[393] in Humor
HUMOR: WEIRDNUZ.337 (News of the Weird, July 22, 1994)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Fri Aug 5 17:57:04 1994
From: abennett@MIT.EDU
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 05 Aug 94 17:53:30 EDT
Date: Fri, 05 Aug 1994 12:08:28 -0600 (MDT)
From: Espacionaute Spiff domine! <MATOSSIAN%ARIES@VAXF.Colorado.EDU>
From: bostic@cs.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: WEIRDNUZ.337 (News of the Weird, July 22, 1994)
WEIRDNUZ.337 (News of the Weird, July 22, 1994)
by Chuck Shepherd
Lead Story
* In letters to the Journal of the American Medical Association in May,
two physicians referred to hundreds of their patients who had complained
of bloating and upper abdominal discomfort and who had then been
prescribed various ineffective gastrointestinal procedures. However,
noting that among their patients with these complaints, the abdominal
girth exceeds the pants size by an average of three inches, the two
doctors labeled the malady "tight pants syndrome" and prescribed larger
pants and suspenders. [JAMA, 5-25-94]
Uh-Oh
* A January Reuters News Service story on Manuel Oliveira's ice cream
shop in Merida, Venezuela, reported on his 567 flavors, including onion,
chili, beer, eggplant, smoked trout, spaghetti parmesan, chicken with
rice, and spinach. He said some flavors fail; he once abandoned avocado
ice cream, and tossed out 99 pounds of it, because it wasn't smooth
enough. [Toronto Star-Reuter, 1-26-94]
* The 58-year-old wife of Ethridge Leon "Bill" Carter died in April of
a gunshot to the head in Heber Springs, Ark., the result, said Carter,
of suicide. In 1992, Carter's second wife died of a gunshot, also
self-inflicted, said Carter. In 1990, Carter's first wife drowned on
a fishing trip the couple had taken by themselves. [Poplar Bluff Daily
American Republic-AP, 5-18-94]
* New York City police investigating a burglary at a debt collection
agency in Queens happened upon a plastic case that contained 62 live
Western diamondback rattlesnakes. Police said the three men who run
the agency create souped-up vodka at $100 a pint to sell to Koreans
in the neighborhood (floating snakes in the vodka to supply enhanced
power). [Chicago Tribune, 6-5-94]
* In November, a judge in Georgetown, Guyana, found Ronald Jonas [NOTE:
J-o-n-a-s] guilty of punching his wife after she found him in bed with
another woman and sentenced him to be "at her beck and call" for two
weeks. "He is your slave," the judge said. "Anything you want him to
do he has to do." [Greenville, S. C., News-AP, 11-6-93]
* At a Congressional hearing in February, the director of the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service, Mollie Beattie, argued with Rep. Don Young
(R-Alaska) over continued exemptions for Alaska Natives from laws
protecting ocean animals. Beattie's concern is that seals, polar bears,
and other animals are being killed solely for their gall bladders and
reproductive organs, which are delicacies or thought to be aphrodisiacs
in some Asian countries. Young became angry, grabbed an 18-inch-long
walrus penis bone that he had brought along as a prop, and pounded it
into his hand as he argued with Beattie. [Anchorage Daily News,
2-11-94]
* In June, the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency and the Illinois
Department of Transportation agreed that land near Edwardsville, Ill.,
containing Mississippian Indian remains about 1,000 years old, could be
used as dirt for a new highway because the site was archaeologically
not feasible to save. [Albuquerque Journal, 6-10-94]
Latest Hormone Surges
* In March in Bossier City, La., Kenneth Bryant, 19, and Sabrina
Perkins, 17, were arrested in the middle of the day at Dillard's
Department Store, on a showroom bed, where they were having sex. Said
a police officer, "They said they just wanted to do it." And in
October, in Dayton, Ohio, a ninth-grade boy performed oral sex on a
female classmate in a study hall while the teacher was reading and
listening to her radio using earphones. [New Haven Register-AP, 3-29-94;
Albuquerque Journal, 2-18-94]
* Richard T. Martinez, 35, was arrested for indecency in St. Paul,
Minn., in May after police found him wearing only a bra and G-string at
10:30 p.m. outside a theater, holding a life-size plastic inflatable
doll. According to police, a bottle of lubricant was nearby, and the
man was performing a sex act. [St. Paul Pioneer Press, 5-13-94]
* In February, a judge in Sydney, Australia, awarded $1.5 million
against the driver of a car responsible for partially paralyzing
Charmaine Johnston, now 35, in 1985. A portion of the damages was to
care for Johnston's son, now 2, who the judge said was conceived as a
result of Johnston's brain damage from the accident, which prompted her
to act "impulsively and without judgment or thought of consequences"
when an opportunity arose to have sex. [Chicago Tribune, 2-20-94]
* Philippines president Fidel Ramos announced in March that he would
allocate about $150,000 to provide cable television to some northern
areas of the country. He said he was concerned about the increasing
population growth in the area and said cable TV would enable the people
there "to do something else in the evening, in the hours of darkness."
[Globe & Mail-Reuters, 3-19-94]
Luck of the Draw
* Immediately after giving birth to her, and husband Moe's, second child
in 1977, Fran Casto underwent a tubal ligation. A little over a year
later, Fran gave birth to their third child. Immediately after that,
Moe underwent a vasectomy. In February 1994, in Henderson, N. C., Fran
gave birth to the couple's fourth child. [Wilmington Morning
Star-Henderson Daily Dispatch, 3-12-94]
* In Littleville, Ala., in May, Terry R. Mills, 32, lying on the
railroad tracks, was struck by a Norfolk Southern train and lost his
left leg just below the knee. The incident occurred a few feet from
the spot where, in 1986, he had been struck by another train and had
lost his right leg. [Montgomery Advertiser-AP, 5-19-94]
* In March, Judy Amos of Dayton, Ohio, was watching the news on TV when
word came that two planes had collided at Pope Air Force Base in North
Carolina, setting on fire a third plane on the ground filled with
paratroopers, and she knew that her son, Chad Van Cleve, was a
paratrooper on exercise at Pope. Amos's grandfather, four uncles, her
father, and her sister had all died in fires. Van Cleve was indeed
assigned to the plane that caught fire, in which 20 were killed and 80
injured, but minutes before the crash, he had left the plane to take a
rest room break. [Dayton Daily News, 3-25-94]
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.
