News of the Weird

-- Two former faculty members at the University of South Florida medical school settled religious discrimination lawsuits with the school in August, lawsuits based on acts by their department's former chairman, Dr. James Rowsey, an eye surgeon of some note. Rowsey had practiced such faith-based governance as denying researchers equipment based on religious admonitions from his wife, whom he considered a prophet, and then pressuring complaining faculty members to actually pray that the university administration will increase the department's budget.

-- In September, King Mswati III of Swaziland, faced with a dramatic AIDS epidemic, ordered all teen-age girls to abstain from sex for five years and to wear tassels of green and yellow to make it easier for men to avoid them (under threat of a fine, for man and woman both, of either one cow or about $250). Married teens are exempt but must wear tassels of red and black.

The recently retired Quacky the Clown (Jacob L. Tarner, 53) was arrested in August and charged with molesting a 10-year-old girl last year in his vehicle, which was just over the Michigan side of the Indiana state line; in Indiana, the maximum sentence is 45 years, but in Michigan, he faces life. However, a judge in Moline, Ill., acquitted Chuckles the Clown (Kimble McLain, 42) in September; he had performed at a Wal-Mart with his genitals clearly visible but convinced the judge that he had no idea that his zipper was down until someone told him. And Smiley the Clown (Christopher Bayer, 29) dutifully reported back to jail in Riverhead, N.Y., in August when his bail was revoked on child-molesting charges because a judge had misread state law by releasing him.

-- The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in July that a woman had commenced lawsuits against the Atlanta Braves and outfielder Andruw Jones for an injury to her head from a ball Jones had flipped into the stands. Jones said he was doing what many players do as a reward to spectators by tossing a ball, caught for the third out in an inning, to the usual crowd of begging fans. Said teammate Brian Jordan, "We're trying to give people souvenirs and now some lady wants to sue."

-- In July, the parents of the late University of Florida student Matthew Kaminer filed a lawsuit against the Eckerd drugstore chain and the manufacturer of the powerful painkiller OxyContin, after Kaminer died of an overdose of the drug that a friend of his had stolen from an Eckerd store. The parents claim that Eckerd should have protected its supply of OxyContin better so their son never would have been tempted to ingest it.

-- In April, police in Carmel, Calif., arrested Pinellas County (Fla.) Circuit Judge Charles Cope (who was in town for a judicial conference) after he allegedly opened a locked hotel room door at 1 a.m., occupied by two women he had met earlier in the day, and tried to enter. Cope, who headed his court's family-law section at the time, said the whole thing was a "huge misunderstanding," but the adult woman and her mother said they believe Cope found or took their key during their earlier conversation. In September, after deliberating on a plea bargain for several months, Cope refused to take it, and prosecutors added battery and other charges.

-- In July the Mississippi Court of Appeals overturned a divorce court decision, ruling that Alice Susan King and Jack Bodne should stay married because all King did was prove Bodne was rude and unkind, which is short of the legal standard of "cruel and inhuman." King said she could no longer tolerate Bodne's crude jokes, cussing, and other behavior that humiliated her.

-- In August, a Florida court of appeals heard arguments on a third contempt-of-court order by Palm Beach judges against a lawn care company owned by a cast of characters resembling that in a Carl Hiaasen novel but including superstar New York lawyer David Boies, who has been supplying legal firepower, unsuccessfully, against a rival lawn care firm (whose owner represents himself in court). Boies' company, Nical, alleged that rival Scott Lewis broke a 1996 contract, and things have gone back and forth since then, with a second Nical owner apparently violating multiple court orders. Besides Boies, Nical's owners are a convicted top-drawer Miami marijuana smuggler and the frisky ex-wife of a Guatemalan textile manufacturer (a woman who was described by one California clothing buyer as a "sex nazi" because she used him as her "sexual tool" in exchange for overlooking various invoices).

-- With female undercover police officers roaming downtown Cincinnati in July looking for him, Anthony Searles, 42, was arrested after allegedly tossing his saliva by hand on the clothed backside of one of the officers. Someone, allegedly Searles, had been tossing spit at well-dressed women on the street for several days before that. A detective guessed that it was a "sexual fetish," noting Searles' long sex-offense arrest sheet. And in Dallas, police admitted in June they still had no leads in capturing the serial arm-biter/licker who has been preying on women off and on (13 reported attacks) for nearly a year.

In July, airport security guards in Tampa busted illegal Peruvian immigrant Maria Riano after she had approached a Continental Airlines counter to buy a ticket to Newark, with eight bulging duffel bags behind her. Apparently new at the smuggling game, Riano froze on the standard airline-traveler question, "Did you pack your own bags?" When she snapped, "Why do you need to know that?" airport security was summoned and found about $25,000 worth of shoplifted upscale clothing in the duffel bags.

