News of the Weird

-- According to the annual report on estimated accidents in the home, from Britain's Department of Trade and Industry and detailed in a June issue of New Scientist, three dozen people were sent to the hospital for injuries associated with teapot covers; about 165 for injuries from placemats, about 330 from toilet-paper holders, and about 13,000 from vegetables. However, sponge-related accidents fell from 996 the previous year to 787, and only 329 injuries from meat cleavers were reported. [New Scientist, 6-9-01]

-- Ms. Vermont Elaine Beverly, 47, is likely the only imprisoned murderer in the United States who earns a full salary and benefits as an ordinary state employee, according to a June Associated Press dispatch. Because Beverly (who has served 10 years of a 15-year sentence) scored high on a state test and because the Alabama Vocational Rehabilitation Office is required to hire high-scorers, she spends days on the job and returns to her Birmingham cell at night. Much of her salary is remitted to the state, but she retains full health insurance and retirement benefits. [Columbus (Ga.) Ledger-Enquirer-AP, 6-27-01]

-- In Draguignan, France, a 62-year-old woman identified only as Jeanine gave birth to a boy in May, after in-vitro fertilization. She is not the oldest woman to give birth, but she is the oldest to give birth using sperm from her own brother. The two hid the brother's identity from doctors so they could qualify to receive their 80-year-old mother's estate, which would have gone to others if the siblings had been childless. The couple also had a backup plan, with the brother's sperm being used to produce a daughter with a California woman, and both children now live with the siblings. [Reuters, 6-21-01; New York Post, 6-24-01]

Alejandro Toledo was elected president of Peru in June despite his campaign explanation that the reason he once failed a drug test was because he had been kidnapped by intelligence agents and force-fed cocaine. And Harvard medical school professor Dirk Greineder was convicted in June of murdering his wife, despite his unwavering explanation that the reason the couple's blood was all over him was because they both coincidentally came down with nosebleeds on the morning of the wife's death. And a 39-year-old motorist in Bismarck, N.D., stopped in May by police for having illegal tinting on her truck's windshield, told them it must have been the work of a free-lancer who broke in and tinted the windows without her knowledge. [New York Times, 6-4-01] [New York Post, 5-21-01] [Bismarck Tribune, 5-18-01]

-- In a December 2000 incident, a man in Dakota County, Minn., decided to bludgeon to death (beneficently, he apparently thought) an already slightly wounded German shepherd/husky mix dog. Neighbor John Christoffel intervened during the bloody sledgehammer assault, imploring the man to stop and ultimately pulling a gun on him, but it was too late to save the dog. Prosecutors later filed a felony gun-threat charge against Christoffel (and threatened two more charges) while the dog-hammerer himself received only a misdemeanor citation for animal cruelty. (After community protests, the prosecutor reduced Christoffel's charge to a misdemeanor also.) [Minneapolis Star Tribune, 4-23-01]

-- Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies arrested Steven Smiley, 39, in March and charged him as the one who, just acting on his "fascination with explosives" (as one deputy described it), released plastic trash bags filled with helium into the air, with burning flares and explosive powder attached, so that when the flare burned out, the bag would explode like a small bomb. Smiley apparently had no idea where the bags would land and, according to deputies, didn't seem to care. One, however, landed on the roof of a sheriff's substation three miles from Smiley's home and exploded, but no one was hurt. [Edmonton Journal-AP, 3-17-01]

-- Federal law guarantees every child a public education, no matter how extensive his special needs (or how costly), but Massachusetts could not find any school to take Nathan Vincent, 15, at any price because of his severe physical and intellectual limitations and a self-mutilation problem, until one in New Hampshire accepted him in April after a 10-month search. During the 10 months, according to an April Boston Globe story, the state picked up the bill for him to stay, without schooling, at Children's Hospital in Boston, which came to $619,000, or the equivalent of the annual salaries of a dozen teachers. [Boston Globe, 4-24-01]

-- In May, according to prosecutors in Vancouver, British Columbia, Mr. Sukhjinder Singh Dhillon, his mother and his sister administered a severe beating to the man's wife in January because they were angry at her for being such a failure, primarily because she had so far given birth to two girls and no boys. [National Post-Vancouver Sun, 5-29-01]

