News of the Weird

Fire officials in Warrnambool, Australia, continue to investigate a Sept. 15 incident in which the carpet of a downtown business burned in several spots, following loud crackling noises, as Frank Clewer, 58, walked on it wearing woolen and nylon clothes. Fire official Henry Barton said the garments tested to over 30,000 volts of static electricity, and a lecturer in electrical engineering at Sydney University said that, given the weather and indoor temperature, such a buildup was possible, especially if the carpet had been cleaned with flammable substances. Pieces of the carpet, with coin-sized scorches, were sent to the university for further examination.

-- Debra Field was convicted of violating the Hobart, Ind., nuisance ordinance in July by keeping two 300-pound hogs as pets, after neighbors complained of the smell produced by the pigs' estimated 35 pounds of waste per day. Fields had testified, apparently seriously, that she personally couldn't smell her pigs at all.

-- Two former girlfriends of married New York City endocrinologist Khaled Zeitoun have sued him recently, according to a September New York Post story, claiming that they had been tricked for years by his lies. Tiffany Wang said that Dr. Zeitoun had (1) told her on their first date that they had been married in a previous life, that he regretted mistreating her, and that he had been searching for her in this lifetime to make amends; (2) told her that the devil had taken his soul 14 years earlier, that to get it back he had to agree never to marry, and that Wang was the first woman to make him regret the deal; and (3) that when he actually popped the question to Wang in May 2002, he never intended to marry her but wanted merely "to see the look of joy on her face."

-- The Appellate Court of Illinois ruled in July that the family of Detroy Marshall Sr. could proceed with its lawsuit against Burger King for Marshall's wrongful death caused when a car jumped the curb and crashed into a BK whose building was protected by a brick wall that the restaurant had built only a few feet from the ground instead of higher up. The trial court had dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that Burger Kings can't be expected to build fortresses against recklessly driven, airborne cars.

-- The state of California agreed in August to pay $10 million to the family of Marisol Morales, who accidentally drove her truck off of guardrail-less Highway 138, through a fence, and into the California Aqueduct near Los Angeles in 2003, killing her and two of her children. A surviving child will need $7.5 million for medical care, but $2.5 million will go to husband Raul Morales, an unlicensed driver who had originated the fatal trip by dispatching his wife, also unlicensed and just learning to drive, on an errand.

-- In August, a jury found Virginia death-row inmate Daryl Atkins mentally competent, based on a recent IQ score of 76 (thus beating the "70" standard, below which under state law he could not be executed). Prosecutors said two previous scores below 70 were deceptively low because of Atkins' drug and alcohol use, but legal experts hypothesized that Atkins' IQ had actually improved in recent years via the intellectual stimulation of discussing his case with lawyers.

-- (1) Lawyer Curtis Holmes, who had just delivered the opening statement in defense of an alleged child sex abuser in a Pocatello, Idaho, courtroom in August, was, minutes later, suspended by the state bar association for a previous case, in which he arranged to take nude photos of a client in exchange for reducing her bill. (2) Former L'Oreal executive Elysa Yanowitz won a preliminary round in her lawsuit against the company, which had fired her, she said, because she had refused to dismiss a dark-haired subordinate whom her blonde-preferring boss thought was not attractive enough (in other words, a woman whom L'Oreal thought was not "worth it").

The New York Post reported in July that several high-profile Manhattan dentists were offering sets of temporary teeth veneers to make patients' smiles resemble those of celebrities, at $1,000 to $2,000 a set; more popular veneers were the "Halle," the "Britney," the "Gwyneth," and, of course, for men, the "Tom" and the "George." And The Wall Street Journal reported in July on people who pay "lifestyle designers" up to $450 an hour to construct fanciful, all-new personnas for them, including proper wardrobe and home decor down to which gifts to give and which vacations to take. For example, an ad agency owner who wanted to project a "carefree" image had to be told to buy herself a turquoise 1955 Thunderbird and wear cowboy boots and a bright red scarf around town.

Brendan Francis McMahon, 36, a partner in a financial planning and mortgage brokerage in Sydney, Australia, was arrested in August for having sex with one pet rabbit and abusing others and was jailed without bail because the magistrate thought he posed a danger to animals in the community. McMahon was due back in court on Sept. 30, and police said they may charge him with more bestiality at that time. (McMahon's lawyer blamed a methamphetamine habit for any trouble he may be in.)

The Dominion Post of Wellington, New Zealand, reported in September the arrest of a recruit at the Porirua Royal New Zealand Police College, who in the course of learning fingerprint protocol, ran his own and discovered an outstanding assault warrant. He was immediately arrested. And in May, Laurie Ralston's plans to join the police department in Amherst, Ohio, as a dispatcher were scuttled when a background check revealed 17 traffic convictions and two outstanding warrants. She was immediately arrested.

