News of the Weird

A subculture of hip-hop music has developed recently among computer science professionals, who taunt each other in verse much as mainstream rap artists do, according to a June report on Wired.com. "Geeksta" rappers like Ytcracker and MC Plus+ spin verses such as the latter's "I'm encrypting shit like every single day / sending it across a network in a safe way / protecting messages to make my pay / if you hack me you're guilty under DMCA" (referring to a federal copyright law). Explained another, "Monzy": "(I)nstead of boasting about our bitches, blunts, Benzes or Benjamins, maybe we talk about our math skills or the efficiency of our code." A hip-hop journal editor doubted the genre would endure, though, because so far the major artists are males: "You're going to need some females."

-- Andre Guthrie, 22, faced with a special five-year-minimum sentence under the law because he robbed a Sovereign Bank in Lowell, Mass., "while masked," argued to his sentencing judge in June that he wasn't actually in disguise but merely in his transvestite mode ("Andrea Guthrie"), including wig, false breasts, and a fake nose and facial moles. "This is what he does," said Guthrie's lawyer. "This is who he is."

-- Maureen Faibish, the owner of two pit bulls that attacked and killed Faibish's 12-year-old son in June in San Francisco while he was home alone (after Faibish had ordered him to stay away from the dogs and shut him in a room), denied that she was in any way responsible for little Nicholas' death. "It (was) Nicky's time to go," she told the San Francisco Chronicle. "When you're born, you're destined to go, and this was his time."

-- In April, Florida Highway Patrol officers in Miami-Dade County had set up surveillance, including an airplane, to catch a notorious motorcyclist who at least twice before had sped past officers, at speeds up to 140 mph, and escaped. On April 24, he blew by again, going the wrong way in rush-hour traffic, but with the help of the plane, officers tracked him to his apartment and arrested him on six counts. The motorcyclist turned out to be David Carpenter, 24, who was at that time on track to become a Florida Highway Patrol officer, with his physical exam only a week away. (He was advised to forget about the new career.)

-- In February, a Judicial Conduct Board in Pittsburgh filed charges against District Judge Ernest Marraccini, who apparently was upset one day at having to sit as a substitute traffic judge. ("Well, I'm not spending the day here," he allegedly said in court.) To the 30 people waiting to appeal their tickets, Marraccini reportedly said, "Well, then, let's just find everybody not guilty!" When the stunned appellants didn't immediately react, Marraccini said, "I told you you're all not guilty. ... What are you, a bunch of morons?"

-- It Must Not Be Difficult to Fly Cessnas: In a widely reported incident in June, an apparently intoxicated 20-year-old man with seven hours' student flying time stole a single-engine plane in Danbury, Conn., and joyrode for three hours before landing in White Plains, N.Y. However, a week before that, a 14-year-old boy, who, according to police, had never flown before, stole a Cessna in Fort Payne, Ala., took it up for about 30 minutes, and touched down and took off again, before landing hard on a road (but suffered only cuts and bruises).

-- Two Middle-Eastern Women's Need for Speed: (1) A 27-year-old Saudi woman, Hanadi Zakaria al-Hindi (whose countrywomen are not permitted to drive cars), was granted a commercial pilot's license in June after flight training in Jordan and returned home to fly for Saudi Prince al-Walid bin Talal's company. (2) Ms. Laleh Seddigh, 28, won Iran's national championship car race in March after becoming the first woman allowed to compete against men in any sport since Iran's Islamic Revolution. (In the winner's circle, Ms. Seddigh put on a scarf and draped a cape over her tight-fitting uniform.)

-- The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's lab in Vista, Calif., reported in April that it had received for testing 17 600-gram bricks of what it determined to be cocaine, but that on closer inspection, only the outsides of the bricks were of cocaine. Inside each brick was 500 grams of heroin. Officials guessed that the ruse was to fool transporters, who typically charge more to ship heroin than cocaine.

According to an Associated Press report, Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick told a middle-school class he was visiting in April that the U.S. Congress is different from the Texas legislature, in that in Washington there are "454" members on the House side and "60" in the Senate. (The real numbers are 435 and 100.) And The Kansas City Star, reporting in May on a Missouri legislative debate on the Confederate flag, quoted Rep. Jim Avery as stating that the 1803 Louisiana Purchase involved a fight with France over the territory: "Well, we fought over it. We fought over it, right? You don't think there were any lives lost in that? It was a friendly thing?" (It appears well-settled in history that the Louisiana Purchase was just a land deal.)

According to police in Shreveport, La., in June, Jared Gipson, 24, had entered Blalock's Beauty College looking to rob the place but left (according to a Shreveport Times reporter) "crying, bleeding and under arrest" after the 20 students and teachers (almost all women) wrestled him down and attacked him with curling irons, chairs and a table leg, as well as their fists. Manager Dianne Mitchell had led the charge, tripping Gipson as he headed out the door, then yelling "Get that sucker!"