-- Passed away in April in Long Beach, Calif.: Carolyn R.S. Posthumus. Arrested in January for possession of marijuana in DeKalb, Ill.: Mr. Marjuan Fleming. Sentenced for rape in April in Providence, R.I. (after telling the judge that he fantasizes about having sex with unconscious women): Kevin M. McWeeney. Announcing the unpopular decision in April that his Crow Tribe office in Montana would lay off 25 percent of the workforce because of rising expenses: Mr. Leroy Not Afraid. Pleaded guilty to a charge of possession of child pornography, Stewartville, Minn., May: Mr. Ronald Kummer. [Indianapolis Star, 4-18-01] [DeKalb Daily Chronicle, 1-20-01] [Providence Journal, 4-17-01] [USA Today, 4-20-01] [Minneapolis Star Tribune-AP, 6-1-01]

News of the Weird reported in February that Phillip Buble's father had just been convicted, in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, of attempting to murder Phillip by smacking him in the head with a crowbar because Phillip would not stop his public displays of affection with his dog-"wife" Lady, a mixed breed. (Phillip is a "zoophile" and considers himself married to Lady "in the eyes of God.") In March, Buble gave a 30-minute presentation to a state legislative committee urging (unsuccessfully) that they not pass a pending anti-bestiality bill; Lady had to wait for him in the car because dogs are not allowed in the chamber. And in April, Buble was fined $50 for having an unlicensed dog (not Lady, though Lady is also unlicensed, but she was not caught). [Bangor Daily News, 3-27-01, 4-27-01]

Ron Pollock and his sister Natalie, both 50ish, filed a lawsuit in April against a radio station in their hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba, because it declined their suggestion for a program on Jewish issues, despite the station's having a similar program on Christian issues. The Pollocks are well-known in Winnipeg because of a series of lawsuits after a cable TV channel in the 1980s canceled Natalie's dance show on the basis, according to the Pollocks, that her large breasts called undesired attention to the show. (The Pollocks later discussed the controversy on various U.S. TV talk shows, including the Jenny Jones show, during which Natalie got into a shoving match with another large-breasted woman, who, according to Natalie, "banged me with (her fake breasts) in my eye.") [National Post, 4-4-01]

-- Latest Industrial Accidents: A 45-year-old bakery worker was killed when his head and shoulders got trapped in a dinner-roll-making machine (Bridgeport, Conn., April). A 54-year-old man was killed when he got caught in a factory pasta-making machine (Chester, Vt., February). A 43-year-old New York City municipal environmental worker had just cleared debris from the mouth of a large reservoir drain but then could not get out of the way fast enough and was sucked down the drain 200 feet to his death (March). [New Haven Register-AP, 4-29-01] [Burlington Free Press, 2-17-01] [MSNBC-AP, 3-3-01]

A Malaysian education official, wary of the teacher shortage, urged female teachers to plan any pregnancies so that babies are delivered during school vacations. A man notified a convenience store clerk in person that he would be back in a half-hour to rob him, then loitered outside the store for 30 minutes before returning and robbing him (Covington, Ky.). Five employees at a religion-run reformatory were arrested for having troublemaking students stand in a manure pit (Monticello, Mo.). Salt Lake City Winter Olympics officials said that music with sex, drugs or violence in the lyrics would not be permitted during snowboarding competition, even though such music is standard for many of that event's competitors. [Japan Today-Reuters, 6-26-01] [Cincinnati Enquirer, 6-24-01] [Associated Press, 6-29-01] [New York Times, 6-28-01]

Thanks this week to Albert Clawson, Joe Schwind, Larry Clunie, Jonathan Rowe, David Cyr, Jeremy Dickson-Smith, Jeremiah Puddleduck, Mark Lidwell, Joel O'Brien, Henry Wehman, Larry Manofsky, Mike Reynolds, Robin Olson, Bill Landenberger, Roger Brown II, Sean Smith, Dave Beck, Graham Thomas and Mike Quinn, and to the News of the Weird Senior Advisors and Chief Correspondents.

