Sunday, October 21, 2001
A guy was booted off a United flight because he was carrying a novel about a terrorist bomber. British scientists made a costly research error by not knowing a sheep’s brain from a cow’s. More people are looking to live in underground missile sites. Plus, drunk driver doesn’t notice the manure pit. And parents’ elaborate denial that their son was a lunkhead. And Yr Ed advises: All stories from the past 7 days are transferred to archive at the end of the day, Sunday, at midnight Chicago time.
Thank You This Week to
Algernon Austin, Melissa Campbell, David Pepper, Kellie Sisson Snider, Bruce Townley, Harry Farkas, Sam Gaines, Ron Crawley, Leslie Goodman-Malamuth, David Errington, Dave Beck, Bruce Leiserowitz, Steve Miller, Matt Porter, Tom Mahoney, Kevin Underhill, Angela Torres, Lauren Sandy, Christopher Agnew, Richard Bari, Maggie Morgan, Steve Bird, Troy Oller, Bailey Spencer-Jackson, M. Holmes, Geoffrey Egan, John Cieciel, Roger Gulbransen, Peter Gunther, Roger Strong, Paul Music, Gregory Bogle, Vic McDonald, and Jenny Beatty.
Minor Inconveniences in These Trying Times
A guy attempting to board a United Air Lines flight on 10-10-01 at Philadelphia Int’l was detained by Nat’l Guardsmen because he was carrying the book Hayduke Lives! by Edward Abbey, a novel about a radical enviro and featuring a cover illustration of a bomb. [Philadelphia City Paper, 10-18-01]
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5-Yr Study on Mad Cow Disease Useless: Wrong Brains Used
A British gov’t study of whether sheep could get mad-cow disease was terminated after 5 yrs because scientists had mistakenly used cows’ brains rather than sheeps’ brains. Said the sage Prof. Peter Smith, “Once it’s a paste, a cow brain looks very much like a sheep brain.” [Ed.: “Paste”? And I note that Prof. Smith’s organization is the “Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee.] [London Daily Telegraph, 10-20-01]
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Real Estate Market Booms for Former Missile Sites
According to a Wired magazine piece this week, real estate broker Ed Peden “is sitting on a gold mine,” meaning that he owns a former Atlas ICBM site, as do a few other people, mostly in the Midwest, just about the safest-constructed housing purchasable in America. Peden’s Atlas base on 28 acres near Wamego, Kan., will go for about $1M, twice as much as a month ago. (That one is actually an exception in that it has many upgrades, having been formerly owned by a guy who set up William Pickard and Clyde Apperson in the LSD business to be run out of the property. See News of the Weird 674, 1-7-01.) [Wired News, 10-16-01]
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Below the Fold for Sunday
DUI suspect James Hoke, 36, was arrested after a brief foot-chase near Corning, N.Y.; he had bolted from his car on a rural road, run into a barn, and promptly stepped into a liquefied manure pool.
[Source: Buffalo News-AP, 10-18-01]
Editor's Notes (Sunday, October 21, 2001)
* The parents of the late Kevin Mackle (the guy who died after the Coke machine he was rocking fell on him and whose parents are suing everybody else for the death; see News of the Weird 707, 8-26-01) have a website demonstrating their obsession with absolving their little (21-yr-old) boy of any responsibility. Why were there no fingerprints on the Coke machine, they demand to know. It’s at www.cokemachineaccidents.com.
Saturday, October 20, 2001
NOTE: In the new format for Weird Planet Daily this week, Yr Ed has been placing the story teasers in this first paragraph, but a more important note going here is that, on weekends, Yr Ed relaxes just a little and doesn’t quite cover the breadth of material as during the week. Thus, there will be about half the number of stories posted on Saturdays and Sundays as during the week. But click below and read the latest about weirdo Brit artist Damien Hirst, plus a batch of disturbing news about Brit seniors, plus the latest toe-cam conviction and two more middle-name Wayne (accused) murderers. And lawyers complain that Wal-Mart is no one to feel sorry for.
