News of the Weird

-- As Predicted in the "South Park" Movie: In August, the Ottawa Sun reported general outrage in Canada (led by the war veterans'group, the Royal Canadian Legion) that gay-hating Topeka, Kan., pastor Fred Phelps had burned the Canadian flag while in Ottawa recently. Phelps was protesting a Supreme Court of Canada decision to include same-sex couples as having "spouses" and had called the smoldering Canadian banner the "Fag Flag." Said a retired army captain, "Our government has got to make the stand."

In July, Massachusetts filed a civil complaint against convicted murderer Sean Smith, 34, on behalf of three of Smith's fellow inmates who said Smith bilked them out of $55,000 of family money in an investment scheme. And three days later, a judge in Tampa, Fla., denied tobacco-litigation lawyer Henry Valenzuela his $20 million share (out of $200 million set aside for legal fees from the state's 1997 settlement with tobacco companies) because he had been late in paying his $2,500 share of a litigation expense.

-- Allegedly jealous husband Floyd John Weseman, 27, was arrested in Morristown, Tenn., in April and charged with domestic assault after he reportedly beat his wife and attached a small padlock to her genitals.

-- In June, a New Orleans court awarded bicyclist Jerry Lawrence, 60, $95,000 after he suffered a fractured skull and two broken legs when hit by a police car on call. Lawrence prevailed even though he was drunk and ran a stop sign, which put himself directly in the path of the cruiser, which had siren and emergency lights on. Said Lawrence's lawyer, "(D)runks have some rights, too."

-- In July, a 48-year-old woman filed a lawsuit against Gold Coast Hospital in Southport, Australia, for about $450,000 (U.S.) because the hospital apparently misplaced part of her brain after aneurysm surgery in 1996. According to the lawsuit, doctors were to temporarily remove her right frontal lobe and replace it when swelling subsided, but then, when they went to insert the lobe, they couldn't find it. She has a temporary titanium plate but claims various symptoms including "irritability" and a "perception" that the lobe might have been fed to dogs.

-- According to a March Boston Globe story, residents of Portsmouth, N.H., are finally at the breaking point over the city's ancient and deteriorating sewer system that has resulted (according to one resident) in raw sewage overflow in his basement and on city streets during every high tide in the past 10 years. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency believes repair would be so costly that it has long exempted Portsmouth and 100 New England communities from raw sewage discharge regulations. The city manager said a solution is at least 10 to 15 years away, but, asked one resident, "Why are we talking about building a new library and parking garage when we have sewage in our basements?"

-- The Safety Tanteisha detective agency in Osaka, Japan, told New Scientist magazine in June that it sells about 200 aerosol-spray kits a month (at $400 each) to help women find out whether their men are having affairs by detecting the presence of fresh seminal fluid on their underwear. Another "miracle product," Infidelity Detection Cream, rubbed on a man's skin, will cause blisters the next time he showers, which would subject him to wifely questioning if he arrived home with freshly blistered skin.

-- In May, scientists at the University of Hawaii announced that they had successfully transferred the gene that gives jellyfish a green color over to the permanent DNA of a mouse via a method of "transgenesis" that breaks the coating of sperm and allows gene-commingling. That a pink mouse turned fluorescent green under an ultraviolet light was cool, but the scientists were much more excited that their transgenesis was a big improvement over previous methods.

-- The Times of London reported in May that officials from Britain's Ministry of Defense had recently met with Eric Herr, the American who has patented a phaser gun and seeks $500,000 to make a prototype. Current "taser" guns are not effective unless applied directly to the skin, but Herr's gun would shoot a laser at someone up to 100 yards away and then pass an electrical current through it that would temporarily immobilize the target.

Londoner Lisa Wright was granted a loan of about $4,500 from the Prince's (of Wales) Trust during the spring to help her start a business to design "respectable and elegant" women's clothes for male transvestites. Said Wright, "If they're going to dress as women, they must learn how to dress properly. We don't want transvestites to frighten children." And according to documents released by Canada's Reform party in June, film director Cynthia Roberts received about $78,000 (U.S.) in 1996 and 1997 from the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council to make "Bubbles Galore," starring American porn queen Nina Hartley and featuring, according to Roberts, "wall-to-wall sex."

