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Yucks Digest V4 #30 (shorts)




Yucks Digest                Mon, 24 Oct 94       Volume 4 : Issue  30 

Today's Topics:
                            Administrivia
                   News of the Weird [344] - 9Sep94
                  News of the Weird [345] - 16Sep94
                  News of the Weird [346] - 23Sep94
                  News of the Weird [347] - 30Sep94
                   News of the Weird [348] - 7Oct94

The "Yucks" digest is a moderated list of the bizarre, the unusual,
the sometimes risque, the possibly insane, and the (usually) humorous.
It is issued on a semi-regular basis, as the whim and time present
themselves.

Back issues can be obtained via Gopher as
gopher://gopher.cs.purdue.edu//1Purdue_cs/Users/spaf/yucks/gopher
and subscriptions can be obtained using a mail server.  Send
mail to "yucks-request@cs.purdue.edu" with a "Subject:" line of the
single word "help" for instructions.

Submissions and problem reports should be sent to spaf@cs.purdue.edu

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: October 24, 1994
From: spaf (Chief Yuckster)
Subject: Administrivia
To: yucks-readers

Enclosed are several weeks worth of the "New of the Weird" mailing list.
This should be enough for you to decide if you are interested in
subscribing to the list directly.  I may, from time-to-time, excerpt
items from the list for Yucks.  However, if you want to get the full impact
of all the Weird News, you should subscribe directly.

To subscribe, send the message "subscribe" to notw-request@nine.org

Anybody know of other interesting lists I should mention (or that
Yucks readers should be on)?  If so, let me know.

--spaf

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 23 Sep 1994 08:52:18 -0400 (EDT)
From: notw-request@nine.org (NotW List Admin)
Subject: News of the Weird [344] - 9Sep94
To: notw@nine.org (News of the Weird)

WEIRDNUZ.344 (News of the Weird, September 9, 1994)
by Chuck Shepherd

Lead Story

* In June, the National Gallery of Art in Washington,
D. C., featured a show on "minimalism," in which
sometimes quite ordinary objects are offered as art. 
Included, for example, was a wrapped package, in brown
paper and string, entitled "Package," by Christo. 
According to the Washington Post, when gallery
technician Glenn Perry was installing some of the
exhibits with the aid of his tool cart, "several
patrons and critics" gathered around the cart and
studied it, as if it were an exhibit, before Perry
finished his work and rolled the cart away. [Washington
Post, 6-3-94] 

Couldn't Possibly Be True

* In Baton Rouge, La., in June, minutes after funeral
services for a 25-year-old man ended, his body caught
fire inside the closed coffin, causing smoke to come
shooting out of the cracks.  Investigators said
embalming fluids spontaneously combusted. [Orlando
Sentinel-Reuter, 6-4-94] 

* In Kissimmee, Fla., in May, William Nelson was shot
twice at point-blank range by a man with a .38-caliber
snub-nose revolver.  One shot went through his shoulder
and exited his back; the other bullet hit Nelson
"square in the forehead and just stopped," said police
officer Jim Lakey, leaving as Nelson's major problem
only that his "ears were ringing." [Orlando Sentinel,
6-1-94] 

* The Consumer Product Safety Commission's May report
on sports injuries said 1,455 people were sent to
emergency rooms in 1992 with injuries from playing
ping-pong. [Newsweek, 6-20-94] 

* Daniel Czubko, 32, went on the lam in late July when
police in Bakersfield, Calif., sought him on charges
that he had stalked his estranged wife.  According to
police, Czubko secretly moved into a 2-1/2-foot high
crawl space underneath the floor of Mrs. Czubko's new
home on about July 23 and stayed for a week, listening
to her activities, then leaving briefly to harass her
on the phone by eerily describing what she was wearing
and what she had been doing. [San Francisco Examiner-
AP, 7-31-94] 

* In a story on Elvis Week '94 in August in Memphis,
the The Commercial Appeal newspaper reported its
selections as the two most bizarre Elvis collectors'
memorabilia, both of which belong to Joni Mabe of
Athens, Ga.  One is a toenail she claims was Elvis's,
picked out of a carpet in the Jungle Room during her
1983 visit to Graceland; the other is a wart that was
removed from Elvis's right wrist in 1957.  She said she
purchased the wart, encased in formaldehyde, from the
operating surgeon's estate in 1990. [The Commercial
Appeal, 8-20-94]

