News of the Weird

-- More Anal-Retentive Suspects: Charinassa Fairley was charged in July with killing her husband in Baton Rouge, La., after police found a checklist that included the notations "Make a prank call to him; offer food and love; make him take a bath with you. Put on gloves" and "Make love like never before for the last time. Lay down after he falls asleep. Pop him." And in September, former Navy Ensign Dana R. Collins, 35, was convicted of the murder of a colleague after police found a to-do list that included the items "Take him out," "Cut him up/take head/fingers and toes," "Put him in 2 bags," and "Drive body to Pennsylvania. Keep head and fingers and toes -- scatter on way back." And after Gary Lynn Davis, 43, was arrested in July and charged with sexual assaults on several children around Adrian, Pa., police found in his home a neatly printed, three-page list of 125 "Boys and Girls I've Been With" that included abbreviations for the acts committed with each.

-- The New York Attorney General's office announced in September that a new state law banning prison inmates from throwing bodily fluids at guards did not cover one pressing problem: Some inmates recently mailed their semen in plastic pouches to their wives or girlfriends as an expression of love, and the envelopes squished open when run through mail-sorting machines, splattering workers. However, since the inmates did not intend to splatter them, the law does not apply.

-- In July, artist Victoria Baldwin prevailed in her lawsuit against the Sydney, Australia, salon Synergy over a bad haircut she got last year. She won $750 plus $234 to compensate her for the hats she had to buy to disguise the cut, which she described as so bad that she looked like Hillary Clinton.

-- Three Texas residents filed a lawsuit in Lufkin, Texas, against the Walt Disney Co., objecting to three recent films marketed to family audiences that they say actually contained subliminal sexual messages: "The Little Mermaid" supposedly has a scene in which a minister has an erection; a voiceover in one scene in "Aladdin" whispers "Take off your clothes"; and "The Lion King" contains a scene in which the word "sex" is formed with clouds, grass and flower petals.

-- Scott Byron Morrison, 47, in jail awaiting trial for the 1995 murder of his ex-wife, filed a $500,000 lawsuit against Calgary (Alberta) General Hospital in August. Morrison claims that if the hospital had properly treated him for a mental illness, he would not have been released and would not, four days later, have killed the woman with a shotgun blast.

-- Earlier this year, unsuccessful Puyallup, Wash., school-board candidate Dale Washam filed a lawsuit against House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the Washington state Republican party and others because, he said, the Republicans stole the 1994 "Contract With America" idea from him. Washam said he originated the concept of holding political candidates to their promises when he ran in 1991, 1992 and 1993.

-- Customer Jerry Merich filed a lawsuit against the Starbucks Corp. in July over a 1995 injury in which a Starbucks employee in the company's Littleton, Colo., shop greeted him with a "high five" slap of the hand and caused a shoulder injury which left Merich unable to work for six months.

-- In August, Chris Bowdish's Chevron gas station in Lake Oswego, Ore., offered free mammograms administered by local hospital personnel. Said Bowdish, "You can tune up your body while you're having your car tuned up."

-- A Minneapolis firm is marketing an electronic device that allows people to see whether they have the proper temperament to become parents in that it "cries" at random intervals (more often on the "cranky" setting than on the "easy" setting) and stops only when the "parent" reacts properly. To stop the crying, a probe must be held in place for up to 35 minutes to simulate the time required to feed, bathe and comfort the crying infant. Shaking or tilting the device causes it to register an "abuse" signal.

-- At a trade fair in Vienna, Austria, in August, body-paint artist Karl Machhamer demonstrated his design for a skin-tight latex condom, custom-painted onto a penis. He plans to market bottles with enough paint for three applications, along with instructions, for about $8. The main drawback is the seven-minute wait while the paint dries.

-- In July, Philadelphia inventor Bill Killian introduced the Lawn Buddy message machine, in which a 5-inch-tall mechanical animal arises from a flower pot placed by the front door, announces that the resident is away, and invites the visitor to say a message. Killian says it will be on the market in early 1997 for about $30.

