News of the Weird

-- Among issues in the months-long labor-management strife at the Taronga Zoo (Sydney, Australia): Workers have resisted managers' alleged solution for getting Kibabu the gorilla to mate (following his rejection of all females for six years now), which was to have the keepers sedate him, stimulate him manually, and collect his sperm in a container (but that, said one keeper, would be "too bloody dangerous. What if he woke up?"). It now appears that zoo officials are resigned to use technology instead, by a process called electro-ejaculation. Earlier, workers had announced a partial strike for a 3 percent pay increase, in that they would stop picking up animals' droppings (whereupon management began docking their pay of the "poo allowance" of the equivalent of US $2.40 an hour.

-- On Nov. 2, skydiver Ron Sirull (1,000 career jumps) performed at the Air and Space Show at Vandenberg Air Force Base (just north of Lompoc, Calif.), accompanied by his Dachshund, Brutus the Skydiving Dog (100 career jumps), to the protests of animal-rights activists but (according to Sirull) to the delight of Brutus, who was "totally turned on." (Brutus doesn't jump alone; he wears goggles and rides in Sirull's jumpsuit. According to Sirull, Brutus' vet and the Arizona Humane Society say the jumps are safe.)

In August, Brian Lynch of Scotchtown, N.Y., was convicted of stealing $8,000 in donations intended for a Sept. 11 FDNY widow. Also in August, Vernon Coleman, 32 (of Philadelphia), and Dane Coleman, 28 (of Upper Darby, Pa.) (who are not related), were arraigned on charges of stealing $35,000 from a donation fund for Afghan children displaced by the war. Also in August, New York City landlord Denise M. Lyman announced she would not allow the family of Sept. 11 victim Danielle Kousoulis into Danielle's old apartment to secure DNA to help detect her remains because Danielle had breached her Sept. 1, 2001, lease by failing to give three months' notice before "abandoning" the apartment.

-- According to a September New York Times report, New York City homeless-shelter workers believe that "50 to 75 percent" of the current population of 8,000 families (2,000 more than the year before) are "unreasonably picky" about moving into permanent assisted housing, thus remaining in temporary apartments at an average cost to the city of $2,800 per family per month. Sara Kelly, a mother of six and eight-year assisted-housing client, said she could not accept a three-bedroom apartment because "you had to walk through one bedroom to get to another bedroom to get to a bathroom (and) I can't live like that. (I am) choosy about where I live."

-- In White River Junction, Vt., in October, Stewart Fuller, 41, was charged with looting about $30,000 worth of goods from the house of neighbors Roger and Shirley Labelle (who were away) and holding a three-day yard sale nearby so that when the Labelles returned, they couldn't help but notice that some of their neighbors had their stuff.

-- Earlier this year, 89 wives, daughters and lovers of wealthy or powerful Mexican men posed chicly in extravagant settings with complete lack of inhibition about their opulence, for photographer Daniela Rossell's coffee-table book, "Ricas y Famosas" ("Rich and Famous"), thus appearing to taunt the 53 percent of Mexicans who live in poverty. Rossell, who comes from the upper class herself, and is thought to have made the book in part because of conflicted views of her upbringing, has since received threats from the embarrassed wealthy, who apparently miscalculated how their pictures would be perceived.

Herbert Toney, 36, and Latisha Washington, 29, were arrested in October in St. Bernard Parish, just outside New Orleans, and face several charges including deserting their 8-year-old son. According to police, the couple instructed the son to go into a Winn Dixie supermarket and steal groceries and beer. When a security guard stopped him, the boy pointed out his parents nearby, but Toney and Washington matter-of-factly denied knowing the kid and walked away. Deputies brought the couple in again a while later, but Washington said only that maybe she had seen the boy around the neighborhood a few times. Finally, she admitted he was hers.

According to a July Reuters photo dispatch from the mountains of northeast Colombia, U'wa Indian girls' traditional "cocora" hats, designed to encourage chastity from puberty until marriage, consist of oversized cones made of layers of large sheets of green leaves, all completely covering the girls' heads, except for narrow eye slits.

