Sunday, December 9, 2001
Good morning. (No, Yr Ed has not yet received the weekly News of the Weird column e-mailed from uComics.com. It usually goes out early Sunday New York time. In any event, if you don’t receive it today, I can’t do anything about it; you’ll have to write webmaster@uComics.com.)
Scotland Schools Aim to Get Toddlers to Set Personal Development Goals
The Scotsman this morning is all over the widespread criticism of the new educational-bureaucracy requirement that kids as young as 5 in New Community Schools be asked to set personal development goals. One teacher said one of her kids answered “[playing] dodge ball” as a goal. “The poorer ability children had no clue what I was talking about or what answers I was expecting from them.” [The Scotsman, 12-9-01]
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New Prison Chaplain Is a Wiccan
Rev. Jamyi Witch [Ed.: I’m guessing that’s not her birth name, but I don’t know] took office this week after being appointed official chaplain at the Waupun [maximum security] Correctional Institution, Waupun, Wisc. She won the job over 9 rivals despite the fact that only 30 of the 1,200 inmates are Wiccan and despite the fact that Wicca does not preach fear of eternal damnation, which would be a sort-of-important message for this population. It almost goes without saying that some Wisconsin officials went nuts on hearing this news. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 12-5-01]
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Below the Fold for Sunday
The lawyer for a 14-yr-old announced a forthcoming lawsuit against the town of Fairfield, Conn., because officials didn’t have the foresight to cut down a tree branch that the kid tied a rope from and swung on; he lost his grip, fell 25 ft into a ravine, and broke his arm. [Connecticut Post, 12-7-01]
Saturday, December 8, 2001
Good morning.
F State Judge Found Half-Naked at Conference
Broward County judge Joyce Julian, 44, was arrested at 2 a.m. Monday at the Amelia Island Plantation conference center in northeast Florida after she fled security officers and appeared intoxicated and verbally combative, all the while missing all clothes from the waist down. Later she reported that someone had sexually assaulted her, and police are still investigating whether that happened. She was at the center attending a judicial conference. [South Florida Sun-Sentinel-AP, 12-6-01]
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Below the Fold for Saturday
A Denver magistrate sentenced an HIV-positive prostitute to 5 days in jail for biting a police officer who was arresting her (despite the fact that she had received a sentence 6x that long in September for plying her trade).
Chicago police arrested scam artist Joseph Kalady for an inept attempt to fake his own death; turned out Kalady’s doctor wouldn’t verify the death because the dead body he only glimpsed (with facial features similar to Kalady’s) was that of a 176-lb man, whereas Kalady weighs 450.
A Philippines self-Bobbittization is making the rounds of the world’s press; a machete was involved, along with the victim-perp’s belief that his organ was a “cobra” that was leading him into a life of sin.
According to the Iraqi newspaper owned by Saddam’s son Uday (a serious chip off the old block), pop may have published another novel (The Fortified Castle), which apparently showcases the old man’s literary skills, in that the plot is reported with “boring details” omitted.
[Sources: Denver Post, 12-6-01; Chicago Tribune, 12-7-01; Manila Times, 12-7-01; SwissInfo-Reuters, 12-7-01]
Thanks So Far This Week to
Ronbo Phillips, Bill Remer, Tina Hong, Corey Richason, Bob Allender, Christine Van Lenten, Brian Jeffiers, David McCreary, Brian Bevan, Cliff Lewis, Paul Tucek, Skip Munger, Paul Sethre, Paul Meyer, Gene Kirby, Craig McAdie, Ethan Minovitz, David Schlosser, Lance Spangler, Jim Moore, Jeff Rose-Martland, Amy Kunce, Helen Chappell, Steve Raimi, Patrick Faber, and the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors (see below).
Friday, December 7, 2001
Good morning.
