News of the Weird

-- A November Associated Press dispatch described the work of commercial leech and maggot suppliers who sell to hospitals for medical treatments. A Welsh firm, Biopharm Ltd., moves about 20,000 3-inch-long leeches a year at $17 each to suck blood through delicate, clogged veins to restore circulation, and a unit of the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend, Wales, produces sterilized maggots to eat decayed skin on a wound to speed the healing process (price: $90 per 100 maggots). Boasts Dr. Stephen Thomas, who guards his secret technique for sterilizing fly eggs, "Our maggots are cleaner than the patient."

-- Los Angeles surgeon Brigitte Boisselier announced in November that her company, Clonaid, might soon accept clients, at $200,000 each, to make genetic twins of themselves. She plans to use the technique that produced the sheep Dolly, which she hopes will be refined for humans by the year 2000. In her spare time, Dr. Boisselier is a bishop in the Raelian religion, founded in 1970 by a French former sports reporter, which believes that Earth was created 25,000 years ago by alien DNA. Said Dr. Boisselier, "I'm a scientist and very pragmatic even if I do believe in little green men."

The developers of the Providence (R.I.) Place shopping mall now under construction announced in November that they had reached agreement to house a private high school of about 100 students with classrooms inside the mall.

Window washer Kerry Burton, 27, was only slightly injured in November after falling five stories from a building in Calgary, Alberta. Burton landed butt-first in the basin of water that was tethered to his body and bounced two feet in the air after the bucket hit the pavement. And in November, Jo'Tan Cooper, 18, escaped from the Natick, Mass., police station lockup by sliding his 5-foot-6, 130-pound body through the 9-by-17-inch food-tray slot. (He was recaptured before he made it out of the station.)

In November, the state of Punjab, India, announced that its 18-month search for its most honest government officer (which carried an award of more than $2,000) was over, because they couldn't find anyone worthy. However, as part of the same program, the government revealed that it had found 300 corrupt officers worthy of prosecution. (India was recently named as the world's eighth most corrupt country by an international watchdog organization.)

The latest episode of inmates acting as winemakers was disclosed by the Chattanooga Times in October, reporting on missing sugar from the pantry of the Franklin County Jail in Winchester, Tenn. Authorities traced the sugar to two dozen inmates concocting a fruit-based wine in, as usual, a jail cell toilet.

In the course of offering support for Scottish independence from Great Britain, Mohamed al-Fayed (father of the late Dodi al-Fayed) told a Glasgow Herald reporter in October that Scots are sexually superior to Brits, in part because of the kilt (which al-Fayed says they stole from his own ancestors, the Egyptians). "The Egyptians wore nothing underneath. That is why they were great (copulators). (W)hen you leave your organs free and ventilated with air, they are always fertile."

In November, Ms. Ma Yulan, 41, owner of a restaurant and bathhouse in Beijing, was convicted of allowing her hostesses to engage in sex for hire and was sentenced to death.

The Hotel de Sal Playa (altitude, 12,500 feet and recently renamed the UT Salt Palace and Spa) in the Uyuni Salt Flats in Bolivia is a 12-room setup in which the walls, beds, tables and chairs are made entirely of blocks of salt. According to an August Associated Press travel story, the rooms go for $50 a night and have no salty smell (although during the rainy season, the walls are covered with brine).

In May, after another guest at New York City's Waldorf-Astoria hotel disturbed her sleep for two hours and eventually urinated outside her door, Elizabeth Jaffe received a complimentary bottle of wine and a fruit and cheese basket from the management to make amends for her horrible night. According to Jaffe's $6.5 million lawsuit against the hotel filed in August, the fruit and cheese caused severe vomiting, requiring her to be hospitalized with intestinal bleeding and dehydration. "Obviously," said Jaffe's lawyer, "it was the fruit."