* William Powell, 35, was convicted of assault in
Detroit in June after a court found that he
intentionally pulled his pregnant, 33-year-old
girlfriend part-way through the window of his van as he
sped through the neighborhood, rammed her body against
a telephone pole, and kicked her after he stopped the
van.  The woman, who lost the baby as well as an arm
and a leg in the incident, testified in support of
Powell, saying that the incident was her fault.
[Burlington Free Press, 7-1-94; AP wirecopy, Jun94] 

* Police in Mendota Heights, Minn., filed armed robbery
charges against John P. Wuchko, 28, in July.  According
to police, Wuchko left no fingerprints at the scene
because he wore surgical gloves, but they recovered one
of the gloves nearby and found Wuchko's fingerprint on
the inside of one of the fingers. [Minneapolis Star
Tribune, 7-28-94] 

People in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

* In Las Vegas, Nev., four undocumented aliens were
deported to Mexico in July after being turned in by the
customer for whom they were installing carpet.  The
customer was Arthur Strapp, head of the local office of
the U. S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). 
Said Strapp, "Out of 900,000 people in Las Vegas, they
picked my house."  And in March, a Haitian woman who
had just landed illegally in St. Croix, the Virgin
Islands, was arrested when she hailed what she thought
was a taxicab but which turned out to be an official
INS car. [New York Times-AP, 7-10-94; Virgin Islands
Daily News, 3-16-94] 

* In May, a gang of bandits burst into a bakery in Rio
de Janeiro at precisely the time that it was being
robbed by another gang.  The first gang had just taken
a cash box, containing about $45, which the second gang
then demanded at gunpoint.  A hail of gunfire erupted,
and the first gang escaped with the money. [Boston
Herald, 6-19-94] 

* In January and February, respectively, inmates
escaping from prisons in Lancaster, Calif., and 
Immokalee, Fla., by hiding in garbage trucks, failed to
get out of the trucks before they were compacted into
bales of trash.  The California man survived, but the
Florida man, who was serving a life sentence for
kidnaping, was found dead, badly mangled, in a
landfill, where the truck had deposited him. [L. A.
Daily News, 1-14-94; Miami Herald, 2-16-94] 

Cries for Help

* Last fall, the California Bar Association finally
disciplined Berkeley, Calif., attorney Morgan Doyle for
a string of incidents dating back eight years.  Among
them, according to the bar association:  In 1985, he
fired a shotgun from the roof of his apartment building
to celebrate what he called the exploration of the West
and the arrival of a battleship in the San Francisco
harbor; and in 1991, after the owner of a restaurant
refused to yield to Doyle's repeated, inexplicable
requests for free croissants, Doyle threw food around
the room and threatened the man and his wife.  The bar
association, noting that none of the incidents involved
"moral turpitude," suspended Doyle for 30 days.
[California Lawyer, April 1994] 

Least Competent Criminal

* Danny Kelley, 17, was charged again in August for
burglarizing a home near San Antonio, Tex.  Last year,
the 400-pound Kelley was arrested for another home
burglary, during which he had also raided the
refrigerator, after police traced a trail of discarded
ice cream wrappers from that house to Kelley's in the
same neighborhood. [Tampa Tribune, Aug94] 

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.

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 1 Oct 1994 01:48:34 -0400 (EDT)
From: notw-request@nine.org (NotW List Admin)
Subject: News of the Weird [345] - 16Sep94
To: notw@nine.org (News of the Weird)

WEIRDNUZ.345 (News of the Weird, September 16, 1994)
by Chuck Shepherd

Lead Story

* Desmond Morris's latest documentary, "The Human
Animal: The Biology of Love," now on TV in England,
will appear on U. S. cable TV in January and picture a
human orgasm--from inside the vagina.  A tiny camera,
similar to those used for diagnosis of the colon, was
placed inside Wendy Duffield, 31, and another was
strapped onto her husband's penis.  The couple
reportedly had sex about 60 times to assure sufficient
footage. [Chicago Tribune-Reuters, 8-18-94] 

