Sunday, October 28, 2001
Nigeria has its own Taliban-type problems. Why do those third-world couples seem to get stuck so much? The guy who can’t seem to stop robbing banks. And remember, today’s and the previous 6 days’ stories roll over into archive tonight (and remember also that I do not recheck the Links after I post the stories so you may often encounter expired Links, and that’s too bad, but I’ve got far too many things to do here than recheck Links).
Thanks This Week to
Geoffrey Egan, Harry Farkas, Scott Langill, Colleen Klosterman, Andre May, Lang Thompson, Bob Bayer, Joel O'Brien, Paul Bogrow, Kerry O'Conner, John Columbus, Steve Miller, Andrew Buchan, Scott Shellhamer, Rich Adams, Kenneth Gorman, Paul Music, Paul Blumstein, Jennifer Lankheim, Roger Gulbransen, Peter Gunther, John Cieciel, Sam Gaines, Leslie Goodman-Malamuth, and the News of the Weird Senior Advisors and Chief Correspondents.
Oh, Those Radical Muslims!
A judge in Sokoto, Nigeria, ordered Ms. Safiya Hassaini, 35, stoned to death for adultery while her probable partner (her cousin, Yahaya Abubakar, 60) had the charges against him dropped for insufficient evidence. (The evidence against Hassaini was that she is not currently married but just gave birth.) Sokoto is one of the northern Nigerian states that practice Muslim Sharia law (e.g., pickpockets lose a finger, and bands of men with clubs roam around looking for lawbreakers), in contrast to southern Nigeria, which is mostly Christian. There’s another quirk in that law, apparently: Though Hassaini is on death row, she was released on bail so she could take care of the kid for a while, after which time she’s supposed to report back to court so she can be killed. [London Daily Telegraph, 10-28-01]
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Either It's a Hoax, or We Need a Peace Corps for Sex
According to yesterday’s Straits Times (the leading newspaper in Singapore), there has been yet another instance of a copulating couple being unable to extricate themselves from their hookup. The hetero couple in their 20s had to be taken by ambulance on Wednesday in Taiping [which Yr Ed guesses is Malaysia’s Taiping, and not China’s Taiping, despite the story’s having been credited to the China Press]. The woman had taken a prescription similar to Viagra. Four months ago, in the neighboring town of Ipoh, another couple had a similar problem. [Straits Times, 10-27-01]
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The Sad Life of Bank Robber Dwight Pichette
Here’s a guy serving 14 life terms (concurrently, at least) on 58 convictions for robbery and related charges, yet his lawyer and others say he’s one of the most intelligent and sensitive people they’ve ever met, and since he’s been in the slammer (in Victoria, B.C.) , he’s published three books, with a 4th having won a pre-publication arts award. So he gets supervised leave in May to attend a philosophy discussion downtown, and he gives his escort the slip, see, and tries 2 more bank robberies, and they catch him. Pichette said, reasonably, that he was subconsciously sabotaging his future because, on that supervised leave, he realized how he’d tossed away his life. And the sabotage worked, because he’s now got 16 concurrent life terms. [Edmonton Journal, 10-27-01]
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Saturday, October 27, 2001
Cop begs victim to help him undo his big mistake. Mother has trouble proving to the bureaucrats that her son is dead. Plus: gaffes by a local TV reporter and a candidate for lieutenant governor. And Yr Ed clarifies why animal-cruelty stories almost never seem usable in Newza the Weird.