On Nov. 9, according to police in Creedmoor, N.C., Leroy Howard, 30, took a space heater from the back of one truck, placed it into the truck he was driving, and fled, just as the police chief, who happened to be driving by, asked him what he was doing. Chief Ted Pollard chased Howard, who abandoned the truck (which had been stolen in nearby Oxford, N.C.) and fled on foot. Oxford police joined in the chase. Two state wildlife officers were in the area and also joined. Two vans carrying a SWAT team happened to be passing by, headed for training, and joined in, and then called their 60 colleagues at the training site to come on over. A Highway Patrol helicopter was nearby, also, and joined the chase. Four hours after the theft, Howard was in custody.

Several times, News of the Weird has mentioned natural-cause deaths that had gone unreported for months and even years. In November 1998, a landlord entered the Bonn, Germany, apartment of Wolfgang Dircks when rent invoices to Dircks' bank stopped being paid. The landlord found a skeleton in a chair in front of a television set (in the "on" position but now out of order) and beside still-twinkling Christmas lights and a TV program guide of Dec. 5, 1993. Since no one had seen Dircks in years, authorities declared that to be his date of death.

A 29-year-old man was accidentally run over in September by a tractor-trailer on the traffic-jammed Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago after he had gotten out of his car to gather debris to throw at the truck's driver for some alleged highway discourtesy. Apparently, he slipped on spilled oil and fell under the wheels. And a 33-year-old man died in a workplace explosion in Ascutney, Vt., in November when he cut into a 55-gallon drum with a blowtorch in order to make scrap metal and was perhaps surprised that the drum contained propane. According to fellow workers, the man had done the very same thing the week before, but that explosion had merely blown his gas mask off.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com. Chuck Shepherd's latest paperback, "The Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics," is now available at bookstores everywhere. To order it direct, call 1-800-642-6480 and mention this newspaper. The price is $6.95 plus $2 shipping.)

-- In October, a California appeals court reinstated the 1997 jury verdict for Robert Cunningham against his Orange County homeowners' association for meddling. Over a two-year period, the association had ordered Cunningham to clean up not only an outside patio but also the inside of his unit, claiming that he had too many books and newspapers lying around, that his bed was too messy, and that piles of old clothing should be given to charity.

-- In November, Ten's World Class Cabaret (a strip joint) asked New York Supreme Court justice Stephen Crane to be exempt from New York City anti-nudity rules because it had begun to admit children to the premises and thus was no longer an "adult" establishment that the rules applied to. Shortly afterward, Crane ruled in favor of Ten's, which at press time at least twice had admitted children (accompanied by a parent, of course) for lunch, with dancers in the background.

According to a November New York Times report, Chinese soccer fans' new traditional yell to harass opposing teams is a word which is street slang for female genitals and which the press has dubbed the "Beijing curse." And in Lagos, Nigeria, in November, the star soccer player on the Cameroon female team, Gwimotoh Lilian, was disqualified from the championship series because, according to officials, "all" of her physical features are "male" (except for her female genitals).

A 12-year-old boy was let off with six months' probation in West Bloomfield Township, Mich., in October after he admitted urinating in his teacher's water bottle. Although she went to the hospital with nausea and stomach cramps, the boy's lawyer said, "The bottom line is, urine is not harmful to drink." And 10 days later in Tucson, Ariz., Caroline Gomez Maldonado, 42, was arrested and charged with chasing a reluctant 8-year-old stranger down the street in order to convince him to urinate into a cup so Maldonado could use it for an upcoming test as part of her probation on drug charges.

Jordan Locke, 5, was suspended from elementary school in Pittsburgh in October when he showed up in his Halloween firefighter costume that included a 5-inch plastic hatchet, which the school calls a "weapon" (though firefighters call it a "tool"). And in November, a Canoga Park, Calif., advertising agency was forced to pull ads for perfectly legal Alterna Hemp Shampoo from 106 bus-stop benches because an anti-drug group complained that "hemp" should not be portrayed favorably.

The Boston Globe reported in November on the upcoming trial in Richmond, Va., of Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard Barry Black, who was arrested for burning a cross in violation of a state hate-crimes law. His lawyer is a black man, David Baugh, who took the case without fee to defend Black's right to symbolic free speech, even though Black said, "I am not going to invite (Baugh) to my home to break bread with me because my Bible tells me that mixing leads to the destruction of my race." Black also said he believes Africa is still today the home of naked cannibals who, when sick, "are going to some witch doctor with a bone in their nose."

