News of the Weird

Dutch artist Iepe created the sport of chess boxing, which began in earnest in Amsterdam in November with several matches of six four-minute chess rounds alternating with five two-minute boxing rounds, with victory coming by knockout, checkmate or, if the match goes the distance, judges' scoring of rounds. Both the Dutch Chess Federation (KNSB) and the Dutch Boxing Federation (NBB) have endorsed the sport, and cards of matches have been scheduled for Berlin and Moscow.

"Mentally Disabled Taught How to Vote" (a Mainichi Daily News report on how employees at a nursing home in Yokkaiichi, Japan, have for years instructed residents how to print out names of their favorite candidates on ballots) (November). "Woman Gets Probation for Chasing Kids With Dildo" (a Pottstown, Pa., Mercury report about Linda Schultz, 36, engaging in inexplicable conduct in front of three small children and being referred for psychological counseling) (October).

-- In October, San Francisco artist Jonathon Keats, 32, registered his brain as a sculpture and began selling futures contracts on its 6 billion neurons, offering buyers the rights to any creative products it might produce if science learns how to keep it alive after his death. He also wrote a prospectus for investors, with MRI scans showing the idea-fertility of various brain areas. For now, he is selling inexpensive options ($10) to buy a million neurons for $10,000 when he dies; he sold 71 the first day.

-- California Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante (runner-up to Arnold Schwarzenegger in the October recall election) is not the family's only public figure. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported in September, his sister Nao Bustamante, 39, is a prominent performance artist whose work includes (1) wearing a strap-on burrito for men to kneel before and bite in order to absolve themselves of "500 years of white man's guilt" and (2) sticking her head into a plastic bag filled with water and tying it around her neck to resemble a Houdini stunt, to create "an urgent situation to respond to."

-- According to an October Boston Globe profile, New Bedford, Mass., city council candidate Raimundo Delgado is a charismatic politician despite his freely disclosed bipolar disorder, which has resulted twice in his involuntary hospitalization during the campaign. Among his proposals: to create a "city underwater"; to "free the dogs, the sheep, the goats"; to grow a tropical forest in place of local Route 18; and to give $10,000 raises to numerous city employees that he has met. He lost the council election and an earlier mayoral election, though he did outpoll an opponent with schizophrenia.

-- Norway Is Different: Lena Skarning, 33, who calls herself a witch, won a government startup grant of the equivalent of US$7,400 for her Oslo-based Forest Witch Magic Consulting business (but conditioned on her refraining from casting evil spells). Said the modest Skarning in October, "I'm (just) an ordinary witch who came up with an original business idea." And in November, a Norwegian court ordered the government to buy a 22-year-old, 4-foot-2 man a car because of his severe anxiety about riding public transportation due to his size, which has made him the subject of taunts ever since he was a child.

-- George Duncan was finally fired by the New York Department of Corrections in November, after having taken 744 "sick" days in 15 years (for spikes of high blood pressure), none of which were ever authenticated by doctors examining Duncan afterward. And a week before that, the city of Vicksburg, Miss., took a step to alleviate its own problem with employees' illnesses: Henceforth, city workers will be expected to give 48 hours' notice before taking sick days.

-- In a November report, The New York Times revealed that the highly touted Houston school district (praised as exemplary by President Bush and the district's former superintendent Rod Paige, who is now U.S. secretary of education) used apparently highly stylized statistics to show its widely admired low dropout rates and campus crime rates. A subsequent school district audit found that "thousands" of dropouts had been left out of the earlier record, and the Times further found that the district's principals had reported only 761 campus assaults in four years while the schools' own police officers reported 3,091.

-- In a September story, the local Spokesman Review reported that putting a stop sign at the Spokane, Wash., junction of Havana Street and Eighth Avenue is tricky because the intersection is subject to the jurisdiction of three different entities. West of the center line of Havana is regulated by the city of Spokane, and east of it by Spokane County, and to stop Eighth Avenue traffic heading west, permission is also needed from incorporated Spokane Valley, which controls land up to the edge of Eighth Avenue. Said resident Ed Weilep, "You get a real thrill going through that intersection."

News of the Weird reported in 2001 that Dr. Stuart Meloy had inadvertently discovered a side effect of an electrical implant whose purpose is to block spinal pain: It taps into the nerve that produces orgasms in women. By November 2003, Meloy had Food and Drug Administration approval for clinical tests of this "side effect," but said, surprisingly, he was having trouble attracting volunteers at his clinic in Winston-Salem, N.C. He said the only volunteer to that point had had a terrific experience, but that at least eight more women were needed.