Art Cliché Hits Damien Hirst
Yr Ed’s favorite Brit artist (sheep in formaldehyde, etc.) temporarily lost a new exhibit, created out of found objects for a launch party at the Eyestorm Gallery in London, when a cleaner mistook it for a bunch of found trash (cigarette butts, beer bottles, soda cans, candy wrappers) and tossed it out. Gallery officials recreated it later by referring to a photograph of the exhibit to get the exact placement correct. [The Sun, 10-19-01]
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British Seniors in Trouble
A couple in their 70s were recovering in Wythenshawe Hospital (Manchester) after taking a pill OD because their neighbors’ kids had long been behaving too rambunctiously (‘We no longer wish to be part of a society that allows this situation to reach this point”). And a judge at Newcastle upon Tyne Crown Court told John Bushnell, 75, he better relocate after finding that, for 40 yrs, he has been tackily, pettily harassing his neighbors out of inexplicable hatred (“You’re just a dying-looking git,” “a creepy-looking Jesus,” “a first-class s-house,” “a humpty-backed bastard”). And then the manager of an elderly-care home was convicted of “willful negligence” [Ed.: Er, I know, but that’s what they call it] at Chelmsford Crown Court for her longstanding obsession with making sure her clients get sufficiently hydrated, only she went too far, sometimes flooding water down their throats, to the point where 2 of them died. [The Times, 10-19-01] [The Times, 10-20-01] [Daily Telegraph, 10-20-01] [Link is to the Bushnell story.]
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This Link
is to the hydration story.
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Below the Fold for Saturday
Robert Mathis was placed on probation for 1 yr for operating a toe-cam in a mall in Overland Park, Kan., shooting “upskirts.”
Two more real bad middle-name Waynes: Arrested in New Jersey and awaiting extradition for a Maine murder: Carl W. Heath; and charged in Irving, Tex., for killing the infant daughter of his girlfriend: Darrell W. Wright.
[Sources: KCBS (Los Angeles)-AP, 10-19-01; Boston Globe-AP, 10-18-01; Dallas Morning News, 10-19-01]
Editor's Notes (Saturday, October 20, 2001)
* Several lawyers have complained that it is actually Wal-Mart, and not those suing Wal-Mart, that are the meaner people involved in the separate section of U.S. jurisprudence entitled “Wal-Mart Litigation” [News of the Weird 714]: For instance, from reader Jamie Bendall: “It probably does strike some as weird that litigation against Wal-Mart is so common. What is even more weird is that Wal-Mart has been sanctioned for discovery abuse numerous times. The Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA) does assist lawyers to share information about Wal-Mart in an effort to level the playing field. The only people "getting rich" in litigation involving Wal-Mart are the defense attorneys. After all, they get to bill by the hour and are paid regardless of outcome.” And, from John Wallach: “[W]al-mart is extremely obstructive in their litigation tactics and routinely either denies or "low balls" settlement offers on valid cases. ATLA has a litigation group to attempt to combat the manner Wal-Mart chooses to conduct litigation. The company has been sanctioned by courts for discovery abuse. I'm sure you can get information from ATLA giving the flip side of this coin, showing just how ridiculous Wal-Mart is in litigation. Believe me,
it will read just as funny (and give you a running issue to cover).”
Friday, October 19, 2001
Parents make sure their kids get their chicken pox early. O.J.’s jurors reveal themselves to be as dumb as sticks. Ontario’s Health Ministry decides now is just not the right time to invest in biohazard work. Toyota and Sony combine to create a warm, cuddly car that’ll calm down your road rage. Plus: who not to ask for money when you’re driving a stolen car; another middle-name Wayne arrested for murder; and Tater Tots and macaroni as homicide-inducing food. And Yr Ed exposes the scam website that preys on people who didn’t learn the i-before-e rule exceptions in English class.
