WEIRDNUZ.510 (News of the Weird, November 14, 1997) by Chuck Shepherd
(Not much to comment on this time.)
LEAD STORIES
* In October, Santa Cruz, Calif., attorney Jay BloomBecker began offering a weekly Plaintiff School Support Group for People in Litigation. For $15 a session, BloomBecker guides lawsuit-filers through the process while sympathizing with the anguish that caused them to litigate. "The basic problem," he told the newspaper Metro Santa Cruz, "is that people come to me not because they want money but because they're hurt."
Yeah, right.
* Another "Distinguishing Characteristic": According to an October Reuters news report, a man who was fined for mooning German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in a political protest two years ago near Salzburg, Vienna, has decided to appeal his fine of about $357. The man has asked a court to require Kohl to come back to Vienna, take a look at the protester's bare bottom, and certify that he was not among the mooners.
He just wants to crack a smile for Helmut.
* The King's Continuing Influence: Voters in Tornved, Denmark, have a chance to vote for Birger Niels Petersen as city councilman this month and possibly enjoy a payoff on his campaign promises: to rename the town's main street Elvis Presley Boulevard and the town hall Graceland. And in a story on the U. S.-China summit in October, the New York Times reported that president Jiang Zemin, visiting the Philippines in 1996, initiated a duet with his host, president Fidel Ramos, in which the two sang "Love Me Tender" in English.
QUESTIONABLE JUDGMENTS
* A recently-completed work by well-known sculptor John Waddell to commemorate the 1963 Birmingham, Ala., church bombing (that killed four black girls), offered for free to several museums and churches in Birmingham, has so far been turned down by all. While other civil rights-era statues depict police dogs and officers' brutality against demonstrators, Waddell's piece shows four nude black women in a fountain, representing the adulthood the girls were never allowed to achieve. A committee of the Unitarian Universalist Church said the sculpture shows what one might see at a "slave auction." (However, the black mayor of Birmingham and the father of one of the bomb victims said they like Waddell's piece.)
* In June, Kenyon Bowe was picked up by the Coast Guard after drifting 15 hours in the Atlantic Ocean on his Jet Ski, on which he had intended to ride from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to Freeport, Bahamas, about 100 miles away. (He said he lacked patience to wait for the next cruise ship.) And in August, Lawrence Tervit was picked up drifting in the English Channel after he had set out for the 30-mile trip to England from Calais, France, on a 3-foot by 3-foot wooden pallet. (He said he ran out of money in France and couldn't afford a ferry back.)
* Jamaal Lou Wallace, 27, was arrested at a traffic checkpoint near Knoxville, Tenn., in July when officers found 300 pounds of marijuana in his trunk. Wallace had drawn attention to himself: 1) Said one officer, he had a "deer-caught-in-the-headlights" look in his eyes, and (2) he had attempted to mask the marijuana smell with air fresheners but had used "15 to 20" of them, creating an odor in his car that "would nearly knock you down," said the officer.
* In September in Edmonton, Alberta, a man attempting to unclog his toilet by pouring five gallons of gasoline in to dislodge a partially-flushed foam toy, created enough fumes to ignite a furnace pilot light, causing an explosion and $60,000 in damage. And in Hazel Park, Mich., in September, an elderly woman who could not drive her car because of a steering-wheel lock placed on it by her children, tried to burn it off. She succeeded but only because the fire obliterated everything but the car's charred outer frame.
She always wanted a hot rod, er, hotrod, er, whatever.
* In September, Superior, Wis., administrative law judge Charles Schaefer denied unemployment benefits to June Lauer, who had quit her job at Kentucky Fried Chicken, disgusted by the prevalence of vile language in the workplace. Schaefer ruled that Lauer did not have good cause to quit because, he wrote, "Use of vulgar and obscene language and terms can serve to promote group solidarity."
At a KFC? Usually, the cussing is in front of the counter.
FIRST THINGS FIRST
* Mary Samuel, 34, a food seller in Monrovia, Liberia, quoted in the New York Times in July supporting eventual winner Charles Taylor in the then-imminent national elections that were to end years of vicious civil war: "He killed my mother, and he killed my father, and I don't care--I love Charles Ghankay Taylor."
* David Ash, 21, was arrested in August in Northport, Ala., and charged with robbing a Speed Mart. As David entered the store with a knife, he was apparently so focused on his goal that he passed right by his father, Frankie Ash, who was walking out after making a purchase. Frankie shrugged and told his wife, waiting in the car, that David was probably in a hurry to use the bathroom, but the couple watched as their son wielded the knife, grabbed the money, and ran out. When David's car broke down a few minutes later, he called his parents for help, and they urged him to surrender, which he did.
* In September, relatives of the late Donald Blaul, Sr., who died of cancer in July, filed a lawsuit in Detroit against his fiancee, Joann Small, to recover Blaul's two season tickets to University of Michigan football games (face value, $448). Small said Blaul gave them to her; one suing relative said, "It's a very serious and highly personal matter that is very painful to the family."
OOPS!
* Latest truck spills: 3 tons of liquid chocolate on State Road 15 near Belleville, Ill., in July; 10 tons of ketchup in Carnegie, Pa., in July; 20 tons of jalapenos on I-10 in San Antonio, Tex., in September; 4,000 gallons of milk on I-35 north of Norman, Okla., in July; and, on the same day in June, a truckload of turkey innards on State Road 119 near Longmont, Colo., and a partial load of putrid cow hearts and intestines on I-35 in Minneapolis (which did not deter the driver, who witnesses said never even slowed down).
Carnage on the highways.
* Cary L. Rider, 43, was arrested for burglary in Wood River, Ill., in September after police found him in a hospital. The burglar had attempted to move a safe, but it fell on his hand, and his glove was found underneath it, still containing the top part of the middle finger of the burglar's left hand (which was exactly the part that Rider was missing when he reported to the hospital). Said one officer, "He admitted it. What can you do if your finger's there?"
* In August, Frederick Yuzyk, 34, was convicted in Edmonton, Alberta, of mailing obscene material, namely a photograph of only his genitals. He said he intended to send it for publication in a men's magazine in order to meet women, but it wound up in the mailbox of a Calgary businesswoman by mistake. And Michael E. Starks, 31, and Ginger Edwards, 28, were arrested in Collinsville, Ill., in September after they dialed a wrong number trying to have an escort service send a female to complete their sexual threesome. Instead, a 63-year-old Florissant, Mo., great-grandmother got the call, played along, arranged a meeting, and notified police.
Yuzyk? I've never been in Edmonton, I swear!
* John and Margaret Ruppel's new, $3.5 million mansion near Tampa, Fla., burned to the ground in May after a maid accidentally closed a kitchen cabinet door in such a way that a toaster was activated. The Ruppels had recently made a decision not to insure the house.
Why didn't they just close a window and start a flood?
Copyright 1997 by Universal Press Syndicate. |