A 14-year-old boy has made nearly a full recovery after a pal accidentally slung a steel rebar rod at his face; it penetrated 6 inches, between his nose and lip, knocking out two teeth and piercing his tongue (Spokane, Wash., September). And a man miraculously survived an accidental fall from a ladder onto an 18-inch-long auger bit firmly locked into his drill, penetrating his right eye, nudging his brain, and exiting above his ear (Truckee, Calif., August).

(1) Sheriff John Maspero (Williamson County, Texas) said he would run for re-election in March 2004 despite being stopped in November by Georgetown, Texas, police for being drunk in public; in a previous drinking binge, according to the county attorney, Maspero was spotted crawling on all fours like a dog, barking and biting. (2) And recent research in an American Sociological Association publication, citing high crime rates, laws against felons voting, and felons' political preferences, concluded that if all felons could vote, Al Gore would have won Florida by 30,000 votes in 2000.

Brian Lawrence, 38, died of a heart attack five days before he was due in court to answer the charge that he and his girlfriend had had sex in New York City's St. Patrick's Cathedral in August 2002 as part of a radio station's stunt (September). And eight people on a 16-day sightseeing tour sponsored by their First Baptist Church of Eldorado, Texas, were killed when their bus slammed into a tractor-trailer (Tallulah, La., October). And at least 39 Hindu pilgrims were killed in a stampede of crowds while waiting to ritually bathe their sins away in the holy Godavari River in western India (August).

A TV station reported that a state historical fund gave $210,000 to a landlord to renovate a building whose only tenant happens to be a sex club for gay men (Denver). A 41-year-old California mayor who was cited for having illegally tinted car windows filed a complaint against the ticketing officer for continually referring to him as "dude" (Arvin, Calif.). Three 19-year-olds, who said they were bored, allegedly hacked into an Internet auction account and bought $160 million worth of goods (including industrial machinery and airplanes) in a two-hour period (Limburg, Germany).

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

Municipal employee George Pavlovsky stalked through his shop in April, drunk, carrying a loaded, sawed-off shotgun (sending colleagues fleeing in fear), and looking for the two supervisors who had recently passed him up for promotion. As a result, he was fired by the city (Moncton, New Brunswick) and went to jail in November, but he said through his union (Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 51) that he wants his job back when he gets out, and the union has filed a wrongful-firing grievance on his behalf. Several of his colleagues are still on stress leave from witnessing the incident.

Prof. Trevor Cox (University of Salford in England) and fellow acoustics researchers concluded that, contrary to prevailing wisdom, a duck's quack does have an echo (September). And biologist Nette Levermann (Copenhagen's Zoological Museum), whose team monitored 100 walruses near Greenland, concluded that the animals use their right flippers more than their left (October). And an aerodynamics expert at Britain's Open University, aided by an Oxford engineering student, designed and machine-tested a beer coaster to produce the ideal model and conditions for winning at the British pub game of coaster-flipping (November).

-- According to the arresting officer, Devikia Donise Garnett, 20, was calm when he stopped her for speeding in Hampton, Va., in November. However, after accepting the ticket, she quickly developed second thoughts and lit out after the officer, slamming her car into the back of his cruiser, then stopping and accelerating again, smacking the car three more times. After the officer avoided her fifth pass, Garnett spun around and headed straight for him, but he managed to pin her car before it struck his.

-- After Norm and Darlene Scott's Montana farm burned in 1996, they collected $75,000 from Mountain West Farm Bureau insurance but weren't satisfied and demanded more, finally getting another $52,500 in 1999. However, they wanted still more money and sued the company, claiming it was dealing with them in bad faith. In November 2003, a jury in Helena not only rejected the claim for more money but found that it was the Scotts who had started the fire (a finding that probably never would have been made had the Scotts quietly accepted the first $127,500). (The statute of limitations prevents criminal charges against them, but the insurance company will sue to get its money back.)

-- Toni Lynn Lycan, 44, in a shouting war with a downstairs neighbor over his loud music, stomped up and down on the floor, eventually breaking both her legs about four inches below the knee (Vancouver, Wash., October). And deer hunter Jeffrey Souza slipped while building his tree stand and, dangling by his feet, broke both ankles (Lakeville, Mass., November).

-- In September, Rouse Co., a developer and landlord of shopping malls, acknowledged that it had somehow forgotten to renew the lease on its own headquarters in Columbia, Md., a blunder that will probably more than double its rent, perhaps costing as much as $11 million.

-- In October, imprisoned child molester Kevin Kinder, 31, scheduled for a routine court hearing, was temporarily placed in a holding cell in Tampa, Fla., with 60 other prisoners, among them a 22-year-old man who immediately recognized Kinder as the man who had molested him when he was 11. The man started punching Kinder and knocked out a tooth before he was restrained.