Bug-Chasing Parties (Revisited)
An AP story yesterday reported that a couple of parents in the Pittsburgh area held chicken pox “parties” for their kids, wherein one kid with a current outbreak would play with other kids and infect them, too, so that (after a week’s discomfort) they, too, would be free of chicken pox for the rest of their lives. These parents are people who, for various reasons, want their kids to avoid immunizations (one less toxin in the body; unpredictable side-effects). [Ed.: This sparsely-reported article aroused Yr Ed’s Hoax-Detector gene, but then, remember this story from NOTW 577, 2-26-99:
“According to a January report in the San Francisco Chronicle, the percentage of gay men who have risky sex without condoms ("barebackers") is growing, and a tiny minority of those men have taken their passion a step further: There are now gay "Russian roulette" parties publicized on the Internet (the latest scheduled for February in Houston) in which HIV-negative men ("bug chasers") invite HIV-positive men ("givers of the gift") for anonymous sex so that every act carries the possibility of death. A gay writer told the Chronicle that he has spoken to participants and is certain that the parties are not just another Internet hoax. [San Francisco Chronicle, 1-29-99]”
[ABC News-AP, 10-18-01] [Link is to the chicken pox story]
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Yesterday at the O.J. Road-Rage Trial
The victim, Jeffrey Pattinson, who has been keeping an extremely low profile until now, testified; he’s a 55-yr-old Jamaican former lawyer, who speaks with a dignified British accent. He said O.J. was totally out of control when he approached his vehicle and yanked his glasses off his face but that he immediately calmed down when Sydney begged him to. Sydney, it was revealed, is now the proud owner of a brand-new Lexus as a reward from her pa for turning 16; surely Fred Goldman understands the needs of South Florida teenagers. And the jury didn’t distinguish itself yesterday at all: Already this morning, there’s a motion on the table for a mistrial, for despite traditional, repeated warnings not to discuss the case, what were several jurors doing after Pattinson testified? Discussing his testimony. [Miami Herald, 10-19-01]
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How to Be Off by Exactly 180 Degrees
Canadian newspapers reported yesterday that the Ontario Health Ministry’s 5 (and only 5) biohazard scientists have just been fired for budget reasons, replaced by 3 lab technicians with community-college degrees. Liberal Party people went nuts, blaming the decision on the Health Minister’s longstanding, rigid adherence to a less-gov’t philosophy. (Also yesterday, it was announced that Ontario Premier Mike Harris had just visited the one office of N.Y. Gov. Pataki that had anthrax spores found in it.) [National Post-CP, 10-18-01]
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Toyota-Sony Do It Again
A report yesterday out of Tokyo reveals “the pod,” an experimental, joint-venture car that will, according to Reuters, “smile, frown, and cry, not to mention take your pulse and measure your sweat.” Design: headlights look like eyes, side mirrors like ears, tail antenna that wags. Color: bright orange-yellow when the owner approaches it, turning blue if it has a flat tire or runs out of gas, red when the car has to swerve. Controlled by a joystick. Measures the driver’s temperament and issues warnings or facilitates safer driving, as required. [Yahoo-Reuters, 10-18-01]
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Below the Fold for Friday
Nathan Tyrone Brown, 22, was arrested in Spartanburg, S.C., when he stopped at a sheriff’s office at 3 a.m. (about the only place open) to ask if he could borrow a few bucks for gas; Southern deputies sometimes accommodate such requests, but the $30G Lexus Brown was driving just didn’t work for him (stolen).
In San Jose, Calif., David M. Baumann, 30, was sentenced to 27 yrs in prison for murdering his wife last yr in a domestic fight, which started as a discussion whether Tater Tots and macaroni constituted a healthful meal.
In Toledo, Ohio, Mr. Tyrone Willis was stabbed to death on Monday, and his roommate allegedly confessed: Mark Wayne Jones.
