[1422] in Humor
HUMOR: NoTW
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Mon May 6 14:50:02 1996
From: <abennett@MIT.EDU>
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 06 May 1996 14:31:38 EDT
Date: Fri, 03 May 1996 23:50:12 +0000 (GMT)
From: Espacionaute Spiff domine! <MATOSSIAN@aries.colorado.edu>
From: Keith Bostic <bostic@bsdi.com>
From: notw-request@nine.org (NotW List Admin)
WEIRDNUZ.426 (News of the Weird, April 5, 1996)
by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORY
* In February, the British Columbia Supreme Court acquitted a 26-year-old
man with a sleep disorder of sexually assaulting a 4-year-old girl
because the assault occurred while he was allegedly asleep. In 1995, a
man in Calgary was acquitted of sexual assault using the same defense,
and in 1987, an Ontario man who stabbed his mother-in-law to death after
having driven 20 kilometers on a busy highway to get to her house also
proved he had a sleep disorder and was acquitted on the same ground.
[Sault Star-CP, 2-3-96] Kirchmeir
GOVERNMENT IN ACTION
* A Houston Chronicle investigation published in February revealed that
only rarely does a complaint to the state Board of Examiners of
Psychologists result in suspension or revocation of a license. One
Temple, Tex., psychologist admitted pointing a gun to his head in a
suicide threat, shooting a gun inside his home, seducing a patient, and
carving a pentagram into his arm with a knife; he's still practicing.
While the Board is not quick to pull licenses, it often requires that
troubled psychologists get psychological counseling. [Dallas Morning
News-Houston Chronicle, 2-5-96]
* The Washington Post reported in March that the Department of Agriculture
required Iowa's Oink-Oink, Inc., last year to begin dying green its
best-selling dog treat, Pork Tenderloin (which is made from the penises
of hogs). Oink-Oink thought the green dye would make the product
unappealing and took a $100,000 loss killing the product and enraging dog
owners who loved the treat. The Department's only reason for requiring
the dye was so the treats would be more obviously identified as not for
human consumption. [Washington Post, 3-1-96]
* In October, Pennsylvania Rep. Alan Butkovitz introduced legislation to
end a disparity in state law. Under the unsatisfactory law, a drunk
driver who causes an accident and fails his blood-alcohol test is subject
to a felony charge, but one who manages to flee the scene before the cops
get there, sober up, and turn himself in later is subject only to a
misdemeanor. [Philadelphia Inquirer, 10-3-95]
* Former Orange County (Calif.) Treasurer Robert L. Citron, who is
awaiting sentencing for fraud in mishandling the county's finances, said
in December that the reason his investment decisions plunged the county
into the biggest local-government bankruptcy in history in 1994 was the
bad advice he had received on interest rates from a mail-order psychic.
The good news for Citron, according to Anaheim, Calif., channeler Barbara
Connor, is that Citron told her that he learned during two trances last
year that he would receive community service but no jail time for his
conviction. [Las Vegas Review-Journal, 3-13-96]
* Program analysts hired by the CIA to evaluate its $20 million project
to use psychics to gather intelligence concluded in November that the
psychics were accurate about 15% of the time. Among the psychics' tasks
were to track down Moammar Gadhafi so that he could be hit in the 1986
bombing of Libya and to locate the plutonium squirreled away in North
Korea. According to columnist Jack Anderson, the Pentagon adopted the
program in the early 1970s because the Soviet Union was making extensive
use of psychics. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch-AP, 11-30-95] Washington Post,
Oct95]
* In December, less than three months after he had sold federal land worth
$1 billion in mining rights to a Danish company for $275, Secretary of
the Interior Bruce Babbitt was forced to sell another $2.9 billion piece
of land in Arizona for $1,745. Babbitt is required to make these sales
under an 1872 federal law, which Western Senators refuse to change. [Tampa
Tribune-AP, 12-2-95]
OOPS!
* Recent Highway Truck Spills: two dozen bags of coins from an armored
truck, and kegs and bottles from a beer truck, in Washington, D. C., in
November; a half-ton of cat litter, in Stafford County, Va., in March;
dozens of boxes of socks in Decatur, Ala., in January; and animal blood,
which dripped out of a tanker and stained a highway for 20 miles near
Syracuse, Kan., in February. [Washington Post, 11-8-95] [Fairfax Journal,
11-10-95] [Washington Post, 3-14-96] [Decatur Daily, 1-10-96] [Northwest
Florida Daily News, 2-9-96]
* In December, Eric Dulkin, 19, failed his driver's test in Chicago when
he inadvertently accelerated as he was leaving the parking lot, causing
his car to fishtail and smash through a window in the licensing-office
building. In Greenville, S. C., in November, a 15-year-old boy driving
a stolen car saw his grandmother driving toward him in traffic, ducked
down to avoid her seeing him, and inadvertently hit the gas pedal, causing
his car to smash into hers. (Injuries were minor.) [Chicago Sun-Times,
12-14-95] [Columbus Dispatch, Nov95]
* In February in Winona, Minn., firefighters had to be called to rescue
Mary Tyler, 39, after her hand got stuck in her toilet as she tried to
retrieve a deodorant container that had fallen in. [Winona Post, 2-11-96]
* Lowell Altvater, 80, was charged with negligent assault in Sandusky,
Ohio, in November after he thought he saw a rat in his barn and fired his
shotgun at it. It turned out to be his wife's hat, which she was wearing.
Mrs. Altvater begged police not to file charges, but they did, in part
because Lowell had shot himself in the leg in 1992 in the same barn after
thinking then, too, that he had spotted a rat. [Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel-Toledo Blade, 12-20-95; Columbus Dispatch, Nov95]
* In January near Branford, Conn., Mark Sullivan, 41, was about to bite
into a Big Mac while driving on an icy road when his car spun into a
concrete divider. The first rescuer on the scene found "McDonald's
wrappers and french fries all over the place" and Sullivan turning blue,
the sandwich having been thrust down his throat by the impact. (He's fine
now.) [Hartford Courant, 1-5-96]
* Reading, Pa., county controller Judith Kraines complained at a
commissioners' meeting in January about having to type letters and do
other business on a typewriter because her computer was old and no one
had been able to get it to work for two years. "If we had a computer,"
she said, "letters would go out faster." Three days later, she announced
that the computer she was complaining about in fact had not been plugged
in to any electrical outlet and that when the plug was inserted and the
computer was turned on, it worked fine. [Reading Eagle-Times, 1-21-96]
Copyright 1996, 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.