-- Recently Arrested on Sex Charges: The vice chairman of a Louisville, Ky., anti-pornography group (for patronizing a prostitute, November); a retired New Jersey Superior Court judge whose job was to administer Megan's Law for Camden County (for possession of child pornography, August); and a politically conservative Richmond, Texas, radio-show host who is regularly critical of lax moral standards (for indecent exposure to a child, November).

Once again in October, panic spread through some African cities about black-magic men who could, with a mere touch, make penises shrink or disappear. In alleged incidents in Khartoum, Sudan, and Banjul, Gambia, these sorcerers would shake men's hands and then extort money in exchange for removing the evil spirits they had just incited. As word spread and fears heightened, vigilantes would chase down the suspected sorcerers and beat them up or kill them. (Academics who study this folklore refer to the communities' hysteria as "genital retraction syndrome.")

James Perry, with four DUI arrests in Florida, feared rejection if he tried to get a driver's license in his new home state of Connecticut and so pretended to be Robert Kowalski (the name of his neighbor in Florida), but a routine computer check revealed "Robert Kowalski" to be a Michigan sex offender, unregistered in Connecticut (Clinton, Conn., September). And Mr. Chance Copp, 15, who was on probation for arson and who feared testing positive for marijuana, submitted the urine of a relative, instead, only to find out later that that urine tested positive for cocaine (Chillicothe, Ohio, November).

The city of Bartow, Fla., amid complaints about stray chickens, repealed a 1922 ordinance that made it illegal to kill, capture or "annoy" birds (August). And the 10th annual cockroach races (and "tractor"-pull) were held at the Indiana State Fair in August, with separate events for American roaches (on an oval track) and the stronger Madagascar hissing cockroaches (on a straightaway). And among the less-publicized charges against the Russian oil giant Yukos (whose chairman, Russia's richest man, was arrested in October) was that a farm it owns in Siberia was illegally allowing rabbits to mate "unsystematically."

About 40 percent of U.S. elementary schools have eliminated recess over the last 20 years (according to a September story in New Times Broward-Palm Beach, Fla.), so that schools could squeeze in more classroom time. In addition to the problem of overweight students, Florida school psychologist Marvin Silverman referred to children's "chemical need" for recess, pointing out that even psychiatric institutions give recess to help with "mood and movement." A complicating factor is that in some schools, playground equipment has already been removed because of safety concerns and fear of lawsuits.

Prominent author and filmmaker Timothy Treadwell, much of whose work was devoted to his love of brown bears and a campaign to make people more tolerant of them, was killed and partially eaten by bears in October near Kaflia Bay, in southern Alaska. Treadwell carried no weapons in the wild, and according to friends, was unmoved by brown bears' ferocity. He told one friend, "I would be honored to end up in bear scat."

"Thousands" rioted in Sierra Leone when a prominent pair of Nigerian dwarf comedians no-showed a performance and promoters tried to substitute two local dwarfs (Freetown, Sierra Leone). A brother and sister who had thrown away a winning, $10.5 million Illinois Lotto ticket recovered it, only because their garbage had remained uncollected due to a nine-day sanitation workers' strike (Chicago). And Dog-Plus K-9 Water went on sale in Australia (for about US$2.10) in flavors like "bacon and beef" because, said the inventor, "dogs get bored with plain water."

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

Enraged that his computer was virtually disabled by e-mail spam earlier this year, Charles Booher, 44, of Sunnyvale, Calif., allegedly repeatedly threatened employees of the spammer with torture (castration with a power drill and an ice pick) and murder (using a gun and anthrax spores). He was arrested in November and admitted to the Reuters news agency that he had "sort of lost (his) cool" at the bombardment of penis-lengthening ads from DM Contact Management. DM's president blamed a rival company for stealing DM's e-mail address and said such companies give a bad name to the penis-enlargement business.

(1) "Patrol Car Hit by Flying Outhouse" (an October Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story about Wisconsin trooper Rich Vanko's squad car being smashed when a truck carrying portable toilets lost one along Interstate 90); (2) "Shatner Frozen Horse-Semen Suit Dismissed" (a July Lexington, Ky., Herald-Leader story about William Shatner's ex-wife's accusation that she was being denied divorce-settlement-mandated access to a breeding stallion for her own farm).

Prof. Jeff Meldrum of Idaho State University said recently that, hoaxes aside, there is enough legitimate evidence of Bigfoot to warrant a comprehensive scientific investigation of his existence, once and for all. (National Geographic reported in October that a Texas fingerprint expert, as well as noted chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall, have said they are certain of Bigfoot's existence.) And Provo, Utah, explorer Steve Currey is organizing a July 2005 expedition to the North Pole (cost: $21,000 per person) to find the so-called polar "opening" to the hollow center of the Earth, supposedly the kingdom of God where the biblical 10 Lost Tribes reside.