-- In July, a jury in Boulder, Colo., quickly acquitted Patrick Murphy, 50, of harassing an unhygienic dog owner whom he had videotaped at a school park failing to pick up behind his dog. Murphy is a dog-droppings activist and, in addition to video cameras, has recently used global positioning satellite equipment to show that, at one time four months ago, there were 663 piles in the park. Murphy had been on the issue for more than five years before moving into electronic strategies.

The sheriff's office apologized to Adelberto Ruiz Hasselmyer for mistakenly arresting him, a 5-foot 8-inch, 360-pound black man, who was somehow confused with fugitive Jorge Adaberto Ruiz, 5 feet 4 inches, 150 pounds, white (Orlando, Fla.). The Thorupgaarden nursing home said it regularly shows pornography on its in-house TV channel because it relaxes patients (even some women) as effectively as drugs, but is cheaper (Copenhagen, Denmark). A jury recommended that Keith LaJuan Jones, 44, convicted in a serious road-rage dragging incident, serve 750 years, and the judge added 300 (Oklahoma City). Michael McMillian, accused of DUI, sat patiently on the stand while his lawyer reached over and removed McMillian's glass eye in order to undermine the arresting officer's claim that McMillian had appeared "glassy eyed," but the judge convicted him anyway, saying the other one was glassy, too (Philadelphia).

(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 September, Tokyo's Mainichi Daily News reported that a 25-year-old bulimic woman from Toyoda, Japan (near Nagoya), was arrested for massive violations of the country's Waste Disposal Act after being identified as the person who has, for over a year, been illegally dumping about 60 pounds a week of vomit that she had collected in plastic bags. She said, according to police, "I didn't want to throw away the vomit near my home, so I took it to faraway places."

-- A study reported in a September issue of the journal Nature presented good news and bad news about the sexual apparatus of the male earwig (which is, according to a dictionary, a "dark and slender nocturnal insect of the order Dermaptera, having horned pincers at the rear that can rise up like a scorpion's"). The bad news: The organ is thin and brittle and frequently breaks off. (Ends of penises are sometimes found inside females.) The good news: Researchers say that earwigs are equipped with a fully functional spare organ.

-- Boxer Tony Ayala, Jr., 38, whose promising career (27-0, 24 knockouts) was cut short in 1983 by a rape conviction for which he served 16 years in prison, won a big comeback fight in San Antonio in July by gaining a 10-round decision in a bout during which he wore a court-ordered ankle bracelet so that authorities could monitor his whereabouts. (In December, Ayala had been arrested on a charge of burglary with intent to commit a sexual assault; he pleaded guilty to lesser charges in September. Ayala won the July fight despite a shoulder weakened by a bullet hole, put there by the woman whose house he had allegedly broken into.)

Marie Solomon, 41, was arrested at a friend's wedding in July for loudly and incessantly yelling out reasons why the couple should not marry (Bridgeport, Conn.). Groom Howard Brown, 31, was arrested in August after allegedly shooting a guest at his wedding reception because the guest had brought too many friends (San Antonio, Texas). Newlyweds Marcia Alarcon and Carlos Alarcon-Schroder were jailed in May after brawling over whose parents they would visit first (Des Moines, Iowa). Bride Kathy Naylor, 28, was arrested in August after following home a guest from her wedding reception and reigniting an earlier brawl (Crystal River, Fla.).

-- In earnestly reported stories on Aug. 3 and Aug. 7, the Wichita (Kan.) Eagle informed the community that more than a thousand 30-inch-long, dried corn husk leaves had floated down from the sky onto the town over the weekend. Two meteorologists said that no weather phenomenon could have accounted for it. To add to the mystery, a Wichita-area evangelical ministry had woven "corn husks" into its pro-life message in mid-July and consequently took the phenomenon as a sign. Townspeople's favorite guess (though no evidence has yet been offered): an elaborate (and illegal) airplane prank by University of Nebraska football fans.

-- A 50-year-old man from Magog, Quebec, and his two sons, ages 26 and 23, were arrested in June and charged with a total of 47 sexual-assault-related counts. The victim was the 21-year-old daughter (sister of the younger men), who, according to police, had been molested regularly for 17 years and whose ordeal was finally brought to an end by nurses when the three men could not even refrain from molesting the woman in her Montreal hospital room, where she was undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer.

-- A serious article in a recent issue of the British Dental Journal warned people of the dangers involved in using foreign objects for relief of hemorrhoids, pointing to the experience of one patient who said he used a toothbrush for that purpose but inserted it too far and had to have it removed at a hospital by biopsy forceps.