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

-- Recent Too-Cute Diagnoses: "Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome" (a strong urge to stay out late, followed by an inability to wake up on time, according to Dr. Michael Thorpy, a sleep-disorders specialist interviewed for an April New York Observer report) and "Pseudologia Fantastica" (a condition doctors offered up to a judicial disciplinary commission in May as a medical explanation for why Los Angeles Judge Patrick Couwenberg had padded his resume with tall tales).

-- A Tucson, Ariz., international big-game-hunting organization recently pressured the government of Botswana to lift its ban on shooting at the rapidly dwindling lion population, with help from three of the group's highest-profile members, former President George Bush, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf and former Vice President Dan Quayle. According to a leading Botswana conservationist, rich hunters (safaris cost $20,000 to $35,000) create even further attrition by demanding to kill only mature males, because of their bushy manes, leaving lairs unprotected from other lions. Said the conservationist (to London's The Guardian): "There's no reason to shoot a lion other than ego. As a hunter you want to feel great so you can hang it on the wall and your mates say, 'Wow, what a man!'"

-- A steadily increasing number of Cambodians in the northern Dangrek Mountains are trekking to the gravesite of the heinous dictator Pol Pot (who presided over the murders of a million people during the 1970s) because they say that communing with his spirit brings them good luck and, in some cases, winning lottery numbers, according to a June New York Times dispatch.

Scotland Yard was called to investigate a citizen complaint against a police officer who purposely broke wind while investigating a crime scene at her home (Chingford, Essex, England; June), but in Werribee, Australia, in June, a misdemeanor convict was fined about $100 (U.S.) for purposely breaking wind inside a police station. And Drew Shintani, 35, was charged with stabbing a 30-year-old co-worker because he was tired of the co-worker's laughing at Shintani's flatulence problem (Hilo, Hawaii; April). And two men (aged 49 and 64) were arrested at a ShopRite store for harassing customers with cans of an aerosol spray that sounded and smelled like someone breaking wind (Washington Township, N.J., May).

-- A state judicial board's fact-finding panel concluded in April that Los Angeles County Judge Patrick Murphy was not entitled to the 400 days sick leave he has taken since 1996 and that he was merely malingering while being paid $130,000 a year to be a judge. Murphy said he was plagued with various maladies, including a phobia for the job of judging, and that's why he had left the country and enrolled as a full-time medical student in Dominica while still on the courthouse payroll.

-- New Mexico District Judge Stephen Bridgforth ruled in March against a new trial for Joseph Montoya, 22, leaving him to serve the 20-year sentence he was given in a 1999 shooting death, despite the subsequent confession (backed by a polygraph) by Montoya's twin brother, Jeremy, that it was he who committed the crime. The judge reasoned that, after all, several witnesses freely admitted they were confused about which one of the Montoya brothers fired the shots, but that the jury, in its wisdom, decided it was Joseph, and that was that.

-- According to police in Wethersfield, Conn., Richard Levitt, 42, secretly videotaped himself having sex with a girlfriend and decided to post the video on the Internet, which caused problems when the girlfriend found out, and more problems when a second Levitt girlfriend found out, and even more problems when Mrs. Levitt found out. (The girlfriends met and together confronted Levitt and his wife at home at 2 a.m. on March 25.) Levitt was arrested for disseminating voyeuristic materials.

-- Prison officials in Australia told reporters in May that they would review their procedures after they found out that convicted mass murderer Julian Knight (who killed seven and wounded 17 in an incident in Melbourne in 1987) had earned a behind-bars college degree in military strategy and weapons systems. One official acknowledged that the curriculum Knight chose might conflict with the rehabilitation goals the prison had set out for him.

-- A mirrored dome used in playground equipment in 45 locations around the country, called a playscape, concentrates the sun's rays inside to a temperature of over 250 degrees, but before an incident in Bristol, Conn., playscapes were thought to be acceptable devices for small children to play in. (At a Bristol day-care center in April, the shirt of a 3-year-old boy burst into flames, and though the boy was not injured, the New York company that makes playscapes recalled them so that the mirrors could be replaced with safer material.) [Boston Globe-AP, 4-27-01]

-- In April in Chicago, IBM acknowledged it had authorized an on-the-street advertising campaign (for the Linux computer operating system) that involved the defacing of public sidewalks with graffiti at 100 locations around the city. The 20-year-old man hired to paint all the hearts and smiling penguins was arrested, and municipal officials said IBM would be liable for cleanup costs. An IBM spokeswoman admitted the campaign "got a little carried away."

