[1101] in Humor
HUMOR: WEIRDNUZ.395 (News of the Weird, September 1, 1995)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Wed Sep 27 22:17:44 1995
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 22:14:11 EDT
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 1995 00:05:46 +0000 (GMT)
From: Espacionaute Spiff domine! <MATOSSIAN@aries.colorado.edu>
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 1995 13:05:02 -0400
From: bostic@bsdi.com (Keith Bostic)
From: notw-request@nine.org (NotW List Admin)
WEIRDNUZ.395 (News of the Weird, September 1, 1995)
by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORY
* In March, police in New York City charged salesman Joel Levy, 32, with
assault. According to police, Levy's live-in girlfriend arrived home
unexpectedly after Levy had just put in an order for a call girl to come
over. Levy improvised a plan to intercept "Brandy" in his building's
lobby, have a liaison, and then to dash back upstairs before his
girlfriend got suspicious. When he saw a good-looking woman in the lobby,
Levy assumed it was Brandy, nudged her into an elevator, and, according
to police, pawed and fondled her while waving a $50 bill, saying, "You
know you want it. You know you'll do anything for it." The woman was not
Brandy but rather an assistant district attorney from Brooklyn. [N. Y.
Post, 3-10-95]
GOVERNMENT IN ACTION
* Until July, when the state passed a law to correct the problem,
hospitals in Alabama were allowed to charge rape victims for the forensic
exams from which evidence, such as sperm and blood samples, were gathered
against the perpetrators. In other Alabama crimes such as burglary, the
forensic examination for blood, fingerprints, etc., is paid for by the
state. [N. Y. Times, 7-25-95]
* In July, an official in the office that supervises road construction
crews in Minneapolis issued a directive, in response to complaints, that
workers stop "eyeing," "staring at," or "ogl[ing]" women while on duty.
In a subsequent clarification, the official said "sneak[ing] a look" would
be okay and said men, as well, should not be ogled. [Minneapolis Star
Tribune, 7-19-95, 7-20-95]
* Elifonso Lopez, 39, was recently granted a new trial after five years
of protesting his innocense of his 1990 rape conviction. An investigation
into law enforcement records by The Brownsville (Tex.) Herald revealed
that Lopez had an ironclad alibi that was ignored at his trial: He was
in prison serving a sentence for drunken driving when the rape occurred.
[Houston Chronicle-AP, 6-18-95]
* In July, the U. S. Department of Transportation proposed to liberalize
its procedure for drug-testing employees who have "shy bladders."
Currently, such employees are given 24 ounces of fluid within 2 hours to
encourage urination. The Department proposes 40 ounces over 4 hours, and
on July 25 issued a 4,800-word Federal Register notice explaining its
proposal. [Federal Register, 7-25-95, p. 38200-38203]
* According to records disclosed in July by an Associated Press inquiry,
Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles, who makes just over $100,000 a year, has a
lower salary than 796 other state employees, including his own chief of
staff. [St. Petersburg Times-AP, 7-30-95]
* In March, twelve hours before a massive, extensively-planned drug raid
was to take place in Washington, D. C., the D. C. Department of Public
and Assisted Housing issued a press release praising its role in the raid.
Officials thus had to call off the operation, rendering practically
useless eight months' planning, coordination among four law-enforcement
agencies, and a large number of arrest and search warrants obtained by
thousands of hours of investigation, surveillance, and undercover drug
buys. [Washington Post, 3-23-95]
* In April, the National Endowment for the Humanities announced a $559,500
grant to the American Association of Community Colleges to answer the
question, "What is an American?" [Washington Times, 4-13-95]
* In March, the U. S. Supreme Court let stand a 1988 decision that Paul
E. Spragens, a quadriplegic man who earns money typing with his toes, be
kicked off the Social Security rolls and ordered to return almost $20,000
he had received over a three-year period. During that time, Spragens
averaged $350 a month working as a free-lance book indexer; as soon as
his earnings hit $300 a month, according to law, he was no longer eligible
for benefits. [Rocky Mountain News-AP, 4-7-95]
* In May, the Washington Times reported that a federal judge had
transfered parole supervision of an assistant to D. C. Mayor Marion Barry,
from the D. C. parole board to a federal board. That was because the
assistant, Rhozier "Roach" Brown, a convicted murderer, drug dealer, and
thief, had inexplicably been released early by the D. C. board from his
prison sentence and, due to a "clerical error," freed of his obligation
to repay $45,000 to an orphanage he was convicted of swindling.
[Washington Times, 7-9-95]
* According to records obtained by the New York Post in May, the New York
City Transit Authority's worst bus driver, Leroy Goodwin, 56, is still
driving despite 103 at-fault collisions over his 22-year career and even
received a safe-driving award in 1986 sandwiched between collisions number
68 and 69. [New York Post, 510-95]
FAMILY VALUES
* The San Diego Union-Tribune reported in July that Jim Harnsberger, 40,
a Republican party operative who founded the local Center for Family
Values, has been married five times and owes almost $20,000 in child
support. According to the newspaper, a former girlfriend said of
Harnsberger, "He said he would cut me up into little pieces and throw me
into the ocean and no one would ever know." [Sacramento Bee, 7-25-95]
* In January in Little Rock, Ark., a 41-year-old man clubbed his
32-year-old brother with a handgun, then fired two shots at him, in a
dispute of which of the two would take their mother to her doctor's
appointment. [Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 1-27-95]
* In August in San Bernardino, Calif., Lisa Nester, 24, and her husband,
23, pleaded guilty to abandoning their son, Wolfgang, 3, on June 2 at a
shopping center in California while they took off for a Grateful Dead
concert in San Francisco and then went on to Maryland, where they were
spotted 24 days later. Because of Lisa's previous, uninspired parenting,
her mom and dad have custody of her four children from other
relationships. [Washington Post, 8-2-95, 6-28-95, 6-27-95]
Copyright 1995, Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.
Released for the entertainment of readers. No commercial may
be made of the material or of the name News of the Weird.
