News of the Weird

-- In June, after the British musical group the Planets introduced a 60-second piece of complete silence on its latest album, representatives of the estate of composer John Cage, who once wrote "4'33"" (273 seconds of silence), threatened to sue the group for ripping Cage off (but failed, said the group, to specify which 60 of the 273 seconds it thought had been pilfered). Said Mike Batt of the Planets: "Mine is a much better silent piece. I (am) able to say in one minute what (took Cage) four minutes and 33 seconds."

-- In July, a California Court of Appeal rejected as excessive an arbitration panel's award of about $8,800 per lawyer-hour in fees ($88.5 million total, all from taxpayer funds) "earned" by the attorneys who successfully challenged an unconstitutional state law. Also in July, David L. Brite of California told the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times that the Florida lawyer he had hired to find his step-grandmother's will did only a few hours' work, at most, yet intended to keep $350,000 (a 25 percent fee) because the will turned out to be worth $1.4 million.

In the last four months, residents of four cities have confronted ice-cream truck drivers over allegedly excessive noise and late hours on residential routes, and especially over the repeated playing of "Turkey in the Straw" (although "When the Saints Go Marching In" and "Yankee Doodle Dandy" have also been mentioned). Drivers were ticketed in Brunswick, Ga., and Hartford, Conn.; a protest was being organized in Green Bay, Wis.; and in London, England, about 50 ice-cream truck drivers blocked a downtown street, blaring their theme music at full blast, in protest of the city's clamping down on their licenses.

-- The Pain of Performance Art: The annual "Fierce!" festival in London in May featured Mr. "Franco B" lightly slicing up his abdomen and keeping the wounds open for six hours, inviting patrons to observe the blood in order to "re-examine their own notions of what's beautiful and what's suffering." And in May, the Artspace gallery in Sydney, Australia, featured artist Mike Parr having his only arm nailed to a wall, for 36 hours, to show "the possibility of confloating the body." And performance artist Pierre Pinoncelli chopped off a pinky finger in June at a festival in Cali, Colombia, to symbolize the nation's loss after a popular politician was recently kidnapped by the revolutionary group FARC.

-- Russia's Culture Ministry changed its mind in April and decided to take Kasimir Malevich's 1913 "Black Square" painting off the block for an impending auction. Officials at the Gelos auction house in Moscow expected the 21-square-inch work (which is, in fact, only a black square) to bring in from $2 million to $10 million.

-- For three months this spring, New York City's New Museum of Contemporary Art displayed Belgian artist Wim Delvoye's "Cloaca," a room-sized mechanical rendition of a human intestine, which at announced times would take food input and process it into various components just as the body does, including the final waste product, which was then scooped up by an attendant and flushed. Said a German curator, Delvoye's "strength" "lies in his ability to engineer conflict by combining the fine arts and folk art, and playing seriousness against irony."

-- While health insurance plans have long been cut back drastically all over the country, the self-funded insurance of the county employees of Niagara County, N.Y., reimbursed more than $1.25 million since 1999 for its workers' purely cosmetic face peels, breast implants and liposuction; taxpayers finally realized what was going on when property taxes shot up by 20 percent this year. And San Francisco elections supervisor Tammy Haygood was fired in April for cost overruns and irregularities but continues to fight for her job so that her husband can maintain his transsexual treatment under the city government's liberal employee health-care plan.

-- In March, Fremont County (Mont.) officials passed a resolution prohibiting "the presence" of grizzly bears within the boundaries of the county. And in May, a Magistrate Anurag Rastogi of the Gurgaon district near New Delhi, India, issued an order forbidding the assembly of four or more pigs. (Both the Montana resolution and the Indian order had other sections directed at any humans responsible for introducing the animals into public space, but the above provisions stand alone, seemingly directed at the animals themselves.)

St. Petersburg, Fla., police arrested Calvin Calhoun, 25, Lavance Palmer, 22, and Kelvin Charles, 22, in July and charged them with using a stolen credit card in a ticket-scalping scheme. The men, from Miami, bought 180 Tampa Bay Devil Rays baseball tickets for a weekend series against the Seattle Mariners, intending to resell them, but there was almost no demand because attendance at Devil Rays' games is among the poorest in the major leagues, and in fact there were 127,000 empty seats for the four games.

In April in Fayetteville, N.C., Shirley Brigman Turriff, 63, was sentenced to six years in prison for embezzling $1.1 million from the law firm for which she had been office manager (Anderson Johnson), which had hired her shortly after she had been convicted for embezzling from her first employer. Anderson Johnson was fully aware that she was an embezzler when it hired her because one of its lawyers had defended her in that earlier case.

