Below the Fold for Friday
Prosecutors in Springfield, Mo., charged two jail guards with urinating on 4 inmates, from a roof, while they were playing basketball below. [Newsday-AP, 8-2-01]
Wanted: Male, 5-feet-10, 175 lbs., Willing to Be Hung on Cross
Colorado Springs, Colo., researcher John Jackson continues his laborious quest that he hopes will end in strong evidence that the fabled Shroud of Turin is the actual piece of cloth that Jesus Christ was buried in, and now needs a body the size of Jesus to hang from a cross (no nails, though) so he can examine certain things such as blood flow (to see if it is consistent with the stains on the shroud). (Actually, he’s done the blood-flow thing before; he won’t say specifically what he’s doing this time.) Jackson says his devout Catholicism has nothing to do with his research (yet he is absolutely certain, as a researcher and not as a Catholic, that the shroud is authentic and that the radiocarbon-dating that placed the age of the cloth as 700 years and not 2,000 was faulty). [Denver Post, 7-27-01]
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Below the Fold
Marie Salomon, 41, was arrested Saturday in Bridgeport, Conn., for failing to hold her peace at a friend’s wedding; they had to call the cops because she wouldn’t calm down and shut up about why marriage was a bad idea for the couple. [Connecticut Post, 7-30-01]
Two mothers were arrested in Salt Lake City on Friday for allegedly beating up the mother of the 15-yr-old boy who scored the winning run to beat the other womens’ sons’ team in a Babe Ruth tournament; they knocked her unconscious with an umbrella, a folded-up baby stroller, and a fist. [Salt Lake Tribune, 8-1-01]
Death of a Hermit in New York City
Mr. Irwin Rose, said to be in his 50's, was found dead in his upscale Manhattan apartment Sunday night (foul play not suspected). The doorman said Rose hadn’t been out of the building in 13 yrs, that he had everything delivered; an employee of a restaurant in the next block said Rose had been calling for the same meal 3 times a day every day for 8 yrs (rice pudding, chicken soup, 2 eggs over easy, sausages, cheesecake). A neighbor said Rose used to be in the porn business and for several yrs was visited by a hot babe but that she stopped coming around. [New York Post, 7-31-01]
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Below the Fold for Wednesday
A 55-yr-old woman was sentenced to a yr in prison for smacking her 83-yr-old mother “repeatedly” over the head with a kitchen appliance after a disagreement over who should start dinner following “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” (Cornwall, England). [BBC News, 7-31-01]
Authorities tried to detonate the dead whale [Weird Central, 7-23-01] that tourists were walking on in order to pet the sharks near Adelaide, Australia, but the powerful explosives failed to open up a hole. [Sydney Morning Herald, 8-1-01]
The Canadian military decided to issue only written reprimands to several soldiers guilty of poisoning (naphtha gas, battery acid, bug stray) their commanding officer’s food during the unit’s peace-keeping service in Croatia. [Ottawa Sun, 7-31-01]
Oregon Eases Up on Law Enforcement
A 2000 ruling by the Oregon Supreme Court is finally having a major negative impact on police, according to a Los Angeles Times dispatch. The Court had ruled that all lawyers, including prosecutors, must obey the state bar association’s rules on deceit and misrepresentation, e.g., no supervising or prosecuting that dirty, deceitful “undercover” work (and federales under pre-existing rules always abide by whatever their state’s ethics rules are). [No, seriously, I mean it, no undercover work.] One child-porn investigation has already been shut down because cops can’t pretend online that they are underage and curious. [Seattle Times-L.A. Times, 7-30-01]
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Makeover Artists Tell How to Disguise Needle Tracks
Over the weekend, The Times (London) told the world about the pilot issue of a glossy, 30-page publication, Mainline Lady, financed by the Health Ministry in the Netherlands and resembling a newsstand fashion magazine, with a purpose to improve the self-esteem of drug-addicted women (but not preach to them, because that’s too negative a message). How does one make her heroin-ravaged dry skin radiant again? [Fox News-The Times, 7-30-01]
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Clueless in Alaska
The robber of the One Stop Grocery in Kenai, Alaska, last week got away, but few knew. It was 9 p.m., store packed, suppliers were still delivering, several people pumping gas, plenty of hubbub, and suddenly a guy appears with his hand in his pocket pointing a “gun” and shouts, “Everybody freeze, don’t move. You know what that means.” Basically, his shout had no effect. He snatched some beer from the cooler and shouted again, “You people don’t understand. I really mean it.” Nothing (except one customer told him he could get in trouble talking like that). Finally, he cussed a bit, complained that nobody was listening to him, and left. [Peninsula Clarion, 7-27-01]
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Below the Fold
Officials at the airport in Kenarak, Iran, found a smuggler with 3.5 lbs. of opium in his belly, said to be a new world’s record (old: 2.38 lbs.). [NineMsn.com-Agence France-Presse, 7-30-01]
The British gov’t has begun an inquiry into whether the country’s doctors have been collecting brains of dead people without family permission. [The Times (London), 7-30-01]