On July 7 in Bari, Italy, neighbors found the skeleton of a man, later learned to have been born in 1928, fully clothed and lying on his bed. After contacting relatives and neighbors, police estimated the man had been dead for around five years. That might tie the record set by the late Wolfgang Dircks of Bonn, Germany, when his body was found in November 1998; he apparently expired during December 1993 based on the TV program guide next to the still-"on" (but broken) television set that the body was propped in front of.

In May, four men, aided by an employee of the State Theater in Menomonie, Wis., stole a print of the "Star Wars" movie "The Phantom Menace" (value: $60,000) in one of the worst-executed crimes in state history. As the men lifted the 3-foot-wide spool from the projector, it unraveled, leaving two miles of celluloid on the floor. The men scooped the mess up, took it home, and tried to wash the film in a bathtub to get rid of their fingerprints (hint: doesn't work). Then, they cut it up for disposal but, after a while, finally realized they needed to turn themselves in. (Authorities said alcohol was heavily involved in the caper.) In sentencing in July, each man got five days in jail.

-- A thief who stole $500 from Frieda Folsoms 36 years ago returned it to her anonymously (but without interest, which would have been another $2,200) (Sacramento, Calif.). A 42-year-old Boy Scout volunteer, missing for 24 hours, was found naked and hanging by his ankles from a tree, as a result of an autoerotic mishap (Orlando, Fla.). A groom divorced his wife at their wedding reception after she had dissed his mother's dancing ability (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia). A credit-union robber ducked out quickly with his stash, failing to notice that the teller had honestly misread the holdup note asking for "$2500" and put only "$25.00" in the bag (Pawtucket, R.I.). A pizzeria robbery was foiled when the manager thought the robber's "I want it all" demand referred to a large-sized pizza and began reading off the options and prices, confusing the man (Dayton, Ohio).

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679, or Weird@compuserve.com.)

-- In April, Citizens Bank, the holder of the mortgage on Edward J. Brown's $90,000 Dartmouth, Mass., home, sold it at auction for $60,000 because Brown had dallied over paying the final $324 last year. He had made 299 of the 300 payments but held off on the last one because he mistakenly thought having a mortgage reduced his legal liability. Brown also apparently ignored several letters and phone calls inquiring about the final payment.

Recent Events at Tesco: January: considered allowing its Hastings store to run a nude-shopping night after the normal closing hour (but eventually declined because of the potential for mishandling of fresh fruits and vegetables). May: told farmers to grow smaller melons after focus groups reported that large melons made small-busted female customers feel inferior. May: tested its pies ballistically after receiving a surge of requests for recommendations on which of its pies is best for throwing (answer: egg custard). June: began a program to sew instructions on self-testing for testicular cancer into men's underwear.

-- In April, the administration at Princeton University reaffirmed its faculty appointment of Australian philosophy professor Peter Singer to a prestigious chair in bioethics, saying that "the strength of his teaching and his research" outweighs "any particular point of view" he holds. One of Singer's points of view is that parents have the right to kill their severely deformed children in the first month of life.

-- In May the National Foundation for Ectodermal Dysplasias (disorders affecting the teeth, hair, nails and sweat glands of children) complained that it was hard enough to raise money for research for such obscure disorders without having Pfizer Inc. and its spokesman Bob Dole steal its nickname "E.D." as a euphemism for impotence. The foundation started using the term in 1981.

-- According to a March Chicago Tribune story, anywhere from 40,000 to 200,000 patients woke up during their surgeries in 1998, in possession of one or more of their senses (sometimes feeling searing pain) but unable because of muscle relaxants to move or tell their doctors they need more anesthesia. According to a professor of anesthesiology, the cause often is doctors' restrained use of anesthesia in order to minimize legal liability.

-- In March, the Rocky Flats nuclear cleanup site near Denver announced that it was packaging up more radiated waste than it had facilities for and would have to store the steel drums in tents, perhaps until the year 2006. The Rocky Flats environmental manager said he was confident the tents could withstand 100 mph winds and that, besides, the most lethal waste would be stored indoors. Still, an official of the neighboring town of Bloomfield called the idea "ridiculous."

-- The New York Times disclosed in June that about 2,000 obsolete, unfunctioning fire hydrants remain in place in New York City, dry for almost 20 years, whose only purpose is to allow the city to collect revenue from motorists who park too close to them. Supposedly, a contractor will begin removing them soon, for a fee of about $3,000 each.

