News of the Weird

-- New York doctors, praising an unconventional remedy for diarrhea in the American Journal of Gastroenterology in November, surmised that sufferers might merely lack certain predator bacteria in the colon (killed off, perhaps, by antibiotics) and thus might benefit from a transfusion of bacteria from a person with a normal amount of such predatory bacteria among his "fecal flora." A "stool donation" by a healthy person, the doctors wrote, homogenized in a blender and introduced (after an enema) into the patient by a colonoscope, might establish a sufficiently strong bacterial mix to kill the organisms causing the diarrhea.

-- The Los Angeles Times reported in December that a scammer had recently rented out as many as 20 rooms in an abandoned inner-city hospital as apartments, at rents from $300 to $400 a month, and that among the amenities of the complex, according to a tenant, was a children's recreation area that was formerly the operating room, complete with obsolete equipment (including syringes) and blood caked on the floor. (Since the scam was discovered, city agencies have been busy relocating the tenants.)

-- In September, Linda Wallace, a former resident of Rocky River, Ohio, and who during two years there was the object of a dozen neighborhood noise complaints, filed a second trillion-dollar lawsuit against the city, this time because she says officials insulted her son; two weeks earlier, she had sued a town police officer for a trillion dollars for false arrest. And several Los Angeles contractors petitioned a court in July to restrict lawyer Robert W. Hirsh from filing lawsuits because of the 82 personal lawsuits he has initiated in 18 years against his home contractors, his clients, his brokers, the hotels and restaurants he frequents, his synagogue, his insurance companies, his former employers, and other targets, many of which he receives cash settlements from in order to end the litigation. Said Hirsh, "I'm not going to be a patsy."

-- Luis A. Chavarria, released from prison in 1999 after serving 10 years for murder, was charged in Bonita Springs, Fla., in October with possessing a firearm. Chavarria was arrested at a hospital, where he was being treated for a gunshot to the foot which he received in bed when he accidentally engaged the family-heirloom, double-barreled shotgun he said he sleeps with every night.

-- A 43-year-old man was hospitalized in Richmond, Va., in October after being blown off the top of a van at about 50 mph. Police said the man was trying to hold down some wooden fencing that he and another man were trying to move without the benefit of rope, when a gust of wind carried him off.

-- The Knoxville News-Sentinel reported in October that a recent University of Tennessee Medical Center memo directs that UT athletes be treated in the emergency room ahead of all other patients (except those with trauma or chest pain). According to the protocol, if the athletic department calls ahead, the caller will not be put on hold, the athlete's medical records will be pulled immediately, and upon arrival, the athlete will be escorted to a private room and treated promptly. (Until recently, the Medical Center was embarrassed that UT athletes preferred treatment by the competing St. Mary's Medical Center.)

-- In October, after a Detroit judge allowed four high school rape suspects back to school pending trial, the River Rouge School Board permitted them back on the football team, too, just in time for the team's final-game push for a perfect 9-0 season. (River Rouge lost, anyway, but still made the playoffs.) And in October, a star Lowndes (Ga.) High School football player was permitted back on the team despite his guilty plea for sexually molesting a student, in contrast to the experience of two players in adjacent Cobb County, who were kicked off their team altogether when charged with vandalizing mailboxes.

-- According to calculations by the Albuquerque Journal in October, all 18 of the public schools around the city that were named among the state's 94 high-improvement schools (based in part on math scores) actually had scores that decreased from the year before. The state school superintendent, when asked about his poor arithmetic, blamed the errors on a traditional bane of test-takers: "working too quickly."

-- Too Clever for Their Own Good: In Akron, Ohio, a 10-year-old boy hiding from his mother in leaves he had just raked was hospitalized in October with minor injuries after his mother drove off (and over the leaves) in the family's minivan. And four days earlier, near Ashby, Minn., a teen-age boy playing a prank put some logs across a road just to make a relative have to stop and remove them in order to drive on; however, the relative chose instead to drive around the logs and accidentally ran over the boy, who was hiding in the grass, and he had to be hospitalized.

-- In 1999, News of the Weird reported on the rare Sumatran titan arum plant, one of which was about to blossom in a California library despite being thought by many to be the world's most putrid "flower" (resembling rotting flesh). In August 2000, another of the Sumatran plants blossomed before hundreds of disgusted visitors (as usual, blooming for one day, after 13 years' cultivation) in the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, whose botanists have dubbed it the "penis plant" because of its 6-foot-long pod.