News of the Weird reported in 1999 on the work of Reading University (England) Professor Kevin Warwick in the uses of surgically implanted microchips, which he then was offering as technology to track the whereabouts of employees, pets, and people licensed to carry firearms. Recently, Warwick announced that in September, he and his wife, Irena, will have transmitter/receiver microchips implanted in their arms, attached to nerve fibers, and that Warwick will attempt, by intentionally moving his fingers, to send a radio message from his arm to Irena's that will cause her fingers to move also. Researchers believe the technology could be used to allow spinal-injury patients to move paralyzed limbs by sending radio waves directly from the brain to the limb.

Public works officials in Kannapolis, N.C. (population 30,000), were forced to issue a plea to residents in June that two recent sewer breakdowns (producing solid-waste flooding) were caused by flushing cloth underwear down toilets and that people should please stop that.

Two men were arrested for selling marijuana from a neighborhood ice-cream truck, after drawing the attention of police because the only customers in line were adults (Brooklyn, N.Y.). A judge ordered a 19-year-old man to abstain from sex until marriage (under potential penalty of decades in prison), after noting his penchant for impregnating young teen-age girls (Corpus Christi, Texas). A 73-year-old woman rescued her Scottish terrier from the jaws of a pit bull by biting the pit bull on the neck until it released her dog (Tallahassee, Fla.). A 17-year-old boy on a bicycle was arrested after robbing a Taco Bell via the drive-thru window, having been hampered in his getaway by his decision to wait around until an employee could fix him a hot chalupa and put it into the money bag (Fort Worth, Texas).

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

-- In recent New York City art auctions, according to a May report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Tom Friedman's "Untitled" (a Styrofoam cup of evaporated-coffee stains, pinned to a piece of wood along with a ladybug) went for $30,000 at Phillips Auctioneers; Robert Gober's "Broom Sink" (a fancifully constructed wash basin) earned nearly $500,000; and Jeff Koons' life-sized ceramic "Michael Jackson and Bubbles" (the chimp) sold for $5.6 million.

-- Golfers cannot play on courses in Germany without a license, which applicants must earn by passing a written test and a skills test in putting, chipping and driving, according to a June dispatch in The Wall Street Journal. Golf association officials defend the requirement for keeping away slow-playing novices, but they estimate it might take about $800 or more for lessons and classes just to get the certificate.

-- Hard Times for Rape Victims: In St. Petersburg, Fla., in June, a 29-year-old rape victim, still shaken up and in a hospital gown after being treated, was arrested and ushered off to jail when a routine check revealed that she had three outstanding judicial warrants (failure to pay a traffic fine, failure to pay an unlicensed-dog fine, and allowing her young daughters to miss school). Also in June, in Albany, N.Y., Supreme Court Justice James Canfield performed the wedding of Robert Gorghan to his girlfriend, Cheryl, only minutes after Gorghan had been sentenced in another courtroom to 25 years in prison for the serial sexual assault of Cheryl's daughter over a 13-year period. (Canfield is notorious for marrying the just-convicted, which he said reduces the likelihood that they will engage in homosexual sex in prison.)

Following recent FDA approval and as a safer alternative to surgery, doctors have begun offering the $2,500 Brava Breast Enhancement vacuum device that its developer says can increase cup size by stimulating tissue growth, although the contraption must be worn for 10 hours every day for 10 weeks, pulling tissue gently inside its vacuum domes. And a researcher in Melbourne, Australia, told a recent meeting of surgeons that he had grown breast tissue in rats, mice and rabbits, and that, if it could be done for humans, it would allow women to grow larger breasts. And a 31-year-old woman in Frankenmuth, Mich., reported in June that a nail that flew up from her lawn mower's blade and that could have penetrated her heart was deflected by her "liquid-curved" Maidenform bra; she said that "a higher power" had told her that day to wear a bra for lawn-mowing.

