News of the Weird

As of mid-October (six months after the so-called fall of Baghdad), nearly one-fourth of U.S. troops in Iraq still had not been issued life-saving Interceptor ceramic body armor and were using comparatively porous Vietnam-era flak jackets, according to an Associated Press report quoting congressional sources. And a few days later, responding to an alarming United Press International report, the government abruptly stepped up money for medical treatment of Army reservists and National Guardsmen who had been wounded in Iraq but were being warehoused at Fort Stewart, Ga., sometimes for months, because, allegedly, preference was being given to active-duty soldiers.

Mr. Ashrita Furman, 48, claims the world record for breaking world records (81, 20 of which are still recognized by the Guinness Book), demonstrating extraordinary but fanciful skills, such as the fastest mile run while balancing a bottle of milk on his chin, unicycling backward for 53 miles, and pogo-stick jumping (3,647). According to a June New York Times profile, Furman is a celibate bachelor with few possessions and lives quietly in an Indian-American community in Jamaica, N.Y., whose residents are spiritually guided by guru Sri Chinmoy. He said he would go the distance in the Nov. 2 New York City Marathon not by running but by skipping.

German law requires a divorcing couple to equalize pensions, and thus it is common for an ex-husband to pay part of his pension to the wife. However, not only do the payments continue if she remarries, but in September, administrative judge Bernhard Wanwitz ruled that if she dies, the ex-husband has to continue the pension payments to her widower (Mainz, Germany). And it was not until September that the German government ended a longtime loophole that allowed citizens to continue to collect welfare benefits while living abroad, as in the case of "Rolf J.," 64, who lives in Miami Beach because he said living in Germany fueled his clinical depression.

-- In September, Australia's National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre identified a problem that was serious enough that it felt it had to issue a warning, mainly for partygoers in the "club" scene: There is no physiological benefit, the Centre said (and maybe a great harm), in trying to revive drug-overdosers by administering ice-cube enemas.

-- In a recent government raid on a Colombian rebel compound, authorities recovered a videotape apparently made at a Christmas party of the violent National Liberation Army (ELN) and released it to TV stations in September. Among the scenes on the tape was a mock beauty pageant featuring giddy male rebel soldiers, in bikini bottoms and with sashes across their chests, strutting along a makeshift catwalk, with tongue-in-cheek narration by a ski-masked emcee who playfully chides the contestants. Interspersed, however, were non-humorous scenes of kidnapped Colombians being held for ransom.

-- In September, Ohio's state medical board charged family practitioner William J. Stefanich, 78, with negligence after investigations of two patient complaints, including one by a female hemorrhoid-surgery patient who was later told in an emergency room visit that a wide area of her anal canal had been removed and her anal opening sutured closed. Stefanich disputed the diagnosis.

-- Alleged Gambino family strongman Thomas "Huck" Carbonaro was convicted in October in New York City of plotting to kill turncoat Salvatore "Sammy Bull" Gravano, evidence of which included reference to Carbonaro's tattoos: (on his stomach) "Death Before Dishonor" and the three-monkeyed "See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil" and (on his lower back) "Rats Get Fat While Good Men Die."

-- John Edward Knowles II, 45, was convicted in October of the attempted murder of two Shasta County, Calif., sheriff's deputies, based in part on a surreptitious jailhouse audio recording, in which he admitted the crimes and lamented his failure to achieve a longtime dream. Knowles, who, after the shooting, had stolen his sister's car (which made it easier to catch him), said on the tape: "I always wanted to be on the FBI's top 10 Most Wanted list. I would have made it if (my sister) hadn't woke up and reported the car stolen."

-- In Sparks City, Nev., during the summer, City Attorney Chet Adams, perhaps influenced by the legal challenges to the Alabama courthouse monument displaying the Ten Commandments, ordered an employee to scissor out "God" from the town's Sept. 11 "God Bless America" signs around City Hall. (Mayor Tony Armstrong, among the many baffled by the newly anonymous blessing, immediately bought more "God Bless America" signs and posted them, himself.)

