[253] in Humor
HUMOR: NoTW (Apr 22)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Sat May 7 00:48:23 1994
From: abennett@MIT.EDU
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Sat, 07 May 94 00:46:04 EDT
From: Espacionaute Spiff domine! <matossian@aludra.colorado.edu>
From: dave-barry@marble.com (Keith Bostic)
Subject: WEIRDNUZ.324 (News of the Weird, April 22, 1994)
WEIRDNUZ.324 (News of the Weird, April 22, 1994)
by Chuck Shepherd
Lead Story
* Los Angeles talk-show host Joe Crummey has begun offering for sale a
30-minute video of his recent brain surgery. The tape, made by St.
Vincent Medical Center staff, includes interviews with Crummey's doctors
and Crummey's station colleagues and costs $22.50. [L. A. Times,
3-3-94]
The Continuing Crisis
* The Lebanon (Pa.) Daily News reported in March that an ear-piercing
establishment at the local mall had pierced the ears of an 11-month-old
girl who was brought in by her 16-year-old mother, but had refused to
do the mother's. The proprietor explained that the daughter had her
mother's permission, but that he couldn't do the mother's ears because
she was under 18 and thus needed *her* mother's permission.
[Lebanon Daily News, 3-4-94]
* In Alhambra, Calif., in March, Robert C. Lewis, 52, was jailed for
four days without possibility of bail after his unlicensed
labrador-shepherd dog chased a cat into the street. And in Clearwater,
Fla., two weeks later, Michael C. Diana, 24, was also jailed for four
days without possibility of bail after being convicted by a jury of
publishing obscene comic books on a photocopy machine. [Albuquerque
Journal-L. A. Times, 3-19-94]
* The Washington Post reported in September that at the third annual
Fairfax County (Va.) Slugfest, "Slippery" beat out 49 other slugs in
the Tour de Slug race. Also featured at the festival: slug
face-painting, the slime toss, and the official drink--green "slimeade."
A 12-year-old boy demonstrated his skill at flicking his tongue in and
out of his mouth with his slug, Mickey, attached. He said that despite
washing Mickey several times with soap beforehand, "the slime [still]
sticks between your teeth. I've still got some slime from yesterday."
[Washington Post, 9-12-93]
* According to the prosecutor at his gang-related murder trial in
September in Milwaukee, Antonio Mendez, 18, told police at the time of
his arrest: "You know, this is going to wreck my whole summer. I'm
not going to be able to go to Summerfest. It's not like [the 15-
year-old victim] was the president or anything. She's just a girl."
[Milwaukee Sentinel, 9-29-93]
* On Valentine's Day, police in West Springfield, Mass., chased away
four women who claimed to be members of "Lesbian Avengers" and who were
passing out candy and leaflets near an elementary school. The leaflets,
proclaiming "Girls who love girls and women who love women are OK!!!",
contained a telephone number for a lesbian and gay hotline that turned
out to be a recording that advertised gay phone sex at $1.98 per minute.
[Washington Times-AP, 2-18-94]
* In September, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in
Washington, D. C., announced that it had issued 60 citations and $90,000
in fines for unsafe workplace conditions at the Federal Building in
Kansas City, Mo., which is the regional OSHA office. [Macon (Mo.)
Chronicle-Herald-AP, 9-2-93]
* Recently, Univ. of Massachusetts Professor Robert Malloy announced a
plan to save the endangered African black rhinoceros from hunters who
kill them for their horns. At a cost of about $2,000 per animal,
officials would tranquilize the rhino, remove the horn, and attach an
artificial one, using a technique similar to that used to affix dental
crowns. The horn would be painted orange to discourage poachers.
Namibia has rejected the proposal, preferring its own program to remove
but not replace the horns, but Malloy maintains that an artificial horn
is necessary for rhinos' social standing within the group. [[Columbus
Dispatch-AP, Jan94]]
Great Art
* In March performance artist Ron Athey stunned some audience members
at the Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis by piercing parts of his body,
slicing into the back of accomplice Darryl Carlton, wiping the blood on
towels, and passing them on a clothesline over the audience. A Walker
spokesperson said Athey has AIDS and that the show was directed at the
AIDS-phobic society, but that there was no risk to audience members from
the infected blood. Carlton said such erotic torture is "revered in
Africa and feared in America." [Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 3-29-94]
* The Esbjerg Art Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark, is featuring an exhibit
of six decomposing, beheaded pigs and a mirror covered in pig's blood,
from March 11 to May 1, in an area 25 feet from the museum's restaurant.
The artist, German sculptor Christian Lemmerz, said, "This is art that
makes people think. They must take a stand on their own existence and
face the reality of what happens to their bodies after death." Lemmerz
said he will bag whatever is left of the exhibit on May 2 and expects
to sell it to some collector for around $60,000. [Columbus Dispatch-AP,
3-26-94]
* In June at the Biennale art show in Venice, Italy, an animal activist
filed abuse charges against Japanese artist Yukinori Yanagi, who had
used more than 200 ants in a labyrinth of colored sand dunes and tunnels
shaped like nations' flags that he called "Can Art Change the World?"
Following the show, Yanagi freed the ants. [Wilmington Morning Star-AP,
6-19-93]
* In September, funded in part through a $4,000 grant from the
Rockefeller Foundation, three artists selected 70 cows near Boulder,
Wyoming, and painted feminist poetry by early settler Phyllis Luman
Metal on their hides. Said artist Sue Thornton, "Cows are great, and
so are women. Their lives are about self-sacrifice and motherhood."
[USA Today, 9-30-93]
I Don't Think So
* Sheriff's Lt. Armand Tiano, a candidate for Santa Clara County
sheriff, apologized to voters in March when a recent photo surfaced of
him with a motorcycle and three topless dancers. Tiano said he had
agreed to pose with the dancers only as a favor to a friend and said,
"If I had known they were going to [expose their breasts], I wouldn't
have [done it]." [San Francisco Chronicle, 3-16-94]
Undignified Death
* A 45-year-old minister was electrocuted in February at the Christian
Fellowship Church in Larose, La., as he was standing in a pool about to
baptize a dozen people. According to the coroner's office, the cause
was either the microphone he was holding or a faulty pool heater.
[Wilmington Morning Star-N. Y. Times Regional Newspapers, 2-23-94]
Copyright 1994, Universal Press Syndicate. All rights
reserved. Released for the personal use of readers.
No commercial use may be made of the material or of the
name News of the Weird.