-- In March, the Yakima Indian Nation performed two rain ceremonies (ancient rituals involving fruits and berries) in the Washington mountains to bring an end to the drought plaguing the Northwest and then sent the bill for expenses ($32,000) to the region's electricity provider, Bonneville Power Administration, pointing out the (slight) increase in rainfall afterward. Nonetheless, Bonneville declined to pay.

-- Testifying at his sexual molestation trial in Leeds, England, in March, psychic healer Terence Wood, 41, admitted that he might have put his hands inside the clothing of the four complaining females but that he was unaware he was doing anything wrong: "When I'm healing, I'm in an altered state, and I just go where the spirit tells me the pain is. I close my eyes. My hand becomes very, very hot."

-- Tom Wahl and his wife, Suzi, were convicted in St. Louis in April of "prostitution," in that a jury found that they had engaged in sex for money, even though they were having sex only with each other, at paid sex-education "seminars" the couple ran. Their lawyer's unsuccessful closing argument compared the Wahls to a golf pro trying to teach duffers the proper techniques for swinging a club. That would not be "golf," said the lawyer; it would be a demonstration of techniques, and thus, a demonstration of sex techniques would not be "sex."

-- In May in Denver, Richard M. Young, 43, filed a federal lawsuit against his ex-employer, Ohio Casualty Insurance, for firing him after an incident in which he kept sheriff's deputies at bay for six hours while wielding a gun in a shopping center parking lot, threatening to kill himself. Young said he has a mental illness, which the company is required to "accommodate" under federal law, and that just because he wanted to kill himself doesn't mean he doesn't want to continue working for Ohio Casualty. Young's job at the company was regional manager of litigation.

-- In separate lawsuits filed in January, two teen-age boys claim that York, Pa., personal injury lawyer Mark David Frankel fondled them inappropriately when the boys, with their mothers, went to Frankel's office to discuss injuries they had suffered in auto accidents. According to the lawsuits, in each case Frankel quickly attempted to examine the boys' buttocks, thighs and genitals, claiming that he could detect injuries that doctors often miss. According to one mother, Frankel said he needed to examine those areas because, if a doctor had diagnosed a head injury and a foot injury, there was usually another injury in between.

Arrested for murder: Andrew Wayne Toler, 21 (Houston, May); Christopher Wayne Scarber, 25 (Independence, Ky., February); Kenneth Wayne Jackson, 32 (Balch Springs, Texas, May). Filed for a new trial: convicted murderer Jack Wayne Napier, 48 (Lexington, Ky., March). New trial granted: convicted murderer Anthony Wayne Walker, 39 (Cincinnati, September 2000). And, occasionally, this happens: acquitted of murder at his retrial (after five years on death row): Gary Wayne Drinkard, 45 (Decatur, Ala., May 2001).

Frank T. Singer, 38, pleaded guilty in May to manslaughter in the death of a 36-year-old man in Stroudsburg, Pa., that resulted from consensual bondage play between the two men in a motel room last year. The younger man, wearing a sauna suit, was found duct-taped and handcuffed to a chair and apparently choked to death after, according to news reports, being force-fed 2 1/2 pounds of peanut butter.

A 34-year-old man was shot to death over a piece of sweet potato pie (Atlanta, January). A man was stabbed to death allegedly by his girlfriend when he brought her home a McDonald's ham, egg and cheese bagel instead of the two Egg McMuffins she requested (Martinez, Calif., March). A 48-year-old man was shot to death, allegedly by his wife, after a fight over their satellite-TV controls (Orlando, April). A 37-year-old man was beaten to death, allegedly by his roommate, in a fight over the thermostat setting (Dallas, May).

In China, which is enduring one of its worst droughts in history, soldiers were ordered to open fire on any clouds they see, to bring rain. Jail inmates complained at having to wear the new black-and-white-striped uniforms on outside work details, with one man protesting, "It makes us look like convicts" (Pasco County, Fla.). Vineyard owners in southern France began to sell powdered wine extract to pharmaceutical houses in the U.S., to make wine pills that provide health benefits without the hangover. A couple filed a lawsuit against a county building inspector who failed to detect that the attic in the house they bought contained a half ton of raccoon droppings (Bloomfield Hills, Mich.)

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