-- Clean Air Act regulations announced by President Clinton in April establish the goal for returning national parks and wilderness areas to pre-industrial purity but only by the year 2064. States don't even have to decide on their plans until the year 2008. This program represents a frenzied acceleration by the Clinton administration, in that previous Environmental Protection Agency plans called for pure air in national parks by around 2190.

-- In March, the Oklahoma City Council agreed to pay a settlement to local video stores after police illegally seized copies of the Oscar-winning movie of Gunter Grass' classic, "The Tin Drum," which treats life in World War II-era Germany through the eyes of a young boy. The boy, disgusted by the grown-ups around him, uses special powers emanating from the drum to refuse adulthood and remain young in order not to have to join German society, a storyline missed by Oklahoma City police, who saw only that when the "boy" had sex, it must have been child porn. That oversimplification of obscenity law cost Oklahoma City taxpayers $400,000.

In May, a 32-year-old Austrian man was charged with tormenting women with obscene phone calls during the previous three years; he admitted to making 40,000 calls, which works out to 250 per week. One month later, Edward Lightfoot, 28, was charged with continuing to make obscene calls to women from a Michigan prison, where he is serving five years for stalking; in his prime, Lightfoot was said to have made as many as 200 obscene calls a day.

One of the classic reports from an early News of the Weird column in 1988 is of the Japanese inventor with a three-pole-and-brush system hooked to a water supply that will, when someone squeezes between the poles, start squirting water and vibrating, as sort of a car wash for humans. In July 1999, a Tokyo beauty parlor, Avant, announced that it had invented the world's first washing machine for humans, consisting of a 7-foot chamber (covering all but the head) with 13 shower jets. An 18-minute session sells for about $8 and makes the user feel like (according to a recent customer) "a dish in a dishwasher."

In May, an 18-year-old man who jumped the turnstile at a Brooklyn, N.Y., subway station was killed while fleeing police when he leaped from the platform but couldn't avoid a train coasting into the station. And a 23-year-old Clearwater, Fla., bar-brawling man, who had been escorted out of the Turtle Club in March by a bouncer, sneaked back in and leaped off a staircase, trying to kick another man, but was killed when he landed on his head. (Also, the kick was ineffectual.)

Amnesty International charged that the Myanmar government just captured a 3-year-old girl, whom it called a political prisoner. Sailor Matt Boreham's attempt to cross the Atlantic solo ended after four miles, when he told the Newfoundland Coast Guard he didn't feel good and to please come get him. A weaving driver in Jerusalem was ticketed after police discovered he was steering with his elbows while he was having conversations on two cell phones at the same time. Virginia legislature candidate Al Bedrosian was arraigned on assault and battery charges for spanking a 2-year-old kid, not his own, who was running loose in a Roanoke hospital waiting room. A 20-year-old woman suffered a broken arm when she stood too close to a passing freight train while lifting her blouse to flash the conductor (Olathe, Kan.).

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679, or Weird@compuserve.com.)

-- In July, Zoe Bernadette Dawes, 25, and two men were scheduled for trial in September on a charge that they raped a 24-year-old man at a party in Miles, Queensland, Australia, last year. According to prosecutors, the victim was held at gunpoint, tied down on the floor, and straddled by Dawes after he had been given an injection to induce an erection.

A Canton, Ill., physician told the judge in February he didn't know why he filed 150 false Medicare claims. A Calgary, Alberta, man told the prosecutor in June he didn't know why he killed a guest at his sister's wedding. New Jersey murderer Samuel Manzie told the judge in April he didn't know why he killed that 11-year-old boy. Quebec union leader Lorraine Page told a court in April that she didn't know why she left a store with unpaid-for leather gloves. A since-fired lab technician in Palo Alto, Calif., told her supervisor in April she didn't know why she reused needles to draw blood from thousands of patients. Seventy-year-old Marie Noe of Philadelphia told her lawyer in June she didn't know why she killed her eight young children decades ago.

-- Veteran radio reporter Larry Matthews, 55, told a judge in Greenbelt, Md., in March that he really wasn't trafficking in child pornography during the two years he swapped pictures with Internet pedophiles, but rather was working on a story; however, he couldn't produce the name of any editor he had told about the story. And Washington, D.C., vanity-press author Ralph Vitale faces a big tax bill after a U.S. Tax Court finding in April that disallowed $9,000 in prostitute visits as "research" expenses for his novel set in a Nevada brothel; Vitale said he was just a stickler for detail in his characters, but one reviewer said the average woman in the book "has the complexity of a blow-up doll."