Gary Moody, 45, was arrested after being pulled by police from a tank underneath a women's outhouse in a park near Albany, N.H., in June. A teenage girl had reported that when she went to use the facility, she saw Moody, standing in the muck below the hole, staring up at her. News of the Weird has reported on others discovered in similar circumstances (and who typically wear raincoats and waders and stand patiently, waiting for a user): in Horsetooth National Park in Colorado in 1998; near Peterborough, Ontario, in 1995; at a state park near Hamden, Conn., in 1990; and near Durango, Colo., in 1990. According to Moody's arrest report, his explanation (which is a familiar one for these situations) was that he accidentally "dropped" a "ring" into the toilet and had to go looking for it.

Lawrence Brown, 91, was arrested in June after an armed standoff with police, who said he was operating a drug market out of his home in order to, according to one officer, "supplement his Social Security income" (Chicago). Dorothy Densmore, 86, was arrested in May for having called 911 20 times in a 40-minute period to complain of poor pizza-service delivery and then biting the officer who came to question her (Charlotte, N.C.). Vera Tursi, 80, who uses an oxygen tank and a walker, was nonetheless arrested in June and charged with running a prostitution service out of her apartment in a low-income project (Lindenwold, N.J.).

A 21-year-old student at University of Tennessee-Chattanooga died after pulling her car into a garage and closing the door behind her but leaving the engine running while continuing a long cell phone call (February). A 54-year-old man in the Tokyo suburb of Musashimurayama became the latest person to be killed by a suicide jumper's inadvertently landing on him (December).

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

The Jordan River, considered by believers to have been the gateway to the Garden of Eden (and by Christians to have been where Jesus was baptized), is now more than 50 percent raw sewage and agricultural runoff, according to a Middle East conservation group spokesman interviewed by Reuters in June. Together, Israel, Jordan and Syria have diverted away from the river (and then treated) about 90 percent of the water flow over the years for their own uses, though part of Jordan's diversion was to create a clean-water baptismal site for pilgrims (some of whom, nonetheless, still bathe in the greenish, polluted part).

-- In an early-morning shootout on June 4 in the Homewood housing complex in Pittsburgh, two undercover officers and suspect Keith Carter, 19, exchanged a total of at least 103 gunshots and missed every single time. (On the other hand, in March, Regina Jones-Peoples, 30, of Warren, Ohio, survived 18 gunshots, from her neck to her legs, allegedly by her estranged husband, Marcus Jones, 29, on whom police issued an arrest warrant.)

-- In the course of a traffic stop on Interstate 70 in Kingdom City, Mo., in June, Missouri Highway Patrol officers found a 3-foot-long rocket with an electric launcher, attached to an elaborate system of pulleys in the trunk of the car of two men, Michael Ray Sullivan, 41, and Joseph C. Seidl, 39. The rocket, which could probably be triggered from the driver's seat, was found stuffed with methamphetamine, with more (totaling about $145,000 worth) in pipes alongside. The patrolmen who arrested the pair believe the contraption was for quick disposal of their inventory if they got cornered.

-- Ireland's justice ministry proposed rules changes for its prison system in June, banning such "inhumane" treatments as restricted diets and corporal punishment. On the other hand, among the current practices that would soon be prohibited are inmates' bringing in their own furniture, hiring maids, and ordering food and alcoholic beverages, according to a dispatch from Dublin published in The Australian.

-- Officials in Montgomery County, Md., regard the feathery green plant called the mugwort as a weed, an "alien invasive plant," and periodically lament its presence in the county's parks, according to a June Washington Post report. However, local Koreans, who call the plant "souk," consider it a delicacy in seafood soup and rice cakes, and have eagerly been digging it out of the parks for free, except that it is illegal to remove anything, even weeds, from the parks. Consequently, according to the Post, county officials have simultaneously undertaken (a) a pilot program to see if goats could be trained to root out unwanted flora and (b) a stepped-up program to convince the Koreans to obey the law against removing mugwort.

-- In May, Councilman Manfred Juraczka in Vienna, Austria, proposed, in order to alleviate the city's growing problem with pet droppings, to collect DNA samples from all registered dogs so that the soilers can be identified and their owners fined. According to an Associated Press report, a similar proposal was made in Dresden, Germany, in March, and News of the Weird reported another, in 1996, in the English village of Bruntingthorpe, which at the time had a population of 200 people and 30 dogs. (Vienna has about 50,000 registered dogs.)