-- In a May crime spree in Edmonton, Alberta, shoplifters hit several Blockbuster Video stores, but the only items missing were all 81 copies of the Sean Connery movie "Finding Forrester" and (even more puzzlingly) 12 copies of Adam Sandler's "Little Nicky."

-- Kids Growing Up Fast: At rodeos across the country (such as Florida's Okeechobee Rodeo over Labor Day weekend), kids as young as 3 ride, broncolike, for endurance (up to 4 seconds) on sheep ("mutton busting"), before inevitably acquiring the rodeo experience of being dumped on their backsides. And in June, state investigators examining Valdez (Alaska) Community Hospital practices found that several physicians had routinely brought their kids (from teen-agers down to infants) into operating rooms and offices while treating patients; among the episodes was one girl "assisting" her father in placing a cast and another in which a doctor's 4-year-old became frightened at a patient's shrieks during a hip-manipulation procedure and caused a major incident.

From the July 18 Police Blotter in the Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas): "At a grocery store on the 600 block of Austin Avenue, a 27-year-old lawn specialist from Round Rock was arrested at 12:46 a.m. on charges of public lewdness. (A) male employee found the male customer between two aisles with his shorts and underwear pulled down around his ankles. The man was bent over and inserting a can of Big and Sexy brand hair spray lubricated with Suave lotion into his rectum. He told arresting officers he was attempting to sexually gratify himself. He was taken to jail."

-- The robber of the One Stop Grocery in Kenai, Alaska, in July got away. The store was packed with people at 9 p.m. when the man suddenly appeared with his hand in his pocket pointing a "gun" at the clerk and shouted, "Everybody freeze, don't move. You know what that means." However, everyone ignored him. He snatched some beer from the cooler and shouted again, "You people don't understand. I really mean it." One customer told him he could get in trouble talking like that. Finally, the man cussed a bit, complained again that nobody was listening to him, and left with the beer. And in June, Kevin Shegog, 41, was charged in Highland Heights, Ky., with eight gas station robberies when police finally found a witness who could identify the getaway car: It was the one with the license plate "SHEGOG."

-- South Carolina's Department of Motor Vehicles has recently pared services, creating longer lines, and it has also privatized its janitorial service, which now makes an appearance only once a day. In a July incident at the Fairforest Road office in Spartanburg, an elderly man had an incontinence accident while waiting in line to renew his driver's license. Neither he nor his adult daughter waiting with him wanted to lose their place, so he had tried to ignore his urgency as long as he could, but ultimately, his bowels won, and with no one volunteering to clean the floor, lines snaked around the mess for hours. However, the man and his daughter stayed in line. Said the office's deputy director, "You can't keep someone from getting a driver's license for incontinence."

While celebrating her son's homecoming from college, Karyn Aikin suffered 1st and 2nd degree burns on her face, incurred by igniting a shot glass of 151-proof rum and trying to swallow it (Newfane, N.Y.) Professor Merryn Dineley announced he will soon start selling a historic-recipe beer in the Orkney Islands (Scotland) that is flavored with a trace of baked animal droppings (Manchester, England). Connecticut state Rep. Kevin Ryan, freshly sentenced to four months' hard time as a recidivist DUI, said he can very well conduct his legislative business from his cell and does not intend to resign. Stanford University medical professor Simon Stertzer, who just finalized the deal to buy the Palomino Club strip joint in North Las Vegas, Nev., said he plans to funnel all the profits from the club into his research on cardiovascular medicine.

(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 Halberstadt, Germany, in September, an organist kicked off a performance of the late, radical composer John Cage's "Organ 2/ASLSP" (an acronym somehow derived from "as slow as possible"), which was written for 20 minutes, but thanks to technology and imagination, will be performed over a period lasting 639 years. The first six months will be devoted to creating an organ's first note. The purpose of the performance is to contrast the piece with the frenzied pace of modern society.

-- Georgia state Rep. Dorothy Pelote of Savannah, addressing her chamber during opening prayer ceremony on the day after Labor Day, informed colleagues that she has psychic powers and in fact managed to catch a glimpse of Chandra Levy's dead body in a ditch (but did not get a chance to speak with her). House Speaker Tom Murphy diplomatically told reporters, after being asked for a comment, that he really did not hear too well what Rep. Pelote had said (even though he was standing well within earshot).

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (47) A husband's enthusiastically taking his wife back into the marriage even though she just tried to murder him, as David Martin did in June after his wife, Tammie, emptied a gun into him and his father (Moulton, Ala.) (works also for wives taking husbands back). And (48) forcing young miscreants to listen to less popular kinds of music as punishment for playing their rap or rock music too loud in public, as Cambridge, Ohio, Judge John Nicholson sentenced Alan Law to do in August (i.e., listen to polka).