[Sources: Spartanburg Herald-Journal, 10-17-01; Los Angeles Times, 10-18-01; Toledo Blade, 10-18-01]
Editor's Notes (Friday, October 19, 2001)
* The rule governing the spelling of “weird” is actually the exceptions to the rule. The rule (i before e, except after c) comes with this sentence of exceptions, as learned by Yr Ed in 1960 from the late Nana T. Laney of Howey-in-the-Hills, Fla.: “Neither foreign financier seized either species of weird leisure.” But if you didn’t learn that and tried to reach Yr Ed at www.NewsoftheWierd.com, you’d get a series of pop-up ads, courtesy of this bottom-feeding poacher, who actually pays good money to register and run that website: Popular Enterprises, L.L.C., 5201 Kingston Pike, Suite 6301, Knoxville TN 37919, (877) 291-4823, fax (877) 291-4823. The bad news for PE is (1) Yr Ed’s site is popular enough but for sort of a cult audience rather than a huge-mass audience, (2) not that many people misspell weird, and (3) advertising rates are such these days that the “wierd” surfers couldn’t bring in more than a nickel a month total, anyway.
* On Wednesday, somehow, a news site (maybe more than 1) reported what was actually a mundane pre-trial reference to the case of accused Pittsburgh-area murderer (and transsexual) Tammy Lynn Felbaum [News of the Weird 686, 4-1-01], but supplied the url of the original murder story, from the 3-14-01 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Several NOTW correspondents thus thought this murder was breaking news. In reality, it was just a state appeals court ruling that, because of the case’s notoriety, the jury pool would be imported from faraway McKean County, Pa. One of Yr Ed’s correspondents said the sloppy url-dissemination was by The Drudge Report.
Thursday, October 18, 2001
Environmental officials conduct the ultimate screwing of protestors. A Pennsylvania man really, really detests jury duty. The 1880s’ Hatfield-McCoy feud is renewed. Artist who fancifully photographed corpses is convicted. America’s leading cheese artist prepares to really mess up a house in Wyoming. Plus: a Dublin model’s embarrassing pratfall and the robber who changed his mind almost in time.
Ohio Environmental Officials Screw Protestors
Susan Heitker and Matt Glass staged a week-long anti-logging protest in Vinton County, Ohio, in August, sitting on a platform they had constructed in 2 huge oaks down the road from a patch of trees to be cut. Not only were they arrested (trespassing), but the Dept. of Natural Resources cut down the two trees (which were not part of the original patch) on the flimsy guise that they needed to collect evidence in the trespassing case and so needed to get as many fingerprints as they could from the trees, which would be easier if the trees were lying on the ground rather than still alive. And then, the coup de grâce: The gov’t seeks a court order to make the protestors pay $152 for the cost of chopping them down. [Columbus Dispatch, 10-17-01]
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Civil Disobedience to Trial by Jury
Gregory M. Smyth, 31, is spending the rest of this week sitting in an uninviting chair outside the West Chester, Pa., sheriff’s office (8 a.m.-5 p.m., except an hour for lunch and two 15-minute breaks) as punishment because he got in Judge Howard Riley’s face about how much jury duty sucks. After receiving his initial summons, Smyth had written the judge an opinionated letter, closing with, “[J]ust send the cops. [I]’ll be at work.” [Philadelphia Inquirer, 10-17-01]
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Hatfields and McCoys: A Holy-Land-Type Battle in Kentucky
Descendants of the two families that staged a notorious, 12-yr-long feud in the late 1800's in Pikeville, Ky., are now embattled over a cemetery important to the folklore of both families. A Hatfield man, John Vance, refuses to let people cross his property to visit the cemetery, which is, according to Ron McCoy, “hallowed ground” for his family because the feud was kicked off when 3 McCoys (now buried there) were killed by a Hatfield. Fortunately, yes, fortunately, this dispute will be dealt with by lawyers rather than suicide bombers. [Knoxville News-Sentinel-AP, 10-17-01]
Art Updates
Cincinnati photographer Thomas Condon, 29, was convicted Tuesday of corpse abuse for taking quixotic shots of various bodies (corpse “eating” an apple) in a morgue (after obtaining permission to be there innocuously in order to document an autopsy) [News of the Weird 692, May 2001]. And Cosimo Cavallaro, 39, the New York cheese-saturation artist, announced that he is only days away from blowing 5 tons of melted Monterey Jack into a one-bedroom home in Powell, Wyo.; he previously had really, really messed up a New York City hotel room. [News of the Weird 598, July 1999]. [Columbus Dispatch-AP, 10-17-01] [Rocky Mountain News, 10-16-01] [Link is to the cheese story.]