Schemes

* Texas A&M officials were considering charges in July
that chemistry professor John Bockris used unorthodox
scientific methods, and improperly circumvented school
funding procedures, for his work in which he claims
gold can be manufactured from other substances.  In
December, Bockris expressed surprise at the charges, 
reminding a campus newspaper reporter that he is a
professor and saying, "What professor would be doing
bogus work?" [USA Today, 7-5-94; Houston Post-AP, 12-
24-93; Dallas Morning News, Dec93] 

* Delaware prison officials decided in July to allow
condemned murderer Nelson Shelton to undergo a kidney
removal at public expense so that he can donate the
organ to his mother.  The state initially refused to
pay but relented when Shelton played his trump card: 
He threatened to use all of his legal rights to appeal
his sentence, which would cost the state hundreds of
thousands of dollars. [USA Today, 7-28-94] 

* In June, South Charleston, W. Va., inmate Robert Dale
Shepard, in jail on robbery charges, escaped from a
recreation yard by braiding dental floss into a rope
that he used to scale a fence.  To prevent such
occurrences, the state of Maine prohibits inmates from
having dental floss, but in July, Portland inmate
Michael Tuck, 31, filed a lawsuit against the state,
claiming that the policy hinders his ability to fight
tooth decay. [New Haven Register-AP, 8-14-94; USA
Today, 8-3-94] 

* In February a federal court in California dismissed
the complaint of Jogezai Kakar Khan against the
director of the FBI and about two dozen other
defendants for harassing him.  The other defendants
included President Bush, "the Queen of England," French
President Mitterrand, the San Francisco Chronicle, some
college professors, several street gangs in Hong Kong,
"the drug cartel," H. Ross Perot, Paul Newman, Kirk
Douglas, Frank Sinatra, Dennis Hopper, Phil Donahue,
"the founders of Israel," Oliver North, and a "humanoid
alien extra-terrestrial leader speaking Greek." [Khan
vs. Sessions, No. C93-04394, U. S. District Court,
Northern District of California, 2-8-94] 

* In June, police in Deventer, Netherlands, arrested
six women and a man they said had been robbing local
supermarkets.  The women would enter the market and
disrobe down to their underpants to create a
distraction, while the man walked into the manager's
office and grabbed money. [Tampa Tribune-AP, 6-7-94] 

* In June, Michael Frazier, the "lifestyle" editor of
the daily newspaper in Oak Ridge, Tenn., was charged
with attempted murder of the husband of a woman he had
written about.  According to police reports, Frazier
and Lisa Whedbee began an affair shortly after he
interviewed her.  In a plot to kill John Whedbee,
Frazier was to pose as a robber-intruder and stab John
while Lisa stood by with a baseball bat and pretended
to defend John.  According to John, Frazier seemed
tentative, causing Lisa to break character and yell to
Frazier, "You've got to do it, just do it now."
[Knoxville News-Sentinel, 6-10-94 and subsequent days] 

* In July, Mollie Brusstar, 48, was convicted of two
counts of embezzlement from the Catholic Diocese of
Arlington, Va., where she had been employed in
administration.  According to the prosecutor, Brusstar
put imaginary employees on the rolls and issued their
paychecks to herself.  She and a sister went to Utah
and, posing as nuns, used the money to obtain dental
work and cosmetic abdomen-reduction surgery. 
Brusstar's defense was that a monsignor had approved
everything, but he was unavailable to testify, having
committed suicide in the interim after being accused of
molesting a parishioner. [Northern Va. Sun, Jul94] 

Feuds

* In August, to climax a feud in Concordia Sagittaria,
Italy, a judge ordered Maria Bruna Bortolussi to keep
her talking blackbird away from neighbor Norina Miorin,
after Miorin testified that Bortolussi had taught the
bird to say, in Italian, "Norina, I'm going to kill
you."  The two were fussing over a garden. [Edmonton
(Alberta) Journal, 8-21-94] 

* In Minot, N. D., in June, a woman ran into a police
station asking for protection from her husband, who was
chasing her.  She was told to be seated in the waiting
area, but before police could get to her case, they
found the couple outside in the parking lot facing off,
with each pointing a chain saw at the other. [Sioux
Falls Argus Leader-AP, 6-12-94] 