New-Age Stuff Is Undermining All the Intellectuality at West Virginia University
Two professors recently fled WVU in protest of its Sydney Banks Institute for Innate Health, named after a welder whose epiphany “catapulted him from a routine life of stress and insecurity into a state of deep peace, hopefulness, security, and clarity.” The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that WVU paid $70G to attend a recent Banks conference in Seattle (but West Va. people said it was much more than that). One professor in attendance said he walked out when he heard a speaker present photographs of “ice crystals formed in the presence of positive thoughts and ones formed in the presence of negative thoughts," then say the negative-thought ones weren’t as pretty, and then say “I’m not a scientist myself, but this looks like evidence to me.” [Charleston Gazette, 12-5-01]
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A Palestinian Golden Boy
In the U.S., suiciders and mass-killers of civilians are certified down-and-out’ers or at least people whose mortal future is not on the bright side, but a profile of one of last weekend’s Jerusalem suicide bombers portrays a handsome, 21-yr-old man who was looking forward to holy matrimony after having popped the question in October, and the man’s tight, middle-class family was overcome with grief at the same time that their neighbors were dancing in the streets outside the home, chanting congratulations to the family. [New York Post, 12-3-01]
Least Competent Criminals
Sonia Yoder, 31, allegedly confessed to burglary of a neighbor’s apartment in Albuquerque Tuesday, after gentle questioning that was provoked by the sight of her on her balcony with an Old Milwaukee beer; police had found at the scene an Old Milwaukee can, which, they told Yoder, might possibly have fingerprints on it, which caused her to break down and start squealing.
Suspect (McMinnville, Tenn.) Landon Ty Martin, 18, was questioned on the street after a reported burglary, and he was holding a blue fly swatter, which police later learned was the only thing taken during the aborted crime; when they saw Martin a few minutes later, he had luckily dropped the fly swatter, making it harder to link him to the crime, and police didn’t arrest him, but then a few minutes after that, they arrested him because, for some reason, he had gone back down the street and picked up the fly swatter again.
[Sources: Albuquerque Journal, 12-6-01; Southern Standard (McMinnville), 12-3-01]
Below the Fold for Friday
Classical conductor Pierre Boulez was grabbed out of his luxury hotel room in Basle, Switzerland, and detained for a while as a suspected terrorist, based entirely on a 1960s statement he had made that opera houses should be blown up.
A 36-yr-old man on trial for murder (Lexington, Ky.) took the stand to insist it was self-defense, despite the fact that 9 witnesses have said the man subsequently bragged about killing the man without mentioning self-defense; extra, solidifying “evidence”: His name is Edward Outlaw.
The Colorado Supreme Court heard arguments on whether it was okay for a lawyer (the prosecutor) to pretend to be a public defender in order to get a holed-up murderer to disarm; many members of the nonlawyering public are always surprised to find out that lawyers are required by law to tell the truth.
[Sources: BBC News, 12-4-01; Lexington Herald-Leader, 12-6-01; Rocky Mountain News, 12-4-01]
Thursday, December 6, 2001
Good morning. I’ve tried to resurrect the week’s Thank You list, which follows the stories for today. (This is another one of those days in which my one-man-shop status reeks for all to see: Good Weird News was committed by various people yesterday, but I can only post a few stories before I have to leave for the day.)
Wrong-Place Surgery on the Rise
The steepness of the numbers might be due to increasing negligence or simply to better reporting techniques, but surgeries performed on the wrong arm or leg or patient, etc., jumped from 16 in 1998 to 58 so far this year, 11 of which occurred last month. The big culprit is those walk-in surgery places, some of which apparently engage in about as much preparation-attention as barbers do. [Washington Post, 12-6-01]
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Pot About to Boil in the Indian Trust Accounts Case
Federal judge Royce Lamberth is probably about to lower the boom on Interior Sec’y Gale Norton (contempt of court hearing set for Monday) for the dept’s mismanagement of Indian Trust Funds, which of course goes back to the century before last but on which Norton apparently hasn’t made much improvement in her 9 months in office. In preparation for that, Lamberth released a report on Wednesday in which a court-appointed hacker easily broke into a gov’t-run financial system that houses the trust fund records. [Denver Post, 12-5-01]
Makes One a Little Nostalgic for the F State's Electoral Quirks
A BBC News dispatch Wednesday from Colombo reported on the Sri Lanka electorate’s heavy reliance on astrologers to make sense of gov’t and politics, including an accusation that an influential magazine tried to skew the recent election by publishing an illustration in which the planets were in the wrong place. (The magazine said it was just a bad paste-up job.) [BBC News, 12-5-01]
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Below the Fold for Thursday
Forget Jerry Lewis: Penna. death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, probably a target of racist police but also surely guilty of killing a police officer in cold blood in 1981, has been named an honorary citizen of Paris by the city council.