-- In 1990, News of the Weird reported on a man playfully testing a bulletproof vest by having a friend stab him with a knife, which was not supposed to penetrate the lining but did (sending him to the hospital). In October 2000, a 20-year-old man in Swan River, Manitoba, tested his bulletproof vest by having his roommate shoot him. The vest stopped the first shot (by a .22-calibre rifle), but even with a telephone book inserted underneath the vest, the second shot (with a 12-gauge shotgun) cracked the man's ribs, sending him to the hospital.

A 41-year-old Air Force Reserve pilot was killed near Tulia, Texas, in August when he lost control of his F-16 while aerobatically buzzing the farmhouse of his in-laws. And a 32-year-old man was killed on Interstate 26 in Orangeburg, S.C., in September when, riding without authorization atop a tractor-trailer, he was wiped out by an overpass. And a 29-year-old man driving in a Ventura County, Calif., recreation area in his off-road vehicle was killed in October; he was using a flashlight to substitute for his failed headlights when he accidentally drove over a cliff.

An Australian research company, Autogen, purchased the exclusive right to use the genes of all 107,000 citizens of the South Pacific island of Tonga. To substitute for a broken fire alarm system at a courthouse, the government hired 20 people to roam the building daily from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m. at $8.90 an hour, to do nothing except look for fires (Phoenix). Officials finally mailed $8 million in settlement checks to 502 inmate-victims of New York's Attica prison riots, which occurred in 1971. A woman purchasing chicken wings at McDonald's (offered during a trial promotion) discovered one of her "wings" was actually a fried chicken head, with clearly visible beak, eyeballs and red comb (Newport News, Va.).

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

-- Doctors in England are under criticism, according to a November report in Canada's National Post, for having performed a leg-stretching surgery on Emma Richards, 16, apparently only for the purpose of making her happier about her height. She had aspired to be a flight attendant (minimum height, 5-foot-3) but had stopped growing at 4-foot-9. Surgeons fractured her femurs and inserted pins to gradually separate the pieces so that bone material would grow internally to fuse the pieces back together. (In the 10 months since the operation, she has grown five inches but also has endured a bad infection and two unintentional fractures.)

-- The Netherlands legalized prostitution in October (before that, it was merely tolerated), but also began regulating it as any other business. For example, among the workplace safety regulations applied to brothels: a well-lighted premises, the banning of carpets (too hard to clean), and separate showers and changing rooms for males and females. Also, prostitutes, like other "professionals," are required to register for consumer-protection purposes with local chambers of commerce, which routinely make such lists available to the public (which is not quite the same as having a public list of, say, plumbers).

In September, engineers reported that the mecca of Brazilian "futbol," Maracana stadium, is corroding in places because so many fans, unwilling to miss a few minutes' action by queuing up at the restrooms, relieve themselves on the terraces. Also in a September international incident, Macedonian soldiers captured a very modest Albanian border officer who had wandered across the line; he said Macedonia-side trees provided better cover to answer nature's call than the sparse vegetation on his own side. Also in September, a 35-year-old man was convicted by a Nara, Japan, court for reaching into the next stall at a public restroom, which was occupied, maneuvering a wire and cup contraption, and scooping out freshly deposited urine, which he told the judge he needed for a skin condition.

-- Critics of China's one-child policy say it has produced the country's most overindulged generation ever, a symptom of which is the Jin Duoba camp in Shanghai, famous for its tough-love regimen for overweight kids. According to an October story in the Chicago Sun-Times, the camp is modeled after military training, including requiring kids to crawl on their bellies while fake bullets fly overhead.

-- In September, The New York Times reported on a rhinoplasty fad among upscale Iranian women. Since Islam requires almost every part of women's bodies to be covered in public, getting a nose job has become virtually the only way in which Iran's conspicuous consumers can effectively avail themselves of plastic surgery. According to the Times, even the post-surgical bandages are seen as indicators of wealth.

-- Rome hairdresser Vittorio Giunta has created a stir this year by defiantly keeping his salon open past the decades-old, mandated closing time of 7 p.m., which he does sometimes in order to offer his customers haircuts during a full moon, which some believe is part of the same superstition by which crops grow faster during a full moon. According to a June New York Times report, the hours of operation of hairdressers and dozens of other artisans are rigidly controlled, which opponents say limits competition and proponents say allows Italians the luxury of not having to work so hard.

-- Full-Birth Abortion: Officials in a village near Wuhan, China, allegedly drowned a just-born baby in front of its parents in August for the parents' grossly violating the country's one-child policy. It was actually the couple's fourth child, and officials had earlier injected the mother with a saline solution to kill the fetus, but the baby was nevertheless born healthy. The Beijing government's official position is that the village authorities overstepped their bounds.

