[897] in Humor
HUMOR: NoTW May 5, 1995
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Thu May 25 17:26:48 1995
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 17:21:57 EDT
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 17:05:06 -0400
From: bostic@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Forwarded-by: notw-request@nine.org (NotW List Admin)
WEIRDNUZ.378 (News of the Weird, May 5, 1995)
by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORY
* In March, after the president of the Puerto Rico House of
Representatives accused him of illegal drug use, Sen. Freddie Valentin
denied the charge and led reporters into a restroom in the Capitol
building in San Juan, where he yielded a urine sample that he later
submitted to the Senate leadership. A TV camera shot over Valentin's
shoulder, and journalist Sonia Salgado's play-by-play radio report ended,
"I have just transmitted, for the first time ever, a senator taking a pee
before the media." [Austin American-Statesman-AP, 3-18-95]
WEIRD ANIMAL NEWS
* In February, Humane Society officer Tori Matthews in Los Angeles and
farmer Janet Bonney in Harpswell, Maine, revived animals that were near
death. Matthews applied mouth-to-nose help to a boy's pet iguana, and
Bonney saved a nearly frozen chicken with mouth-to-beak resuscitation.
[St. Louis Post-Dispatch-AP, 2-12-95; Syracuse Herald-Journal-AP,
2-24-95]
* On January 16 in the woods near Waukegan, Ill., a German shepherd dog
named Friendly brought home a two-foot section of a severed human left
leg and five days later brought home a portion of a right one.
Authorities identified the legs as belonging to a 24-year-old woman
missing since January 3, but in extensive sweeps through the area, and
after outfitting Friendly with a radio transmitter, they were unable to
find the rest of the body. [Chicago Tribune, 1-18-95, 1-24-95; Chicago
Sun-Times, 2-1-95]
* In June in Camden, N. J., two-year-old Matthew Mikel slipped while
reaching for a cat on a balcony. He and the cat fell three stories;
doctors said Matthew survived because his landing was cushioned by the
cat, which did not survive. [Philadelphia Inquirer, 6-24-94]
* In a February Los Angeles Times story on the San Francisco Zoo's annual
Valentine's Day mating-practices tour, the pygmy hippopotamus seemed the
most hapless exhibit. According to Zoo official Jane Tollini, "Roly" has
lived with his mate "Poly" since 1969 with no success. "He'd put it in
her ear," said Tollini. "He'd put it under her arm. In 26 years he never
put it in the right spot." [Los Angeles Times, 2-14-95]
* In a four-student, Davidson College class project reported in November
in The (Charlotte, N. C.) Observer, an Australian terrier named Willie
starred in an experiment in which the students sprayed a synthetic
dog-scent chemical on stakes, hoping to see how often dogs would urinate
on the scent. Willie, who is legendary because he has been known to
urinate dozens of times on a single stroll through the neighborhood,
correctly hit three of the five marked stakes but also hit two of the
unscented ones. [Charlotte Observer, 11-2-94]
GOVERNMENT IN ACTION
* The federal Small Business Administration office in Birmingham, Ala.,
confirmed in December that it had helped Mobile, Ala., entrepreneurs who
opened Sammy's, a topless go-go bar adjacent to Westlawn Elementary
School. Said the SBA director, "[W]e could not discriminate against them
[just] because they are a go-go club." [Tuscaloosa News-AP, 12-16-94]
* In 1993, the Fairbanks, Alaska, Social Security Administration office
rejected the application of Athabaskan Indian Altona Brown, 90, for
Medicaid benefits because she was not poor enough. She owned only a
$3,000 coffin, a $700 plane ticket (reserved for flying her body home to
her tribe when she passed away), and various rugs and clothing that she
had a tribal duty to pass on to her survivors. The Social Security office
said Brown's coffin was too fancy to be counted as an exempt "burial
receptacle," and later said that the ticket and rugs were worth more than
the $1,500 burial-expense exemption. In December 1994, the office changed
its mind and ruled her Medicaid-eligible. [Independence Examiner-AP,
12-17-94; AP wirecopy, 12-5-94]
* In December, a former lawyer for Canada's House of Commons, Paul Ebbs,
reached a settlement in his lawsuit against the government for having
given him a boring job. He claimed the government enticed him to take a
pay cut from his previous job, promised him "exciting, challenging, and
demanding" work, but assigned him to a four-lawyer office that had only
enough work for two. Ebbs spent two years doing nothing before filing
his complaint. [Globe & Mail-CP, 12-20-94]
* In September, Dutch officials modified their political-asylum policy,
which had recently been plagued with abuses estimated to cost $100 million
a year. Teenagers from other European countries had been claiming
"political asylum" in upscale Netherlands beach resorts, where they would
then be given government-paid room and board plus about $15 a week to
spend while their claims were being processed. [Columbus Dispatch-Scripps
Howard, 8-10-94]
* When U.S. Army Gen. Joseph Ashy left his post in Naples, Italy, in
September to assume his new command duties in Colorado Springs, Colo.,
taxpayers paid out $120,000 for the trip. A C-141 with a crew of 13 flew
from New Jersey to pick him up, then on to Colorado Springs with only two
passengers -- Ashy and his aide. [Albuquerque Journal-Colorado Springs
Gazette Telegraph, 12-7-94]
* Recent government employee news: A guard for an Illinois mental health
center, who was fired when an investigator took photographs of him
sleeping on the job, was reinstated by an arbitrator's decision in August.
Warwick, R. I., police Sgt. Michael D. Mallette filed a lawsuit in
February claiming he was wrongfully fired. Mallette repeatedly had sex
with a woman on duty, lied about it during investigations over a
nine-month period (in which he was on mandatory, paid leave earning
$42,000), and confessed only when confronted with tape recordings that
were to be the basis for perjury charges. [Chicago Tribune, 8-21-94;
Providence Journal-Bulletin, 2-23-95]
LEAST COMPETENT CRIMINALS
* Jeremy E. Bennett and three juveniles were arrested in Waynesboro, Va.,
in February and charged with burglary after allegedly throwing a bowling
ball through a store window to gain entry. Police knew who to look for
because the gang left behind the bowling ball, which had the name of one
of the juveniles engraved on it. [Waynesboro News-Virginian, 2-14-95]
Copyright 1995, Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.
Released for the entertainment of readers. No commercial use
may be made of the material or the name News of the Weird.
