[1885] in Humor
HUMOR: News of the Weird
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Tue Feb 11 16:33:27 1997
From: <abennett@MIT.EDU>
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Reply-To: abennett@alum.mit.edu
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 16:23:04 EST
WEIRDNUZ.467 (News of the Weird, January 17, 1997)
by Chuck Shepherd
See copyright information at end of this transmission.
LEAD STORIES
* The New York Police Department disclosed in December that it
has been stepping up the enforcement of a little-known ordinance
that makes it illegal for a subway passenger to occupy more than
one seat (such as by putting a package or his feet on an adjacent
seat), even if no one else is in the car. NYPD said more than
31,000 summonses (carrying $50 fines) were issued in 1996,
compared with 1,800 in 1993.
* After a trial in Alesund, Norway, in December, a 34-year-old
man was sentenced to 12 years in prison for repeatedly molesting
seven boys he was baby-sitting. Before now, no child molester
in Norway had ever be sentenced to longer than six years, and no
one has ever been sentenced for longer than 21 years for any
crime.
* Balaclava Blues: Police in Grand Rapids, Manitoba, in
December said a woman, who had chased down a thief who had
stolen her group's bingo receipts, ripped off his balaclava and
discovered it was her 15-year-old son. And Barry George
Paquette, 40, was arrested in November for the robbery of a
convenience store in Edmonton, Alberta--a collar made easier
because he was halfway through the robbery before he realized he
had forgotten to pull down his balaclava. (He halted the robbery
momentarily to pull it down, but the store's surveillance camera
had already captured his face clearly.)
THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT
* In October, veteran San Francisco beauty-salon owner Carla
Blair opened another one, a full-service salon called "Crossers,"
catering exclusively to cross-dressing men. Blair said she got the
idea when she sensed more and more men were not being taken
seriously at women's clothing and cosmetic counters. (She said
the big tip-off for her was the number of men who claimed to be
looking for something for their wives and habitually said, "She's
about my size.")
* Janet Merel of Deerfield, Ill., recently introduced Diet Dirt
(sterilized soil that can be sprinkled over french fries, cake, etc.,
to make them taste repugnant). Order $10 bags from 1-888-Diet
Dirt.
* Sherry Dubois and Peggy Freemark recently opened a
licebusters business in Barrie, Ont., to pick through people's hair
for $30 per hour, which they say is a bargain because
nonprofessionals miss about half of any resident head lice. Lice
has become a major problem in school because infested kids
sometimes purposely share their hats to pass lice to classmates so
they can get a few days off.
* A December Associated Press dispatch touted the male baldness
remedy of cosmetic surgeon Anthony Pignataro of West Seneca,
N. Y.: hairpieces with tiny gold screws that snap on to titanium
sockets implanted in the top of the skull, which fuse to the bone
in about 12 weeks. Pignataro said he has about 100 customers
and got his idea from what he said were commonplace (in his
profession) snap-on eyes, ears, noses, and fingers.
* The Chicago Tribune reported in October on Woodland Hills,
Calif., sculptor Mark Maitre, who for two years has been
creating casts of body parts of his clients (many of them
Hollywood celebrities) at $1,500 to $4,000 per product, which
includes mounting on marble. Actress Marlee Matlin had her
breasts cast into a bust for her husband, and another celebrity had
the small of his back and his buttocks cast into a fruit bowl.
SCHEMES
* Huntsville, Tex., prison inmate Steven Russell escaped in
December when he walked past guards after having colored his
prison whites with a green marking pen so they resembled
hospital scrubs. He was soon recaptured. However, David A.
Neel, 48, serving a life sentence at a prison in Point of the
Mountain, Utah, did not even make it out the gate in his
December escape attempt because a guard thought something
looked funny about the United Parcel Service box into which
Neel had had himself sealed.
* In James City, Va., in September, Robert Pablo Montez, 46, at
first showed up at the public assistance office with dark glasses
and a white cane, claiming to be blind, but left when a social
worker told him he'd need a doctor's certificate. A week later,
he returned minus the cane and glasses and soon was arrested
when he threatened to blow up a social worker's car if she didn't
sign him up.
* Ronnie Wade Cater, 39, was arrested in Hampton, Va., in
October and charged with calling in a bomb threat. According to
detectives, he was sitting at a bar, drunk, and had the idea to tell
police there was a bomb at another bar, hoping to divert enough
officers to that bar so that he might drive home undetected.
However, probably because he had been drinking, he lingered on
the phone a little too long while talking to the dispatcher, and the
call was traced.
* In St. Paul, Minn., in December, well-to-do dentist Gerald
Dick, 58, his wife Gretchen, 56, and their two adult children
were charged with receiving up to $250,000 in stolen luxury
consumer goods that they had allegedly "ordered" from a
personal shoplifter who was given detailed lists of which upscale
goods to procure. (In a refreshing departure from suspects' usual
denials, Mrs. Dick was reported to have said to the police, "You
caught us red-handed. Now what?")
* In September, Texas-based Electronic Data Systems (the
company founded, and later sold, by Ross Perot) won the
contract to collect the unpaid parking tickets for the city of
Madrid, Spain. A few weeks later, the city treasurer accused the
company of creating as many as 73,000 bogus tickets in order to
collect more money on its contract.
UPDATE
* Michael Anderson Godwin made News of the Weird
posthumously in 1989. He had spent several years awaiting
South Carolina's electric chair on a murder conviction before
having his sentence reduced to life in prison. In March 1989,
sitting on a metal toilet in his cell and attempting to fix his small
TV set, he bit into a wire and was electrocuted. On January 1,
1997, Laurence Baker, also a convicted murderer once on death
row but later serving a life sentence at the state prison in
Pittsburgh, Pa., was electrocuted by his homemade earphones as
he watched his small TV while sitting on his metal toilet.
UNDIGNIFIED DEATHS
* Wilmetta Billington, 68, an inveterate collector of trash, which
she stored in her home in Metropolis, Ill., asphyxiated in
December when she stumbled and fell into one of her many
stacks, causing debris to fall on top of her. So jam-packed was
the room that it took authorities 20 minutes to unstack the debris
from the top of her body. And British tourist Stephen John
Pepperell, 39, lost his balance as he was tossing a melon off a
second-floor balcony into a trash can in Nicosia, Cyprus, in
October and fell to his death.
==============================
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