News of the Weird

-- Even with a $1.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez is having trouble attracting pancreatic-cancer patients for his Columbia University study (only 25 of 90 slots filled), perhaps because the treatment's most prominent component is twice-a-day coffee enemas. A Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center doctor called the regimen "ludicrous," but Gonzalez said the caffeine stimulates nerves in the bowel, helping the liver with detoxification, according to an October Wired magazine report. His initial pilot program reported significant benefits of the treatment but was regarded with skepticism in that it included only 11 patients.

-- The for-profit school administration company Edison Schools Inc., reportedly low on cash but with 20 particularly troublesome Philadelphia high schools to manage, tried to cut some corners in September until reined in by the school board. According to an October dispatch in Toronto's Globe and Mail, Edison ran low on cash and (1) had to send back newly ordered textbooks, computers, lab supplies and musical instruments; (2) tried to move its Philadelphia executives out of their downtown offices and into vacant school-system rooms to save on rent; and (3) suggested to the school board that students could acquire valuable experience if they were assigned various work projects (for free) for Edison. The latter two ideas were thwarted by the school board, but the students were still making do with old books and equipment.

Scheduled to marry in December in Flint, Mich.: Ms. Laura Kah and Mr. Scott Boom (although she plans be just plain Laura Boom). And in May, the prosecutor in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., charged four men with stealing tires: Edgar Spencer, his son Edgar Spencer (Jr.), the older man's brother Edgar (W.) Spencer, and his son, Edgar (W.) Spencer (Jr.) And the Santa Cruz (Calif.) Sentinel, in an August story on the town's shrinking 1960s-'70s hippie population, interviewed among others (legal names) Mr. Climbing Sun, Mr. Shalom Dreampeace Compost and Mr. (no last name) Chip; other recent residents such as Darting Hummingbird Over a Waterfall, Moonbeam Moonbeam and "XXXXXXXX X" were not available.

-- Several doctors of the government-funded British National Health Service plan to start prescribing personal vibrators for female sexual dysfunction, according to a September report in The Observer. A sex boutique operator welcomed the development, describing the previous devices "used for dilating vaginas" as "frightening" and crosses between "toilet brushes and medieval torture implements." (In October, the medical clinic at the private Cornell University was about to begin selling vibrators in its dispensary.)

-- In October, the State Department awarded a $15,000 "outstanding performance" bonus to the head of the office that permitted 13 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers to enter the country via expedited U.S. visas. Mary Ryan, who retired in September after a 36-year tenure (reportedly eased out after she defended her "visa express" program even after Sept. 11), received the award specifically for the 12-month period beginning April 2001. The express program, which was spearheaded by the U.S. Consul General in Riyadh, Thomas Furey (who also got a bonus), allowed Saudi nationals to apply over the Internet without ever being seen by a U.S. official.

-- A state humanities and arts panel named Amiri Baraka the poet laureate of New Jersey earlier this year, several months after he had written a poem suggesting that Jews, and President Bush, had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks. Gov. James McGreevey, who announced the appointment in August 2002, now wants Baraka to resign, but Baraka has refused. In addition to the $10,000 the poet laureate receives from the state, Baraka has gotten several five-figure taxpayer grants for his poetry, favorite themes of which are attacks on religion, whites and Jews.

-- Sculptor-painter Antonio Becerra's government-funded "Oils on Dogs" exhibition opened in Santiago, Chile, in August, consisting of the artist's paintings (e.g., Pope John Paul and a cross, blue and orange butterflies) on the embalmed cadavers of a dozen roadkill dogs Becerra had found on the city's streets. Becerra called the work a reflection of society's violence and cruelty, but animal rights activists were appalled at his lack of respect for the dogs.

-- Retired graphics designer J. Jules Vitali has created more than 1,000 pieces of small art in his preferred medium, foam polystyrene (Styrofoam) cups (some with flourishes of acrylics or bronze), according to an October Boston Globe profile. He took up his craft with a carry-out coffee cup and a Craftsman knife 20 years ago, inspired, he said, by boredom. A display of his "Styrogami," with pieces priced at up to $800, is housed at the Freeport (Maine) Public Library.

Recent Paraphilias: Ian Cheeseman, 34, already locked up in Ottawa, Ontario, was charged in September with having made about 250 collect calls from prison trying to trick young girls (by offering them Backstreet Boys concert tickets, among other things) into urinating into a cup near the phone. And a judge in Omaha, Neb., ruled in October that a confession made by former teacher Mike Florea, 35, was admissible in his sex-abuse trial; he had told police that he would pay boys $20 to $25 if they would ejaculate into small containers, which Florea then stored in his freezer.

Chattanooga, Tenn., police told the city's WTVC-TV in October that they had arrested Rudy Raines for possession of about a pound of marijuana, after Raines allegedly walked nonchalantly into a Fast Food and Fuel convenience store, past officer David Ashley, and uninhibitedly placed a stash of marijuana into the store's microwave oven because, he said, he needed to dry it out. Raines was arrested, along with another man sleeping in Raines' car in the parking lot.

-- More Flaming Pop Tarts: Deanna Robinson and her insurance company filed a lawsuit in Atlanta in August against Kellogg's, alleging that the poor design of Pop Tarts is the reason one burst into flames in her toaster two years ago, igniting a house fire that did more than $10,000 in damage. Kellogg's has had to defend Pop Tarts' flammability before, in New Jersey and Ohio lawsuits (which it settled) and against newspaper columnist Dave Barry, who wrote of his experience of inducing 30-inch-high flames from Pop Tarts in his own toaster.

-- The Food Chain Thwarted Again: A 55-year-old man was killed in October as he and a colleague were preparing to butcher a hog on a farm near Frazee, Minn. According to authorities, after one of them fired his .22-caliber rifle, hitting the hog, it at first fell back, then lurched forward against the rifle, causing it to discharge again, fatally hitting the other man.

James F. Welles, author of the book "Understanding Stupidity" and an authority on dumb decisions, was arrested for soliciting sex on the Internet from a "15-year-old girl" who was really a 40-year-old policeman (Lantana, Fla.) Mr. Besh Serdahely, 58, and his wife vacated the tree house on San Bruno Mountain (just south of San Francisco), which, for the last 12 years, they have called home (to the consternation of county officials). And health officials in Tororo, Uganda, warned prospective (but impoverished) brides that they are ruining their valuable, malaria-stopping white mosquito nets if they use them as bridal gowns. And a bold bank robber was arrested in Tehran, Iran, even though he thought he was invisible (thanks to a special piece of parchment he had bought from a man on the street for about $550).

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

-- 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/.)