-- In September, a British government-funded charity, Family Planning Association, distributed a cartoon booklet teaching the joys of masturbation to a target audience of 9- to 11-year-old girls. Also in September, the British teen community-service organization Connexions distributed a primer on marijuana smoking printed on a poster resembling a package of rolling papers. And the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor this semester offered another edition of its sociology course, "How to Be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation" (but its creator said "initiation" is a sociological term and does not refer to initiation of straight students).

People Who Recently Failed to Get Out of the Line of Their Own Fire: (1) Jonathan Rodriguez, 17, Newark, Del. (a home-invasion suspect who batted on a door with the butt of his handgun, which fired into his groin; July). (2) Joshua Michael Short, 18, Houston (got up from a table at Memorial City Mall food court and bumped the gun that was in his waistband, firing a round into his buttocks; July). (3) Detroit police officer Michael Allen, 22 (tried to cram his gun under the front seat of his car at a Canadian border-crossing, but it discharged into his leg; July).

Raymond Garfield Gordon, 23, who was scheduled to be a contestant on the "Canadian Idol" TV show, was arrested in August after an alleged public-masturbation spree, during which at least once he, nude, followed a woman and implored her, "Look at me. Please look at me." And police in Barcelona, Spain, arrested a man in August whom they thought was the serial mugger (19 victims) whose modus operandi included, most of the time, telling the victims that he knew what he was doing was bad and that they should spit on him (and, according to an officer, several did).

A San Francisco Giants fan was killed at Pacific Bell Park on Sept. 17 after his sunglasses fell to the ground during a game and he hit his head after falling from a light pole trying to retrieve them. And a 17-year-old girl accidentally fell to her death after sitting on a 15th-floor ledge, to which she had retreated to get away from cigarette smoke during a party (Strathclyde, England, May). And in October, the family of a 61-year-old man had their lawsuit reinstated for his May 2000 wrongful death, which occurred when he fell on a defective stairway into the basement of the Wells Funeral Home (Stanton, Ky.).

-- The Colorado prisons' inspector general's office said that because of the state's new no-smoking law, inmate profits of 450 times costs can be made on contraband tobacco, vs. typical profits of eight times costs on contraband cocaine. And the chief of a remote Fiji mountain village agreed to apologize for his ancestors, who killed and ate British missionary Thomas Baker in 1867 after Baker innocently pulled a comb out of the then-chief's hair. And 750 students in two Paris high schools went on strike after their principals decided to strictly enforce French law banning smoking in the schools.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)

The Federal Communications Commission ruled in October that the "F word," used as an adjective with the "ing" ending by U2 singer Bono during the live telecast of the Golden Globe awards ceremony in January, is not obscene language because Bono was not using it sexually but rather to enhance the word "brilliant." And two weeks later, Texas's 3rd Court of Appeals ruled that making the well-known middle-finger gesture is not illegal because it is not so provocative these days as to incite immediate violence.

Brandon Kivi, 15, was suspended from Caney Creek High (Conroe, Texas) in October for possibly saving the life of his girlfriend (a fellow classmate) by lending her his asthma inhaler after she had misplaced hers; that was delivery of a dangerous drug. And Raylee Montgomery, 13, was suspended from school in Duncanville, Texas, in September when her shirttail became untucked, a violation of the dress code (raising the number of dress-code-caused suspensions in her 3,500-student school to more than 700 in just five weeks).

-- In April, community activists and other volunteers established a "safe injection site" in Vancouver, British Columbia, so that addicts can bring their heroin, crystal meth or cocaine, and prepare and inject it with clean equipment and in an environment free of hassling by police, who have been reluctant to close the site down. Often, there is a volunteer registered nurse on duty to provide advice on injection technique.