-- Earlier this year and backed by $100,000 in federal, state and private grants, Kodiak, Alaska, photographer Marion Stirrup developed PlanTea, a nutrient-rich mix of kelp, fish bone meal, dried beet root powder and other ingredients, which she touts as a superior plant food. Stirrup says the list of ingredients came to her telepathically from her 16-inch palm plant, georgiane (which prefers its name spelled with a lower-case G, Stirrup said).

-- Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (7) The person believed to be missing and dead but who attends his own funeral and shocks the mourners, as did Dulal Chandra Das, who turned up in October after having merely gone off from his home in Calcutta, India, to pray for a while. And (8) the episodes of just-desserts shootings in hunting season, as when Clifford Shellman allegedly shot to death another hunter in May near Blooming Grove, N.Y., after the two inadvertently coaxed each other closer together by sounding their turkey lures.

-- In August, a 60-year-old stray-dog caretaker was killed in Los Angeles when four large sacks of dog food fell on top of her in her home. And in August, the Ontario Labour Ministry issued a warning after two professional divers drowned in June and July in ponds while searching for golf balls for Sports Quest Inc., which runs a $500,000-a-year business of reselling "experienced golf balls." And Basilio Re died in the village of Vigogna, Italy, in July, during a party to celebrate his 100th birthday, when a gust of wind blew off his hat and he suffered a heart attack chasing it.

-- Wayward Principals: On Sept. 3, the principal of Sylvia Elementary School in Beckley, W.Va., George S. Meadows, 55, was suspended after being arrested for prostitution. (He was wearing a wig and dressed as a woman at the time.) On Sept. 4, the principal of Charles Brush High School in Lyndhurst, Ohio, Walter Conte, 50, was arrested and charged with clandestinely videotaping 16 cheerleaders as they changed into swimsuits for a party at his lakefront home.

-- In August, the Copenhagen (Denmark) Zoo added an exhibit to its primate collection, amid the baboons and chimpanzees: a Homo sapiens couple who will go about their daily business in a Plexiglas-walled natural habitat consisting of kitchen, living room, bedroom and workshop, as well as a computer, television, telephone, stereo and fax machine. Said a Zoo official, "We are all ... monkeys in a way, but some people find that hard to accept."

-- The Lazarus Society in Cologne, Germany, recently released a "Confession by Computer" CD, with a menu of the 200 most-frequent sins and a separate program to allow the particularly iniquitous to customize the sins to which they will confess. Appropriate penances are prescribed, as well as a link to priests via the Internet. The German Conference of Bishops quickly denounced the disk. And in June, Rev. David E. Courter of the Independent Catholic Church International told an Associated Press reporter he would soon celebrate Mass on-line and allow people to take communion via computer by placing unleavened bread in front of their monitors.

-- In April, Eastern Orthodox monks in the former Soviet republic of Moldova signed a contract with the Exiton corporation, one of the leading builders of the severely depressed Moldovan economy. Under the contract, Exiton would help support a monastery and assist the monks in recovering lost icons, and the monks would pray for Exiton's bottom line.

-- Completely separate police investigations began in August in Lake Helen, Fla., and Woburn, Mass., after parents complained that their children had been baptized without permission at local churches (Central Fellowship Baptist in Florida and Anchor Baptist in Massachusetts). Anchor allegedly lured housing-project kids with a promise of pizza, which the kids say they never received.

-- In May, Social Security Commissioner Shirley Chater went against an agency policy by reassigning a Social Security number based on a religious complaint. Eric and Maria Bessem's toddler had been assigned a number containing 666 (the biblical "mark of the beast") and protested by refusing to claim the child on income tax forms. A Pentecostal pastor near the Bessems' home in Orange County, Calif., has a zip code of 92666 but says he accepts it because it is not a personal identifier like the Social Security number.