Cop Begs Girl Not to Turn Him in; She Does, Anyway
It’s a routine story of a cop who takes advantage of a DUI girl (age 16) he stopped, and now he’s facing 11 to 30 in the slammer. But the Broward County (Fla.) prosecutors arranged for the girl to talk to the cop on the phone, to hear what he’d say to her. Answer: He begged, pure and simple, and you can read highlights of the phone call. [Miami Herald, 10-27-01]
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Mother Offers Proof Her Son's Dead
The Sallie Mae loan-processing office in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., received a letter in the mail the other day from an obviously frustrated mother in Washington state who had been having trouble convincing the agency to forgive her deceased son’s $35G student loan. (Only an original death certificate or raised-letter copy will do.) So she sent 2 teaspoons of his ashes and the certificate from the crematorium. Of course, these days, one does not send powdered things through the mail, and the hazmat people were called in, and a few employees had to be anthrax-tested. [L.A. Times-AP, 10-24-01]
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Below the Fold for Saturday
A Nashville TV reporter, crawling under a fence at a water facility to show how easy it would be for terrorists to contaminate the city’s supply (and then being incredulous that guards didn’t hassle him), started cheerfully taping his report until informed that the “water facility” he was at was the sewage plant.
A campaign ad in Texas Monthly by Lt. Gov. candidate David Dewhurst features a large U.S. flag with a smartly dressed soldier in front, but upon closer inspection (after the magazine hit the streets this week), it’s a German soldier in a Luftwaffe uniform, and campaign heads will roll.
[Sources: Nashville Scene, 10-25-01; Dallas Morning News, 10-26-01]
Editor's Notes (Saturday, October 27, 2001)
* Two readers asked for clarification of Yr Ed’s remarks here (10-25-01) rejecting animal-abuse stories, asking, in essence, why that genre of stories is so special. My aversion to animal cruelty stories has to do with the utter lack of any good reason for anyone to engage in the behavior that causes harm to the animal. (Even parental cruelty toward their small kids is usually an attempt [misguided; wildly overzealous] to fulfill what the parent might believe is his responsibility for discipline and rearing.) Since animals cannot possess any sophisticated degree of intentionality in whatever behavior “provoked” the cruelty-inflictor, it’s nearly impossible for me to draw any irony from that situation. (But I wouldn’t go too far with this, since I do respect the intelligence/food chain; PETA people shouldn’t write me for a donation.)
Friday, October 26, 2001
The dead-contacter John Edward puts his career at risk, then bails out. Italians’ terrorist-identifying detectives score a victory. A contest winner that insults a long line of British eccentrics. Plus: a famously dumb serial killer back in the news; another middle-name Wayne charged with murder; an Ohio principal who temporarily lost it; and the wrong place for a drug warehouse.
John Edward Almost Grosses Out America
Early yesterday there was a report from the trade journal Broadcasting & Cable that dead-contacter John Edward would soon stage a TV show at which he communicated with deceased victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. Just as Yr Ed was pondering that (thinking, for example, that it would soon also be appropriate for Americans to say that they’ll always remember where they were at the moment they first heard that John Edward would do this show), the producers got word that they had reconsidered and won’t do it, after all. [Broadcasting & Cable, 10-25-01 (both). [The Link is to the first story.]
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This Link
is to the reconsideration story.
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A Week Later, Italians Conclude They've Got a Terrorist
Italian police announced on Wednesday that the Egyptian guy they captured the week before was probably a terrorist, but beyond that, they aren’t sure. He was a stowaway headed for Canada, inside a shipping container, on a boat, was well-dressed and clean when he emerged, had a laptop computer and a couple of cell phones inside, possessed an open airline ticket, airport maps, access passes, and papers showing (falsely) that he was an airline mechanic, and more. [The Times (London), 10-25-01]
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"Best of British Eccentrics"? Give Me a Break!