In tests of busy hospitals in each state (reported in a July issue of the New England Journal of Medicine), it was discovered that at least 12,000 heart-attack patients in a six-month period were apparently not given the most basic, life-saving, follow-up instructions (such as prescribing aspirin in the first 24 hours after an attack, which increases survival rate by 30 percent). "(T)hings will fall through the cracks," said an author of the study. And a RAND Corp. survey released in August revealed that, of 19 public health clinics tested with telephone messages describing symptoms of facial pustules or other well-known indicators of small pox, not one of them told the caller to isolate the patient.

Thomas Haberbush, 72, pleaded guilty in April in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., to two counts to settle charges that he recently stalked as many as nine long-ago supervisors, with petty vandalism of their homes, in retaliation for his having received unfavorable job reviews as an elementary school teacher nearly 30 years ago. And retired political science professor Robert Spadaro was convicted in New York City in June of recently trying to kill Douglas Bennett, who was a personnel executive in the administration of President Ford and who in 1975 allegedly denied Spadaro a job.

In August, a 22-year-old motorcyclist going 100 mph to outrun police, who wanted to stop him for riding without a helmet, lost control and fatally crashed at the outskirts of the town of Bogart, Ga., ramming into the "Welcome to Bogart" sign. And in July, a 61-year-old farmer in the village of Cadjavacki Lug, Croatia, was accidentally killed when, as he prepared to milk a cow, he fell down, scaring the cow, and causing it to fall on top of him.

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

-- For 25 years, Multnomah County, Ore., has set aside 1 percent of public building construction money for art, meaning almost $600,000 worth for its new $58 million jailhouse. Critics of the program say that art won't do much to battle crime in Multnomah, but on the other hand, so far, neither has the $58 million. The jail has been finished for a year, but as of September, it's still empty because county officials have not found a way to pay the operating expenses. If they ever do, inmates and visitors will be treated to such works as Thomas Sayre's concrete shipwreck sculpture.

-- City Officials Who Know How to Make News of the Weird: Mayor Felipe Santolia of Espertantina, Brazil, declared last May 9 as "Orgasm Day," pointing out that orgasms seem to make people happier and more productive. And Mayor Gabor Mitynan of a municipal district in Budapest, Hungary, declared in August that female workers should not wear revealing skirts to work unless they have "completely perfect legs," nor crop tops unless they have "well-trained bellies."

-- Government Service Is Tougher Than You Think: City council member Yvonne Lamanna, 58, filed a worker compensation claim earlier this year against the city of Penn Hills, Pa., when she suffered a severe back injury as she took her seat at the Feb. 7 council meeting. And the chief minister of the Malaysian state of Kedah ordered all members of the legislature from his party to learn how to catch snakes so they will be ready to help people in distress. "Otherwise," he said in June, "they will be standing there watching helplessly as victims cry (out)."

In July, the Transportation Security Agency fired Houston airport baggage handler Bassam Khalaf when it discovered that he is, off-duty, the "Arabic Assassin," a rap singer whose lyrics, according to TSA, glorify the 9-11 hijackers and threaten similar mayhem on the United States in the future. (Khalaf said his lyrics were an innocent effort to gain notoriety as a performer.)

In July, envelope-pushing strip club owner Howard White changed the main sign for his joint on Century Boulevard near Los Angeles International Airport from "Live Nude Nude Nudes" to "Vaginas R Us." Neighboring merchants immediately complained, but city officials said that "vagina" is simply not an obscene word. However, the city did cite White's sign for being made of illegal combustible vinyl. At press time, opponents of the sign were trying to encourage the Toys R Us company to force White to abandon the name as too similar to its own protected trademark.

-- Evelyn Davison, 74, of Austin, Texas, filed a lawsuit in June against a neighbor who had failed to bring in her empty garbage can after a pickup. Davison discovered it in her driveway, and, attempting to move it by herself, she said she was seriously injured when she accidentally fell into it. And the Minnesota Court of Appeals sent a case back to trial in May, ruling that Jenell Casarez could indeed sue Amy and David Klema for injuries suffered as a guest in their home. According to the lawsuit, Casarez needed to use the bathroom, which was occupied by David, and so with Amy's acquiescence, went to the basement and attempted to relieve herself in a concrete laundry tub, but when she climbed on top, it tipped over and crushed her fingertips. (Alcohol was involved, according to the trial court.)