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Below the Fold for Thursday (October 18, 2001)
Ms. Julian Fallon, big-time model in Dubin, Ireland, won about $8,500 for being injured when the floor collapsed on the second story of a rehearsal studio and left her, er, straddling a beam (but the worst part, she said, were the 2 nail holes [“vampire bites”] in her bum, which ends her bikini career).
A hapless (but unnamed) 49-yr-old man was arrested in Kashihara, Japan, on Tuesday after he told police he had thought seriously about robbing a post office (except that he got cold feet and drove past it, directly to the police station); on the way to the post office, he had swiped a can of oil to use in the robbery and so was charged with theft.
[Sources: Irish Independent, 10-17-01; Mainichi Daily News, 10-17-01]
Editor's Notes (Thursday, October 18, 2001)
* Correction: The story yesterday from India about the army hospital nurses’ uniforms was wrong. The dress code requires trousers and lab coat, not just lab coat. I plead guilty for having been influenced by the Ananova.com version of the story (which I never cite; if I read the story there, I always go look it up in a real newspaper before reporting it, and believe me, I have to pass up some real doozies from Ananova.com because they are simply not authenticatable for my purposes). Ananova.com reported lab-coat-only; I then found the story on the Times of India site; I did not read the latter closely enough to catch Ananova.com’s error. Thanks to reader Alyx Thorne.
Wednesday, October 17, 2001
The People’s Republic of Berkeley condemns U.S. bombing (and while they’re at it, yeah, terrorism). Anthrax scare over a pair of thong underwear. A woman discovers her husband hoarded tuna fish and mayonnaise. Truth still eludes Department of the Interior in Indian trust funds fiasco. An Australian state decides what it really needs is more whorehouses. Gov’t in India decides army nurses need to show more skin in summertime. Plus: the entrepreneurial, but dumb, locksmith in Kansas City; the $1.5G cuddly cat robot; the world’s clumsiest tooth-brusher; and a seriously inept impersonator of O.J. Simpson. And Yr Ed reminds you that his address weird@compuserve.com is dead, replaced by newsweird@aol.com
The Latest War News
The Berkeley (Calif.) City Council voted to condemn the bombing of the Taliban, 5-4 (only after someone pointed out that the resolution should include a condemnation of terrorism, too), saying that these things ought to be settled by “the legal system”; Mayor Shirley Dean countered, “Who’s going to serve the papers?” And a 59-yr-old man in Fallon, Nev., turned in a pair of what he said were anonymously-mailed women’s thong panties, and the local sheriff dutifully put them in a biohazard barrel until they could be examined for anthrax. And in a Los Angeles Times piece on surprises (pleasant or unsettling) discovered among the left-behind possessions of the Sept. 11 victims was Joanne Hrycak’s learning by exploring the basement that her late husband Marty, a confirmed packrat, was even more severe than she thought: He not only had saved “every single piece of paper since the day we met,” but he had a secret stash of mayonnaise and tuna fish (and toothpaste) in the basement. [Sfgate.com-AP, 10-17-01] [Sfgate.com-AP, 10-16-01] [Los Angeles Times, 10-16-01] [Link is to the Nevada story]
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A Quaint Consistency Between Administrations at Interior
A federal district court-appointed factfinder told Judge Royce Lamberth yesterday that the Dept. of the Interior is still hiding and stonewalling under Secretary Gale Norton, just like it did under Secretary Bruce Babbitt, regarding decades-long mismanagement of Indian trust funds. Babbitt once admitted that the department had squandered at least $10B from royalties on grazing, mining, logging, and oil-drilling rights it agreed to administer in 1887, and “efforts” were begun, sort of, to set things right. The problem this time is that a periodic report was prepared for the court but that utterly no official would sign off on it attesting to its accuracy [which, Yr Ed notes, is refreshing in itself in Washington, in that the normal thing to do would be to sign the inaccurate report and then spin away any criticism]. [New York Times-AP, 10-17-01]