Lyndon Yorke was the winner, announced yesterday in the contest sponsored by Kellogg Fruit ‘n’ Fibre, apparently because he sails on the Thames in a combination tricycle-catamaran (The Tritanic), beating out a guy who eats only baked beans. Yr Ed can name a half dozen more worthy recipients just in 2001 alone. Like this guy, from last month’s News of the Weird [.711]: “William Lyttle, 71, of North London has been a compulsive digger for years, said neighbors, according to an August report in The Guardian. To satisfy unarticulated inner needs, Lyttle has dug extensively all over his multi-acre property, once going about 50 feet straight down before getting bored and cementing up the hole. However, in his latest adventure, which authorities said is probably the first time his digging has gone past his property line, his excavation caused the street in front of his home to collapse. Lyttle lives in a 20-room home that would be worth about $1.5 million if it were in good repair.” [The Times, 10-26-01]
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Below the Fold for Friday
UK serial killer (12 men) Dennis Nilsen challenged prison authorities’ denying him a soft-porn gay magazine when hets in prison can receive soft-porn het mags; Nilsen is the guy who came to police’s attention in 1983 when plumbers turned him in after investigating reports of clogged pipes in his neighborhood (clogged by the cut-off body parts Nilsen was flushing down the toilet).
Charged with murdering his girlfriend’s son, in Hastings, Minn., Steven Wayne McBride.
Fired for an incident in which he (elementary school principal, Cambridge, Ohio) spanked a 7-yr-old kid 13 times while uttering, “You little son of a bitch . . !”: Bill Lee.
Indicted in New York City on drug-ring charges: A man who provoked the curiosity of police when he refused to evacuate his apartment across the street from the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, despite the danger, smoke, and falling debris (and in which muchas drogas and paraphernalia were found.
[Sources: Icbirmingham.com, 10-25-01; WCCO (Minneapolis), 10-25-01; Columbus Dispatch, 10-25-01; Excite-Reuters, 10-25-01]
Thursday, October 25, 2001
Another Federal Aviation Administration rule you didn’t know. Baseball player retires, actually gives back to the community. The F State legislature cranks up the patriotism. A jury rejects another attempt by psychotherapists to normalize everyone. 6-time-convicted murderer guilty again. Plus: the innocent O.J. Simpson and the aptly-named Berkeley pro-war guy. And about that sex-with-a-horse story . . .
Something Else to Worry About
Port of Oakland (Calif.) commissioners ordered a full inquiry Tuesday on why 1,000 secure-area access badges to Oakland Int’l Airport are missing. The FAA has come down on the airport for the following reason: 1,000 badges is 10 percent of those issued, and FAA regulations require that that number be no more than 5 percent. [Seriously.] [sfgate.com-AP, 10-24-01]
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Stan Javier: the Jimmy Carter of Baseball
The Seattle Mariners’ Stan Javier’s baseball career (17 yrs) ended Monday night when his team got kicked by the Yankees. In retirement, he has decided to use his baseball nest egg to plant 15,000 to 20,000 acres of trees in his native Dominican Republic. Said Javier, “[I]f we keep cutting trees and not planting them, we’re going to run out of forest. It can be devastating. [My partners and I] just want to start something, and maybe other people can follow us.” [Seattle Times-Bloomberg, 10-24-01]
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F-State Patriotism
The Florida Legislature is meeting this week out of the need to trim $1.3B from the budget but took advantage of the session to pass (115-1) a bunch of patriotism bills, e.g., schoolkids have to stand, with their hands over their hearts, and recite [or stand silent] the Pledge of Allegiance. The “1,” Rep. Chris Smith of Fort Lauderdale: “What’s next? We pass a bill that says you have to tattoo a flag on your butt? They’ll vote for that.” [WKMG-TV, 10-24-01]
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"Acute Adjustment Disorder"
According to shrinks testifying for the defendant in the Hackensack, N.J., murder trial of Agustin Garcia, 49, he was acting more as a manslaughter guy than a murder guy when, out of jealousy, he shot his former girlfriend to death on her wedding day. The shock that occurred when Garcia found out the woman was getting married (as recently as 3 days after she and Garcia had last had sex) caused him to come down with Acute Adjustment Disorder, the shrinks said. (The jury didn’t buy it. Answer: 30 yrs.) [New York Times, 10-23-01]
F State Jury Convicts Oscar Ray Bolin Again
The guy with 6 overturned death sentences [News of the Weird 710; Weird Planet Daily, week of 8-27-01], was convicted yesterday in the 2nd retrial of one of the cases, meaning that 84 jurors over the years have heard the evidence against him in 3 murders, and that not a one of them thinks there’s a reasonable doubt, but it’s not over until the appeals courts say so. This time, the prosecutors won without relying on what Bolin told his ex-wife about the murders. [Tampa Tribune, 10-25-01]
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Below the Fold for Thursday
The Miami jury acquitted O.J. Simpson, apparently concluding that it didn’t like either the assaulter or the assaultee very much.
