[1789] in Humor
HUMOR: NoTW
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Fri Jan 3 10:11:02 1997
From: <abennett@MIT.EDU>
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 03 Jan 1997 10:06:14 EST
From: Espacionaute Spiff domine! <MATOSSIAN@aries.colorado.edu>
Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1996 15:05:01 -0500 (EST)
From: Keith Bostic <bostic@bsdi.com>
Forwarded-by: notw-request@nine.org (NotW List Admin)
WEIRDNUZ.461 (News of the Weird, December 6, 1996)
by Chuck Shepherd
COMMERCIAL MESSAGE
* Chuck Shepherd's 5th paperback collection, The Concrete Enema and Other
News of the Weird Classics, is available at bookstores everywhere ($6.95).
Give all your friends Concrete Enemas!
LEAD STORIES
* In a procedure denounced by the Association of Professional Piercers,
Phoenix, Ariz., piercer's apprentice Joe Aylward recently had a plate
implanted just under the skin of his skull so that he can screw decorative
spikes into his head, which Aylward believes will improve his appearance.
Another man reportedly plans to have devil-type horns made of coral
similarly implanted.
* Incriminating Fingers: In Amsterdam in August and Miami, Fla., in
June, men were arrested based on fingerprints from their own severed
(bitten off and shot off, respectively) fingers that they abandoned at
crime scenes. And Victor Arreola, 23, was arrested at the Scripps
Hospital in Chula Vista, Calif., in November, where he had gone after
losing his finger in a slammed door in what police say was a carjacking.
(According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, the police asked Arreola if
the finger they had was his. When he said yes, they arrested him.
Arreola then asked to take another look at the finger and decided, no,
come to think of it, it does not look like his finger--thus allowing the
time to expire when the finger could have been grafted back onto his
hand.)
* Los Angeles County authorities decided not to charge Texan Robert
Salazar in the death of his employee Sandra Orellana, who fell from the
8th floor balcony at the Industry Hills Sheraton, where the two were
staying during a business conference. Salazar said Orellana fell
accidentally as the two were having sex braced on a handrail and she
changed positions.
POLICE BLOTTER
* In October, U. S. Customs agents stopped a Somerton, Ariz., man coming
from Mexico at the border town of San Luis, Ariz., because he had an ice
chest containing 12,700 dead scorpions. Customs didn't know immediately
whether importing dead scorpions was illegal and so turned over the cache
to another agency.
* In August, 12 men were arrested near Szczecin in northern Poland as they
were digging up a road because they had heard a rumor that it was built
with a large stockpile of police-confiscated hashish. The hashish had
been sold to a chemical plant to be incinerated into ash for road
construction.
* In August, three teenage boys were arrested for allegedly writing vulgar
graffiti on several buildings in Hallsville, Mo. Police chief Pete
Herring said the crimes were particularly serious because they frightened
the elderly, and city attorney John Whiteside agreed, saying that the
slurs were "mean-spirited" because one of the targets, Casey's convenience
store, was the "psychic center" of Hallsville.
* In August, Pembroke Pines, Fla., police Det. Earl Feugill foiled a
robbery at a fast-food restaurant by disguising himself and his shotgun
as a tree (using a camouflage outfit, strips of burlap, and black face
paint) alongside the drive-thru window. He had staked out the restaurant
because of a string of similar robberies.
* If Only They Put Their Minds to It: In the 10-week period before the
Summer Olympics in Atlanta, federal, state, and local police arrested 765
career criminals (including 14 wanted for murder and 57 for bail
violations in violent felonies) in that city and the Olympic venues of
Macon, Ga., and Birmingham, Ala., and thus created one of the most drastic
short-term reductions in crime rate ever reported for major cities.
* In July, police in Dayton, Ohio, said Janet Denise Hailey, 40, was the
one who climbed into a Wells Fargo Armored Services truck and had such
excellent sex with driver Aaron McKie that he did not immediately notice
that she left clutching a bag containing $80,000.
* Police in Sanger, Tex., said four kids, including the police chief's
son, broke into a funeral home in September intending to steal embalming
fluid so they could smoke cigarettes dipped in it, but when they couldn't
find any, they cut off the finger of a corpse and took turns trying to
smoke that to draw out the absorbed fluid.
CAN'T STOP MYSELF
* Paul Carthy, 25, pleaded guilty in Exeter, England, in September to
theft subsequent to his original charge of shoplifting from a liquor
store. In the second theft, he had stolen the magnetic letters off the
name board that was held up to his face when his mug shot was taken.
* In October, police in Tokyo arrested Ms. Teruko Hamakawa, 52, for
illegal interference with a man's business, charging her with calling him
on phone at work and then hanging up--16,000 times in a one-year period.
She was angry that, after they had exchanged photos seeking a romantic
introduction, he failed to call, which she thought was "impolite."