Suspected cult leader Scott Caruthers, 57, was arrested in September in Carroll County, Md., and charged with conspiracy to murder the ex-husbands of two of his alleged disciples; according to a Baltimore Sun report, Caruthers has claimed to be an alien who reported back to the mother ship by messages to cats. And Dem Mam, 54, head of a fringe Buddhist cult, was freed from custody in October, having been determined not responsible for three disciples' immolating themselves in a bathtub of gasoline in a Cambodian countryside pagoda; Dem Mam teaches that ritual suicide is the only path to heaven but told police that he did not need to commit suicide himself because he is already holy enough.

Ronnie Dale Jones, 33, was arrested in Brevard, N.C., in September after he, for some reason, drove into a parking lot and past several police officers standing by their cars, talking; Jones apparently had momentarily forgotten he had a very large marijuana plant in his back seat. And a 22-year-old man was detained by a sheriff's deputy in Gainesville, Fla., in October after he had been stopped routinely for an expired tag; as the men were conversing casually, the deputy noticed a rolled-up marijuana joint behind the man's ear (to which the motorist said, "Man, I forgot that was back there").

In Tucson, Ariz., in August, Iris Jazmin Rangel, 24, was sentenced to three years' probation in the death of her 10-month-old daughter in a minor collision caused by Rangel's inability to brake quickly enough; her attention was diverted because she was breastfeeding the girl at the time. And South Carolina Highway Patrol officers said in July that Marie Butler, 20, triggered a five-car collision on State Road 90, sending three people to the hospital, when she lost control of her car while changing clothes during her drive to work.

Arrested for murder: Anthony Wayne Grimm (Springfield, Ill., August); Daryl Wayne Smith (Wheeling, W.Va., August); Seth Wayne Campbell (Houston, July); Douglas Wayne Clark (Austin, Texas, October). Convicted of murder: Gary Wayne Davis (Louisville, Ky., September). Arrested on suspicion of murder at press time: Michael Wayne Bartlett (Ridgetop, Tenn., October). [Springfield Journal-Register, 8-21-02] [The Intelligencer (Wheeling, W.Va.), 8-6-02]

The North Korean government gave its top yearly science prize to Pyongyang Hospital for developing a rhubarb-and-marijuana concoction that is "97 percent effective" in curing constipation. Adele Robinson and several other New York City public-school contract teachers were mailed checks for 1 cent to correct a calculation error on summer-class pay. Cheyenne Harley Kahnapace, 26, pleaded guilty to violating his parole restrictions after a police officer caught him out for a walk pushing a baby stroller containing a small keg of beer (Regina, Saskatchewan). Prominent entomologist Elmo Hardy passed away at age 88, his legacy secure in that 50 species of flies are named for him (Honolulu).

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

-- A business consulting firm teaching how to use astrology to increase profits was inaugurated in May in San Francisco by two former telecommunications executives (and ex-Marines). Bruce Cady and lawyer Tom Mitchell founded Jupiter Returns to show executives, for example, that a failed business collaboration may have been prevented simply by understanding that one's associates "(act) out their (astrological) program." Mitchell told the San Francisco Chronicle that the firm's best customers are women.

-- Performance artists and computer gamers staged a cockfight night in a basement in Los Angeles' Chinatown in October, attracting about 200 people to go down-culture, drink beer, and wager on "roosters" flapping and pecking and clawing at each other, except that the cocks were humans dressed in garish rooster outfits. Tech people had rigged the outfits with sensors to register the effectiveness of the fighters on a large screen that exhibited virtual blood.

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (57) The accidental bombardment of a house by an airliner's "blue ice" toilet waste, such as by the melon-sized ball that plunged through the bathroom ceiling of Susan Seltzer's house in North Massapequa, N.Y., in September. (58) And the usually elderly citizen who must fight the cutoff of government benefits brought on by the bureaucracy's erroneous insistence that he or she is dead, as happened to the 80-year-old Ms. Addie Nelson of Natick, Mass., in September, by the Veterans Administration.