Cries for Help

* In May, a Denver, Colo., judge sentenced Oliver
Thomas Oster, 77, to serve 12 months in prison for four
attempted bank robberies.  Oster, who was said to
resemble the near-sighted cartoon character Mr. Magoo
and who is unable to walk, attempted the robberies from
a car at the banks' drive-in windows and used a gun so
rusted that the cylinder wouldn't turn, which was
irrelevant, said his lawyer, because Oster lacked the
physical strength necessary to pull the trigger,
anyway. [Denver Post, 5-7-94] 

Least Competent Criminals

* Last fall, in Memphis, Tenn., a Loomis Armored truck
guard was robbed by two men just as he was about to
enter a supermarket to make a pickup.  The gunmen fled
with the large bag the guard was carrying, which, since
the guard was entering the store at the time, was
merely a bag containing other empty money bags.
[Lebanon (Tenn.) Democrat-AP, 10-15-93] 

* In November, in St. Joseph, Mo., Michael Gene
McCrary, 37, was charged with attempted robbery of a
barber shop.  He walked in, reportedly slightly
inebriated, pretending to have a gun in his pocket, and
said to barber Fred Robertson, "Set 'em up."  When
Robertson requested clarification, McCrary replied,
"You know what I mean."  A customer walked outside and
summoned police. [St. Joseph News-Press, 11-6-93] 

I Don't Think So

* In a St. John's, Newfoundland, courtroom in August,
George Clarke denied that the bruises and cuts on his
girlfriend's body were the result of domestic assault. 
He said the back bruises occurred one night when Clarke
was suicidal.  He said he tied a noose ineptly to an
overhead pipe and ultimately fell on top of her when
she tried to stop him.  The bruises and cuts on her arm
came because he is forced to hold her arms tightly
during sex because, he said, "Your Honor, I only got a
small penis on me."  [CP wirecopy, 8-19-94] 

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.

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 7 Oct 1994 09:05:22 -0400 (EDT)
From: notw-request@nine.org (NotW List Admin)
Subject: News of the Weird [346] - 23Sep94
To: notw@nine.org (News of the Weird)

WEIRDNUZ.346 (News of the Weird, September 23, 1994)
by Chuck Shepherd

Lead Story

* According to a notice in U. S. News & World Report in
July, a new book by San Diego researcher Thomas T.
Samaras criticizes the negative environmental effect of
Americans' historically increasing height.  Taller
people require significantly more of the earth's
resources, writes Samaras.  He recommends controlling
children's diets to make them shorter and says the
ideal adult would be 5 feet tall and weigh 110 pounds.
[U. S. News & World Report, 7-4-94] 

Compelling Explanations

* In April in Savannah, Ga., Robert Palmer, 44, was
charged with burglary after removing a window pane and
entering the home of Joseph Palmer.  He denied any
motive of mischief and said he broke in only to
ascertain whether he was related to Joseph. [Savannah
Evening Press, 4-28-94] 

* In April, Dr. Jian-Yun Dong was convicted of 12
counts of sexual misconduct against a female babysitter
and against two female lab assistants in his office at
the University of Alabama at Birmingham.  In the course
of denying the charges, Dong's attorney pointed out
that one of the allegations was that Dong forced sex in
a lab at UAB while both parties were standing up.  "It
couldn't have taken place," the lawyer said.  "It's
physically impossible." [Birmingham Post-Herald, 4-6-
94] 

* In Dallas, Tex., in June, lawyer Brian Loncar
defended against his indictment for bigamy by saying he
did not believe his second marriage was valid because
the wedding was performed in Las Vegas by an Elvis
Presley lookalike, that it was a "phony deal." 
Countered the prosecutor, "Not necessarily.  Not in Las
Vegas." [AP wirecopy, 6-22-94] 

* Five Florida counties have recently taken out all
television sets for jailed inmates, in order to deter
crime.  Said a Clay County sheriff's deputy, "Knowing
there's no television here, maybe they'll think twice
before committing a crime."  Said the Jacksonville
sheriff, "If people want to watch football on TV this
fall, they better not get arrested." [St. Petersburg
Times, 8-14-94] 