The head of the pro-war demonstrators at the Univ. of Calif. at Berkeley: Mr. Bret Manly.
[Sources: Miami Herald, 10-25-01; Fox News, 10-24-01]
Editor's Notes (Thursday, October 25, 2001)
* Apparently, a lover of horses [if you know what I mean] turned up in the news Wednesday in Pennsylvania. Yr Ed disfavors stories of cruelty to animals in any form, meaning, boy, the irony of the specific situation has to be tremendously strong to overcome the cruelty that I virtually never do such stories. For example, Mr. Phillip Buble (News of the Weird 701, 7-15-01) might have been having sex with his dog Lady, but in my view, the story was the absolutely carefree way in which Buble presented the two in public (and before the Maine legislature) as actual husband and wife. Nonetheless, if you’re interested in yesterday’s horse story, click the link.
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Wednesday, October 24, 2001
School reconsiders, will allow students to egg a photo of Osama. Yet another reason to quit smoking. The arson ‘n’ nakedness activist gets 6 yrs. And a copy editor’s error causes nearly the entire city of Mankato, Minn., to get hacked off at Yr Ed.
F-State School Coddles Osama, Then Changes Mind
St. Petersburg’s Dixie Hollins High School changed its mind yesterday and allowed a physics teacher to proceed with her project to demonstrate how packaging eggs might prevent their breaking, by having students drop packaged eggs 35 feet from stadium bleachers onto a 9-foot by 9-foot poster of bin Laden’s face. As of Monday, the school administration had said such a stunt was “culturally insensitive,” arbitrarily preferring to think of bin Laden as a member of the “Muslim” community rather than as a member of the “Kill Americans” community. [St. Petersburg Times, 10-23-01]
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Smoking Continues to Be Dangerous to Your Health
An 18-yr-old student at the University of Arkansas fell to his death Monday from a 5th-floor ledge, where he had gone to light up because he lives in a smoke-free dorm. [Associated Press, 10-23-01]
Below the Fold for Wednesday
Mary Braun, the arson ‘n’ nakedness religious activist [Weird Planet Daily 8-30-01] was sentenced to 6 yrs in prison (Nelson, British Columbia).
[Sources: Excite-Reuters, 10-23-01]
Editor's Notes (Wednesday, October 24, 2001)
* Two particularly absurd child-abuse stories ran in News of the Weird 714, 10-14-01, which just made its way on Saturday into the Mankato (Minn.) Free Press, under Yr Ed’s titling “Adventures in Bad Parenting,” but with the Free Press copy editor’s having dropped the “Bad.” Result: It looked to many Free Press readers that Yr Ed was lauding these ridiculous parents. It’s bad enough that Yr Ed has to explain to a few dozen people a year that, well, not all NOTW stories are supposed to be funny (i.e., “weird,” in the dictionary, is merely “bizarre,” “eerie”); it’s impossible when they actually believe that I set out to make fun of tragedies.
Tuesday, October 23, 2001
“Soccer” gets Muslim crowds just as ticked off as “America” does. A Scottish girl has to go to court, twice, to get dad to pay for school. The first accidental Halloween hanging of the year. O.J. gives the road-rage version of pitching golf balls from his sandbox at 10 p.m. by the light of the Bronco. Apparently, it’s good to have a large brain. Plus, judgment-challenged people galore: the clumsy pipe-bomber, the (late) freeway drag-racer, and the $8 bank robbery. And more on the Tammy Lynn Felbaum reporting error.
