[903] in Humor
HUMOR: WEIRDNUZ.379 (News of the Weird, May 12, 1995)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Fri Jun 2 10:40:06 1995
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 02 Jun 1995 10:35:07 EDT
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
From: Espacionaute Spiff domine! <MATOSSIAN@aries.colorado.edu>
Date: Wed, 31 May 1995 20:05:06 -0400
From: bostic@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Forwarded-by: notw-request@nine.org (NotW List admin)
WEIRDNUZ.379 (News of the Weird, May 12, 1995)
by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORY
* Since early in 1994, the Vineyard Christian Fellowship Church in Toronto
has been conducting services in which some parishioners, overcome by the
Holy Spirit, raucously fall on the floor in side-splitting laughter.
Leaders liken this "Toronto Blessing" to such experiences in other
religions that inspire members to speak in tongues. Six evening services
per week are filled to capacity with giggling parishioners. Visitors have
taken the gospel back home to England, Hong Kong, Norway, South Africa,
Australia, and several states in the U. S. [Newsweek, 2-20-95; Globe &
Mail, 11-18-94]
THE CONTINUING CRISIS
* In February, U. S. Rep. Wally Herger (R-Calif.) publicized a
then-current U. S. Forest Service employment position announcement that
reflected such an eagerness by the agency to meet a 43%-female hiring goal
that it stated, "Only Unqualified Applicants May Apply." The job was a
$20,000 position in the fire dispatch office in the Six Rivers National
Forest. [Wash. Times, 2-6-95; San Francisco Examiner, Feb95]
* In January, Australian immigration officials denied entrance to Charlene
Mirabella, a Buffalo, N. Y., librarian who had just married Brisbane,
Australia, librarian Robert Boot after a nine-month courtship that took
place exclusively by E-mail. Mirabella was rejected as a drain on
Australian health care resources because she is overweight--based on a
government calculation of "body mass index," which is obtained by dividing
the weight-per-age by the square of her height. [Austin
American-Statesman-London Independent, 3-24-95]
* In September, the Zhu Ma Dian pharmaceutical company won a lawsuit over
a newspaper and a TV station in Liaoning province in China for defamation
of the strength of the company's sleeping pills. The newspaper had
reported, truthfully, that a couple, distraught over gambling losses, had
attempted suicide by swallowing a total of six bottles of the pills, but
that they wound up only with bad stomach aches. Since the story was
reported at the time of the Chinese National Medicines Fair, the company
immediately lost about 90% of expected sales. [San Jose Mercury
News-Chicago Tribune, 10-9-94]
* In Decatur, Ga., in September, Adei Grenpastures-Doty and Tim Doty
appeared at the First Christian Church five years after their marriage--to
get a divorce in a ceremony presided over by the minister who married
them. The former Mrs. Doty is a minister, herself; Mr. Doty is working on
a master's degree in divinity. Scripture readings and prayers of
thanksgiving and forgiveness highlighted the ceremony. [San Francisco
Chronicle-Reuters, 9-17-94]
* Among new Japanese computer fish technology: a computer-aided fishing
simulator, in which working a rod and reel properly allows simulated fish
on a video monitor to be bagged, and a virtual aquarium, "Aquazone," in
which simulated fish "live" in real time, must be fed, must be prescribed
optimum environmental conditions for breeding, dirty the water with
excretion, and grow older even while the program is not running.
[Details, August 1994; Los Angeles Times, 3-10-95]
* In July in Nakorn Sri Thammarat province in Thailand, Perm Suttimusik,
76, committed suicide after all 17 wives in his harem deserted him.
Police speculated that Perm had lost his potency because of the failure
of an herbal brew he had been taking. [St. Petersburg Times-Deutsche
Presse Agentur, 7-29-94]
* In February, to combat a wave of student vandals who had been fouling
rolls of toilet paper at Canyon Vista Middle School in Austin, Tex.,
principal Don Dalton himself joined the battle. Dalton climbed into the
ceiling above the toilet stalls in the boys' restroom and lay in wait,
peering out of a small opening in the ceiling panel. Within a minute of
his being there, he caught a boy urinating on a toilet paper roll. Said
one parent, "[A] lot of us feel the situation could have been solved [in
a different way]." [Austin American-Statesman, 2-21-95]
* In September, artists in Lviv, Ukraine, formed the International Masoch
Fund to honor the city's most famous native, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch,
from whose name is derived the word indicating pleasure from being abused.
They were not successful in their effort to get the United Nations to name
1995, the centennial of Masoch's death, "The Year of Masoch." [San Antonio
Express-News, 9-3-94]
* In December, two men and a woman were arrested in connection with the
murder of Randall Sheridan (with whom the woman had been having a
child-custody dispute) in Junction City, Kan. Among the bases for the
arrests was that the three people's alibis had been refuted by a piece of
evidence used for perhaps the first time in a domestic criminal case--a
CIA-type satellite photo purportedly showing that the three suspects' cars
were not parked where they had said they were. A few days later, bail
was lowered when the photo was revealed to have been a fake. [Kansas City
Star, 12-3-94]
* In January, British astronomer Dr. Jacqueline Mitton told reporters that
all star signs are about one month off, meaning that everyone who believes
in astrology has been reading the wrong signs. The dates for each star
were drawn up more than 2,000 years ago, said Mitton, but "[t]he Zodiac
is constantly changing," for example now spending only seven days under
Scorpio and more than a month each under Virgo, Taurus, and Pisces.
Countered astrologer Jonathan Cainer of London's Daily Mail newspaper:
"Her claim is codswallop." [St. Louis Post-Dispatch-Reuters, 1-21-95]
LEAST COMPETENT CRIMINALS
* In March, three men were arrested in Mexico City after their plan
fizzled to carjack a Jeep Cherokee as it stopped for a traffic light in
broad daylight in an affluent neighborhood. The three turned out to be
wayward Mexican policemen. Unknown to the men, the Cherokee was being
driven by Ernesto Zedillo Velasco, 19, son of President Ernesto Zedillo,
and was accompanied by two unmarked cars filled with bodyguards, who
quickly subdued the men. [New York Times, 3-24-95]
I DON'T THINK SO
* In February, William Williams, 34, and Robert Williams, 32, were
arrested in Des Moines, Iowa, and charged with breaking into a change
machine and a detergent machine at a laundromat. An eyewitness to the
crime assisted police, even though the men allegedly had thought they
could buy her silence by giving her several small packages of detergent
from the machine. [Des Moines Register, 2-18-95]
Copyright 1995, Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.
Released for the entertainment of readers. No commercial use
may be made of the material, or of the name News of the Weird.