* Clint Johnston, 69 and blind, told authorities in
Mountain Home, Idaho, in August that the recent charges
against him for having consensual sex with two 12-year-
old girls should be dismissed.  Johnston said that
since he could not see the girls, he did not know how
young they were. [USA Today, 8-19-94] 

* Ray Von "Poochie" Everette, Jr., told a sheriff's
investigator in Gloucester, Va., after his arrest for
sexual assault in June that he crawled into bed with
three sleeping women and had sex with one of them "to
prove a point."  He said he wanted "to show her she
could be had," because he suspected the woman to be a
lesbian.  Said the investigator, "He thought it would
bring her back right and make her act right." [Newport
News Daily Press, 6-24-94] 

* Often-unsuccessful Arkansas political candidate Dan
Ivy, who had just switched from Democrat to Republican,
was accused recently by his wife Sarah, in divorce
papers, of beating her.  Dan denied the charge in July
and countercharged that Sarah, who like Dan weighs over
200 pounds, recently physically beat him because of his
decision to switch parties.  Dan's attorney explained
that Sarah was angry at her husband's change of party
because a Republican "has increased pressure" to have a
good family life. [Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Jul94] 

What Goes Around, Comes Around

* In December, Marcus Melton, author of the book Nice
Guys Don't Get Laid, which encourages mild, virtuous
men to act like rowdy, macho hell-raisers, confronted
two men who were harassing a patron in a bar in
Traverse City, Mich.  They beat Melton up, leaving him
with a black eye and a cut that required four stitches.
[Publishers Weekly, 1-17-94] 

* In August, a television station in Jacksonville,
Fla., which had been carrying Rev. Jerry Falwell's "Old
Time Gospel Hour," suspended the show, and threatened
to cancel it altogether, because of Falwell's sexually
explicit references describing the alleged foibles of
President Clinton. [St. Petersburg Times-AP, 8-17-94] 

* The French newspaper Le Parisien reported in November
that a black man, who was the victim of racist remarks
from an elderly woman in a Vienna, Austria, train
station, snatched the woman's train ticket and ate it. 
Transit authority rules specify that a passenger
without a ticket must pay a hefty fine. [Le Parisien,
11-24-93] 

* Union City, Calif., police arrested Gardner Forster,
32, in January after he fled, nude, from a burglary
scene after hiding in the homeowner's closet.  Forster
leaped over a fence but landed in a neighbor's cactus
garden and was easily subdued. [San Francisco Examiner,
Jan94] 

* In August, Edward Musgrove, 32, attacked his
estranged wife as she began an evening route as a Los
Angeles bus driver.  He grabbed the steering wheel,
causing the bus to veer off the road, hit a tree, and
crash into a brick wall.  The wife was not injured, but
Musgrove was hurled full-force through the windshield
into the wall and was decapitated. [Los Angeles Times,
8-17-94] 

The Weirdo-American Community

* In June, the County Medical Examiner in Knoxville,
Tenn., Randall E. Pedigo, was shot after he pulled a
loaded gun on law enforcement officers who confronted
him at his home on a charge that he had molested a
teenage boy the night before.  A search of Pedigo's
apartment turned up 97 guns along with photos of nude,
underage boys, some of which were taken, the police
allege, after Pedigo had drugged them or had convinced
them that the photos were for "medical research."
[Knoxville News-Sentinel, 6-23-94 and subsequent
editions] 

Least Competent Person

* In February, about a year after one of the World
Trade Center bombers returned to the rental agency to
get his deposit back on the van used in the explosion,
Memphis, Tenn., police arrested a 21-year-old man for
burglarizing a home.  The man had left a pair of
sneakers behind and had returned several hours later,
knocked on the door, and asked the homeowner, "I was
wondering have you all seen my shoes?  They are red and
white Nikes." [Memphis Commercial Appeal, 2-20-94] 

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.

