]
Readers' Choice
The Philippine Star reported that George Mamaril, perhaps overreacting to his
wife, Evelyn's, suspicion of infidelity, severed his penis on Feb. 22, wrapped
it in newspaper, and tossed it through the window of her parents' house, where
she was staying, with a note reading (in Filipino), "So you will not suspect I
am courting another girl." [Philippine Star, 2-27-03]
Also, in the Last Month ...
A Maryland state auditing office found, based on examining cell phone usage of
74 state employees, that the state could have saved $130,000 last year if the
74 had switched to a higher-minutes call plan. And Daniel Torres was convicted
of killing a man (and his pet cockatoo) after prosecutors showed that Torres'
DNA was found in the cockatoo's beak because the bird had pecked Torres
furiously to defend itself (Dallas). And a highly lauded Vermont sex-crime
investigation unit, staggered by government budget cuts, announced it would
turn to raffle tickets and bake sales to keep the office going (St. Albans,
Vt.). [Government Technology-AP, 2-19-03] [Reuters, 2-19-03] [MSNBC.com,
2-20-03]
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