And speaking of murder, James Hamm, who served 18 yrs for murder but who passed the Arizona Bar exam in 1999, was released from parole Tuesday, clearing the way for the Bar to admit him to practice (if the Bar goes by the 47 letters of recommendation saying he’s now a fine fella).
[Sources: SFGate.com-AP, 12-5-01; Arizona Republic, 12-5-01]
Wednesday, December 5, 2001
Good morning.
Thank You List
has temporarily disappeared into outer space, but I'm hoping to get it back momentarily. If you run across it on some faraway website while you are cruising the Internet, please capture it and send it back to me.
Another Semen-Squirter Was on the Job
Orlando, Fla., dealt with its guy last yr, but now comes Howland, Ohio (near Warren), where a 38-yr-old man was arrested Monday based on complaints from women at Eastwood Mall and 6 garments that tested positive for semen, spritzed from a container. [Sharon Herald, 12-4-01]
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How to Succeed in the Pizza Business
Kimberly Hericks, 36, a manager for Donato’s Pizza, Lakewood, Ohio, was indicted Monday for stealing 38G from the till, an amount that included the 400 decaying pizzas found in her garage. According to police, she had placed big orders at her store for hospitals, etc., just to get her store’s sales figures up; she would cook the books to cover the costs and then deliver the pizzas, herself, to her garage. She was busted, allegedly, when she asked her boss (the owner) to help her move, and he discovered the pizzas. [Plain Dealer, 12-4-01]
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Another Sad, Strange Japanese Death
The Bismarck Tribune reported yesterday that Ms. Takako Konishi, 28, had been found dead in Detroit Lakes, Minn., on November 15, 6 days after being discovered wandering around Bismarck, having been drawn to the city looking for money that had been buried by a character in the movie “Fargo.” Bismarck police had let her go after questioning (which was incomplete, in that they could not find a single Japanese-speaking person in town that day to translate for her!). [Bismarck Tribune, 12-4-01]
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Another Hapless (Alleged) Rapist-Murderer
Eight months ago, the Virginia Supreme Court ordered a new trial for death-row murderer Paul Warner Powell, 23, because the prosecutor had commingled two crimes in order to qualify Powell for the executioner. Powell (already serving 3 life terms for rape) then wrote a letter taunting the district attorney who tried him, but in the course of which confessing to precisely the detail of the case that the prosecutors needed to legitimately file death-penalty charges. He was re-indicted Monday.[Washington Post, 12-4-01]
The Mexican Semen Artist in Banff
The partly-gov’t-funded Banff Centre in Alberta admitted (proclaimed?) that it has taken care of about one-fourth of the expenses of Mexican performance artist Israel Mora, 33, for his current exhibit, Level 7, which consists of, oh, Jesus, 7 glass vials into which he has choked his turkey, in order, he says, “to examine the concepts of privacy and intimacy within contemporary society.” And “Mora intends to undertake a private act and examine the ways in which it intersects with a public context.” [National Post, 12-5-01]
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Below the Fold for Wednesday
A 42-yr-old man was arrested as a suspected shoplifter (6 packages of corn removers from a Wal-Mart in Serra Mesa, Calif.) last week; police nabbed him quickly, in that he could not run very fast because of his corns.