-- Marion, Ohio, inmate Willie Chapman got permission to delay his scheduled parole by one day until Aug. 12 so he could attend a prison meeting of the religious/personal-responsibility organization Promise Keepers. Chapman's inspirational decision made the newspapers, inadvertently alerting his manslaughter victim's family, who complained to the Ohio Parole Board that Chapman should not be free at all. Consequently, the board reconsidered Chapman's parole and delayed it 991 days, until May 1, 2006.

-- In Knoxville, Tenn., in September, Thomas Martin McGouey, 51, apparently set on committing suicide, left a note and painted a bull's-eye on his body before arranging a standoff in which he pointed a gun at police officers so they would kill him in self-defense. McGouey's scheme failed because Knox County sheriff's deputies, who fired 28 shots at him, missed with 27 and only grazed his shoulder with the other.

-- From recent newspaper Police Logs: (1) Wayne Leonard Hoffman, 45, was arrested for DUI (0.39 reading) at a gas station in Minnetonka, Minn., where he was "attempting to add air to his vehicle's tires using a vacuum cleaner hose" (Lakeshore Weekly News, July). (2) Two Wilson, Wyo., men were feuding over a parking space at a K-Mart when one drove alongside the other and spit at him through his open window. According to the police report: "As (the victim) saw the projected body fluid traveling through the air, he dropped his jaw in shock, and the phlegm landed square in (his) mouth where he swallowed it in a gag reflex" (August, Jackson Hole News & Guide).

-- NYPD officers Paul Damore and Farrell Conroy were briefly suspended without pay in July for their conduct in the 45th Precinct station house in the Bronx, when they got into a fistfight over which one would get to be the driver of their patrol car.

-- In widely publicized criticism in August, the Arab League (22 nations, all of which are governed by monarchies, clerics or military dictatorships) charged that the new American-installed Iraqi Governing Council was illegitimate because it was not freely elected but consisted only of appointed representatives from various interest groups. The league's secretary general announced that Iraq's former seat in the Arab League would therefore remain vacant until the country has an elected government (which would then make it the league's only elected government).

-- Thailand's leading massage-parlor/prostitution entrepreneur, Chuwit Kamolvisit, reacted with outrage when he was charged this summer in connection with two criminal cases because, he said, he has paid police the equivalent of US$2.5 million in bribes to get immunity. Mr. Chuwit called a series of press conferences in July, at which he released information on whom he had been bribing and who some of his customers were, and in September, he announced he would form a new political party to put an end to Thailand's culture of official corruption.

-- In August, the city of Edmonton, Alberta, ordered the owners of Keep It Simple, a nonalcoholic "bar" catering to recovering alcoholics by creating the ambience of a tavern without the temptations, to enforce the city's no-smoking law for businesses. However, smoking is a popular crutch for recovering alcoholics, and the owners sought an exemption from the law in order to retain their customers, but the city said the only legal exemption on the books is for establishments that serve alcoholic beverages. (In September, Keep It Simple applied for a liquor license but said it would still not serve alcohol.)

For many years, News of the Weird has covered charity-sponsored "cow patty bingo" competitions (a field divided into squares wagered on by contestants; a cow released to answer nature's call; the grand prize going to the owner of the lucky square), but in July, a variation called "Moulette" (sponsored by Dunlop Tires in Toronto) drew criticism because an actual 50-foot-long roulette board was to be used instead of a field. Critics charged that, despite the charitable aims of the contest, it was "cruel" to deprive a cow of the convenience of dirt and grass on which to conduct her business.

(1) "Flying Bowling Ball Breaks Bone in Woman's Leg" (a July Greensboro, Ga., Herald-Journal story about a driver running over a bowling ball, pinching it out from under a tire with great force and hitting a woman walking to her mailbox); (2) "Bible Study Group Captures Murder Suspect" (a September Arizona Republic story about six men dropping their Bibles to rush to their host's garage to stop a fugitive trying to steal a car); (3) "Flies Are Like Us: Scientists" (a July News Limited story on discoveries by the Neurosciences Institute of San Diego that fruit flies show human-like anticipation of alarm, among various learning, memory and perception traits).

