[2143] in Humor
HUMOR: News of the Weird
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Victor P Morales)
Tue Jul 22 22:21:26 1997
From: Victor P Morales <vicmoral@MIT.EDU>
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 22:16:23 EDT
------- Forwarded Message
WEIRDNUZ.488 (News of the Weird, June 13, 1997)
by Chuck Shepherd
See copyright notice at the end of this transmission.
To Unsubscribe: notw-request@nine.org with subject Unsubscribe
LEAD STORIES
* The Federal Emergency Management Agency reported in May
that only 946 households out of more than 10,000 in Grand Forks,
N.D., were covered by flood insurance when the recent floods hit.
Four months earlier, FEMA had begun issuing numerous advisories
about imminent flood danger and spent $300,000 on a media
campaign about ominous snow-melting conditions. However, the
FEMA campaign convinced only 73 Grand Forks homeowners to
buy policies.
* The first copies of the European Union's 24-page user's manual
for boots recently hit the market in England, reported The Daily
Telegraph in May. The booklet comes with the shoes and advises
the consumer how to choose footwear, how to use and care for the
boots, and how to wear them safely. It also explains how to read
the EU-mandated boot comfort ratings, though it also advises,
"Each boot should be tried for fitting before use."
* Dueling Misjudgments: In April, expecting a $3 million gift
destined for Children's Zoo in Central Park from philanthropists
Edith and Henry Everett, the New York City Art Commission
nonetheless approved only a small donor-name plaque on one
entrance marker to the zoo, rather than the slightly larger plaque
requested by the Everetts. Consequently, the Everetts snatched
back their gift, jeopardizing the zoo's long-overdue renovation.
COMPELLING EXPLANATIONS
* One of the members of the Mug House players pub darts team in
Worcester, England, commenting in February on his team's 50-
match losing streak: "I think we all drink too much [during the
matches]. One regular feature [of our games] is to miss the board
completely."
* Fernando Magana-Rodriguez, 24, pleading not guilty to bigamy
in Kelowna, British Columbia, in January: "I'm Mexican. I never
knew you could go to jail for marrying two women, or I never
would have done it."
* John H. Bergantini, a candidate for tax assessor in Exeter, R.I.,
commenting in March on his being sued by the town for $2,678 in
back property taxes: "My ability to write a check for a certain
amount of money has nothing to do with [my ability to judge] how
much a piece of property is worth."
* Rochester, N.Y., Assemblywoman Susan John, who is the chair
of the Assembly's Alcohol and Drug Abuse committee, upon her
guilty plea in March for driving while impaired: "This will give me
additional insights into the problem of drinking and driving, and I
believe, will allow me to do my job even more effectively."
* Owatonna, Minn., elementary school principal Kevin A.
Thompson, 37, was charged in January with peeping into the
window of a home and was apprehended hiding under the deck of
another house. According to police, Thompson said he was merely
checking street addresses in connection with the redrawing of
school-bus pickup boundaries.
* Public television's "Frugal Gourmet," Jeff Smith, has denied that
he sexually molested any of the five men who have since January
filed complaints against him for having fondled them as boys. One
of the men, Keith Thomas, who had worked for Smith in the 1970s
as part of a high school work-study program, said that at the time
he had shrugged off Smith's hugs and kisses as "weird, but [I
thought] maybe that's the way it is with people in the food
business."
LEAST COMPETENT PEOPLE
* According to the Berlingske Tidende newspaper of Copenhagen,
Denmark, in January, an unidentified man drove his car onto the ice
at the Augustenborg Fjord 120 miles to the south, but it broke
through. The man managed to escape in the shallow water, though,
and then minutes later attempted the crossing with a four-wheel
drive vehicle, with the same result. He next tried it with a tractor
(same result), then with another tractor (same). It took rescuers
seven hours to pull the four vehicles out.