In January 2001, News of the Weird reported that a 6-year-old boy had been removed from his mother's home in Champaign, Ill., because she insisted on continuing to breastfeed him. A judge later released the boy back to the mother, and in July 2002, the woman, Lynn Stuckey, 34, appeared on an ABC's "Good Morning America" videotape showing that she is still to this day breastfeeding him (every two weeks or so). Stuckey continues to call it "a perfectly normal practice": "We are your standard middle-class American family, and we're not doing anything wrong."

A 26-year-old woman was charged with attempted murder for a vicious knife attack on her 25-year-old boyfriend that resulted in the nearly total mutilation of his buttocks and rectum (Carrollton, Ala., June). A 21-year-old disgruntled construction worker was charged with the pickax slaying of his loud-mouthed foreman (New York City, April), and another recently fired construction worker was charged with attempted murder for shooting his former boss in the chest with a 3-foot-long spear gun (Miami, April).

Also, in the Last Month ...

A 13-year-old boy was arrested after he allegedly pulled out a gun and robbed a convenience store of just a sex magazine (Martinsburg, W.Va.). Police officer Thomas Richmond applied mouth-to-snout CPR and revived an apparently dead pit bull that had been hit by a car (West Bridgewater, Mass.). A man in his 20s, identified only as Mr. Hsu, was rushed to a hospital from an Internet cafe‚ suffering paralysis after what was believed to be three consecutive days of playing a computer game (Chungho City, Taiwan). A 34-year-old man on his maiden sky dive let out a joyous whoop at 9,000 feet, which dislodged his false teeth, which fell and could not be found (Addison, Vt.).

-- Despite a warning label reading "Do not use indoors because of flammability" on its carpet adhesive, the Para-Chem company was ordered by a jury in Akron, Ohio, in July to pay $8 million to two professional installers who were severely burned in an explosion when they tried to use the product indoors. One juror told the Akron Beacon Journal that he and his colleagues felt the warning did not go far enough in convincing the installers not to use the product indoors.

-- A whole class of New Bedford, Mass., middle-school students was recommended for blood tests in July after officials learned that, in May 2001, a now-retired seventh-grade science teacher had pricked the fingers of about two dozen of the students to make sample blood slides, using the same needle (though he wiped it with alcohol between uses). Officials thought the risk of infection was low but had no explanation how a veteran science teacher could stray so far from contemporary blood-safety procedures.

A paper by psychologist Michel Lariviere for Correctional Services of Canada concluded that most guards don't respect inmates (which inhibits rehabilitation efforts) (May). A $4 million study by University of Buffalo Research Institute on Addictions revealed that employees are much more likely to call in sick if they have drunk alcohol the night before (May). A Harvard School of Public Health survey found that people report more noise and other disruptions in binge-drinking college neighborhoods than in other neighborhoods (July). An Iowa State University study found that TV viewers had a harder time noticing the commercials on shows containing explicit sex than on other types of shows (June).

-- The owners of Los Angeles' Westwood Village Memorial Park (resting place of Marilyn Monroe, Dean Martin and Frank Zappa) have asked the county to allow them to build a 463-casket mausoleum on formerly open space in the park that is very close to residential property, thus potentially disturbing both neighbors worried about spirits in their back yards and solemn park visitors, who may be exposed to screaming children and barbecue smoke. (And in June, bowing to strong opposition, the operators of Dublin, Ireland's most famous cemetery (Glasnevin) withdrew a proposal to add income by building 11 luxury townhouses on its grounds.)

-- Former Broward County (Fla.) librarian William Coday's online personal ad touts his multilingualism, world travels, compassion, and love of Keats and baroque music. The ad does not mention that he was convicted of murdering his 1978 and 1997 girlfriends, both with hammers, and that he is in jail awaiting a jury's decision whether he gets death for the latter crime.

-- Leslie Collard, 42, arrested in May in Providence, R.I., for offering an undercover officer a tandem prostitution deal that included her 19-year-old daughter, was asked before the arrest if that meant the mother and daughter would serve him at the same time. "No," she said (according to the officer), "I have morals, because she is my daughter. My daughter will do you first."

-- Pull Their Parenting Licenses: David and Guadalupe Mata were arrested for allegedly chaining their 21-year-old daughter face up on her bed, to keep her away from the married man she had been seeing (Fullerton, Calif., July). A mother and stepfather were charged with duct-taping her 12-year-old son to a lawn chair so he would get sunburned as punishment for sassing her (Hamilton, Ohio, May). Gary and Kathleen Rabatin and their teen-age kids were charged with possession of marijuana, with the parents admitting pride that the kids smoke at home rather than on the street (and dope was found in every room in their house) (Levittown, Pa., June). Sedrick Lamont Curtis, 28, and Shakima Lewis, 25, were charged with forcing their adolescent kids into sex shows in their home, at which they charged clients $10 to watch (Gary, Ind., May)

According to an Agence France-Presse report of a United Nations officials' meeting with Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe in April (concerning how undemocratic the country's last election was), Mugabe allegedly exploded when scolded by a U.S. representative: "Well," said Mugabe, "I don't think George Bush won the U.S. election, but I accept (it)." And in Lumberton, N.J., in July, Michael J. Devine, 36, captured in a stolen truck after a police chase, denied he was trying to escape; he said that he couldn't stop because the truck contained a bomb that would explode if his speed dropped below 55 mph.