-- For an anniversary tribute to Sept. 11 victims, the city of Jersey City, N.J., planned to release a flock of doves at a downtown ceremony, but since officials waited until the last minute to order the doves, all suppliers were sold out. Jersey City wound up having to use pigeons (which had been caged most of their lives), and observers at the solemn ceremony were forced to witness the awkward birds smashing into office-building windows, plunging into the Hudson River and careening into the crowds.

-- Teri-Lynn Tibbo filed a lawsuit in October, charging that doctors at St. Martha's Regional Hospital in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, not only left a 15-inch-by-20-inch surgical towel inside her after a hysterectomy but opened her wound eight more times in the next four months to drain it, never suspecting that a towel was there. Another hospital, Meadow Lake, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, was sued in October by Rebecca Chinalquay, who charged that while she was in the delivery room in labor, all personnel had stepped out so that when little Tyler emerged, there was no one to help, and he slid off the gurney onto the floor. (He's OK now, but Chinalquay fears later-manifesting problems.)

-- A clerical error caused the large investment firm Bear Stearns to place orders on Oct. 2 to sell not the intended $4 million worth of stocks but 1,000 times that much. The company was able to recover about 85 percent of the sold stock and told a Reuters reporter that the remaining loss (the sale of only 152 times as much stock as intended) would have no material impact on the company. (An early edition of the next day's Wall Street Journal inadvertently carried a report of the mishap on the same page as a Bear Sterns ad that touted the firm's ability to "execute complex transactions flawlessly," but the story was placed elsewhere in subsequent editions).

-- Sheriff's deputies in Marion County, Ind., said in September that passenger Kevin Small's right arm was severed in a one-car collision as he and a buddy were taking a nightclub dancer home after her shift. According to deputies, when Small and the driver asked the dancer for sex, she refused and started fighting with the men, causing driver Richard Everhart to lose control of the car and crash, taking Small's arm off. (The dancer was uninjured; Small's hand was recovered but not the rest of his arm.)

-- Teamsters Local 988 opened its brand-new meeting hall in Houston in August, to unfavorable reviews by representatives of locals representing construction workers, plumbers, electricians and other trades. According to a Houston Chronicle report, the Teamsters had the hall built with nonunion labor because union work was too expensive.

Bill Saintclair Patton, 45, was convicted of indecent exposure in Warren, Mich., in September, and sentenced to 90 days in jail; he was the subject of neighbors' complaints after he appeared nude in his back yard and used a pumpkin to sexually gratify himself. And Ross Watt, 33, was convicted of disorderly conduct in Edinburgh, Scotland, in October after witnesses and police testified that he rolled around on the ground, simulating sexual intercourse with an orange and white traffic cone.

The Augustine Band of Mission Indians (a "tribe" of seven kids and an adult) finally opened its $16 million casino, 130 miles east of Los Angeles (July). Prosecutors dropped the charges against accused child murderer Nathaniel Bar-Jonah, whom they had originally believed disposed of the victim's body by serving it as stew to unsuspecting neighbors (but he's still serving 130 years for another crime) (Great Falls, Mont., October). Surgeon David Arndt, who was suspended for running to the bank on an errand literally in the middle of an operation, was charged with possession of cocaine and the sexual assault of a boy (Cambridge, Mass., September).

Recent Excretory Excesses: A 43-year-old nude boater docked at a waterside restaurant and defecated on shoreline rocks, to the astonishment of diners, who chose the restaurant for its waterfront views (Stratford, Conn., September). Green Bay Packers football player Najeh Davenport accepted community service to settle a charge that he broke into a university dormitory and defecated in a woman's wardrobe closet (Miami Shores, Fla., October). Philadelphia Gas Works paid $4,500 to settle a complaint that an employee (since fired), sent to turn a customer's gas back on, urinated on his valuable collection of sports cards (October).

