[300] in Humor
HUMOR: NoTW (May 13)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Tue May 31 14:29:33 1994
From: abennett@MIT.EDU
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 31 May 94 14:22:49 EDT
Date: Fri, 27 May 1994 17:27:21 -0600
From: Espacionaute Spiff domine! <matossian@aries.colorado.edu>
From: dave-barry@marble.com (Keith Bostic)
WEIRDNUZ.327 (News of the Weird, May 13, 1994)
by Chuck Shepherd
Lead Story
* Clinton supporter George W. Smith told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
in February of his plan to relieve one of the President's Whitewater
problems. To reduce potential taxpayer liability for the failure of
the Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan, Smith would encourage private
contributions toward the bailout--by rebating baseball trading cards to
each contributor, from Smith's four-room collection, at $2 in card value
for each $1 contributed. Smith thinks $2 million could be raised toward
the projected bailout cost of $47 million. [Arkansas Democrat-Gazette,
Feb94]
Couldn't Possibly Be True
* In an August raffle to raise money to send Australian surfer Trudy
Todd, 18, on the world pro surfing tour, the winner of the $1-a-ticket
lottery got a fling with a Sydney prostitute of his choice, and second
prize was a sex-shop voucher worth about $27. [San Francisco
Chronicle-Reuters, 8-27-93]
* In November, Brazil's heaviest woman, Joselina da Silva, who weighs
900 pounds, was admitted to a posh health spa in Sao Paolo. A
specially-adapted ambulance was required to transport her to the
facility, and when she arrived, firefighters had to remove a window and
part of a wall so that she could be taken to her room. [London (Ont.)
Free Press-Reuter, 11-4-93]
* In court papers submitted in July, federal prosecutors moved to revoke
the parole of convicted Irvine, Calif., bank swindler Charles J.
Bazarian, who was then on the lam. In those papers, the prosecutors
accused Bazarian of a second swindle: In 1992, he had convinced the
man who prosecuted him three years earlier in the Irvine swindle to
personally invest $6,000 in an Oklahoma company that turned out to be
worthless. [National Mortgage News, 10-4-93]
* In December, a three-year-old boy survived a 19-story fall from a Hong
Kong apartment house, as numerous clotheslines impeded his fall. And
in October, a construction worker in Mountain View, Calif., survived
when a 10-ton concrete slab fell on him, because the slab was slightly
concave. [San Francisco Examiner-Reuter, 12-5-93; Albuquerque
Journal-Knight-Ridder, 10-17-93]
* As the result of simultaneous in vitro fertilization, one set of
triplets was born to two mothers in two cities one month apart. Linda
Schaper, 33, of Chesterfield, Mo., and her sister Barbara Payne, 32, of
Columbia, Mo., gave birth in January and February, with Schaper having
two babies. Schaper and her husband had produced six fertilized eggs,
three of which were implanted into each woman. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
2-28-94]
* The winner of a January contest sponsored by the Washington Mutual
Bank, to select the most unusual places or events in the
Washington-Oregon area, was the Douglas fir tree in Vashon Island,
Wash., that contains a bicycle trapped inside the tree's bark. Local
residents say that the bicycle was parked beside the tree years ago and
that the bark eventually grew around it and completely enveloped it.
The tree's growth has lifted the bicycle seven feet off the ground.
[Seattle Times, Jan94]
* In November, a jury in Montrose, Pa., acquitted Samuel J. Cosmello,
Jr., who had confessed to killing his brother and burning his house
down. The jury accepted the testimony of a psychiatrist who said
Cosmello suffered from an obsessive-compulsive disorder that made him
need to confess falsely. [Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, 11-17-93]
Courtroom Antics
* In November, a defense lawyer in San Francisco attempted to call a
parrot to the witness stand on the chance that it might speak the name
of the man who killed its owner, but the judge said no; last spring, a
chicken took the stand in a Tyler, Tex., courtroom to facilitate a
demonstration of vaccination procedures at a local prison; and also last
spring, a police dog took the stand in a Pittsburgh, Pa., courtroom as
a defense attorney tried to show that the dog, and not his client, was
the aggressor in a fight. [New York Times, 11-12-93; Tyler Telegraph,
4-6-93; S-T, 4-7-93]
* A January Associated Press report from the Gaza Strip described recent
sentences handed down by one of the best-known of the local religious
arbiters. (Most Gazans boycott the Israeli-run court system and opt
for private arbitration.) A man who "winks" at a woman and says "Hey,
beautiful!" should pay the woman's family about $2,500 and have his eye
gouged out. As punishment for rape, the rapist must ride an oiled camel
from his house to his victim's, and upon arrival, he must submit to
having cut off any part of his body that has oil on it. A murderer's
family was ordered to pay either a large amount of money to the victim's
family or a smaller amount plus the use of a woman to bear a son to
replace the victim. [Columbia State-AP, 1-7-94]
* In New Orleans in July, Kevin Dominique was acquitted of possession
of stolen property, a crime for which he would have received only a
short jail sentence. On hearing the verdict, and despite the judge's
warnings on courtroom decorum, Dominique leaped to his feet, yelled
"Thank God!" and bearhugged his lawyer. Judge Leon Cannizzaro then
sentenced Dominique to six months in jail for contempt of court. (An
appeals court freed Dominique after nine days.) [Times-Picayune,
Jul93]
* In September, the Judicial Council of Manitoba reprimanded Judge Frank
Allen for comments he made in a domestic violence case. According to
the Council, Allen told the male defendant, who had threatened to kill
his girlfriend and himself, "There isn't any woman worth the trouble
you got yourself into." [Edmonton Journal-CP, 9-3-93]
Least Competent Person
* In December, David Posman (serving time for a crime for which I
labeled him in my book as one of America's Least Competent Criminals)
escaped, and on January 6, according to police, entered a Providence,
R. I., bank armed with a gun, walked up to a clerk, and demanded money.
The woman informed Posman that he was in the loan department and that
the tellers were on the other side of the lobby. After pulling off the
robbery and jumping in the getaway car, he briefly got lost trying to
elude police and was finally subdued after a brief chase. [Providence
Journal, 1-7-94]
Undignified Deaths
* In April, the Utah Supreme Court upheld the murder conviction of Frank
Powell, who in 1987 ran over Glen Candland, culminating their fight over
who had the best pickup truck. [USA Today, 4-12-94]
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.