(1) The support group for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in Nelson, New Zealand, announced that it would support in principle the illness-publicizing International Awareness Day on May 12 even though its members would probably not participate in the commemorative activities because they are often too tired for such things. (2) The Rotary Club of Chatham, New Brunswick, announced in May that the grand prize in its raffle to help build a new environmental awareness center would be a Hummer. (3) Federal agents who were interviewing Gerald T. Williams, 34, about possible child pornography at his home in St. Louis, said that in the course of the interview, a screen saver featuring child-sex images happened to appear on Williams's computer. (Williams pleaded guilty in June.)

Juan M. Puliddo-Castaneda, 24, was arrested just as he was preparing to play a round at the Anchorage (Alaska) Golf Course on June 11. Police said he had just moments before caused a two-car collision that sent five people to the hospital (but not Puliddo-Castaneda, who walked away). Puliddo-Castaneda's passengers said he was speeding because he said he had to make his tee time. And, in June, describing the moments immediately after a serious auto collision the month before on Interstate 4 near Plant City, Fla., victim Tracy Palmer (ankle shattered, lip impaled on her teeth, according to a Tampa Tribune story) said she could hear tires rolling inches from her head as other motorists crept through the four-car wreck in order to be on their way. "People were actually driving between us (victims)," she said.

-- An 82-year-old man who had locked himself out of his still-running car in Glen Burnie, Md., in June, was hospitalized with first- and second-degree burns after attempting to siphon gasoline from the car using an electric vacuum cleaner (a spark from which ignited gasoline vapors). He told police that he wanted to force the engine to stop by removing the rest of the gasoline.

-- In June, community leaders in a largely gay neighborhood in Toronto unveiled a 13-foot-high statue of Alexander Wood, one of their historical heroes, who according to legend had been pressured out of town in the early 1800s over a sex scandal. As the story goes, magistrate Wood, investigating a heterosexual rape in which the victim claimed to have scratched her attacker's genitals, rounded up numerous suspects and zealously examined each for such a scratch. Hence, the statue features a 5-foot-tall image of Wood, seated, "inspecting" a standing man with his trousers down.

A Springfield, Ill., lawyer was unsuccessful in his petition to the judge to have his client tried for DUI-reckless homicide under a false name (in that the jury just could not be fair if it knew her real name, which is Doris Lush, and in fact, she was convicted) (May). Another woman who might have a similar problem: Denise Coke, 25, charged with possession of 33 pounds of cocaine (Roseville, Mich., May). Not so troubled: Mr. Emmanuel Innocent, charged with attempted murder in a bar fight (Ottawa, Ontario, May).

"Fool for a client" Timothy Daniel, 25, who had fired his lawyer and defended himself on a murder charge in Columbus, Ohio, was found not guilty by a jury in May (though the judge sentenced him to five years in prison for being a felon in possession of a gun). (News of the Weird reported in 2003 that Jonathan Harris, representing himself, not only beat a murder rap in Philadelphia, but also prevailed as his own counsel in two felony trials, and then taunted the prosecutor for threatening to bring additional charges.)

(1) In the course of accusing her estranged boyfriend of killing her miniature collie in New York City in March, according to the New York Post, a woman said the man was fond of having the dog watch while the couple had sex. (2) In the course of investigating sex-crime charges against former Citrus County, Fla., judge Gary Graham, investigators said a former girlfriend reported that Graham was fond of having her dress as a little girl, with hair in pigtails and freckles painted on her face, according to a May Tampa Tribune story.

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

Willie Windsor, 54, of Phoenix has for several years lived as a full-time baby, wearing frilly dresses, diapers and bonnets, sucking on a pacifier, eating Gerber cuisine, and habitually clutching a rag doll, in a home filled with oversized baby furniture. According to a long Phoenix New Times profile in June, the diaper is not just a prop. Windsor said he worked hard to become incontinent, even chaining the commode shut to avoid temptation, and the reporter admitted feeling "disconcert(ed)" that Windsor might be relieving himself at the very moment he was describing his un-toilet training. Apparently, Windsor's brother, ex-wife, girlfriend and a neighbor tolerate his lifestyle (though no girlfriend has yet been willing to change his diapers). Windsor is a semi-retired singer-actor and said he's been celibate for nine years.

-- After a passer-by found two kids (ages 12 and 6) dragging suitcases along a rural road near Marshfield, Mo., in June, prosecutors charged their mother, Roxanna Osborne, and her boyfriend, Timmy Young, with child abandonment. The kids said their mother had awakened them, given them $5 each, and told them to pack up and leave. The kids told police that the two adults are drug-users.

-- In June, prosecutors in Porter County, Ind., were deciding whether to file charges against the parents of a 17-year-old boy after, according to police, they had beat him up because he had refused to let his sister and her friends borrow his underwear when their own clothes got wet while they were swimming. After initially rebuffing his sister, the boy had moved all his undergarments to his grandparents' house for safekeeping, but a confrontation with his parents ensued.

-- Brian F. Monfort, 27, was arrested in Springfield, Ohio, in April and charged with child enticement based on an arrest report noting that twice, in January and March, he had approached children and paid them money (up to $40) to insult him for being fat, supposedly as a tactic to inspire himself to lose weight.

