[957] in Humor
HUMOR: WEIRDNUZ.383 (News of the Weird, June 9, 1995)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Wed Jul 5 09:40:05 1995
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 05 Jul 1995 09:34:46 EDT
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
Date: Mon, 03 Jul 1995 18:29:15 +0000 (GMT)
From: Espacionaute Spiff domine! <MATOSSIAN@aries.colorado.edu>
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 1995 14:05:02 -0400
From: bostic@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Forwarded-by: notw-request@nine.org (NotW List Admin)
WEIRDNUZ.383 (News of the Weird, June 9, 1995)
by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORY
* In separate recent actions, four Irish Republican Army inmates in
Britain and the family of an inmate murderer in New Jersey have filed
lawsuits against prisons for injuries incurred during escape attempts.
In the New Jersey case, Giovanni A. Almovodar, 18, awaiting trial on a
murder charge, died when he fell on his head after climbing through a wall
in Camden County Jail; his family accused jailers of not maintaining a
"reasonably safe facility." [Fortune-Legal Intelligencer, 5-29-95;
Edmonton Journal, 5-6-95]
WELL-PUT
* John Christo, a friend of accused abortion-clinic murderer John Salvi,
admonishing the media in January for portraying his friend as a serial
killer: "There's nothing wrong with John whatsoever other than he killed
a couple of people." [Biloxi Sun-Herald-AP, 1-2-95]
* From a recent scientific paper noting that not everyone regards the
body-gas inhibitor Beano favorably: For some people, "the production of
high volumes of resonant, pungent intestinal gas is a source of personal
pride and fulfillment." [Orlando Sentinel, Jan95]
* Defense lawyer Paul Fernandez, explaining in a Paterson, N.J., court in
March why his client, a 14-year-old boy, might have sexually assaulted an
11-year-old girl: They were "two kids who had nothing better to do. They
don't have cable TV, what do you do?" [Newark Star-Ledger, 3-9-95]
* Kingston, Ontario, city councilman Dave Meers, at an April council
meeting in which he argued the uselessness of inviting candidates for the
provincial legislature to appear before the council to give their
platforms: "We all know that all politicians are liars, including
ourselves." [Sault Star-CP, 5-4-95]
* Texas Sen. David Sibley, describing tough negotiations in February on
pending state tort reform legislation: "It was like playing pick-up
sticks with your butt cheeks." [Austin American-Statesman, 2-11-95]
* University of Arkansas football coach Danny Ford on the September
decision by freshman Chad Roe to give back his football scholarship and
return home: "He signed with us just to get [an engineering] education,
and that's the wrong reason. I wish he had told us that [sooner]."
Little Rock Free Press-Hawgs Illustrated, Oct94]
* In September, after U. S. Air had suffered two fatal crashes in two
months, bringing to five the number of fatal crashes in five years for
the airline, Steven Fink, a Los Angeles public-relations specialist, told
the Wall Street Journal: "To the casual observer, there seems to be a
disturbing pattern." [Wall Street Journal, 9-21-94]
* Marie D'Amico, 53, pleading guilty and showing tearful remorse as the
prosecutor read the charges against her in Chicago in October for
defrauding three local government agencies by accepting high wages for
"ghost" jobs for which she barely showed up: "It makes me sick to hear
what I did." [Chicago Tribune, 10-13-94]
NOT WHAT THEY HAD IN MIND
* A Republican Party of Virginia open house in May to attract black
voters, set up for a 6,000-seat convention hall in Richmond, attracted a
crowd of nine. [Newport News Daily Press, 5-6-95]
* In March a federal judge awarded $871,000 in damages to six Belize
nationals on the payroll of U. S. drug agents. The six had been hired to
fly cocaine to Miami in order to sting the drug runners who would meet
the plane, but at a scheduled stopover in Honduras, the cocaine was
detected by Honduran officials, who arrested the six and subjected them
to 12 days of torture before U. S. officials were able to intercede.
[Chicago Sun Times, 3-13-95]
* In February, federal prison inmate Rodney Curtis Hamrick, 29, was
charged with threatening the life of President Clinton from behind bars.
Hamrick was originally imprisoned in the mid-1980s, with a modest
sentence, for writing bad checks. Since then, for expressing his
dissatisfaction about his trial, he has had about 50 years added to his
sentence for threatening President Reagan, the judge who sentenced him,
and his prosecutors, and building five small fire bombs while in prison
and mailing two of them to the prosecutors. [Belleville (Ill.)
News-Democrat, 2-15-95]
* In January, the city of San Francisco halted its plans to change the
name of Army Street to Cesar Chavez Street, in honor of the late labor
organizer. The city had budgeted $20,000 for replacing the street signs,
but state officials said the cost would be almost $1 million because the
longer name would necessitate bigger signs on the intersecting interstate
highway, which would require larger beams to support them and more lights
to illuminate them. [Standard Democrat (Sikeston, Mo.)-AP, 1-25-95]
* Two janitors at a Ceres, Calif., school were hospitalized in April and
16 pupils injured in a failed scheme by the janitors to kill a gopher by
pouring a gum-and wax-removing compound on him. One of the janitors lit
a cigarette, causing an explosion. And in New Orleans's French Quarter
in March, an apartment explosion injured two people when a woman set out
six cans of aerosol insecticide (one can is the recommended capacity),
which were ignited by the flame on the water heater. [Merced Sun-Star,
4-4-95; Times-Picayune, 3-14-95]
I DON'T THINK SO
* In April, Stephen Gordon, 37, was sentenced to almost six years in
prison in Denver, Colo., for stalking a woman. According to his lawyer,
Gordon's contacts with the 27-year-old victim were just coincidences.
Gordon had pursued the woman first in Scottsdale, Ariz., where he was
discovered hiding underneath her car (looking for a bird's nest, he said);
when she moved to Denver in 1993, Gordon moved there, too, and eventually
moved into her apartment complex, where he was discovered in the crawl
space underneath her apartment after allegedly boring holes into the
woman's bathroom (trying to trace a mysterious noise, he said). [Arizona
Republic-SHNS, 3-14-95]
Copyright 1995, Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.
Released for the entertainment of readers. No commercial use
may be made of the material or of the name News of the Weird.
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