[1133] in Humor
HUMOR: WEIRDNUZ.393 (News of the Weird, August 18, 1995)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Fri Oct 13 15:55:15 1995
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 15:50:50 EDT
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 19:26:08 +0000 (GMT)
From: Espacionaute Spiff domine! <MATOSSIAN@aries.colorado.edu>
Date: Tue, 03 Oct 1995 20:05:02 -0400
From: bostic@bsdi.com (Keith Bostic)
Forwarded-by: notw-request@nine.org (NotW List Admin)
WEIRDNUZ.393 (News of the Weird, August 18, 1995)
by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORY
* In July, U. S. Rep. Jack Metcalf of Washington revealed that the U. S.
Forest Service and a state agency had planned to spend $18,000 to dye
rocks gray and brown along a scenic highway in the Cascade
Mountains--because the rocks otherwise would not look sufficiently natural
for tourists. According to Metcalf, colorization projects have been
undertaken in the past because rocks, newly-exposed after construction,
do not achieve a weathered look rapidly enough. (Later in the month, the
project was postponed.) [Montgomery Advertiser-AP, 7-28-95]
WEIRD SCIENCE
* The Wall Street Journal reported in May that Dutch farmers can now
purchase machines to allow cows self-service milking. A cow desiring to
be milked approaches the milking machine's robot, which is activated by
a computer chip in the cow's collar. A typical farmer saves about four
hours a day, and, said one, "The cows tend to like it." [San Jose Mercury
News-Wall Street Journal, 5-9-95]
* In an April column in Toronto's Globe & Mail, Dr. Shafiq Qaadri selected
memorable gastrointestinal patients from his practice and celebrated their
"award-winning" problems in detail: Greatest Number of Parasites taken
from a patient, Most Obscure Parasite, Best Vomit, and Best Stool. The
latter two awards were won by African men whose excretions had yielded
worms, each about six inches long, with the stool worm being pregnant
carrying 10 babies. [Globe & Mail, 4-22-95]
* In March, Gannett News Service reported that among the maladies being
studied as part of returning soldiers' "Gulf war syndrome" were complaints
by "scores" of wives that their husbands' sperm painfully "burns" them on
discharge. Among the symptoms were blisters, rashes, itching, and vaginal
swelling. [Chicago Sun-Times-Gannett, 3-5-95]
* At a March conference, a University of Pennsylvania radiologist told
colleagues he had successfully sterilized all 17 rabbits in his experiment
by squirting a substance similar to Super Glue into their fallopian tubes
and said he would seek FDA approval to test his procedure on women. And
in May, Pacer Technologies announced it was seeking FDA and Department of
Agriculture approval for using a variant of its Super Glue to prevent
salmonella contamination by sealing the rectums of chickens and turkeys.
The product would be known as Rectite. [New Haven Register-AP, 3-29-95]
[Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, Calif.), 5-16-95]
* In a March issue of New England Journal of Medicine, a 45-year-old
Houston, Tex., plastic surgeon described how, when feeling dizzy after
receiving an electrical shock, he hooked himself up to the office
defibrillator and gave himself two massive jolts to slow down his heart,
thus saving his life. [New Haven Register-AP, 3-2-95]
OOPS!
* In June, Troy Harding, 19, was released from a Portland, Ore., hospital
three weeks after he turned around abruptly when talking to friends and
walked into the radio antenna of his car. The antenna went up his nose
almost four inches, pierced his sinus, and entered his brain, coming to
rest in his pituitary gland. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 6-8-95]
* In May, Edmond Scrivens, 48, an inspector at the "solid waste transfer
station" near Rockville, Md., was buried under a truckload of hospital
refuse dumped by a driver who did not see him. Unable to move except to
operate his radio, he called out, gave instructions as to his location,
and waited about 20 minutes until rescue workers dug him out. [Washington
Post, 5-18-95]
* In June, police in Clearwater, Fla., were called to the apartment shared
by Kenneth Anderson, 23, and Lisa Moses, who were having a domestic
quarrel. As one of the officers counseled Moses in a bedroom, he happened
to see three duffel bags on the bed at about the same time that he began
to smell marijuana. Three thick plastic bags of $20 and $50 bills were
also on the bed. Inside the duffel bags, officers found about $23,000
worth of marijuana. [St. Petersburg Times, 6-2-95]
* Missouri coroner William Gum told reporters in May that Emmitt Foster,
who had just been executed by lethal injection, had remained alive for 30
minutes because the leather straps binding him to the table actually
prevented the flow of drugs through his veins. After officials noticed
the straps' tightness and loosened them, Foster died quickly. [Greenville
(S. C.) News, 5-6-95]
* The 9-foot-tall, 800-pound statue of Babe Ruth unveiled at the entrance
to the Baltimore Orioles' stadium in May is a model of the artist Susan
Luery's lavish attention to detail, down to the size of the Babe's belt
loops. However, the Babe is shown holding a glove to be worn on the left
hand, when actually he was a lifelong left-handed thrower. [Columbia
Tribune-AP, 6-12-95]
* In June, a couple in their 30s revealed to newspapers in the Netherlands
their partially successful 1993 in-vitro fertilization experience in one
of the country's most prestigious clinics. The process was successful in
that the mother had twins; however, due apparently to a test-tube cleaning
error, the University Hospital at Utrecht admitted that the mother's eggs
had been fertilized not only with her husband's sperm but also with that
of another man. The couple is white, the other man is black, and the
resulting twins are one of each color. [N. Y. Times, 6-28-95]
* Near Kansas City, Mo., in June, 30,000 pounds of Jif peanut butter
glopped onto I-70 from an 18-wheeler that overturned after hitting another
truck. [Kansas City Star, 6-29-95]
THE WEIRDO-AMERICAN COMMUNITY
* In May in the Bronx, N. Y., former Boy Scout leader David Weiser, 31,
was charged with assault in connection with a private club he ran whose
induction ceremony seemed to be the severe paddling of boys' buttocks.
About 40 boys and young men were members, and police seized photographs
and wooden paddles from the club, as well as club records and copies of
its by-laws. Unexplained in news reports was why Weiser called the club
the "CB Mafia" and what the club did, other than recruit new members. [New
York Times, 5-18-95]
Copyright 1995, Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.
Released for the entertainment of readers. No commercial use
may be made of the material or of the name News of the Weird.
