WEIRDNUZ.497 (News of the Weird, August 15, 1997) by Chuck Shepherd
(edited)
RECENT PROTESTS
* In December, at least 2,000 workers at a Sanyo Universal Electric company plant in Bangkok burned down the eight-story headquarters building along with the factory, warehouse, and inventory of refrigerators and TV sets. The workers were upset that they would receive a bonus of only three months' wages, which is generous by Thai standards but still only about half of last year's bonus.
Bankok, Michigan?
* In June, three environmental activists from Greenpeace set up a 12-foot-by-6-foot survival station atop a narrow, barren, 65-foot-high rock called Rockall, 290 miles off the coast of Scotland, and vowed to remain there until the British government stops oil exploration in the Atlantic Ocean. In Rockall-area storms, waves often reach heights of 90 feet and more.
Calling all sharks, calling all sharks!
* Items Recently Thrown in Protest: A live pig, thrown into the office of the Massachusetts Bar Association in Boston in February to protest the legal profession; rotting bison entrails at Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman in March in Gardiner, Mont., by a man protesting the thinning of the bison herd; about $4,000 worth of money by a man in front of city hall in Seoul, South Korea, in May, to protest corrupt politicians; and bags of excrement and rocks, hurled by Ultra-Orthodox Jews at other Jews in Jerusalem in June, to protest mixed-gender praying.
Don't they mean excrement and stones? And, why were they praying to a transvestite?
CULTURAL DIVERSITY
* A May report in the Jakarta Post described the daily rush of ill people to the home of Cecilia Subini and her husband Florentinus Suparmo in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in order to be therapeutically licked and nuzzled by their bull Joko Andhini. Thousands believe in the power of Joko's body, saliva, and urine (which some rub on their skin and others drink) to cure such maladies as incontinence, arthritis, strokes, rashes, diabetes, and cancer.
Does it cure stooopidity?
LEAST COMPETENT CRIMINALS
* According to New York City police in May, Sidonia Williams tried to open a Lord & Taylor charge account by flashing a piece of U.S. currency in the amount of $1 million. There is no such denomination. Hers was created by pasting 0's onto a $1 bill and running it through a color copier. She cheerfully pointed out that she had 194 more just like it in her bag and insisted to the federal magistrate that she had committed no crime.
* Steven Richard King, 22, was arrested in April for trying to hold up a Bank of America branch in Modesto, Calif., without a weapon. He used his thumb and finger to simulate a gun, but unlike most robbers who use this tactic, he failed to keep his hand in his pocket while doing it. The teller, realizing he had nothing to fear, merely walked away. King got tired of waiting and walked away, too, but police caught him nearby.
* Robert A. Jackson, 17, and another man were arrested in July and charged with robbing a St. Peters, Mo., convenience store and a Citgo gas station. According to police, after the first robbery, Jackson couldn't get his getaway car started and so apologized to the clerk and gave the money back in exchange for a jump-start. The clerk started the car, then called police, who were in the area looking for Jackson when he allegedly pulled the second job.
* Reginald Hunter, 43, was arrested in June and charged with robbing a convenience store in York, Pa., at 3 a.m. When the clerk told police the man's footwear consisted of flip-flops, police surmised he might live nearby. Sure enough, Hunter lives a few doors down from the store.
Copyright 1997 by Universal Press Syndicate. |
