[466] in Humor
HUMOR: WEIRDNUZ.344 (News of the Weird, September 9, 1994)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Tue Sep 27 09:21:34 1994
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 1994 09:18:33 EDT
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 1994 18:12:34 -0600 (MDT)
From: Espacionaute Spiff domine! <MATOSSIAN%ARIES@VAXF.Colorado.EDU>
...
From: notw-request@nine.org (NotW List Admin)
WEIRDNUZ.344 (News of the Weird, September 9, 1994)
by Chuck Shepherd
Lead Story
* In June, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C., featured a
show on "minimalism," in which sometimes quite ordinary objects are
offered as art. Included, for example, was a wrapped package, in brown
paper and string, entitled "Package," by Christo. According to the
Washington Post, when gallery technician Glenn Perry was installing some
of the exhibits with the aid of his tool cart, "several patrons and
critics" gathered around the cart and studied it, as if it were an
exhibit, before Perry finished his work and rolled the cart away.
[Washington Post, 6-3-94]
Couldn't Possibly Be True
* In Baton Rouge, La., in June, minutes after funeral services for a
25-year-old man ended, his body caught fire inside the closed coffin,
causing smoke to come shooting out of the cracks. Investigators said
embalming fluids spontaneously combusted. [Orlando Sentinel-Reuter,
6-4-94]
* In Kissimmee, Fla., in May, William Nelson was shot twice at point-blank
range by a man with a .38-caliber snub-nose revolver. One shot went
through his shoulder and exited his back; the other bullet hit Nelson
"square in the forehead and just stopped," said police officer Jim Lakey,
leaving as Nelson's major problem only that his "ears were ringing."
[Orlando Sentinel, 6-1-94]
* The Consumer Product Safety Commission's May report on sports injuries
said 1,455 people were sent to emergency rooms in 1992 with injuries from
playing ping-pong. [Newsweek, 6-20-94]
* Daniel Czubko, 32, went on the lam in late July when police in
Bakersfield, Calif., sought him on charges that he had stalked his
estranged wife. According to police, Czubko secretly moved into a
2-1/2-foot high crawl space underneath the floor of Mrs. Czubko's new home
on about July 23 and stayed for a week, listening to her activities, then
leaving briefly to harass her on the phone by eerily describing what she
was wearing and what she had been doing. [San Francisco Examiner-AP,
7-31-94]
* In a story on Elvis Week '94 in August in Memphis, the The Commercial
Appeal newspaper reported its selections as the two most bizarre Elvis
collectors' memorabilia, both of which belong to Joni Mabe of Athens, Ga.
One is a toenail she claims was Elvis's, picked out of a carpet in the
Jungle Room during her 1983 visit to Graceland; the other is a wart that
was removed from Elvis's right wrist in 1957. She said she purchased the
wart, encased in formaldehyde, from the operating surgeon's estate in
1990. [The Commercial Appeal, 8-20-94]
* William Powell, 35, was convicted of assault in Detroit in June after
a court found that he intentionally pulled his pregnant, 33-year-old
girlfriend part-way through the window of his van as he sped through the
neighborhood, rammed her body against a telephone pole, and kicked her
after he stopped the van. The woman, who lost the baby as well as an arm
and a leg in the incident, testified in support of Powell, saying that
the incident was her fault. [Burlington Free Press, 7-1-94; AP wirecopy,
Jun94]
* Police in Mendota Heights, Minn., filed armed robbery charges against
John P. Wuchko, 28, in July. According to police, Wuchko left no
fingerprints at the scene because he wore surgical gloves, but they
recovered one of the gloves nearby and found Wuchko's fingerprint on the
inside of one of the fingers. [Minneapolis Star Tribune, 7-28-94]
People in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time
* In Las Vegas, Nev., four undocumented aliens were deported to Mexico in
July after being turned in by the customer for whom they were installing
carpet. The customer was Arthur Strapp, head of the local office of the
U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Said Strapp, "Out of
900,000 people in Las Vegas, they picked my house." And in March, a
Haitian woman who had just landed illegally in St. Croix, the Virgin
Islands, was arrested when she hailed what she thought was a taxicab but
which turned out to be an official INS car. [New York Times-AP, 7-10-94;
Virgin Islands Daily News, 3-16-94]
* In May, a gang of bandits burst into a bakery in Rio de Janeiro at
precisely the time that it was being robbed by another gang. The first
gang had just taken a cash box, containing about $45, which the second
gang then demanded at gunpoint. A hail of gunfire erupted, and the first
gang escaped with the money. [Boston Herald, 6-19-94]
* In January and February, respectively, inmates escaping from prisons in
Lancaster, Calif., and Immokalee, Fla., by hiding in garbage trucks,
failed to get out of the trucks before they were compacted into bales of
trash. The California man survived, but the Florida man, who was serving
a life sentence for kidnaping, was found dead, badly mangled, in a
landfill, where the truck had deposited him. [L. A. Daily News, 1-14-94;
Miami Herald, 2-16-94]
Cries for Help
* Last fall, the California Bar Association finally disciplined Berkeley,
Calif., attorney Morgan Doyle for a string of incidents dating back eight
years. Among them, according to the bar association: In 1985, he fired
a shotgun from the roof of his apartment building to celebrate what he
called the exploration of the West and the arrival of a battleship in the
San Francisco harbor; and in 1991, after the owner of a restaurant refused
to yield to Doyle's repeated, inexplicable requests for free croissants,
Doyle threw food around the room and threatened the man and his wife.
The bar association, noting that none of the incidents involved "moral
turpitude," suspended Doyle for 30 days. [California Lawyer, April 1994]
Least Competent Criminal
* Danny Kelley, 17, was charged again in August for burglarizing a home
near San Antonio, Tex. Last year, the 400-pound Kelley was arrested for
another home burglary, during which he had also raided the refrigerator,
after police traced a trail of discarded ice cream wrappers from that
house to Kelley's in the same neighborhood. [Tampa Tribune, Aug94]
Copyright 1994, Universal Press Syndicate. All rights
reserved. Released for the personal use of readers.
No commercial use may be made of the material or of the
name News of the Weird.