-- Clumsiest Surviving Artist-Bombmaker: Chris Hackett, 33, built a small functional bomb that he was set to exhibit in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in New York City around the time of the Sept. 11 remembrances, but tried to assure worried exhibitors that it was only an art project and would not explode. Hackett is the artist who in January 2004 blew up part of his face when a propane tank exploded as he was hooking it up to fire a confetti cannon.

(1) Amir Husain, 17, and Anthony Nauman, 18, who allegedly burglarized a home in Mundelein, Ill., in August, were easily tracked down by police after the pair decided to build a Web site and post photos of their loot for sale, along with their contact information. (2) In the early morning hours of a July day on the Eastern Freeway in Doncaster, Australia, when a driver on a restricted permit was stopped for speeding (at the equivalent of more than 120 mph), he told the officer in apparent seriousness that he didn't realize the police worked that late. (We're a "24-hour organization," said a police spokesman.)

British insurance companies occasionally write policies on unconventional risks, as News of the Weird reported in 1996, when Goodfellow Rebecca Ingrams Pearson wrote a $160,000-equivalent policy covering alien abduction (including pregnancies resulting from the abduction, even if it is a male who gets pregnant, in the event that the aliens have such extraordinary powers that they can impregnate males). In July 2005, sponsors of the Visit Scotland Adventure Triathlon in Loch Ness announced they had purchased insurance from the company NIG to pay up to the equivalent of $1.8 million in case any of the competitors are attacked by the Loch Ness monster.

(1) Judge Jeffrey K. Sprecher of Berks County, Pa., dismissed charges against a man in August for buying beer for his underage neighbor, ruling that the prosecutor hadn't proved all of the elements of the crime. Specifically, said Sprecher, there was no evidence offered that Miller Genuine Draft is "beer." (Prosecutors usually submit a government-created listing of beers as proof but failed to do that.) (2) In August, police in London, Ontario, informed the mother of a college student murdered in 1990 that they had recently solved the case and were certain that the perp was a man on parole at the time and who died in 1994. However, said police, they cannot reveal his name because of "privacy laws."

(1) Rumors of dead people registered to vote in Venezuela are plentiful, but according to a Financial Times dispatch from Caracas, among the names (with ID numbers) appearing on the rolls in July was that of Henri Charriere, the reputedly awesome escapee-criminal known as Papillon, who died in 1973. (2) A truck hauling 8,000 live chickens overturned after being forced off the road near St. John's, Newfoundland, in July when, on a two-lane highway, a car veered into the wrong lane and headed for the truck. (Thus, the car driver might be said to have won the inadvertent game of "chicken" with the chicken-truck driver.)

From a Legal Notice of a Name Change in the Honolulu Advertiser, Aug. 24: from "Waiaulia Alohi anail ke alaamek kawaipi olanihenoheno Kam Paghmani" to "Waiaulia Alohi anail ke alaamek kawaipi olanihenoheno Kam."

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

Another Underreported Success Story in the Rebuilding of Iraq: "Abu Mustafa" (a nickname) is part of a small market of vendors of pornographic videos operating in Baghdad, according to an August Reuters dispatch, and sells about 50 DVDs a day, with movies from Lebanon and other Arab countries the most popular. "I tried lots of other jobs," he said, but this was his most promising opportunity (although he said the righteous Shi'ite Badr Brigades have threatened to kill him and his approximately 30 competitors in the Bab al-Sharjee neighborhood).

-- Australian surfer Shane Willmott of the country's Gold Coast became a national media sensation in July when reporters showed up to watch him put his three trained mouse surfers through their paces, in local creeks and in the Pacific Ocean. Willmott trained them in a bathtub and built them little surfboards and little jet skis.

-- A week apart in August, police in Searcy, Ark., and Victoria, British Columbia, reported increases in local behaviors that they both strangely but confidently attributed to methamphetamine addiction. Searcy police say that almost all of the meth addicts they arrest have collections of arrowheads in their homes, gathered from lengthy forays into local fields, and Victoria police report a similar fascination with bicycle parts. Authorities in both places say meth makes users need to keep their hands busy on menial tasks. (Said a Victoria constable, "They sit in the bush with hundreds of (bicycle) parts just fiddling with them all day.")

-- In May, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation made a $700,000 grant to a World Wildlife Fund program to protect the apparently gorgeous forests in the Himalayan nation of Bhutan even though (according to a 2003 report in National Geographic) the recipient of the attention, the Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary, was explicitly created to protect Bhutan's version of "Bigfoot." Bhutan's "yeti" is called the "migoi" and is about 5 feet tall, covered with hair except for a face, smells horrible, and disguises its four-legged tracks by carefully making sure to leave only two prints.