In November in Austin, Texas, Henry Benedict, owner of the under-renovation adult theater Cinema West, announced that he will defray renovation costs at a public celebration of the new building by selling the 500 seats from the old theater as souvenirs for $25 each.

-- In India, according to a May New York Times report, parents in several rural states continue the tradition of forcing their children into arranged marriages, at ages as young as 4, in violation of national laws setting the minimum age at 18. By contrast, in August in Annapolis, Md., in a perfectly legal ceremony under state law, Phillip Compton, 29, married Tina Akers, 13. (It was legal because Akers' parents consented and Akers was pregnant. On the other hand, Compton appeared to have violated the state law on statutory rape.)

-- In September, a judge in Chilton, Wis., sentenced Michael and Angeline Rogers to a year in jail, 39 years less than they could have gotten, for physically abusing four of their five children and imprisoning one of them several times overnight in a dog cage in their basement. Judge Steven Weinke said he was trying to show "compassion," which the parents had requested so as to improve their chances to begin the process of retaking custody of their kids.

-- In October in Kitchener, Ontario, a man was sentenced to six months' probation living away from his 15-year-old stepson, as punishment for growing 20 marijuana plants; he said he planted them so the boy would not be exposed to the "dangers of street drugs." And in November in Milwaukee, a man was convicted for supplying his 13-year-old virgin son with a prostitute, saying it was about time he learned.

-- Quality Time With the Kids: Baltimore police dispatcher Harry Gilmore Watts, 32, was arrested in August and charged with chauffeuring his son and a friend, both 15, to rob a Peoples Bank. And on the same day, in Medford, Ore., Cynthia Alice Lockinger, 40, pleaded guilty to robbing two banks while her three daughters waited in the back seat of the getaway car.

Kevin Johnson of Chesapeake, Va., was convicted in November of attempting to defraud a Lowe's Home Center store in a 1993 incident. According to the prosecutor, Johnson and a friend dropped cans of paint in an aisle in an attempt to make it look like the cans had cascaded from a high shelf and knocked Johnson unconscious. Johnson was taken to a hospital and later filed a lawsuit for $250,000. After the judge saw evidence that the open, strewn paint cans were undented and had come from different parts of the shelf so that they were unlikely to have hit Johnson, he dismissed the lawsuit, and prosecutors took over.

In 1996, News of the Weird reported on a new breeding of sheep that produces muscular flanks (in fact, it is named the "beautiful buttocks" strain) and 30 percent more meat. In November 1998, a scientist with England's Meat and Livestock Commission said the scheme has been abandoned because the resultant meat was invariably "tough as old boots," and the best food technologists have not been able to find a way to tenderize it.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com. Chuck Shepherd's latest paperback, "The Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics," is now available at bookstores everywhere. To order it direct, call 1-800-642-6480 and mention this newspaper. The price is $6.95 plus $2 shipping.)

-- Calgary, Alberta, construction worker Michael Pearse, 22, an admitted hothead, pleaded guilty to making threats in 1996 while trying to find a friend's ex-girlfriend, but at his sentencing hearing in November 1998 said he is now a gentle man and had the report of a government neuropsychologist as evidence. The cause of his change: In February 1998, Pearse was hit in the head and knocked out by a crowbar that bounced off a wall after he swung it, and when he came to, he had an amnesia that had turned him into what the doctor said is a "considerate, caring, benign guy," with no aggression at all. The judge postponed sentencing so he could think things over.

-- In November, after French surgeons transplanted an arm and a hand on a man, prominent Italian plastic surgeon Nicolo Scuderi announced that he was ready to perform the world's first penis transplant and in fact had three potential patients. Scuderi said the operation would be less complicated than a reattachment although he was not sure all penile functions would be effective. He said his initial operations would be on transsexual women seeking to become men and not merely on men who seek larger genitals. And the next day, China's Xinhua news agency reported that army surgeons had constructed a new penis, out of abdominal tissue, for a 6-year-old boy who had had an accident.