The Other Deadly Threat to the Mullahs
It’s not only U.S. bombs and cruise missiles that radical Muslim leaders have to fear: “Hundreds” of football fans in Tehran rioted on Sunday after their nat’l soccer team lost a World Cup qualifying match, 3-1, to Bahrain, and rumors circulated that the game was fixed by Iran’s mullahs, who were disturbed by fans’ secular-type gloating after the team beat Iraq on Oct. 12. [BBC News, 10-22-01]
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Parental Sacrifice, Redefined
Nicole Lavelle, 17, had to go to court again to get her dad to finance her secondary education; turns out he had spent too much money on himself (a Jaguar, designer clothes, Cartier watch, Gucci luggage, and accounts at Harrods and Saks Fifth Avenue) to afford her private school tuition and supplies. She had already won a judgment from a court in Stirling, Scotland, last year ordering him to pay tuition, but she had to go back this year (again, successfully) for an order making him pay for a computer. Mr. Callum Lavelle is a computer executive in Dunblane and earns at least $185,000/yr. [The Scotsman, 10-22-01]
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The First Accidental Halloween Hanging of the Year
A 14-yr-old boy in Sparta, Mich., trying to make his role (jumping out of the woods to scare passengers on a haunted hayride) scarier, accidentally hanged himself Saturday night. As usual, the people who witnessed the incident thought the “death” was part of the act. [Detroit Free Press-AP, 10-23-01]
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Surprise! O.J.'s Version Is Different from the Prosecutors'
Testifying at his road-rage trial yesterday, O.J. now says the victim actually got out of his SUV and confronted O.J., and O.J. now says that if his fingerprint is on the eyeglasses, it’s because the victim was waving his eyeglasses around like a pointer and that his finger might have brushed up against them. [Miami Herald, 10-23-01]
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A Reliable Way to Tell Whether You're Likely to Make News of the Weird
A piece in today’s issue of Neurology plays up “head size” as a key predictor of whether someone will get Alzheimer’s, suggesting that the disease simply takes more time to spread if the brain in which it is present is larger and more developed. The doctors suggest that it is a well-accepted fact that people with large head circumferences in fact have large brains, and vice versa. The research, by a U. of South Florida and U. of Washington team, calls the available brain territory “brain reserve,” referring to the space available for use by the brain (rather than to the observation by News of the Weird readers that many people hold their brains in reserve rather than use them). If you’re measuring at home, and you’re less than 21.4 inches around, you’re, haw haw, on the left tail of the distribution. The upper measurement, though, was not given in the newspaper summary of the Neurology article. [St. Petersburg Times, 10-23-01] [This piece, by staff writer Wes Allison, is inexplicably missing from the vast online edition.]
The Judgment-Challenged Are (Were) in Full Bloom
Albert Tamm, 43 and wanted on a warrant for making terroristic threats, nearly blew off his arm on his homemade pipe bomb Sunday (Jacksonville Beach, Fla.). A 17-yr-old boy killed himself when he accidentally rammed a concrete embankment at 100 mph on I-680 Saturday night while drag racing (Fremont, Calif.). A man (probably a foreigner, said witnesses) successfully robbed the Hokkoku Bank in Hatto, Japan, last week, grabbing a sack of money off the counter and fleeing; he was undoubtedly surprised later to learn the bag contained 1,000 1-yen coins (about $8.20). Gerald Wilson, 37, was arrested Monday for robbing the check-cashing store where he used to work, and if that weren’t enough, he also left his entire checkbook on the counter as he fled (Tampa). [Tampa Tribune-AP, 10-22-01] [San Francisco Chronicle, 10-22-01] [Mainichi Daily News, 10-23-01] [St. Petersburg Times, 10-23-01]
Editor's Notes (Tuesday, October 23, 2001)
* The Tammy Lynn Felbaum story [Editor’s Notes, 10-19-01] continues to have a life of its own. The Times of London has now picked up the 7-month-old story and run it as breaking news.