In Kimberly, British Columbia, in July, trying to establish a Guinness Book record, 644 people at a music festival played their accordions simultaneously for half an hour. And in August, the Bradenton (Fla.) Herald reported that business is strong for local resident John Flannery, who at age 78 still works 15 to 20 times a month posing for artists as a nude model.

-- "Sex Offenders": Charbel Hamaty, of Lebanese descent, spent six months in jail in Raleigh, N.C., after being arrested last year for "molesting" his infant son, with the evidence consisting of family snapshots of Hamaty playfully kissing the nude tot's belly button. Only after a protest campaign did a judge finally dismiss the charge, according to a July report by WRAL-TV. Not so lucky was Fitzroy Barnaby of Evanston, Ill., who angrily grabbed the arm of a 14-year-old girl whom he almost ran into as she was playing dangerously in traffic. He was convicted under the state's "restraining a minor" statute, which requires that its violators be listed as sex offenders (even though the trial judge and, in June, the state Appellate Court, both discounted any sexual motive).

-- Ohio state alcohol and drug undercover agent Timothy Gales was accused, after an internal investigation, of having undermined his own teenage confidential informant in a Columbus store that the pair were probing for selling cigarettes to minors. According to the official report (described in the Columbus Dispatch in July), Gales stood alongside the teenager, and when the clerk proceeded with the sale, Gale asked, "Hey, aren't you supposed to ask for ID?" It was allegedly Gales' second blown-sting incident this year.

-- Elijah Walker, 35, who pleaded guilty to cocaine possession in Cincinnati in June, resisted complying with the state requirement that he also give up a DNA sample, in that he feared the state would use it to create a clone of him. (Said the prosecutor, reassuringly, "I'm not sure the state really wants another Elijah Walker.")

Earlier this year, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment in Belfast, Northern Ireland, banned the use of the term "brainstorming" when referring to thinking up ideas, instead decreeing that staff will use the term "thought showers" since the former term might be offensive to some people with brain injuries. And New York City mayoral candidate C. Virginia Fields apologized in July for telling a reporter that, when she was arrested in a civil rights protest in the South in 1963, police took her away in a "paddy wagon." She said the term could be offensive to some Irish-Americans.

(1) Arlyne Reiter, of Pompano Beach, Fla., describing the experience of having just arisen in the morning to encounter an iguana in her bathroom: "It was like Jurassic Park in my toilet." (2) Connecticut saddle-maker Mike Derrick, on why he set up a booth in Boston at the August Fetish Fair Fleamarket: He could spend six hours creating a bridle for a horse and earn $40, he said, but "make one for a human, $120."

In Clovis, N.M., in July, Danny J. Jimenez, 51, was sentenced to six years in prison for a pair of 2003 burglaries. Police had captured Jimenez by following the blood trail that stemmed from his encounter with a pawn shop's glass jewelry case. Later, investigators learned that an injury to Jimenez's head did not come from the jewelry case but occurred when Jimenez accidentally hit himself with a hammer while burglarizing a church later that night. Said a detective, "(Jimenez) had a big, round (indentation) in his forehead that was consistent with the hammer that I found." (And, as if he needed more misery, Jimenez's loot bag broke during his getaway, causing him to lose most of the jewelry, anyway.)

Among the stories fabricated by the former New Republic writer Stephen Glass was a March 1998 description (picked up, unfortunately, by News of the Weird) of two Wall Street companies' ritual worship of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. (One supposedly held a cake party and songfest on Greenspan's birthday; the other supposedly had a special office with Greenspan memorabilia to help bond traders meditate. Two months later, the magazine fired Glass and apologized for the fictions.) In August 2005, Erin Crowe, a recent art graduate of the University of Virginia, quietly placed in a New York gallery 18 paintings and sketches she had made over the years of Greenspan, a subject she chose "because his face is so interesting, his lips, his ears" and "his forehead, his comb over." As news circulated about their existence, money managers from around the country quickly bought all 18 pieces at prices up to $4,000 each.

(1) The Capitol City all-stars, bubbling with confidence that this year would be their best chance ever to win the regionals and advance to the Little League World Series, found out in June that they were out of the tournament because the District of Columbia Department of Parks and Recreation failed to send in the paperwork on time. (2) In June, the District of Columbia agency that approves charter schools turned down the Dupont Circle International Academy (a rigorous International Baccalaureate program), citing as one ground that the school will not admit or pass students who perform at below their grade level. The agency's chairman told Washington City Paper, "(A school) has to serve everybody that shows up."

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