Queensland Fast-Tracks Whorehouse Permits
It’s a problem that Americans don’t see very often: A state gov’t is annoyed that local officials are burying (in bureaucratic delays) applications to open legal brothels. The state (Queensland, Australia) announced this week that it would appoint an independent assessor to speed up the process (and, thus, the tax revenue), and, of course, that person was immediately referred to as the state’s pimp. [The Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 10-16-01]
Male Hospital Administrators in India Nearly Win the Ability to Dress Nurses as They Wish
The Delhi High Court yesterday stayed the army’s new dress code for nurses at the Military Hospital at Trimulgherry, putting on hold the proposed summer uniforms. Currently, they wear olive green trousers and shirt, with a lab coat on top; the new code (hubba hubba!) would have gotten rid of the trousers and shirt. [Times of India, 10-17-01]
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Below the Fold for Wednesday (October 17, 2001)
A locksmith in Kansas City was charged with squirting glue in the door locks of local stores, to make more business for himself. (He’s also pretty focused: There was a surveillance camera like right there by one door, and he didn’t even see it.)
The Japanese company Omron introduced NeCoRo, a $1.5G furry cat robot that doesn’t walk or talk but does most everything else, including making cat noises (48 kinds) and mimicking cat mannerisms (perking up ears, squinting eyes).
Doctors at University Hospital (Cardiff, Wales) removed a regular-size toothbrush from Vania Lucchesi’s stomach after she tripped while brushing and swallowed it.
A guy called up a potential juror in the O.J. Simpson road-rage trial, posing as O.J., demanding acquittal; however, he spoke in a Caribbean accent and referred to his late wife as “Nicole Kidman.”
[Sources: Columbia Tribune-AP, 10-16-01; BBC News, 10-16-01; BBC News, 10-16-01; Tampa Tribune-AP, 10-17-01] [Link is to the toothbrush story.]
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Tuesday, October 16, 2001
America’s ambulance-chasing litigators go after Osama. While much of the F State anthrax-panics, the National Croquet Center opens in West Palm Beach. The father of a man who died of a sports-rage beating says his son also liked to beat the crap out of people. It was the beer talking as a guy fell out of the top deck at Arrowhead Stadium Sunday, and another guy stole a plane and dropped an ineptly-made pipe bomb on an Interstate highway in Idaho. Plus: the ass-backwards carjacker, the Osama sighting in Winnipeg, male cops and male gangbangers waltzing together, and the New Zealand murder trial of a middle-named Wayne. And Yr Ed reminds you that his address weird@compuserve.com is dead, replaced by newsweird@aol.com
America Turns Its Real Dogs of War Loose on Osama
Yesterday, David Pitchford and David Bruner filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., against Osama bin Laden and his bud Ayman al-Zawahiri, for $1.1T ($100B compensatory, for threatening them, among others, with personal injury and $1T punitive damages, which, though theoretically designed to deter, obviously wouldn’t). [Tampa Tribune, 10-16-01]
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While the Nation Anthrax-Panics, West Palm Beach Plays Croquet
Just a few miles up the road from the Nat’l Enquirer building, officials are readying the Nat’l Croquet Center for its formal January opening by scheduling a special series of matches this week (96 a day) to test it out. While many F-Staters were concerned about spreading anthrax, Center official Bob Alman said he was trying to “spread” “the word” about croquet. And, by the way, as an update to the story here on 9-28-01, an Afghan cricket team is playing in the tournament in Pakistan this week and, in the opening round (as seems to be the case lately), it got its butt kicked. [Miami Herald, 10-16-01] [London Daily Telegraph, 10-16-01] [Link is to the croquet story]
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This Link
is to the cricket story.