-- Wilton Rabon told reporters in Seattle in September that he had no intention of dropping his seven-year-long appeal (that would be 49 in canine years) to get his Lhasa apso dog back. The dog, named Word, was declared vicious and impounded on "death row" in May 1993, but the matter has been tied up in court since then, with Rabon visiting Word's pen periodically yet unwilling to accept a compromise (exiling Word to faraway, but wide-open, spaces).

-- Hard Times for Gay Dogs: In October, Jerry Ekandjo, Namibia's home affairs minister, told police academy graduates in the capital city of Windhoek that constables must "eliminate (gays and lesbians) from the face of Namibia" and must also kill any "gay dog" that belonged to a gay or lesbian. (George Stephens Finley, 58, was convicted in June in Ocala, Fla., of killing his male poodle-Yorkie because he thought it was gay; it had become very playful with the other male family dog.)

Joe Brown, a challenger for district attorney, got into a fistfight with the incumbent's brother at a restaurant in Sherman, Texas, the day before the election (lost the fight, won the election). And on the night of the primary election in September, two members of the Florida legislature got into a fistfight at a Miami radio station when one's father called the other's father a drug dealer. And Robert Votava, running for the Rhode Island General Assembly, was arrested the week before the election for throwing nine punches at a state tree-trimmer in his neighborhood (South Kingstown).

News of the Weird reported the January 2000 arrest of Samuel Feldman after a three-year, $8,000 spree of squeezing and smashing packages of bread and cookies in various Bucks County (Pa.)-area supermarkets (and who was finally caught in the act by a hidden camera). Though Feldman argued that he was simply a finicky shopper, Judge David Heckler found him guilty in September and told him to get help for this urge to mutilate bakery products. At a November sentencing hearing, Heckler exploded when informed that Feldman was continuing to deny guilt, but after a lawyer-client consultation, Feldman admitted he had "a problem" and promised that his wife would monitor his supermarket visits.

According to police in Pawtucket, R.I., Eugene Allen, 29, and his brother, Kenneth Bartelson, 35, were caught robbing an apartment's inhabitants in October. They were done in by Allen, who was assigned to be the lookout despite being legally blind; he failed to notice approaching police officers and then mistakenly thought he was talking confidentially to his brother when he was actually talking to a neighbor.

Two cousins clubbed each other in the face with farm tools (including a scythe) in a dispute over cornbread, jelly and chitterlings (Evergreen, Ala.). At a conference, AIDS doctors in Swaziland warned that U.S.-donated condoms were too small for the country's men and would break easily in use. A suicide-attempting woman changed her mind and called 911, but arriving attendants assumed she was already dead and walked out, requiring her to call 911 again to have the attendants sent back inside the house (Shawnee County, Kan.). A 15-year-old girl pleaded guilty to assault for beating up her 18-year-old ex-boyfriend (blackening both eyes) because she was mad that he wouldn't kiss her after their prom last May (Skokie, Ill.).

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

-- A court in Council Bluffs, Iowa, will rule in early December on whether to admit "brain fingerprinting" evidence that might free Terry Harrington, who has been in prison for 22 years for a murder he says he did not commit. Iowa psychiatrist Lawrence Farwell developed the technique, which he says measures brain activity (or inactivity) following attempts to trigger memories; tests on Harrington showed him with no memory of the murder or the crime scene but with memories of attending a rock concert with friends on the same night.

-- High school student Brandi Blackbear filed a federal lawsuit against the school district in Broken Arrow, Okla., in October for suspending her twice during the previous school year, once for her Stephen King-type writing journals and once after the assistant principal implied that Blackbear's Wiccan "curse" actually caused a teacher to become ill. "I, for one," said the Oklahoma director of the American Civil Liberties Union, "would like to see the (evidence) that a 15-year-old girl made a grown man sick by casting a magic spell."

An Atlanta Journal-Constitution database match proved that 5,412 dead Georgians had voted since 1980, with 15,000 more potentials this year. Tom Wesson, an Anglo running for constable in Dallas, lost even though he had given himself an edge by renaming himself "Tomas Eduardo Wesson." Kari Brandenburg, the Albuquerque district attorney, won re-election easily over a man who had sent her a syrupy, flirtatious e-mail message in October but later claimed it was really meant for his wife. To comply with residency requirements, a school board candidate in Miami tried to claim he lived in a 9-by-11-foot storage shed on his father's property, but a judge dropped him from the ballot. And "psychic" Jacqueline Stallone, interviewed before Election Day, said her dogs had told her telepathically that Bush would win the presidency by "200" votes.

