[320] in Humor
HUMOR: WEIRDNUZ.329 (News of the Weird, May 27, 1994)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Mon Jun 13 23:46:27 1994
From: abennett@MIT.EDU
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 94 23:43:48 EDT
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 1994 03:07:00 -0600
From: Espacionaute Spiff domine! <matossian@aries.colorado.edu>
From: dave-barry@marble.com (Keith Bostic)
WEIRDNUZ.329 (News of the Weird, May 27, 1994)
by Chuck Shepherd
Lead Story
* The Boston Globe reported in February that Eulalia Rodriguez and her
extended family receive government assistance payments totaling nearly
$1 million a year. Rodriguez, who has been on public assistance for 26
years, has 14 children on welfare, 74 grandchildren, and 15
great-grandchildren. Said she, "I'm sick of people acting like I'm some
crook. We've got a lot of kids to feed." Rodriguez lives in a
six-bedroom, three-story apartment in a gated Boston community called
Harbor Point. [Boston Globe, 2-20-94]
Government in Action
* In March the Providence Journal-Bulletin reported that the Internal
Revenue Service office in Rhode Island was specializing in pursuing tax
underpayments by pizza parlors. The office calculated a standard amount
of flour in a pizza, divided that by the total flour the restaurant
purchased, found the number of pizzas made, and then determined the
likely income of the store, which was often more than what the store
reported. [Providence Journal-Bulletin, 3-1-94]
* Reading, Pa., Fire Department official Michael J. Moyer was suspended
for a day on October 12 for having violated a directive not to drive
his Department car in the town's Labor Day parade. Moyer was thus not
paid for his regular 8 a.m.-6 p.m. shift, but the person called in to
replace him, at overtime pay, had to vacate his own subsequent shift,
and according to regulations, the person who had to fill that later
shift, also at overtime pay, was Michael J. Moyer, who thus earned $313
instead of the $155 he would have made had he not been suspended.
[Reading Eagle, 10-23-93]
* On March 8, the New York City Division of School Facilities finally
attached doors to the stalls in the girls' restroom at Public School
206 in Brooklyn, following years of complaining by the principal. The
doors were requisitioned on May 25, 1989 -- 1,747 days earlier. [New York
Post, 3-9-94]
* Vice President Al Gore's National Performance Review of federal
government practices revealed recently that the Pentagon spends $4.3
billion a year on travel -- $2.0 billion for the travel itself and $2.3
billion to process the paperwork. [AP wirecopy, 4-26-94]
* In April, a Senate subcommittee found that the number of drug and
alcohol addicts who had signed up for benefits under the Supplemental
Security Income program for the "disabled" had tripled in three years,
in large part because the government does not verify whether the
benefits are spent on addiction counseling or merely to buy more drugs.
A quarter of a million addicts receive $1.4 billion a year under the
program. In Cleveland, Ohio, sheriff's deputies disclosed in January
that 91 of the 330 fugitives rounded up during stings in 1993 were on
welfare -- receiving an average of $330 a month. Regulations prohibit
cross-checking fugitives' records with welfare records. [Washington
Times, 4-29-94; AP wirecopy, 1-10-94; ]
* Among the projects cited in an April Denver Post article on the 10
"worst ideas in modern U. S. environmental history": a plan by a
Department of the Interior official in the 1960s to flood the Grand
Canyon for a hydroelectric plant; a plan by then-Atomic Energy
Commission chairman James Schlesinger to dispose of nuclear waste by
shooting it into the sun on a space shuttle; and the World Health
Organization's 1960s program to kill mosquitoes on Borneo with U.S.-made
DDT, which so disrupted the food chain that the island was soon overrun
with rats, until the U. S. parachuted in cats to control them. [[Denver
Post, Apr94]]
* At a Jacksonville, Fla., City Council discussion of new park sites
recently, a councilman told a councilwoman that she could "kiss my
posterior," and she responded by threatening to "beat the hell" out of
him. [American City & County, February 1994]
Oops!
* In April in Easthampton, Mass., a four-foot-long iguana got free from
its cage in a car being driven by Joann Colby, causing her to lose
control and allow the car to fall down a 25-foot embankment. She and
the iguana received only minor injuries. In nearby Northampton, Mass.,
the next week, another iguana left its terrarium on a jaunt through
Sheri A. Dilks's apartment and en route, accidentally triggered an alarm
that brought firefighters. [Daily Hampshire Gazette, 4-24-94; 5-2-94]
* On April 30, a driver, unidentified by police, was found in his car
at the end of Interstate 8 in San Diego, Calif., with a map in his hand
and a "perplexed look" on his face, according to a California Highway
Patrol spokesman. He explained that he had come from New Mexico and
was looking for Arizona. [Arizona Republic-AP, 5-1-94]
* In January, gun safety instructor Ronald Paolillo, 43, and his
13-year-old son were injured by fragments of a 9mm bullet just before
a class at the Branford, Conn., Gun Club. Paolillo was headed for the
firing range when the bottom fell out of a box of ammunition, and as
the bullets hit the floor, one exploded. [New Haven Register, 1-17-94]
* In September at a dress rehearsal in a Swansea, Wales, theater,
actress June Slavin of the English Shakespeare Company rushed along the
balcony where she was to deliver the "wherefore art thou, Romeo" line,
tripped, and toppled over the railing, falling ten feet and spraining
her wrist. [San Francisco Chronicle-Reuters, 10-2-93]
The Weirdo-American Community
* In March, a manager at a Kroger store in Columbus, Ohio, apprehended
a suspected shoplifter, who was charged with grand theft. Concealed in
his clothing were over $300 worth of vaginal products, including 18
tubes of cream by made by three different companies and five packs of
Monistat suppositories. [Columbus Guardian, Mar94]
Least Competent Criminal
* Michael Antonio Davis, 24, was arrested in Savannah, Ga., in April
while inside a squad car parked in front of the Precinct 1 station
house. According to an officer, who discovered the suspect sitting in
the back of the car with a "most disgusted look" on his face, Davis had
entered the car looking for guns but did not realize that police cars'
back doors automatically lock, from inside and out, when closed.
[Savannah Evening Press, 4-27-94]
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.