The Los Angeles judge trying Sara Jane Olson (Kathleen Soliah) for the 1974 Symbionese Liberation Army bomb attack rejected her attempt to withdraw her 2nd guilty plea, and ridiculing her and her junior lawyer in the process; the luckiest man of the day was her lead lawyer, J. Tony Serra, who missed the festivities by missing his plane from San Francisco, which he announced to the judge by fax was the result of “bad karma.”
An 8-yr-old boy successfully performed a Heimlich maneuver on his teacher, based on no training and merely his having read how to do it in his mother’s day-planner; he said he was also prepared to do a tracheotomy with a pen knife if that didn’t work (Issaquah, Wash.)
[Sources: San Diego Union Tribune, 12-1-01; New York Times, 12-4-01; Fox News-AP, 12-4-01]
12/5/01—Lost in Space
is the Weird Planet Daily thank you list for this week. We're trying to find it. If you come across it while cruising the Internet, please capture it and send it back to me. If it hasn't wandered back by Thursday morning, I will try to re-create the list.
More Premarital Romance-Abstinence
Similar to that couple written up in the N. Y. Times and covered in News of the Weird 717, Sunday’s Bismarck (N.D.) Tribune highlights a devout family’s 2 gals, ages 21 and 25, getting married to guys after lengthy courtships in which the guys never once got to 1st base. And in the more recent wedding, the Big Kiss was just a peck on the cheek, anyway. Fortunately, the younger groom said early on that he heard God Himself tell him not to kiss lovely Margie until marriage. [Bismarck Tribune, 12-2-01]
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His Day Job Is Complaining
The South Wales Echo (Cardiff) website chronicled the daily life of Ricky Canty, 52, yesterday in his efforts to publicize the court system’s injustice at handling what he admits is an arcane land dispute. For a yr and a half, Canty gets up each morning, dresses nicely, heads down to the courthouse, and puts in a full day demonstrating, leafleting, haranguing, etc. Then he comes home, gets to sleep, and gets back up again the next day for another day at the office. He’s doing it this way in part because he’s already spent all his money on the dispute, to no avail. [icWales.com, 12-3-01]
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Below the Fold for Tuesday
Yen Ching-piao was elected to the parliament in Taiwan on Saturday, despite the fact that he has been in jail since August, serving 20 yrs for attempted murder.
A 16-yr-old boy was severely burned doing the old pro-wrestling “fire toss” shtick (which he and his buds had done before, safely, and which followed a series of the old pro-wrestling “chair shots”) (DeLand, Fla.).
Our old friend Troy Hurtubise (North Bay, Ontario) is finally going to try out his years-in-the-making suit that he says will protect the wearer from vicious bear attacks; he will try it out on 12-9 on, for the first time, an actual grizzly bear.
Tadao Miyake, 43, called up police in Kawasaki, Japan, last week and said he was coming in after a life of crime because, in his latest caper, he had stolen a cache of worthless business papers instead of money and was beginning to believe he had lost a step or two.
[Sources: Excite-Reuters, 12-3-01; sfGate.com-AP, 12-1-01; NewScientist.com, 12-3-01; Mainichi Daily News, 12-3-01]
Monday, December 3, 2001
Good morning. A reminder: A week’s worth of Weird Planet Daily recycles every Sunday night, and we start fresh Monday mornings. Click on a Monday in the yellow box at the top-right of the page to see 7 days’ worth of news and notes beginning on the date listed.