Monday, October 22, 2001
Greenland’s lax prison system even lets inmates go hunting (like, with guns). The Pope beatifies your ordinary husband and wife. The Miami Cuban community beatifies the house Elian lived in. Nudists only superficially practice body acceptance. Germany opens prostitution as a viable career choice. Plus, the latest loser at Russian roulette; a hunter’s tree stand gone bad; an Australian town going nuts over radio waves; and a quixotic way for police to get their message out.
Makes "Club Fed" Look Like Devil's Island
Greenland operates probably the world’s most inmate-friendly prison (all residents have jobs on the outside at market wages; there are weekend fishing and shopping trips), emphasizing rehabilitation over punishment (though its recidivist rate isn’t any better than other prisons’). Guards do take up arms, though, but only for weekend hunting trips, when the inmates themselves take up arms. Main advantage of the system: Court sessions are brief because criminals usually confess to everything. [London Daily Telegraph, 10-21-01]
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Saints in the News
On Saturday, the Pope named an ordinary, early-20th century married couple to be beatified as sort of Catholicism’s ideal. Luigi Beltrame Quattrocchi and Maria Corsini produced 2 priests and a nun among their offspring, but mainly they just, you know, stayed together. A son said the couple lived more as brother and sister (separate beds) in their last 26 yrs. And the Miami house in which Elian Gonzalez lived was opened Sunday as a formal shrine (“United in Elian” House), with 500 people coming by to see the bicycles, the skates, the stuffed Barney, the trucks and airplanes, and the Spiderman pajamas of “The Miracle Child.” Said one visitor, “To us, this day [that Elian was taken away] was almost equivalent to the Twin Towers day.” [The Independent (London), 10-22-01] [Tampa Tribune-AP, 10-22-01] [LINK is to the Elian story.]
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Anthropology Study Rips Nudists' Claims of Moral Superiority
A 15-yr practicing nudist and U. of Fla. student, Ellen Woodall, has gotten good press with her study (based on working 2 summers as a housekeeper at nudist resorts) that nudists are just as likely to revere Barbie-type female bodies and make jokes about obese women, and to comment on men’s endowments, as the supposedly less-open and less-accepting population at large. Also, nudists are, increasingly, richer and better educated than the population at large. [Houston Chronicle-Reuters, 10-21-01]
Germany Mainstreams Its Prostitutes
Germany passed sweeping legislation on Friday to give sex workers health insurance, a pension, unemployment benefits, retraining benefits, and full access to the courts, as in contract and discrimination matters. “It’s a step in the right direction,” said the head of Hydra, the prostitutes’ lobbying group. (The weekend before, prostitutes in Hamburg had gone nuts in interviews with reporters after a prominent soccer coach, criticizing his players’ laziness, said they played like “the whores of St. Pauli [Hamburg’s red-light district].” Said one of the whores, “They could learn from us. I work 12 to 14 hours every day.“) [Yahoo-Reuters, 10-19-01] [Yahoo-Reuters, 10-16-01] [Link is to the legislation story.]
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Below the Fold for Monday
Thinning the Herd: Police in Delray Beach, Fla., said Reid S. Torgerson lost a game of Russian roulette (.38 revolver) on Friday night; alcohol was involved.
Hunter Chris Garcia, 22, is in good condition in a Mission Hills, Calif., hospital after slipping and falling out of a tree stand on Saturday morning and accidentally shooting himself in the face on the way down.
The rural town in Queensland, Australia, that petitioned for gov’t help in receiving weak over-the-air TV signals has turned down a spot in the gov’t’s $35M (Aus.) antenna program because it’s afraid of radiation from the re-transmitter.
The Suffolk, England, police purchased 1,000 apples (to hand out to citizens) with a short message (install timers on your lights to fool burglars) sun-stenciled onto the skin.
[Sources: Tampa Tribune-AP, 10-22-01; Los Angeles Times, 10-22-01; Brisbane Courier & Mail, 10-22-01; London Daily Telegraph, 10-22-01]
©
2001, Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