-- A scheduled guest on the Dr. Phil TV program filed a lawsuit in November, claiming it was the show's producers' fault that she had an anxiety attack in her quarters right before the show and tried to climb out a second-story window. She fell and shattered her leg so badly that it had to be amputated. And "Wheel of Fortune" contestant Will Wright, 38, filed a lawsuit in October against Pat Sajak for hurting Wright's back by jumping onto and bear-hugging him to celebrate Wright's having just won $48,000 during a 2000 show.

-- Gary Moses and Rannon Fletcher, both 17-year-old inmates at the Iberia Parish (La.) jail, filed separate lawsuits in October against jail officials, for $1.5 million and $650,000, respectively, because they were allowed to buy cigarettes at the commissary even though they are underage.

-- Former Australian inmate Craig Ballard won a settlement of his lawsuit in September for the equivalent of about US$70,000 against the Grafton Correctional Centre in New South Wales for head injuries that occurred when he fell out of a bunk bed. Ballard was in prison for a vicious assault against a woman.

-- Fear of Lawyers: The Dollywood amusement park in Tennessee announced the end of free passes for the blind and the crippled after someone complained of discrimination against people with other disabilities, who still had to pay (October). And the town of Mosgiel, New Zealand, barred children from sitting on Santa's knee this year because of the risk of future molestation complaints. And the Royal British Legion announced it will no longer give out poppy pins to donors on Remembrance Day (for military veterans) because of fear that people might stick themselves and sue. (November).

In November, District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Susan Winfield ordered no jail time (just drug treatment and probation) to a 25-year-old man who has 33 burglary arrests and seven convictions, including a gun count, plus previous failed probations and failed drug rehabs. And in Melfort, Saskatchewan, Dean Edmondson, 26, a white man, was sentenced to only house arrest in September after a conviction for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old aboriginal girl, whom Justice Fred Kovach found was perhaps "the aggressor."

In August, residents learned that the county librarian in Concrete, Wash., offered her spare-time services as the S&M dominatrix Lady Jane Grey in nearby Bellingham. Despite her credentials and passion as a librarian, her contract was not renewed in November. And in August, Shannon Williams, 37, a teacher for the Berkeley (Calif.) Unified School District, was arrested for misdemeanor prostitution. Williams, who was previously scheduled to be on a leave of absence this school year, said in September she would challenge the prostitution law as unconstitutional.

Just as the towns of Kennesaw, Ga., and Virgin, Utah, had done, the 50-home village of Geuda Springs, Kan., through its town council, voted in November to require every household to own a working firearm, for "emergency management." (Later, the mayor vetoed the ordinance, but it will be reconsidered in February.) And for the second time in 12 months, news broke in November that a python had crushed and swallowed a human. (Unlike the devouring of a small boy in Lamontville, South Africa, in 2002, the body of 38-year-old Basanti Tripura, of the Rangaman district in Bangladesh, was downed only to the waist before villagers killed the snake.)

Officials in Lakeville, Ind., weren't certain, but it appeared that a cause of a fatal Oct. 10 car crash on U.S. 31 might have been that Dale Brenon, 50 (a private detective who survived in critical condition), was working on his laptop computer while driving. (The driver of the other car was killed.) A police spokesman said the computer was thrown clear of the collision but was turned on, and a program was running.

In October, former Massachusetts day-care center proprietor Gerald Amirault, who is believed to be the last person still imprisoned on the basis of now widely discredited, fantastical, heavily coached, child-sex-abuse testimony from the 1980s, finally won parole and will be freed in April. Officials have long refused to cut him slack because of his defiant, 18-year insistence that he never molested a single child. He noted that his sociology textbook for an in-prison college course mentioned his own case as an example of that era's hysteria-driven prosecutions of accused child molesters.

As part of a hazing ritual for a new Ku Klux Klan member near Johnson City, Tenn., in November, several Klansmen would shoot the man with paintball guns while another simultaneously rapid-fired a 9mm pistol overhead to make the pledge believe he was being shot with a real gun. According to police, one of the bullets, fired straight up in the air by Klansman Gregory Allen Freeman, 45, came down through the skull of Klansman Jeffery S. Murr, 24, who was hospitalized in critical condition. Freeman was arrested.

A 19-year-old intoxicated backseat passenger was convicted of drunken driving because he reached to adjust a stereo control and accidentally bumped the idling car's gearshift into "drive" (with a police officer watching nearby) (Tinn, Norway). An 18-year-old woman, wielding a putty knife, allegedly robbed a neighbor during the time she was awaiting trial for robbing a convenience store wielding an ice-cream scoop (Harrisburg, Pa.). Jeweler H. Stern introduced luxury Brazilian flip-flops adorned with diamonds and gold, at about the equivalent of US$22,000 (Sao Paulo).

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