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 14 Oct 1994 08:14:01 -0400 (EDT)
From: notw-request@nine.org (NotW List Admin)
Subject: News of the Weird [347] - 30Sep94
To: notw@nine.org (News of the Weird)

WEIRDNUZ.347 (News of the Weird, September 30, 1994)
by Chuck Shepherd

Lead Story

* The New York Times reported in August on Zimbabwe's
recent salutary birth control performance, an effort
led by more than 800 family-planning missionaries who
regularly tour the countryside.  The achievement has
also helped produce a new export industry:  Zimbabwe
now sells wooden penises for use by family-planning
programs in other African countries for demonstrating
how to apply condoms. [New York Times, 9-4-94] 

Inexplicable

* A New York City Emergency Medical Services crew that
was called to a Macy's restroom on July 25 diagnosed
the contents of a plastic bag that a cleaning woman had
found in a toilet as a fetus.  A few minutes later, a
crew from the city medical examiner's office arrived
and correctly determined that the bag contained
spaghetti. [Albany Times Union-AP, 7-26-94] 

* According to England's Manchester Guardian newspaper
in August, members of a village in the remote highlands
of Papua New Guinea had to that point raised about $530
in a legal defense fund for O. J. Simpson. [The
Guardian, 8-14-94] 

* In New York City in July, Bartolome Moya, 37, charged
with kidnaping, drug-dealing, and six murders, skipped
town after being released on bail.  In 1993, Moya was
jailed pending trial on the same charges but was in
such poor health from heart disease that a judge
thought his death was imminent and dismissed the
charges so Moya could go home to die.  In February
1994, Moya obtained a Medicare-financed heart
transplant--one of only 2,000 (out of 6,000 on waiting
lists) who got hearts during a 12-month period. 
Prosecutors learned of the transplant, reindicted Moya
in May, and jailed him.  Then a judge released him on
bail on the condition that Moya wear a beeper/monitor,
and Moya has not been heard from since. [Philadelphia
Inquirer, 8-6-94] 

* The regional airline Markair apologized to passenger
Rosalyna Lopez in July for a May incident in which a
flight attendant on a Tucson-to-Washington, D. C.,
flight ordered her to stop talking in Spanish to a
relative traveling with her.  "No Spanish!" said the
flight attendant.  "English only!  Do you understand
that?" [Albuquerque Journal, 7-26-94] 

* In August, New York City criminal court judge Sheryl
Parker ruled that the well-known Times Square tourist
hustle known as "three-card monte" was legal, thus
freeing dealer Eric Hunt of criminal charges.  (Players
try to follow the path of one red card thrown in with
two black ones; police routinely describe players'
chances of winning as "zero" because of dealers'
sleight of hand and intimidation.)  Asked one officer,
"What is that judge, about 100 years old?" [New York
Post, 8-17-94] 

* Police in Des Moines, Iowa, in April easily subdued
Ronald Albert Siedelman in the Norwest Bank after he
had given a teller a long, poorly written note that
officers characterized as implying a robbery and asking
for "$19 trillion."  Siedelman further astounded
tellers by walking outside as tellers were deciphering
the note.  He said that he wanted to smoke a cigarette
and did not want to violate the bank's no-smoking
policy. [Des Moines Register, 4-15-94] 

* In July, at an international travel baggage
exposition in Japan, a prototype suitcase-car,
manufactured by the government of Toyooka City, in
partnership with an electronics firm, was introduced. 
The device looks like an ordinary, large plastic
suitcase but can be converted into a battery-driven
automobile capable of transporting a rider at about 6
miles an hour.  A spokesman for the manufacturer
admitted its drawbacks:  It cost about as much as a
real car, and it weighs more than passengers are
permitted to carry aboard airliners. [Manchester
Guardian Weekly, 6-12-94] 

* In September, after a six-month investigation, the
California Department of Health Services decided that
it was merely stress, and not mysterious fumes, that
rendered several hospital emergency-room workers
unconscious in February in Riverside, Calif.  One of
the workers, who has been hospitalized since February
and who has undergone three bone operations, called the
diagnosis of stress "absurd and ridiculous." [New York
Times, 9-4-94] 