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Father of Sports-Rage Beating Victim: "My Son Was a Real Orenthal, Too"
Thomas Junta goes on trial in November in Cambridge, Mass., for the fatal beating that he gave fellow soccer parent Michael Costin in July 2000, and his defense recently got a boost when Michael’s father Gus offered to testify that Michael himself used to beat the crap out of his wife, his kids, and everybody else who crossed him. Junta’s lawyer characterized Gus’s motive as wanting to “make a level playing field” for Junta. On the other hand, Michael’s mother (still married to Gus but estranged for the last, oh, quarter century) said Gus is exaggerating and that Michael had straightened himself out in the yrs just before his death. [Boston Globe, 10-16-01]
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Alcohol Was Involved
A man fell from the top level at Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium Sunday in the first quarter of the Chiefs-Steelers game (after accidentally moshing down 8 rows); he’s okay, as are the 4 people he took down with his rolling body block. And an unidentified, silent-as-to-motive man was arrested in Utah, where he landed the single-engine plane he had stolen in Idaho; he had flown only 10 feet above the ground in places and dropped a homemade pipe bomb onto I-15, but it didn’t explode (but it did cause 2 fighter jets to scramble after him in a terrorist alert). [Kansas City Star, 10-15-01] [The Idaho Statesman, 10-16-01] [Link is to the airplane story.]
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Below the Fold for Tuesday (October 16, 2001)
A 40ish man was arrested in Ogden, Utah, Sunday morning, after allegedly attempting a carjacking by holding a handgun on himself.
Some kids at Buchanan School, Winnipeg, Manitoba, thought it was incredibly cool that Mr. Ben Levin, the deputy education minister, was on his way for a visit, but it turns out those kids had misheard the intercom announcement and thought the visitor would be Mr. Osama bin Laden.
There’s now an official stink over the decision last month by the Watts Towers Art Center (Los Angeles) to pull (for “safety” reasons) artist Alex Donis’s bring-the-community-together exhibit that featured male LAPD officers and male gangbangers dancing socially with each other.
The Americanizing of New Zealand is underway this week in Wellington, as the trial continues for the man accused of murdering his girlfriend (and abducting the couple’s son): Mr. Richard Wayne Gorrie.
[Sources: Ogden Standard-Examiner, 10-15-01; Saskatoon StarPhoenix-Canadian Press, 10-14-01; Los Angeles Times, 10-13-01; The Dominion, 10-16-01]
Monday, October 15, 2001
Tax-court defendants in Canada are using a uniform, gibberishy language to address judges. F State murder defendant Oscar Ray Bolin’s retrial starts today (so far: 6 convictions, 6 reversals). F State judges say that everyone knows in his gut what an “unsound mind” is. The F State’s Yahwehs have apparently relocated to Montreal. A husband kidnapped his wife after learning that she voted for Gore last yr. A tacky Turkish contest honored the World Trade Center victims. A naked councilwoman took a seat in New Zealand. And a claim that the New York Times has squelched conclusive findings that Al Gore should be leading the war on terrorism. And Yr Ed reminds you that his address weird@compuserve.com is dead, replaced by newsweird@aol.com
Gibberish Language Sweeping Canadian Tax Case Arguments
“With the sovereign, hyphen, authority of the Andrew, hyphen, William, colon, Sereda [the defendant] is for the stating of the authority of the noun.” That sentence [?] supposedly makes sense if you speak the “In the Truth” language invented by American David Wynn Miller, who says he created a mathematically-based, precise language to replace the flawed syntax of English. Canadian tax courts have noticed more and more people using it when called to justify their loopy tax loopholes [previous approaches: referring to themselves as sovereigns; insisting that certain legal documents capitalize certain phrases to be valid]. So far, the judges’ preferred response is to award the “In the Truth” speakers with an absolutely-free-of-charge mental examination, and Canadian Immigration’s response has been to keep Miller out of the country. [Edmonton Sun-CP, 10-14-01]
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The F State
(1) The first of 3 murder retrials of Oscar Ray Bolin starts today in Pasco County. He’s the guy convicted 6 times of mid-1980s murders and overturned every time [News of the Weird 710]. This one is the gov’t’s strongest case, with an actual eyewitness, Bolin’s stepbrother (but who has an unorthodox understanding of “solemnly swear to tell the truth”). (2) A state appeals court ruled last week that a pawn shop could be liable for violating the law against selling guns to someone with “an unsound mind,” which the shop said it had no sure-fire way of detecting, since the retarded customer (who went on to kill a tourist) had not been institutionalized, had passed a background check, and had filled out the forms correctly. [Ed.: But, Your Honors, surely you appreciate the high level of skill needed to detect the subtle differences as to whether a particular F State resident is or isn’t of “unsound mind.”] [St. Petersburg Times, 10-15-01] [Tampa Tribune-AP, 10-15-01] [This Link is to the first story.]