Shemuel Nahum Ben Yisrael (formerly, James Christopher) filed a $10 million lawsuit in June against the city of Beaufort, S.C., and its mayor, police and sheriff's department, for an unlawful arrest in 2000 and for generally harassing him. According to the police chief in Yisrael's hometown of nearby Yemassee, Yisrael keeps buckets of paint and urine handy at his home so that, when law enforcement officers come for one of their frequent arrests of him (mostly for trespassing), he can douse himself so as to make the officers' jobs harder.

Latest Bright Ideas: According to an indictment obtained by the U.S. Department of Justice in May, Christopher Lee Jones of Pembroke, N.C., recently publicly attempted to sell 100 stolen Social Security numbers by eBay online auction and tried to enhance their value by specifically suggesting that bidders use them to obtain credit cards. And Tony Alston, 26, and April Lynett Smith, 20, were arrested after a brief police chase following their alleged robbery of a Compass Bank in San Antonio, Texas; police caught them easily because their getaway vehicle was a rental U-Haul truck with a speed governor that the company routinely equips the truck with to slow it down.

A 13-year-old boy was struck and killed in the street while playing "chicken" with a neighbor driving a go-cart (Lithonia, Ga., March). And a 17-year-old boy was struck and killed while playing lie-down-on-the-highway "chicken" at 11:30 p.m. (Crescent City, Calif., June). And a 44-year-old woman was struck and killed by an Amtrak train as she drove through a railroad crossing busily conversing on her cell phone (Little Rock, Ark., June).

County officials charged the Dance Place studio (Safety Harbor, Fla.) with pressuring 30 elderly customers to sign 328 separate contracts for dance lessons, totaling $3.5 million (including selling one woman $257,000 worth over a three-week period) (July). While laid-off workers of Global Crossing Ltd. (one-time value: $54 billion) try to recoup some of the $32 million in severance pay they lost by the company's bankruptcy filing, the Los Angeles Times reported that company founder Gary Winnick continues his historically detailed, $30 million renovation on the $94 million mansion he purchased before the collapse (July).

A Muslim housewife in Florida filed a lawsuit after the state revoked her driver's license because she insisted that her identification photo reveal only her eyes (because of her niqab veil) (Winter Park, Fla.). A 19-year-old man fatally overconsumed in a contest to see who could eat the most salt (Tamluk, India). A 20-year-old man was arrested after making 1,100 calls to 911 over a two-day period, attributing his behavior simply to boredom (Gainesville, Fla.). A court in Iran denied Mohammad Khordadian travel privileges for 10 years because he formerly taught Iran-disapproved dance lessons while living in Los Angeles (Tehran).

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

-- More News From the Front Lines: The Jammu and Kashmir State Cable Car Corp. continues to run its gondolas at the mountain resort of Gulmarg (according to a July Washington Post dispatch), passing within 3 miles of the "Line of Control" that separates Indian and Pakistani forces in Kashmir (and despite the gondolas occasionally picking up ground fire); business is down considerably for skiing, hiking and golf, but still, frolickers show up. And according to a June report in Lebanon Daily Star (via The Wall Street Journal), Israeli and Hezbollah forces on the Lebanese border, on stand-down from live ammunition, recently exchanged "fire" with a paint-gun blast, pingpong balls and eggs.

-- In June, retired British actor Michael Fabian was sentenced to six months in jail for duping an employment agency into sending him 12 actors for a job he had, before leaving town without paying. Fabian had been on trial for harassing a prosecutor and had acted as his own lawyer, presenting a lavish, theatrical defense, for which he thought he needed the inspiration of a good audience, i.e., the 12 actors, sitting in the gallery. (Still, he was convicted.)

Among people who have recently forgotten that they had kids locked up in hot cars (which Centers for Disease Control said has killed at least 27 toddlers since 2000): Tarajee Maynor, age 25 (her two kids died while she kept a three-hour hair salon appointment, Southfield, Mich., June); Jorge Villamar, 59 (left his 16-month-old granddaughter in a sweltering car for an hour and a half, Central Islip, N.Y., July); and two parents who on July 8 had left kids in hot cars in Fort Worth, Texas (fatal to a 6-month-old boy), and Scarborough, Ontario, but whose names had not been released at press time.