* In August, Ottawa biologist David Brez Carlisle told
a meeting of geologists in Waterloo, Ontario, that the
exotic amino acids found in several rocks from space,
which are considered evidence that extraterrestrial
life exists, are not what they seem.  Carlisle said
that the space rocks he has examined contain not the
exotic amino acids but flakes of human dandruff, which
have a similar chemical makeup to the amino acids. 
Carlisle said he knows a lot about dandruff because he
has a lifelong, severe case. [Edmonton Journal-Ottawa
Citizen, 8-15-94] 

First Things First

* In June, the state of Maine yanked the driver's
license of a divorced father--the first victim of a
1993 law authorizing the revocation of driver's
licenses and professional licenses (among them doctors,
lawyers, architects, plumbers, electricians) of parents
behind on child support payments.  However, not
affected under the law are deadbeat parents' hunting
and fishing licenses. [AP wirecopy, 6-28-94] 

* In August near Mont Saint-Michel, France, Marie-
Noelle Guillernee, 42, drowned in a deep water hole at
a tourist attraction when she tried to save her 6-year-
old daughter.  Dozens of tourists were watching the
ten-minute rescue attempt, and none attempted to assist
the woman or called for help.  Spectators reported
hearing one tourist say, "I got the whole thing on
tape." [Newark Star-Ledger-AP, 8-29-94] 

* Last fall in a jail in New Haven, Conn., inmate
Francis Gotlibowski was beaten and kicked by other
inmates in an attack that sent him to the intensive-
care unit of the Yale-New Haven Hospital.  After an
investigation, a jail spokesman found that the beating
was in retaliation for Gotlibowski's having littered on
the floor of the cafeteria.  Said the spokesman, "[The
inmates] apparently have their own code to keep the
place clean." [New Haven Register, 10-5-93] 

I Don't Think So

* Lloyd Johnson, Jr., 38, was arrested in Jacksonville,
Fla., in May.  He admitted to running by a bank's
drive-through teller chute and swiping money just
before the waiting motorist could grab it.  Johnson
told Judge Morton Kesler that he wasn't a thief; he
said he had been using an automatic teller machine
elsewhere on the bank's property but was unfamiliar
with how it worked and thought he had to run over to
the drive-through chute to retrieve his money. [Florida
Times-Union, 5-25-94] 

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.

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 22 Oct 1994 01:56:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: notw-request@nine.org (NotW List Admin)
Subject: News of the Weird [348] - 7Oct94
To: notw@nine.org (News of the Weird)

WEIRDNUZ.348 (News of the Weird, October 7, 1994)
by Chuck Shepherd

Lead Story

* Among recent suggestions by municipal governments to
restrict teenage "cruising" in public places at night
was one by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. 
To get kids off the street, the New York Times reported
in August, Florida is considering installing low-
pressure sodium street lamps because they render
caucasians' complexions a "sickly" color and make acne
look grotesque. [New York Times, 8-16-94] 

Least Competent People

* Jackie Lynn Adams, 19, was charged with burglary in
November after he allegedly broke into a home in
Monterey, Tenn., and stole a VCR.  Apparently to build
his nerve, Adams had pulled into three driveways in the
neighborhood before the break-in, thus drawing
neighbors' attention.  When he finally chose a house,
it was the Monterey police chief's and contained two
VCRs, one of which was broken.  Adams took that one,
then had to have it fixed to make it ready for sale. 
Thus, the chief got his VCR back in better shape than
it was when stolen. [Nashville Banner, 11-3-93] 

* In January William L. Swearingen pleaded guilty to
the attempted bribery of state lottery officials in
Baton Rouge, La.  He had written a letter, complete
with his name and address and 17 numbers that he
normally plays, and suggested that if he could win two
drawings, he would give most of the money in the second
drawing back to the officials.  He wrote that he was
tired of being poor and wanted to spend more time with
his family.  Wrote Swearingen, "I would like to win so
that I could have about $375,000 each year to live on
after state and federal taxes." [Baton Rouge Advocate,
1-7-94] 

* Two 18-year-old men robbed a bank in Northridge,
Calif., in January, ten days after the huge earthquake. 
However, one of the hundreds of roving bands of police
looter-prevention patrols had spotted the two men in
ski masks as they entered the bank and was waiting for
them when they exited. [The Oregonian-L. A. Times, 1-
27-94] 