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This Link
is to the "unsound mind" story.
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The Miami Yahwehs Decide to Bore Montreal for a While
About 600 followers of Yahweh Ben Yahweh (recently released after serving 9 yrs in the Big House for conspiracy to murder white devils) convened last week in Montreal, which they called the “New Promised Land,” and “Pledge[d] Allegiance” to YBY, “Grand Master of All,” “the God of the Universe,” “the Grand Potentate,” and “the Everlasting Father” (who is still stuck in Miami as a condition of parole). In fact, why stop there? Said one follower, Yahweh (pronounced, by the way, u-hay wa-hay) “controls our souls. He controls one-ten-thousandth of the length of a hair that no one can see. The Father of Stars looked to see if there was any other God but himself and he found none.” YBY himself addressed the disciples via audiotape: “I used to be just like you with no wisdom at all. I didn’t even know how to blow up a balloon. [B]ut I became greater than Solomon. I had to be really audacious to come here by myself and stand above planet Earth. [I] am self-ruling, self-proclaimed, self-ordained, self-educated. Yahweh is God of all Gods, King of all me.” [Miami Herald, 10-15-01]
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Below the Fold for Monday (October 15, 2001)
Carter Masters, 76, was convicted of “especially aggravated[ly] kidnapping” his estranged wife, taking her from Livingston, Tenn., to Daytona Beach, apparently because he was “especially aggravated” when he found out she had voted for Gore last year instead of Bush.
In a trying-to-be-helpful anti-terrorism competition in Kayseri, Turkey, last week, the top prizes were won by (1) 2 bakers who made a 5-ft-high cake featuring twin skyscrapers, one with a hole near the top and the other with an icing-made plane embedded in it and (2) a hairstyler (for men) who created a swept-up look formed into 2 towers.
Paula Gillion, 18, who ran for the North Shore (New Zealand) City Council as the Naked Politician (belying her grasp of the issues as a college gov’t major), won a seat on the 16-member board.
[Naples News-AP, 10-13-01] [Agence France-Presse, 10-12-01] [New Zealand Herald, 10-15-01] [Link is to the Gillion story.]
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Editor's Notes (Monday, October 15, 2001)
* In a report dated 10-2-01, journalist David Podvin (of whom Yr Ed has never heard but who, granted, seems to have a good, grownup following online) reports that “the Consortium” of news organizations examining the recounts of the F State’s Presidential ballots has concluded that Gore won and by not such a slim margin, at that. The Consortium is the one headed by the New York Times and CBS (as opposed to the Miami Herald recounters, which earlier reported that Gore probably had more votes but would not have won the specific challenges mounted by his boy David Boies, who contested the wrong ballots). According to Podvin, his sources (a media executive and a Times journalist), certain Times board members and shareholders decided, even before Sept. 11, that releasing its results would not be good for the country and convinced other Consortium members to shelve the results. Now, Yr Ed makes this story an Editor’s Note instead of a news story because I am eternally suspicious of coalitions’ ability to keep their members’ silence on controversial issues, especially one with such bad feelings as linger from November 2000. Read it yourself.
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©
2001, Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