-- Recently, the All-Merciful Saviour Russian Orthodox Monastery realized it needed to raise money through an entrepreneurial venture. Since the order is located on Vashon Island near Seattle, it decided to make and market four blends of gourmet coffee, at $20 to $30 a pound, including its signature blend, Abbot's Choice.

-- At a preliminary hearing in July in Guthrie, Okla., a woman said Jimmy Don Branun assaulted her in his mobile home and then changed into black pantyhose, a garter belt, women's underpants, a training bra, and white, high-heeled shoes. The victim ran out the door and escaped when Branun was not able to keep up with her in his high heels.

-- Tom Murphy of Pittsburgh sold his 30 homing pigeons last year after an injury left him unable to care for them. Two were sold to buyers in Amarillo and Austin, Texas. In August, the two escaped and flew back to Murphy, making the 1,500 miles in about five days.

-- In August at the Loyal, Wis., Corn Fest, Steven Schiller, 24, and Kevin Froba, 25, won prizes at the familiar strength game in which a contestant slams a mallet onto a device that causes a weight to ascend and ring a bell. However, they later complained to the game operator about the quality of their prizes, and an altercation ensued. Schiller and Froba were hospitalized after the operator hit each of them in the head with the mallet.

-- In May, Karen Watson, 20, gave birth to a baby boy in Albany, Ore., which she said took her completely by surprise, though she said she had been suffering from anemia. Of course, this was not the first case of a woman's unexpectedly giving birth, but Watson is a pre-med biology major at the University of California, Davis, with plans to go into family practice.

-- Latest Postal Service-Firearms News: In August in New Egypt, N.J., letter-sorter Rodger Johnson, 44, was arrested after a search of his booby-trapped home revealed explosives, gas grenades, 85 guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition. And in Paterson, N.J., two days later, Postal Service mechanic Danny Isku was arrested for shooting his supervisor in the hand, and news reports indicated Isku was a member of a Paterson postal workers' gun club.

-- In May, an unidentified co-pilot on a Danish Maersk airlines flight from Birmingham, England, to Milan, Italy, with 49 passengers aboard had an anxiety attack over France because he was afraid of heights. He later resigned.

-- In September, a man was crushed to death on a stairway at the Sammis Real Estate and Insurance office in Huntington, N.Y., in the process of stealing the office's 600-pound safe; he apparently violated the cardinal rule of stairway-safe-hauling by standing on a step lower than the one the safe is on. (And it turned out the safe was empty.) And in Tucson, Ariz., a man intending to commit suicide in September is still alive. He turned on the gas in his trailer home and sat down to go in peace, but then decided to smoke a last cigarette. An explosion followed, and he was hospitalized with first- and second-degree burns.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or 74777.3206@compuserve.com.)

-- Productive Lunch Hours: Ollie King, 38, was arrested as he allegedly sought to buy drugs in a suburb of Atlanta in June during his lunch-hour break from serving on a jury. And in July, Li Baolun, 33, was arrested in Beijing, China, and charged with being the thief who, during his lunch hours over a four-year period, walked into more than 1,000 government offices and stole money from unattended workers' desks and belongings.

-- Dole Mania: Just before the Republican convention in August, a man carrying three suitcases climbed a 400-foot radio tower in Miami and told onlookers he would stay there until he was selected as Bob Dole's running mate. His political platform: more horses and bicycles, less asphalt and pornography. And in Dallas, after becoming enraged at Dole's nomination on Aug. 14, Ernest Comegys, 70, went to his bedroom, grabbed a handgun, fired several shots at his cousin and stepdaughter, and then shot himself to death.

-- The government of Zimbabwe announced in June that it was pessimistic that it could fill the vacant position of hangman after the resignation of Tommy Griffiths, 72, an Englishman who had held the part-time post since the 1950s. Though dozens of men are on death row, no local person will take the job because of a national superstition about taking someone's life without personal motive.