Mental health legislation proposed in Britain would force parents (under penalty of a jail sentence) to medicate any child diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (September). The chairman of the Knox County (Tenn.) School Board revealed that "zero tolerance" rules (against even accidental or benign possession of drug- or violence-associated items) got 172 students automatically expelled last school year (and is thus proposing to soften the rules) (September).

Jim Bristoe built an air cannon, with a 30-foot-long barrel, to fire 10-pound pumpkins about a mile, to sweep to victory at the Pumpkin Propulsion Contest (Noblesville, Ind.). A national paintball federation was formed to inaugurate a 28,800-square-foot paintball facility in downtown Tehran, Iran (but females are not allowed to play yet). The Pentagon introduced a portable digital musical insert for a bugle so that "Taps" can be played by non-musicians at funerals, thus sparing grieving relatives the now-increasingly flawed human versions. Humongous opera singer Luciano Pavarotti gave a benefit concert in Monaco on behalf of a United Nations campaign against hunger.

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

-- The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission concluded in May that Costco Wholesale Corp.'s firing of Kimberly M. Cloutier for refusing to stop wearing an eyebrow ring at work constituted religious discrimination in that Cloutier is a member of the Oregon-based Church of Body Modification. The church says piercings and tattoos "are essential to our spiritual salvation." Based on the EEOC ruling, Cloutier, 27, of West Springfield, Mass., filed a federal lawsuit against Costco for not "accommodating" her religious practice, as required by law.

-- Police in Modesto, Calif., arrested Kelli Pratt, 45, in October and charged her with domestic abuse after she, enraged by her husband's refusal to have sex, allegedly held him down and bit him so viciously and so many times that his severely ripped-open skin was ripe for the bacterial infection that killed him six days later. Kelli suffers from multiple sclerosis and often uses a wheelchair; husband Arthur, 65, had recently been hospitalized for diabetes. Said an arresting officer, "(Kelli) refused to wash up (before we videotaped her), so she basically looks (on the tape) like a vampire with blood all over her face and teeth."

A man accidentally killed his 14-year-old son with a crossbow when he mistook the boy for a deer (Adamsville, Ohio, October). A man accidentally shot his adult son with his Father's Day handgun (which the son had loaded before gift-wrapping) (Coraopolis, Pa., June). Mothers in Jackson, Wis., and Port Richey, Fla., shot their sons (ages 9 and 10, respectively) with BB rifles in object lessons taken too far (August; September). A man accidentally fired his hunting bow, driving an arrow into the skull of his 11-year-old daughter, but she survived (Muncie, Ind., September). An 8-year-old boy was taken away by child welfare officials in September after his stepfather shamelessly admitted that he had used a stun gun on the boy for being late for school (Sweeny, Texas).

-- Otis Stansbury, 34, of Long Eaton, England, filed a lawsuit in August against door-to-door salesman Jay Sims and his company, Accident Group, whose business is helping customers in personal-injury lawsuits. Sims had just left the Stansbury home (after failing to sign them up) when, according to the lawsuit, he attempted to catch a ball among kids playing in front of the Stansbury home, slipped, and fell on top of 6-year-old Yohan Stansbury, sending the boy to the hospital with head injuries.

-- Cherise Mosley, 19, filed a lawsuit against the Aaron Family Planning Clinic in Houston in August, seeking damages for the abortion it performed on her two years earlier when she was a minor. Mosley admits that she produced a false ID card at that time, showing that she was over 18, for the express purpose of receiving the abortion without having her parents notified. Now, Mosley apparently regrets the abortion and claims the clinic should have detected that her ID was false and thus notified her parents, who, Mosley believes, would have talked her out of the abortion.