-- Diane Ellis, Clearwater, Fla., candidate for a state House seat, got 27 percent of the vote despite her persistent, inexplicable claims that her opponent, the son of locally well-known U.S. Rep. Michael Bilirakis, was an imposter from out of state, hired to impersonate the younger Bilirakis.

-- As in every election, several candidates who died during the campaign remained on the ballot, including Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block, who took eventual winner Lee Baca down to the wire even though he died four days before the election. In the Yakima, Wash., race for county coroner, incumbent Leonard Birkinbine was re-elected, although he died two days before; he was running unopposed because his only challenger, John Reynolds, had died on Sept. 14, the day before the primary (which he won).

-- In an upset proportional to Jesse (The Body) Ventura's becoming governor of Minnesota, a challenger to the Mendocino County, Calif., district attorney won, despite the incumbent's stature as president of the state association of district attorneys. The new DA is ex-con Norman Vroman, who served time for tax evasion and still owes $1.3 million in back taxes, but is very popular because he favors decriminalization of marijuana. (Vroman says he will prosecute anyone the sheriff arrests, but the newly elected sheriff favors decriminalization of marijuana, also.)

-- A ballot question in the District of Columbia, allowing the cultivation and sale of marijuana for medical purposes, was voted on, and the yes's and no's were counted by computer, but so far the outcome is not known. After the ballots were printed, but before election day, a federal law authored by U.S. Rep. Robert Barr of Georgia passed, forbidding D.C. from spending any money on the medical-marijuana initiative, which includes the money required to type up the computer-generated results and release them to the public.

-- The Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Arkansas, surgeon Fay Boozman, said during the campaign that a "rape exception" for abortion is not necessary because the stress of rape produces hormonal changes in the woman that prevent conception. He did not produce research but said his statement was based on general knowledge in the medical community.

-- In an effort to upgrade her long-shot campaign against incumbent U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, Hawaii Republican Crystal Young, 57 (who beat 8 challengers in the primary), said late in the campaign that the reason she qualifies for Social Security disability payments is the pain she experiences from once having had electromagnetic needles implanted in her body by actress Shirley MacLaine. MacLaine denied ever meeting Young.

-- In an era when Hollywood stars support causes such as Farm Aid, human rights campaigns, and ending child labor, actor Wilford Brimley became the celebrity spokesperson this fall opposing Arizona's Proposition 201, which sought to ban cockfighting (and which ultimately passed). Brimley lives in Utah, but he drove regularly across the border to attend cockfights. "They're magnificent," he said of the roosters. "It's always thrilling to watch."

-- As reported earlier in "News of the Weird," Tennessee state Senate challenger Byron (Low-Tax) Looper was charged with shooting to death the incumbent, Tommy Burks, 14 days before the election. The deceased Burks was one of eight Tennessee state senators to receive the highest-rated endorsement of the National Rifle Association. Burks' widow won the race, and Looper, in jail, still received 571 votes.

-- Voters in Newport, Maine, voted almost 3-1 against a proposed ordinance that would make female public toplessness illegal. The issue had been forced by the propensity of Desiree Davis, 34, to mow her mother's lawn without a shirt, which provoked complaints despite the fact that current law only forbids exposing the genitals and buttocks.

Police in Winston-Salem, N.C., arrested Sidney Reuben Smith, 48, in November after he applied for a checking account at a BB&T bank branch, claiming to be Jerry Cain and possessing Cain's ID. A bank officer called the police. The real Jerry Cain had passed away three weeks earlier after a long illness, a fact known to all at the bank since his widow, Melinda Cain, is a teller there.

In July, British climber Alan Hinkes succeeded in scaling the 26,000-foot-high Nanga Parbot in Pakistan, a year after he had to retire from a previous attempt. As reported in "News of the Weird" last year, Hinkes, after great expense and preparation, was about halfway up when he was eating a Pakistani bread called chapati, which is topped with flour. The wind blew the flour in his face, causing him to sneeze, which resulted in a pulled back muscle that made further climbing impossible.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com. Chuck Shepherd's latest paperback, "The Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics," is now available at bookstores everywhere. To order it direct, call 1-800-642-6480 and mention this newspaper. The price is $6.95 plus $2 shipping.)