Latest Cutting-Edge Products: Fox News reported in July that business was good for Hidden Vestments (Santa Monica, Calif.), a lingerie shop with silk female-type undies specially tailored for cross-dressing men's bodies (e.g., lace-edged vest-and-boxer set, $136). And, according to a June Denver Post story, Buck Weimer (Pueblo, Colo.) sold his entire first run of airtight briefs called Under-Ease, which contains a charcoal filter lining that effectively, he says, prevents flatulence from escaping into the air. And the Potty Putter (mentioned in Newsweek in May) is a toy fabric golf green, complete with hole, flag, ball and putter, that men can put on the floor and play with while sitting on a toilet.

-- In July, Richard Davis, 53, settled his lawsuit with a London doctor and a pharmaceutical company over his claim that a prescription drug made him so sexually wild that it led to his bankruptcy and a criminal fraud conviction. He said he was a virgin until he started binging on the apparently magical bromocriptine, which caused him to act like a "cross between a deranged sex maniac and a highly overexcited teen-ager."

-- Among the potential 21st-century foods being developed for military use (according to research led by Purdue University professor Michael Ladisch, released in June) is a chocolate bar with special nutrients to change body temperature, which could not only make soldiers warmer in cold climates but could also thus render soldiers "invisible" to an enemy's thermal-imaging equipment.

-- Police in Northumbria, England, agreed in April to pay Detective Brian Baker the equivalent of "several" thousand dollars (he was asking for about $25,000) to compensate him for the snoring habit he picked up, allegedly from too many years in the evidence room inhaling dust from seized marijuana plants. His maladies, including a whistling in his nose, were said to have caused Baker marital disharmony.

-- Tim Nelson, a La-Z-Boy recliner tester profiled in a May Associated Press report, said the job of sitting down, kicking his feet up, and rocking back and forth in the company's chairs all day is much harder than it looks: "It's not like they give us popcorn and a TV set to watch"; "(u)p and down all day (can) be a workout." Actually, said colleagues, the job is one of the hardest at the Dayton, Tenn., plant because testers must certify the comfort and balance of up to 130 recliners a day (with 10 to 15 pieces not making the grade).

William Lyttle, 71, of North London has been a compulsive digger for years, said neighbors, according to an August report in The Guardian. To satisfy unarticulated inner needs, Lyttle has dug extensively all over his multi-acre property, once going about 50 feet straight down before getting bored and cementing up the hole. However, in his latest adventure, which authorities said is probably the first time his digging has gone past his property line, his excavation caused the street in front of his home to collapse. Lyttle lives in a 20-room home that would be worth about $1.5 million if it were in good repair.

-- The Philippine toxic garbage pile that collapsed in July 2000, killing more than 200 professional scavengers, is still active in the Patayas neighborhood of Manila, and more dangerous than ever, according to a July 2001 Associated Press dispatch. The government offered to relocate the scavengers, but most stayed because of the pay (about $3 (U.S.) a day). As the AP writer set the scene: "Hundreds of self-described scavengers, many with skin rashes and teeth nearly as black as the toxic mud that caked their feet, followed in a swirl of flies, mangy dogs, diesel exhaust and flying cockroaches." "The children who splash and play in the fetid runoff spread skin fungi, tuberculosis, hook worms, and stomach viruses at an alarming rate." A recent, tough clean-air act, banning incineration, has increased the dump's volume.

An 18-year-old man, rowdily hanging out of the passenger-side car window, fatally struck his head when the driver came too close to a trash can (Lebanon, Ore., August). A 38-year-old man fell 15 floors to his death after he accepted a dare from a buddy and attempted unsuccessfully to hang from an apartment balcony (Vancouver, British Columbia, July). A 39-year-old man was killed when his speeding car struck a parked semitrailer truck at about 9 a.m., with another motorist telling police the man appeared to be reading a newspaper moments before the crash (Pleasant Prairie, Wis., June).

A 31-year-old man barely survived a deadly bacterial infection of the heart valve, facilitated by his numerous body piercings that he acquired in order to look like his idol, basketball player Dennis Rodman (Chicago). Responding to several noise complaints, a city's environmental officer publicly urged citizens to be quieter at night while making love (Stockport, England). In its latest advertising campaign, the University of Bonn (Germany) profiled famous alumnus Joseph Goebbels ("philosophy student," "propaganda minister") but without mentioning his role as an architect of the Holocaust. A 39-year-old woman, who had just killed one son, was thwarted in killing another because the bullet lodged in the Holy Bible he was carrying (North Fort Myers, Fla.).

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