* Daniel Sutherland of Indiana, Pa., accidentally shot himself in the
mouth in February while he was blowing down the barrel of a gun
to see whether it was loaded. Said Sutherland, haltingly, to a
reporter, "You know that hanging-down thing in the back of your
mouth [the uvula]? I lost mine."
* According to a police report in the Providence (R.I.) Journal-
Bulletin in February, a man wearing a flowered dress, swearing and
making obscene gestures, was subdued by police officers but only
after he had softened himself up by accidentally running smack into
a car and then a brick wall. At the police station, he tried to escape
but wound up colliding with the wall in a stairwell.
* In Bozeman, Mont., in March, according to Gary Gerhardt, the
owner of County Lanes bowling alley, a man walked in, told the
cashier he had just gotten out of prison for having robbed County
Lanes several years before, and said he would like to look around
on top of the ceiling to see if he could find the wallet he had
dropped during that job. When Gerhardt ordered him to leave, the
man just shrugged and walked away.
* Brothers Patrick and Daniel Worthing were charged in December
with attempted corporate espionage. Patrick was a supervisor for a
cleaning contractor working for PPG Industries in a suburb of
Pittsburgh, Pa., and in a letter full of misspellings and grammatical
errors allegedly offered to sell many PPG corporate secrets to
competitor Owens Corning. According to the prosecutor, Patrick
had sent PPG's financial statements (actually "finacial" statements,
providing "intimant details" that would be "of intrest"), asked only
$1,000 for all the information Owens Corning could use, and had
given PPG's fax number for any return calls. At his first court
appearance, Patrick asked the magistrate, "If we, like, fully
cooperate with all the details, is there, like, a lesser sentence?"
EXTREMELY FORGETFUL PEOPLE
* Cleveland, Ohio, county clerk Gordana Giovinale was suspended
for 3 days in April as punishment for leaving $65,000 in taxes and
fee receipts in a bag in the restroom stall he was using. After
finishing his business, she apparently just forgot that she had been
headed to another office to drop off the money. And Mike
Shreckengost appeared in court in Somerset, Pa., in April to
reclaim the $20,000 that he had tossed onto the side of a road in
February 1996 as a trooper approached his stopped car. He drove
off without the money and made no inquiries about what happened
to it until he heard in August 1996 that the trooper was claiming the
money under a "finders-keepers" law.
CAPITAL OF BAD RELATIONSHIPS
* Carrollton, Ga.: In March, a sheriff's investigator learned that
Jodi Denman Cecconi had elaborately faked the leukemia death of
her two-year-old daughter (hospital vigils, funeral arrangements,
grave-site selection, obituary in the newspaper, etc.) to win back
her estranged boyfriend Neal Casey, who bought onto the story for
a while before learning that the child was in good health. And the
next month, Carrollton country-music radio station manager Amy
Bullington, 23, who was charged with shooting her boyfriend to
death, surrendered to police only after having aired her favorite
song "Has Anybody Seen Amy?"
==============================
ADMINISTRATIVE NOTICES
[Except for the last paragraph, giving a new, alternative address
for Chuck Shepherd's CompuServe mailbox, these notices
unchanged since December 27, 1996]
NEWS OF THE WEIRD, founded in 1988, is a nationally syndicated
newspaper column distributed by Universal Press Syndicate.
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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
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no fee charged, portions of News of the Weird may be used
without prior permission provided that the portion(s) is(are)
accurately quoted and 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.
BOOKS BY CHUCK SHEPHERD: The Concrete Enema and
Other News of the Weird Classics by Chuck Shepherd (Andrews
and McMeel, 1996, $6.95) is now in bookstores everywhere.
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 to the same address, $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 1989, 1990, and
1991 books were co-authored with 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, they're not free. Send a buck for sample copies to
P. O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg FL 33738.
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 occasionally, 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 Weird@CompuServe.com or P. O. Box 8306, St.
Petersburg FL 33738.
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