-- Josephine Bailey filed a wrongful-death lawsuit in August, two years after her 22-year-old son staggered out of Rick's Pub in Hurricane, W.Va., after a night of drinking and, according to police, collapsed under an idling 18-wheeler across the street, shortly after which he was run over and killed when the driver pulled away without noticing him. Ms. Bailey, who is suing Rick's owner and the trucking company, had said earlier that she couldn't believe her son would do such a foolish thing: "He'd never put himself in that kind of predicament."

-- In a decision hailed by animal-rights activists, District of Columbia judge Frederick Weisberg in July sentenced John Hardy, 49, to prison for assaults he committed during a domestic altercation, which broke out when Hardy and his wife were scuffling and ended when Hardy's pit bull became excited, provoking Hardy to fatally stab him. Weisberg sentenced Hardy to three months for assaulting his wife and 24 months for the attack on the dog.

-- Decisions announced one day apart in September: Toronto prosecutors dropped the public nudity charges against seven men who marched naked in a Gay Pride parade, concluding that it would be impossible to convict them, in that they were wearing shoes. And the Washington state Supreme Court dismissed voyeurism charges against two men who had been convicted of shooting "upskirt" photos of women in public, concluding that the state peeping-tom statute applies only to victims who have an "expectation of privacy" because they are in secluded places.

Linda Henning, 48, went on trial for murder in Albuquerque in September, charged as being the dupe and accomplice of cancer-curing, 2,000-year-old guru Diazien Hossencofft in the murder of his wife, the late Girly Chew Hossencofft. Henning was described by longtime friends as exceptionally level-headed, right up until the day she met the charismatic Hossencofft, after which she became "crazy as a loon," according to one, in that she believed that reptilian aliens were ready to take over the world, using cryogenic pods. (She wrote that reptilian George W. Bush maintains his human visage through "the use of magnetic fields to create holograms.") Hossencofft has since come clean about his frauds, but Henning apparently continues to believe.

News of the Weird reported on the annual Gotmaar festival in Pandhurna, India, in 1989, describing how, despite the village's increasing modernization, its work comes to a halt after the first full moon in September, with males dividing into two groups to gather rocks and throw them at each other, attempting to injure as many people as they can. (At sunset, they stop, nurse the wounded, and return to normal life.) Apparently, the festival continues with equal vigor, despite attempts in recent years to make it less violent. In September 2002, participants again rejected safety rules, and 550 were wounded, some seriously.

Terry Devine jumped on a motorcycle immediately after receiving his driver's license in Greymouth, New Zealand, in September and sped off at almost 100 mph; his biking experience lasted about 45 minutes, until police caught him, and his license was suspended. And to address a self-described "mid-age crisis," Jim Zimmerman of Saginaw, Mich., bought a Harley-Davidson in September, even though he was 60 years old and hadn't been on a bike in 30 years; 10 seconds into his first ride, he slammed into a utility pole and broke several ribs, and shortly afterward sold the bike.

-- Cases Closed, Less Paperwork: A man fleeing police in a stolen car leaped from it as it headed for a wall, but tripped and was pinned under it and fatally run over (Los Angeles, April). Terrance Claybrooks, 27, with a lengthy record and running from police, hid inside a friend's ice-cream truck freezer, but suffocated on carbon dioxide fumes from the dry ice (Nashville, June). Edward McBride, 37, fleeing police after a burglary, drowned in the Arkansas River, weighted down as he was with about 50 pounds of stolen cameras (Tulsa, Okla., August).

Researchers writing in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine reported that putting duct tape over a wart for six days makes the wart easier to remove than does the standard practice of freezing it. And German inventor Matthias Knigge said he has developed a desk with an inflatable airbag, for office workers looking for a quick nap (Hamburg). A nude male jumped onto the ice at a National Hockey League game, but immediately slipped, hit his head, and knocked himself out cold (before coming to and being carried out on a stretcher) (Calgary, Alberta). A cattle truck crashed, killing the driver and nine cows and injuring four other cows so badly they had to be euthanized (as opposed to the 16 surviving cows, which were loaded onto another truck to continue on to a slaughterhouse) (Marietta, Ga.).

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