-- In 1999, Orange County (Calif.) Sheriff Michael Carona and his former chief assistant Donald Haidl deputized 86 untrained civilians, at least half of whom were their friends or family or political contributors, giving them badges and in some cases gun permits and limited arrest powers, according to a May 2005 Los Angeles Times report. Some of the 86 volunteers are still "on duty," and the sheriff did not begin to dismiss some "deputies" until a state law enforcement organization continued to complain that the deputies were not qualified for police work under state law.

-- While virtually every town along the nearly 20 miles of the Long Beach Island, N.J., seashore has signs warning beachgoers of the dangers of rip tides (according to a June Asbury Park Press story), Long Beach Township does not. Even though experts say that most summer visitors are ignorant of the powerful currents and how to cope with them, Township Attorney Richard Shackleton said posting such helpful warnings may hurt local taxpayers. Shackleton explained that a town generally has no legal duty to warn swimmers of natural conditions, but that once a town attempts to warn, judges and juries will too often find the warnings inadequate and permit a swimmer (or his survivors) huge damages.

-- Newsweek named Hillsborough High of Tampa, Fla., the 10th "best" high school in America in May, but as the St. Petersburg Times pointed out the next day, the school got a "D" grade from the state in the most recent evaluation (based mostly on its failure to improve the progress of struggling students), as well as a substandard federal evaluation (based on such criteria as whether low-income and minority students improve). Newsweek's sole criterion for "best" is what percentage of students volunteers to take Advanced Placement exams.

Justin Breakspear, 18, was arrested in Framingham, Mass., in May and charged with illegal possession of three firearms, one of which was a .380-caliber pistol; police said it was unlikely Breakspear would claim the pistol is not his, in that on his hip is a tattoo of an exact replica of the gun. And in Glens Falls, N.Y., in May, Jason McClaskey, 25, on house arrest, was admitted to a hospital in Valhalla, N.Y., with burns over 60 percent of his body; police said McClaskey might have tried to burn the monitoring device off of his leg (though McClaskey said he was merely lighting his grill, even though it was 6 a.m., and there was no charcoal on the grill).

In May, retired obstetrician Parviz "Peter" Modaber, 73, was ordered by a judge to stay out of Clarke County, Va., following his fourth conviction for taking bags of garbage from his home near Charles Town, W.Va., and dumping them along a highway in Clarke County, though court records described by The Washington Post indicated that Modaber had done it many more than four times. Modaber's attorney said the doctor held an intense grudge against the state for having suspended his license during the 1980s and that bucolic Clarke County just happened to be near his home. Modaber had been sentenced three times to a total of 540 hours of picking up litter, but a vigilant citizen caught him dumping again less than six months after the third conviction.

Goat-hoarding continues as an occasional obsession, with a woman in Saarburg, Germany, evicted in June for sharing her home with 43 goats, and a man in Aiken, S.C., charged with animal cruelty in May for cohabiting for seven years with 200 goats in a house whose walls were gnawed away and which contained 3-foot-high hay stacks saturated with manure and urine. And in June, Kentucky officials selected, as the test site for its terror-emergency procedures, the state's goat show in Erlanger. Said a state Homeland Security official, "We try to focus on what really matters to Kentucky."

In June, 13 Cuban refugees in a boat fashioned from a 1949 Mercury taxicab were intercepted by U.S. authorities about 20 miles from their destination of Key West, Fla. Based on current policy, the 13 will probably be returned to Cuba. However, in March, Cuban Luis Grass, and his wife and 5-year-old son, part of groups that had been turned back in two pontooned-car attempts, in 2003 (1951 Chevy truck) and 2004 (1959 Buick), sneaked across the U.S. border in Brownsville, Texas. Since they actually made it to American soil this time, they will probably be allowed to remain.

A sheriff's spokesman in Gastonia, N.C., said a local police officer, summoned to a hit-and-run scene, accidentally ran over the victim (though investigators later concluded that he was already dead) (June). In Fort Worth, Texas, an intoxicated woman involved in a collision got out of her car to investigate and was killed when a beer truck accidentally rammed one of the cars into her (and the truck driver, too, was found to be intoxicated) (January). In Brownsville, Texas, a 29-year-old man working at a silo accidentally fell in, quickly sank into the 20-foot pile of grain, and suffocated (April).

In May, Canada Post notified Christine Charbonneau in Orleans, Ontario, that its letter carriers would probably stop delivering directly to her house because its steps were each 30 cm high (about 12 inches), and regulations require Canada Post to climb steps no more than 20 cm high. Charbonneau said no one else has complained about the steps in the 17 years she has been there, including her now-77-year-old mother-in-law (who takes oxygen through a tube in her nose).

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