-- Simply Dapper, age 6 months, won four prize ribbons at the American Fancy Rat and Mouse Association show in Costa Mesa, Calif., in May. According to a Wall Street Journal report, the rodent's "shiny beige coat, sweet temperament, and a blood line dating back 12 generations" were the main factors in his success. Contest rats have fancy names (e.g., "Himalayan" rat) but cost only a few dollars to acquire and are genetically the same as ordinary, Dumpster-diving Norwegian rats.

-- During the same week in February that the Westminster Dog Show opened in New York City, United Arab Emirates held its first-ever beauty contest for camels in Abu Dhabi, with total prize money of about $27,000. And in June, an Interlachen, Fla., farmer named a goat (which he said came from a long line of show goats) Li'l Dale when it was born with a white marking in the shape of a "3" on its brown coat (and which the hundreds of Floridians who flocked to see it thought was surely a divine sign about the late NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt). (Babe Ruth also wore number 3, but the visitors seemed certain the goat did not refer to him.)

-- To deal with the city's mounting dog litter problem, officials in Anchorage, Alaska, proposed in May to help call recalcitrant dog owners' attention to the problem by squirting a dab of peanut butter on each pile of dog poop in the parks and on sidewalks. (The idea is that owners would more conscientiously clean up so that their own dogs would not be tempted to try to eat the peanut butter.)

-- In June, Harvey, Ill., Baptist minister Rev. Roland Gray was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison for faking at least 14 auto accidents to defraud insurance companies of more than $450,000; "I consider myself a man of God," Gray told the judge, "(but) I got a little confused." Also in June, Mr. Andrea Cabiale, 40, of Turin, Italy, was charged with arranging at least 500 bump-and-stop car accidents involving young female drivers, in largely unsuccessful attempts to date them; in Cabiale's apartment were 2,159 photographs of female car owners and their damaged vehicles.

-- John Patrick Bradley, 56, and three women were arrested in March in Los Angeles for an ambitious scheme in which recent U.S. immigrants were charged as much as $25,000 for the promise of becoming citizens. The ruse involved an almost full-scale replica of the official immigration service process, including elaborate materials and tests and a swearing-in ceremony, with Bradley dressed as a judge, leading everyone in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Christopher Watt, 15, who it is believed entered a 9-foot-diameter pipe in the Ottawa, Ontario, sewer system on a dare, was swept deep into the foul waters for five hours on June 10 before rescue crews got to him on an inflatable raft. And a 12-year-old boy, helping his father clean the family's backyard sewer in Chicago on June 6, got stuck in the muck for several hours until 28 firefighters and 10 paramedics freed him.

Eight-year fugitive John Thomas Boston, 39, who mailed a note in March to Louisville, Ky., police just as he crossed into Canada, informing them that they would never catch him, was arrested in April in Dallas and charged not only as a fugitive but for the first time with three 1994 rapes. Boston's main error (other than returning to the U.S. from Canada) was to lick the envelope containing the taunting note; his DNA allegedly matched evidence from the rapes.

Arrested for murder: Kenneth Wayne Hall Sr. (Gaffney, S.C., March), David Wayne Satterfield (Dallas, March), Shelly Wayne Martin (Baltimore, May), Jason Wayne Petershagen (Alvin, Texas, May), David Wayne Crews (Knoxville, Tenn., June), Mark Wayne Lomax (Houston, April), Jeffrey Wayne Paschall (Draper, Utah, June). Convicted of murder: Mark Wayne Silvers (Anderson, S.C., April), Darren Wayne Campbell (Coquille, Ore., May). Sentenced for murder: Michael Wayne Cole (Goldsboro, N.C., March). Murder conviction overturned and new trial ordered: Michael Wayne Jennings (Contra Costa County, Calif., May).

Melodie Morsicato, 45, was arrested in New Britain, Conn., in March after she crashed through the front door of a Target store at 4 a.m. in her Nissan Stanza and, once inside, continued to drive around the store. And a 37-year-old woman drove into the Ginger Inn Chinese restaurant in Durham, N.C., in April in her Honda SUV and, once inside, continued driving around the dining room. And two men in their early 20s were arrested in El Dorado, Ark., in April for riding their horses into a Wal-Mart and around the store for a few minutes; police said alcohol was involved.

Bell South telemarketer Maria del Pilar Basto became a hero, calling Leonardo Diaz to sell him more minutes for his out-of-minutes wireless phone, and happening to reach him as he was trapped in a blizzard in the Andes Mountains and had almost given up hope of being rescued (Bogota, Colombia). Health inspectors arrested a 57-year-old man and charged him with manufacturing 30 pounds of "bathtub cheese" (Napa, Calif.). Pakistani officials arrested leaders of a tribal council that had ordered an 18-year-old woman gang-raped as revenge against her brother, who had been seen walking beside a woman of higher status (Punjab province, Pakistan). Vandals struck the First United Methodist Church with hate graffiti, but had trouble with Satan ("Satin") and Rebel ("Reble") (Prestonburg, Ky.).

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