Kids who commandeered family vehicles and drove off: Ms. Taccara King's 2-year-old son (crashed a pickup truck into the B Line Transport office, Vero Beach, Fla., July). Rex Davis, 2 (crashed a car into a room at a Red Roof Inn, Tampa, Fla., September). A 5-year-old girl and her 4-year-old brother (crashed car into a McDonald's, Edmonton, Alberta, September). A 6-year-old boy (drove his baby-sitter's car 30 miles, looking for his mother, hitting only three cars along the way, Luling, Texas, July). A 7-year-old boy, assisted by a 3-year-old girl holding down the gas pedal (crashed into a tree, Hannibal, N.Y., July).

An 18-year-old student with the rare vasovagal syncope syndrome was ordered to begin stuffing himself with junk foods in order to drastically increase his salt intake (Scunthorpe, England). A 39-year-old man was arrested for burglary after police found his name-imprinted dentures at the scene, surmising that he had stumbled over something in the dark but was forced to flee before he could find them (Muncie, Ind.). A 27-year-old man was charged with poisoning a drinking-water reservoir, hospitalizing at least 42 people, in order to boost sales of his water purifiers (Henan province, China).

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)

According to a September BBC report, police in South Korea are investigating some of the 22,000 complaints made already this year by computer gamers that characters and property that they have acquired in such all-consuming games as "EverQuest" and "Ultima Online" have been stolen by hackers and sold to other gamers to make their own playing more successful. Experts say such theft of "intangibles" should be punishable by law, but the value of the stolen property might be inconsequential, except to those players whose entire lives revolve around a game and for whom the acquisition of a character or property might have involved hundreds of hours of playing.

In September in Pinson, Ala., Joseph Logan, 46, was arrested for assault just after watching Alabama's 34-31 football loss to Arkansas on TV, which Logan took pretty hard. He started ranting, slamming doors, and throwing dishes into the sink, and it was at this point that his son, Seth, 20, chose to ask Dad innocently if he would help him buy a car, at which point Dad grabbed a gun, put Seth in a headlock, and fired a bullet near Seth's ear. Said a sheriff's deputy, "I know we take football serious in the South, but that's crossing the line."

In August, U.S. Customs confiscated an SUV being used to smuggle Mexican immigrants into the country, but later admitted that their thorough search of it had overlooked a 13-year-old girl hiding inside; she was discovered 42 hours later. And in July, Adrian Rodriguez was imprisoned (but released by an appeals court a month later) because Mexican authorities found 33 pounds of marijuana that U.S. Customs had failed to find in a vehicle it had just sold to him at auction. That was the third time recently that someone had bought a vehicle from U.S. Customs that contained overlooked marijuana and for which the purchaser spent at least some time in prison (in one case, one year) before things were straightened out.

-- Former Ball State University student Andrew Bourne, 23, and his parents filed a lawsuit in September against the school and the manufacturer of its aluminum football goal posts. Bourne suffered a broken leg and vertebrae when, during a raucous end-zone celebration after a 2001 victory over the University of Toledo, students pulled down the goal posts, hitting Bourne.

-- John Clayton III was awarded $1.5 million by a jury in Greensboro, N.C., in September based on injuries he suffered as a passenger in a car whose driver had to slam on the brakes to avoid a collision. The car Clayton was a passenger in was a police car; he was being brought to the station on an outstanding arrest warrant when the officer-driver hit the brakes. Clayton claimed the sudden stop caused him "back problems."

-- Kevin Presland was awarded about the equivalent of US$150,000 by a judge in Sydney, Australia, in August because the Hunter Area Health Service psychiatric hospital released him too soon in 1995, after which he killed his brother's fiancee. This was not a lawsuit by the victim's family against the hospital; this was a direct payout to Presland, whose injury was that he was made to suffer temporary prison conditions after his arrest (he was acquitted because of his psychosis), whereas if he had never been released, he would have experienced only psychiatric-hospital conditions.