* In September, according to police in Junction City, Kan., David Bell,
30, just released from jail for car theft, walked out the door and stole
another car to get home. And in October, William B. Singleton, 24, just
released from jail in Belton, Mo., on a larceny charge, allegedly broke
into a vending machine in the lobby of the police station and stole a
60-cent Strawberry Twisteroo while he waited for his ride to arrive.
UPDATE
* News of the Weird previously reported in March 1994 and July 1995 on
unlucky men who were ordered to continue child-support payments despite
DNA tests that revealed the kids were other men's responsibilities. In
the latest case, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled in July 1996 that
because Darryl Littles failed to get a court-ordered blood test in 1982
(he said he was indigent and not represented by a lawyer), he would be
permanently regarded as the father of 15-year-old Brandi even though a
1994 test showed he could not be.
UNDIGNIFIED DEATHS
* In October, a 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker, who "totally zoned
when he ran," according to his wife, accidentally jogged off of a
200-foot-high cliff on his daily run. And in September in Detroit, a
41-year-old man got stuck and drowned in two feet of water after squeezing
headfirst through an 18-inch-wide sewer grate to retrieve his car keys.
And in September, a 7-year-old boy fell off a 100-foot-high bluff near
Ozark, Ark., after he lost his grip swinging on a cross that marked the
spot where another person had fallen to his death in 1990.
Copyright 1996, Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.
No commercial use may be made of the material or of the name
News of the Weird.
===============================================
ADMINISTRATIVE NOTICES
[These notices unchanged since November 15, 1996]
The electronic version of the weekly News of the Weird newspaper
column is available to the public, free of charge, sent to your
mailbox approximately four weeks after the column has been released
to newspaper clients. Send a message to notw-request@nine.org with
the Subject line of Subscribe. To read News of the Weird newspaper
columns from the past six months, go to http://www.nine.org/notw/notw.html
(That site contains no graphics, no photos, no video clips, no
audio. Just words. Deal with it.)
BOOKS: The Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics by
Chuck Shepherd (Andrews and McMeel, 1996, $6.95) is now in bookstores
everywhere. (Please, please, please walk up to the clerk and
announce in a loud voice, "You know what I really need? A Concrete
Enema." Please.) Or you can order by mail from Atomic Books, 1018
N. Charles St., Baltimore MD 21201 (add $2 postage for the first
book, $3 for two, $4 for 3, and $5 for more than 3) (credit card
orders 1-800-778-6246, http://www.atomicbooks.com). Or by credit
card from Andrews and McMeel, 1-800-642-6480 (they bill $2 postage
per book). Also by Chuck Shepherd and available at only the larger
bookstores in America: News of the Weird (Plume Books, 1989, $9),
More News of the Weird (Plume, 1990, $9), Beyond News of the Weird
(Plume, 1991, $9), and America's Least Competent Criminals
(HarperPerennial, 1993, $9). (The first three books were co-
authored by Shepherd, John J. Kohut, and Roland Sweet.)
HARDCOPIES: The weekly newspaper columns, as well as Chuck Shepherd's
weird-news 'zine View from the Ledge (now in its 16th year) are
available in hardcopy, but unlike with cyberspace, ya gotta pay.
Send a buck for sample copies to P. O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg
FL 33738.
NEWSPAPER EDITORS: Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird, one of the
most popular noncomic newspaper features in the country, is now in
its 9th year and is distributed by Universal Press Syndicate, 4520
Main Street, Kansas City MO 64111. The column contains 15 news
stories per week, tailorable by the editor for space available.
Daily and weekly newspapers' editors please see your Universal
sales manager or contact Denise Clark at 1-800-255-6734 or
dclark@uexpress.com for rates and samples.
COMMERCIAL INTERNET CONTENT-PROVIDERS: If you'd like Chuck Shepherd's
News of the Weird to help draw people to your service or message,
contact Nancy Meis at Universal New Media, 1-800-255-6734 or
nmeis@uexpress.com
COPYRIGHT: Neither the name News of the Weird, nor any issue of
News of the Weird, nor any portion of any issue of News of the
Weird, may be used for any commercial purpose whatsoever. One
example of such prohibited use is to use part or all of an issue
of News of the Weird as material on a commercial Web page or on a
commercial message. ("Commercial" includes Web sites or messages
that contain paid or bartered advertising.) If a Web site or
message contains utterly no commercial content, and it is freely
accessible by the public with no fee charged, portions of News of
the Weird may be used without prior permission provided that the
portion(s) is(are) identified on the Web site or message as from
News of the Weird and this copyright notice is affixed at some
point: Copyright 1997 by Universal Press Syndicate.
AUTHENTICITY: All news stories mentioned in News of the Weird are
from news stories appearing in daily newspapers in the U. S. and
Canada (or in rare instances, reputable daily newspapers in other
countries or other reputable magazines and journals). No so-called
supermarket tabloid, and no story that was not intended to be
"news," is ever the source of a News of the Weird story.
ADDRESSES: To send mail and messages to Chuck Shepherd, write
74777.3206@CompuServe.com or P. O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg FL
33738.