* Bank robbers continue to be ignorant of the chemical
dye-packs that tellers place in holdup money bags. 
Michael David Harris, 39, was arrested in August
outside a NationsBank in Washington, D. C., after he
was spotted by a passersby with smoke coming out of his
pants (into which he had stuffed the money bag). 
Several pedestrians pointed to the alley into which
Harris fled to get the bag out of his pants.
[Washington Post, 8-4-94] 

* Among several recent instances in which men planning
domestic crimes botched at least one crucial detail
were these:  In Oakland, Calif., in April, Darren West
had worn a gorilla mask in an assault on his wife, but
he apparently had forgotten that he was wearing easily
identifiable T-shirt, shoes, and wristwatch, and she
testified against him.  And in Fairfax County, Va., in
May, Linda Prior identified her husband as the masked
man who tried to abduct her--because of his clothing
and because during the incident, the family dogs wagged
their tails instead of barking, as they usually do at
intruders. [San Jose Mercury News, 4-17-94; Burke
Connection, 6-2-94] 

* In June, the Supreme Court of Canada turned down the
appeal of an Edmonton therapist who had been convicted
for tricking a mother into allowing her 15-year-old 
daughter to submit to sex with him for four years.  The
girl was having behavioral problems, which the doctor
diagnosed as caused by the "gamma profile" (which is
nonexistent).  The doctor's lengthy process of therapy
included binding the girl and engaging in a variety of
sado-masochistic sex acts with her.  When she
complained to her mother, the mother reassured her,
saying, "He's saving you from your gamma profile." [AP
wirecopy, 6-2-94] 

* The winner of a "worst photograph" award sponsored by
the Daily Telegraph newspaper in York, England, in
April was Tom Pemberton, 74, who submitted a blurred
photo of his left ear, taken when he accidentally aimed
the camera backward. [Chicago Tribune-Reuters, 4-11-94]

* Within a six-week span, police in Rupert, Idaho, and
Weatherford, Tex., handled cases in which men broke
into a church for burglary or vandalism, were attracted
to the office photocopier, and left behind copies of
their faces.  Said Rupert police officer Val Maxwell,
"I wish more people would leave pictures for us at the
scene." [Deseret News-AP, 7-1-94; Houston Post, 5-20-
94] 

Chutzpah

* In February Theora Simmons, 37, was arrested and
charged with stealing vehicles and office furniture
from a Claremore, Okla., General Motors dealership. 
According to police, Simmons, after taking the firm's
pictures off the walls, had left Post-it notes in their
place reading "You have nice taste." [Pryor Daily
Times, Feb94] 

* In May in Des Moines, Iowa, Arnold Walker, 40, who
police said was caught red-handed after robbing a
supermarket manager and breaking a whiskey bottle over
his head, blamed his trouble on the manager.  Said
Walker, "He brought it all on himself trying to be a
hero for two bottles of booze." [Des Moines Register,
5-25-94] 

* In a March Associated Press interview, Colin
Ferguson, the African-American man accused in the Long
Island Rail Road massacre last December in which six
white people were shot to death and 19 wounded, denied
he is a racist.  "[Racism] destroys the very fiber of
your being, any kind of hate based on race," he said. 
"We can always absorb disagreement without inflicting
wounds on anyone." [Columbia Daily Tribune-AP, 3-25-94]

Creme de la Weird

* The China News reported in July that a patient at the
Chutung Provincial Hospital, who had complained of an
eye infection, was found to have 30 fleas and 40 flea
eggs lodged in her eyelashes.  Said hospital official
Tang Wei-jen, "The fleas were skin-colored and were not
easily detected.  They were deep in her eyelashes."
[The China News, 7-23-94] 

I Don't Think So

* Donald Stewart Boyne, 61, and Kenneth Allen Bentley,
39, were arrested in Tavares, Fla., in August and
charged with lewd and lascivious behavior after someone
complained that they were having sex in a van in a
public park.  According to police, the men denied the
charges, with Boyne explaining that he had gotten in
the van merely to show Bentley how his new penile
implant pump worked. [Sarasota Herald-Tribune-New York
Times Regional Newspapers, 8-11-94] 

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.

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End of Yucks Digest
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