-- Pro wrestling's former women's champion Rena "Sable" Mero filed a $110 million lawsuit against the World Wrestling Federation in June, claiming that her sport is too "obscene, titillating" and "vulgar" for her taste. Mero is a sometimes Playboy model whose signature wrestling move was standing over her fallen opponent and grinding her pelvis at her.

-- In March, about 5,400 descendants of a Welsh pirate filed papers to revive their lawsuit in Pittsburgh in which they lay claim to 77 acres of prime real estate around Wall Street in New York City (including the World Trade Center), in an estate valued at about $680 billion. Pirate Robert Edwards supposedly was given the land by the British Crown in exchange for the booty from his raids of Spanish galleons. The descendants argue that the statute of limitations should not apply because of colonial New York record-keeping errors.

-- Just before his Toronto sexual assault trial was postponed in April, former United Church minister Anthony Gifford, 57, admitted having had consensual sex with troubled female parishioners but said he was only counseling them. Said Gifford, "I tried to follow the ways of Jesus," "to get back to the basics of Christianity." Gifford also admitted that he and Mrs. Gifford once did a three-way, and one man testified that the Giffords separately sexually ministered to his girlfriend and him after Rev. Gifford gave him a book titled "Open Marriage."

-- Greater Manchester (England) Police officer Jackie Smithies, 36, recently had breast-reduction surgery so that she could fit painlessly into inside-the-uniform body armor, according to a May report in The Times of London. She went from a 36-F to a 36-C to comply with the armor directive for all officers on the street.

-- Recent Contested Firings: University of Victoria (British Columbia) sociology professor Jean Veevers, fired after being convicted of running a large marijuana-growing operation in her home (December 1998) (now challenging her firing, arguing that the crime was not relevant to her job); hospital secretary Joan Ramprasad, 55, New York City, fired for frequently weeping and speaking in tongues at work (but claiming freedom of religion); and Barry Green, 50, Toronto air traffic controller fired for leaving the tower unattended for 35 minutes (because of a bowel emergency that in fact soiled his pants).

-- A July Wall Street Journal dispatch from Brazil described a $1.2 million employee morale program at the Volkswagen plant near Sao Paulo, which centers around a medieval courtyard in which workers can escape into characters from Camelot and King Arthur's Round Table. A VW executive said the company chose the themes for their inspirational messages in periods of upheaval (e.g., employees' confidence in withdrawing Excalibur from a rock will make them ignore looming layoffs in Brazil and at VW).

The Bangkok Post reported in February that Wang Xinzhang had filed a lawsuit against Red Flag Publishing Co. in China; he wants damages for a shoddy product, specifically the book "Five Thousand Years of China," which had 984 typos. And Texas court reporter Sandra Halsey lost her certification in June for inadvertently helping convicted child killer Darlie Routier's appeals; there were reportedly 18,000 errors in Halsey's 6,000-page transcript of Routier's trial.

Earlier this year, News of the Weird reported on criticisms that private U.S. disaster-relief donations for Russia and Honduras were rife with unwanted contributions (e.g., old clothes and microwave popcorn, instead of cooking utensils and medicines). Then, in June, relief workers in Albania and Macedonia told The New York Times that as much as half of U.S. pharmaceutical company relief donations (which are double-tax-deductible) are useless (either outdated or products such as lip balm or stop-smoking remedies) and that because some of their ingredients are hazardous, their regulated destruction imposes high costs on relief agencies. However, said an executive with Project Hope, "(R)efugees need Chap Stick (and) Preparation H...."

Shawn Socha, 35, was arrested in Huntington, W.Va., in June as a fugitive from justice and now faces bank robbery and other charges in Ohio. He blew his cover when he called the Huntington police to ask if they had seen any arrest warrants out on him.

A 19-year-old speeder was ticketed, clocked at a Toronto-area record 228 km/hr (141 mph). Cocaine that a 28-year-old man stashed in his pants crotch during a traffic stop suddenly began to burn, causing him to shriek and give himself up (Astoria, Ore.). A burglar was killed fleeing a convent he had broken into, shot to death by a 56-year-old nun (Tunja, Colombia). Three workers testing a pistol at a handgun factory were hit by the same accidentally fired bullet (Cocoa, Fla.). A German descendent of one of the Christian knights who conquered Jerusalem in 1099 sincerely apologized to the whole world for the Crusades.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679, or Weird@compuserve.com.)