-- The New York Times reported in April that entomologist P. Kirk Visscher and two colleagues set out to challenge the conventional wisdom that a human should only very carefully attempt to extract the stinger after a honeybee attack. Their thesis is that speed of removal, not style, is more important, and they tested it the only way they knew how: Dr. Visscher took about 50 honeybees over several days, methodically rubbed each against his skin until it stung, extracted the stinger, and measured the welt. Said Visscher, "That's the price of fame and fortune."

-- A San Francisco Chronicle Labor Day story described several local jobs that might make its readers appreciate their own. University of California at Davis scientist Francine Bradley was interviewed because she trains workers to perform the manual insemination of turkeys, from drawing the semen to implanting it. (Turkeys genetically bred for massive breast-meat sections cannot comfortably mate on their own.) Recommended Bradley, "You have to develop a relationship with your tom."

-- Also in that issue of the San Francisco Chronicle was a report on Martha Huerta, who pulls an eight-hour shift at ABC Diaper Service in Berkeley, Calif., where she feeds soiled diapers through an electronic counting machine and on to the washer. Her tools are gloves and an electric fan, although, said her supervisor, "It helps that her sense of smell isn't very good."

-- The weekly Brazilian newsmagazine Veja reported in April that 72 of the nation's 75 baby-chick gender-inspectors are of Japanese origin and that Brazilians cannot seem to master the craft. A baby chick "sexer" spends the day in a dark room with a single spotlight as he picks up and checks 16 baby chicks per minute with 99 percent accuracy. Newly-hatched chicks have no external sex organs but just tiny appendages concealed by their feathers.

-- Fishing on Junior Lake in July, Phil Cram, police chief of Medway, Maine, lost part of his hand when an explosive tube he was using illegally to stun fish blew up prematurely.

-- In April, a devoutly Christian abstinence counselor and high school senior, Danyale Andersen, 18, of Redmond, Ore., gave birth to the baby of a former, short-term boyfriend. She said she felt guilty about it but still believes in abstinence.

-- In Tampa, Fla., in April, Antonio Valiente Valdez Jr., on his way to court to answer a traffic citation for driving without his prescription glasses, accidentally hit a car that had already crashed on the side of the road. According to police, he wasn't wearing his glasses then, either.

-- In April, Christopher J. Kerins, a Trenton, N.J., undercover police officer, was arrested and charged with robbing the Kenwood Savings Bank in Cincinnati during a break while attending the Middle Atlantic Law Enforcement convention. (Kerins, unfamiliar with the city, reportedly paused after collecting the money from the teller to ask directions out to Interstate 71, and he was spotted on his way there by a local police officer.)

-- In July, according to a fire department official in Pullman, Wash., the cause of a fire in a parked truck was the magnification of the sun, through a plastic prism hanging from the truck's ceiling, onto a stack of papers. The truck's owner said the prism was a gift from his insurance company. And residents of Santa Rosa, Texas, were temporarily in jeopardy in June when a fire broke out in the town's only fire truck, disabling it.

-- In 1992, News of the Weird reported on Navy Department secretary Bea Perry, who had made a daily, 340-mile round-trip commute from her home in Trenton, N.J., to various jobs in Washington, D.C., for 25 years. An August 1996 Associated Press story touted Geraldine Howell, 66, who for 39 years has maintained a six-day-a-week, nine-hour- (and 200-mile-) a-day newspaper route over mountainous terrain delivering the Clarksburg (W.Va.) Exponent.

-- A 63-year-old man died in May in West Plains, Mo.; he had set himself on fire in a suicide attempt, but the pain was so great that he ran into a pond to douse the flames and drowned. Also in May, seven losing candidates in state and parliamentary elections in India committed suicide after their party was trounced. And in June in Exkilstuna, Sweden, Leif Borg, 50, mired in a divorce proceeding, blew himself up with dynamite in the courtroom and injured four others.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or 74777.3206@compuserve.com.)