High School Principal Was Into Black Magic
In the course of an investigation charging Ms. Willie B. Aldridge with embezzling school funds while she was principal at Pontiac (Mich.) Central High, police found a gallon pickle jar in her home containing the names of her enemies written on pieces of paper, which is reported to be the way you cast spells on people. [Detroit Free Press, 11-29-01]
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Ferreting Out Osama by His Funk
In a report in The Times of London yesterday, U. of Nebraska geologist John Shroder (an Afghanistan specialist) said the Pentagon has a Remote-Sensing Gas-Detection Device that is so finely tuned that it can distinguish ethnic groups based on the different foods that they eat. So now the U.S. has sensitive microphones to hear pins drop in caves, tiny snaked cameras to penetrate the smallest crevasses, and gas detectors to pick up familiar aromas (such as the 60-days-without-a-shower aroma). [The Times (London), 12-2-01]
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Bobby Fischer Condemns America
He may be a recluse, but who picks his shots better than chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer, who called into a Philippines radio station (owned by a friend of a friend) on 9-11-01 and expressed delight that his home city had been attacked: “It is time to finish off the U.S. once and for all.” Fischer lives in various places these days, following his 1992 U.S. indictment for his U.N.-defying 1992 match with Boris Spassky, and is said to be rabidly anti-Semitic. [Daily Telegraph (London), 12-2-01]
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That Other Attack on the Continental U.S.
Yr Ed is a broadly-, even over-, schooled person, but has been accepting the conventional 9-11-01 wisdom that the U.S. mainland had not been foreign-attacked since the War of 1812 (except for the off-coast shellings of Oregon and California by the Japanese in World War II). Along came the Denver Post yesterday with what is now common knowledge, I guess, that as many as 1,000 Japanese hydrogen balloon bombs landed in 16 states in 1944, some actually exploding, and that the gov’t hushed it up so efficiently (so as not to encourage the enemy to launch more) that to this day, it’s not talked about much. And it’s certainly not talked about around Yr Ed! But this is apparently a success story in wartime gov’t secrecy. [Denver Post, 12-2-01]
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Below the Fold for Monday
Madison (Fla.) High whipped up on South Sumter, 41-7, in football Friday night, and at game’s end, about 20 Madisonians roughed up Sumter’s 30 cheerleaders in a quest to destroy all the Sumter on-field banners; the Madison coach said he was “embarrassed.”
Probation officers in Staffordshire, England, fresh out of rehab ideas for offenders, have started a counseling program based on questions from the game of Scruples.
Michael Chaplin, 42, was arrested sitting on a woman’s sofa in Xenia, Ohio, after dragging her to her house for the alleged purpose of raping her; before the rape started, she had asked for and received permission to check her phone messages and to call her kids, but each time, she dialed 911.
[Sources: Tampa Tribune-AP, 12-3-01; The Times (London), 12-3-01; Columbus Dispatch-AP, 12-1-01]
News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors
Senior Advisors Jenny T. Beatty, Gaal Shepherd Crowl, Paul
Di Filippo, Geoffrey Egan, Sam Gaines, Ivan Katz, Barbara
McDonald, Matt Mirapaul, and Jim Sweeney.
Chief Correspondents Paul Bogrow, Bob Brown,
Michael Colpitts, Lance E. Ellisor, Harry Farkas, Leslie Goodman-Malamuth, Fritz Gritzner, Ginger Katz, Wolf Kirchmeir, Myra J. Linden, Bob McCabe, Victor McDonald, Kerry O'Conner, Jerry Pohlen, Yvonne Pover, Larry Ellis Reed, Tom Slone, H.Thompson, Bruce Townley, Barbara Tyger, and Elyse Verse.
Sustained Excellence in Weird-News Reporting: Gary Abbott, Bob Bayer, Dave Beck, Paul Blumstein, Rob Borosak, John Cieciel, Roger Gulbransen, Peter P. Gunther, Herb Jue, Scott Langill, David Lips, Joe Littrell, Steve Miller, Paul Music, Christopher Nalty, Joel O'Brien, Allen Pasternak, Jason Rule, Lee Sechrest, Rob Snyder, Maurine Taylor, Marty Turnauer, Willard Wheeler, Mark Weiss, Jerry Whittle, and Peter Wolf.
The people on this list do not necessarily agree with Yr Ed’s opinions and in fact are probably appalled by some of them from time to time.
©
2001, Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