Emmit Scott, 60, was arrested in Roanoke Rapids, N.C., on Friday after he complained to the sheriff that a guy was hanging around his farm trying to steal his (27) marijuana plants; said Scott, “I didn’t know it was illegal to grow it in your own garden.” [Roanoke Rapids Daily Herald, 7-29-01]
Nurses and doctors were among the 400 attending the drug-drenched “mini”-rave party on Saturday night held at the Sainte Anne psychiatric hospital in Paris; hospital administrators were outraged when they found out, but medical staff said patients were not affected, in that they were pretty heavily sedated, themselves. [The Independent (London), 7-31-01]
The San Francisco Chronicle reported on Sunday that the new dog catcher for San Mateo County will be paid $250G/yr, more than Gov. Gray Davis or San Francisco mayor Willie Brown. [San Francisco Chronicle, 7-29-01]
Coach Puts Croc in Pool to Motivate Young Swimmers
London’s Daily Telegraph is reporting this morning, from Darwin, Australia, that Coach Mark Davies trains his age-13-to-21 swim club by tossing a 6-ft crocodile in the pool with them (though declawed and with jaws taped shut) and finds that it does tend to speed up their lap times (and also increase their sense of brotherhood). However, the complainers’ line forms to the left: (1) parents and community, who think he’s crazy; (2) the animal-cruelty people, who say crocs don’t tolerate chlorinated water; (3) croc hunters, who point out that even if the tape holds, a croc’s tail-swatting is dangerous. [Yr Ed vaguely remembers an antecedent story like this but can’t find it on his own database or on the www.snopes.com database of urban legends, so he’s going with it.] [Daily Telegraph, 7-30-01]
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Int'l Human-Bone Business Run Out of Small, Suburban Home
Police busted a guy on Thursday who had been running a very-low-key (but illegal) export business (human bones, skulls, skeletons) for 15 yrs out of a house in Kolkata, India [for elderly readers, that’s what used to be “Calcutta”]. At the time of the raid, skulls were drying on the roof, and employees were busy polishing bones. The company (whose neighbors had tolerated the strangeness) had clients as far away as New York. [The Times of India, 7-29-01]
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Yep, They Really Did Make Broccoli Ice Cream
Max & Mina’s kosher ice cream parlor in Kew Gardens Hills, N.Y., was featured in a Jewish Week piece on Friday, bringing readers up to date on the many idiosyncratic flavors available (all rich in butterfat but meeting various Jewish dietary standards): lox, corn on the cob, horseradish, peanut butter and jelly, beer and nuts, campfire delight [principal taste: baked beans], raisin and nuts. But there really was also a (mercifully discontinued) broccoli ice cream. Max & Mina’s owners (whose names are Bruce and Mark) are doing fine, with more than 100 local restaurants clients, as well. [The Jewish Week (New York), 7-27-01]
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Below the Fold
A judge tossed out Juanita Rodriguez’s lawsuit against the San Antonio Express-News over whether it had the right to run a photo that justified the implication that her ugly house is, indeed, ugly in an article on “visual pollution.” [San Antonio Express-News, 7-27-01]
A 49-yr-old woman in Alliance, Ohio, filed a lawsuit against her doctor for routinely giving her placebos every month for 8 yrs instead of hormone-replacement shots (to stave off bone loss). [Akron Beacon Journal, 7-27-01]
A man, unidentified in news reports, was rushed from his home in Quincy, Ill., to St. Louis for snake-bite treatment after he was “bitten” by a timber rattler, uh, a timber rattler that was in fact dead and that he was mounting on a wall (but which still had some venom), and how clumsy does one have to be to get bitten by a dead snake? [Springfield State Journal-Register, 7-28-01]
Britain’s deputy prime minister John “Two Jags” Prescott of the disabled-community-sensitive (but apparently not very populist-oriented) Labour Party was reported in a restaurant flap for parking one of his Jaguars in a handicapped space (though he did matter-of-factly offer to move it when another patron rolled up to him and asked). [The Guardian, 7-27-01]
In the latest wave of ritual killings by witch-hunters in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 60 victims apparently were selected on the basis of possession of onions (“vegetable of the devil”) in their homes. [Daily Telegraph, 7-30-01]
Thank Yous
This is the cumulative thank-you list for the week, updated daily, covering all 3 pages of Weird Central: Sean Smith, Tim Maloney, Meg McFarlane, Geoff Edwards, Joe Littrell, Peter van Andel, Lance Spangler, Leslie Goodman-Malamuth, Steve Miller, and of course the News of the Weird Senior Advisors and Chief Correspondents.
And the Thank You's from Last Week
Harold Ferber, Skip Munger, Michael Kurinsky, Joe Littrell, Steven Smith, Kevin Dean, Sean Smith, Roger Strong, Craig McAdie, Tim Adams, Oscar Ricardo Silva, Dave Beck, Charles Hymes, Bret Feldman, Jack Crumbley, David Pimm, Carolyn Shankle, Erin Walter, Jeff Hebert, Brian Burghart, Ted Hering, Candy Clouston, Steve Miller, Jeff Brielmaier, James Schmitz, Phillip Barton, Joel O'Brien, Bill Grunnah, Mindy Sue Cohen, and the News of the Weird Senior Advisors and Chief Correspondents.
©
2001, Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