-- Former Kansas City Royals coach Tom Gamboa filed a lawsuit in September against a fan who attacked him during a September 2002 baseball game in Chicago, and also against the ballpark's (U.S. Cellular Field's) security firm and its concessionaire. (However, several days after the initial attack, Gamboa had told the Associated Press, "The fault is with the two people (the fan and his minor son) who did it. I'm not one who looks to (spread) blame. It's nobody's fault but the two idiots who did it.")

A trailer full of toilet bowls, which accidentally came unhooked and overturned on Interstate 88 near Colesville, N.Y. (June). A trailer full of compressed paper and sex toys (including whips, plastic breasts and blow-up dolls), which spilled onto the northbound M6 highway near Castle Bromwich, England (June). And two tractor-trailers full of honeybees (80 million on Interstate 95 near Titusville, Fla., in April, and another measured at 500 beehives of "thousands of bees each" on Interstate 435 near Claycomo, Mo., in June). (Most of the bees were recovered by using smoke to put them temporarily to sleep.)

In an August story about the driving record of U.S. Rep. Bill Janklow of South Dakota (who had just killed a motorcyclist in a collision), the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reported that Janklow's defense (that he had to swerve to avoid another vehicle) was the same one he had used for each of three previous collisions (one swerve was for an animal, not a vehicle), and that in none of the four instances was there any corroborating evidence of the other vehicle or animal.

News of the Weird reported in December that Inga Kosak had won the first World Extreme Ironing Championship in Munich in September, based on running a course through several stations (e.g., up in trees, in the middle of streams) and ironing a designated garment. An October Wall Street Journal story shows the "sport" as growing in prominence. South African Anton Van De Venter, 27, broke the high-altitude record in August by ironing his national flag at the 20,000-foot summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, while nude, in freezing temperatures (quote: "I came, I saw, I pressed a crease"), and British diver Ian Mitchell sawed through ice in Wisconsin in March and submitted photos of himself in a wet suit "ironing" (with a Black & Decker Quick 'n' Easy) a shirt that was braced against the underside of the ice.

A deep-sea research voyage in June, jointly run by Australia and New Zealand scientists, discovered what The Age newspaper called an 1,800-species "freak show" of bizarre creatures (their condition caused in part by the extreme water pressure, which may be hundreds of times greater than at the surface). Examples include: the fangtooth (teeth, longer than its head, would puncture its brain if not for special tooth sockets); the viperfish (whose head is on a hinge); the coffinfish (with a glowing "sign" on its head to attract prey and the ability to swallow large quantities of water to avoid predators); a squid with one big eye (for offense) and one small one (for defense); and the snotthead, which was not described.

-- A 17-year-old boy, after receiving a free Krispy Kreme doughnut at an Erie, Pa., store promotion, stepped back in line for another but was refused. According to the Erie Times-News, he returned a few minutes later with a McDonald's sack over his head and asked for a doughnut but was again refused. Then he fell to the floor and flailed his arms and legs, demanding another free doughnut, and was cited by police for disorderly conduct.

-- In Edmonton, Alberta, in July, Anthony Alan Burton pleaded guilty to a 2002 robbery that went down this way: He had wrapped his head in gauze, covered his face with silicon putty and rouge (and oversized glasses), grabbed a Samurai sword, walked into a Jehovah's Witnesses hall, and screamed, "I am the evil that you have read about! This is the face of evil!" He was in the middle of collecting cash and credit cards from everyone when the police arrived. (A psychiatrist had testified that Burton had run out of medication several days before.)

The Oklahoma treasurer released a list of unclaimed property that included the refundable $100 utilities deposit paid by accused terrorist conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui when he lived in the state to attend flight school. And a delay on a London underground train was caused when an apprentice driver fainted while listening to his instructor describe vasectomy surgery that had developed complications. And Family Christian Stores, the largest Christian retail goods chain in the U.S., announced it would begin opening on Sundays.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)