-- France's communist party, once serious opponents of capitalism and religion but lately in severe organizational decline, hosted a glamorous fund-raising party in Paris in October with the fashion house Prada (featuring supermodels and other trendy guests), and then a week later staged an art show featuring 30 works portraying a heroic Jesus Christ.

-- The Birch K9 Health & Fitness Centre opened earlier this year in Heywood, England, providing hydrotherapy, whirlpool, treadmill and magnetherapy to dogs under the direction of trainer Dave Burdon, according to an August report in The Washington Post. Despite the club's success in rehabilitating dogs' natural muscles that have weakened through dog owners' indolence, one British newspaper quipped that Birch K9 is the kind of thing that could only happen in America.

-- So important is the vodka industry to the Russian economy that in August, police in Moscow forcibly entered the Krystall (Stolichnaya Vodka) factory, ostensibly to seek tax documents but actually to install an insurgent board of directors to commandeer tax revenues and profits. And so important is the tequila industry to the Mexican economy that earlier this year, federal police moved into the western states that grow agave (the cactus-like plant that is the main ingredient in tequila) to guard the crops; recent agave thefts have sent the tequila price out of range for many Mexicans, from about $11 a bottle to about $33.

-- Prostitutes in Romania's dismal economy have been forced to spruce up their services, according to a June Reuters dispatch from Bucharest, by agreeing to cook and clean up after making house calls. And an exclusive Tokyo club has gone even further: For about $1,000, the customer can visit a brothel decorated as a traditional Japanese man's "home" fantasy, of a beautiful young "wife" who waits on him hand and foot, watches the TV shows he wants to watch, listens to him brag about his day, refrains from mentioning her own problems, cooks him a meal and has sex with him.

-- Latest Survived Impalings: A 22-year-old Spokane, Wash., pizza delivery driver was hit in August by a 2-foot-long piece of rebar that shot through the windshield and penetrated his skull, protruding from the back; he requires extensive rehabilitation. And an 18-year-old University of Southern California student fell out of a second-story apartment window in September and skewered her buttocks on two wrought-iron security bars; four USC football players rushed to help, pushing her body upward to relieve the pressure until paramedics arrived.

-- Christines: A 1982 Chevrolet Citation (faulty wiring) in Winter Haven, Fla., and a 1991 Eagle Talon (ignition came on when the trunk was slammed) in Milton, Ontario, reportedly started up on their own in incidents in August and October, respectively. Firefighters were hosing down the Citation when it mysteriously lurched away from them; the Talon suddenly ran down a bystander (hospitalizing him in serious condition) during a car auction.

News of the Weird has reported cases of severe motherhood envy in 1992 (Texas), 1996 (Alabama) and 1998 (Illinois), when pregnant women were killed and their abdomens slashed open so that the fetuses could be stolen. In September 2000, according to police in Ravenna, Ohio, Michelle Bica killed a pregnant woman and stole her baby, but because police suspected her, Bica shot herself to death several days later. In all four cases, the babies survived.

Retiree Neal Terry, 78, profiled in an October Dallas Morning News story about his "hobby": "I've dedicated my life to irritating people. It's a special gift that I have." "I tell my grandsons, 'You're not going to like everybody you run across, so go ahead and irritate them.'" (Terry insisted that no one has ever gotten really angry at him, even the times he sang the Partridge Family song, "I Think I Love You," over and over at work.)

Troy Carlisle, 28, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in October after being convicted in Brandon, Miss., of forcibly taking the life jacket of a 7-year-old girl and leaving her to drown in a Arkabutla Lake; Carlisle told police, "I was thinking I was gonna die or she was gonna die." And in July, Alvin Latham was charged with second-degree murder after he survived the sinking of a shrimp boat in a storm off of the Louisiana coast; police said Latham stabbed the captain to get the ship's only life vest.

The president of the Caesars Atlantic City casino resigned, seeking treatment for compulsive gambling. A married couple, both with doctorate degrees, shot each other to death in a gunfight while their young daughters were watching TV in another room (Sacramento). Home-invading robbers tied up a family on Halloween night and loaded up their valuables, diligently pausing several times to pass out candy to trick-or-treaters (Westminster, Calif.). Jailers confiscated Derrick Echols' artificial leg after he used it to beat a cellmate with and said they probably wouldn't give it back to him until he is released (Peoria, Ill.).

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