Today's Topics:
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Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 18:18:12 PST
From: Chuck Shepherd <cshepherd@igc.apc.org>
Message-Id: <9212170218.AA09837@igc.apc.org>
To: Subgenius@mc.lcs.mit.edu
Subject:
WEIRDNUZ.255 (News of the Weird, December 25, 1992)
by Chuck Shepherd
Lead Story
* In Naples, Italy, in November, masked men attacked
four members of the Napoli soccer team with iron bars,
sending one of them to the hospital. A group of fans
later claimed responsibility, declaring that the
attacks were to punish the players for a 5-1 loss to
the AC Milan team. "[The Napoli players] earn billions
of lire and do not play hard," declared the group. "We
will attack them again if they do not improve."
The Continuing Crisis
* In September a high school senior in Waianae, Hawaii,
who was allowed to run for homecoming queen after she
became a female in a sex change operation, finished
last in a field of seven.
* In June, FBI and Florida authorities finally arrested
Paul E. Flasher, 45, who had been sentenced to five
years in prison in 1980 for grand theft but who had
never been jailed. Flasher said, truthfully, that he
had gone home from the sentencing hearing in Tampa in
1980 and "sat tight," just as his lawyer had
instructed, waiting for notification to report to
prison. The authorities then forgot about him for 12
years.
* In November, a chest pain apparently caused Anne
Shapiro, 79, to snap out of a coma-like trance which
had prevented her from caring for herself and speaking
for 30 years. The pain struck while she was visiting
her son in Dundas, Ontario. Among her first requests
was to see "I Love Lucy," but she became frightened by
the TV because the programs were in color.
* Powell, Ala., police chief James Bryan finally quit
his job in August when his friend, the mayor, lost his
bid for re-election. Over the years, Bryan had been
fired 12 times by the city council for various
indiscretions but had been rehired by the mayor each
time. (The city council had fired Bryan's predecessor
14 times, but he, too, had been rehired by the mayor
each time.)
* When George Bojarski's son failed to come up with the
$384 balance due on his father's cremation in October
in Richmond, Tex., Evans Mortuary placed the body on
the son's doorstep. Interviewed by Houston's KRIV-TV,
owner Newell Evans quarreled with the news report:
"Who says I dumped him there?" he asked. "I [merely]
left him there."
Just Can't Stop
* Jaekun An of Anchorage, Alaska, was arraigned in
August for violating a freshwater fishing limit of
three catches per day. A trooper who found him on July
22, with 169 fish, said An told him the fishing "was
just so good that he couldn't stop himself."
* Los Angeles jail inmate Leslie White earlier this
year blew the whistle on alleged conspiracies between
government prosecutors and inmates who would commit
perjury by testifying that they heard cellblock
"confessions" which the prosecutors could then use at
trial. However, White himself was convicted of perjury
in May while testifying as to inmates' perjury. At
various points while on the stand, he said he had
committed perjury five times, then only once, then
never, and finally only once.
* Dennis Payne, 30, was arrested for pickpocketing at a
Jersey City, N. J., train station in September. It was
his 135th arrest in New Jersey and New York City since
1978. Police knew they had someone special when it
took their computer more than a half hour to print out
Payne's arrest record.
* In October in Denver, Joan Kallinen, 56, pleaded
guilty to attempting to hire an undercover police
officer to murder her husband. Kallinen had maintained
that the "contract" was all part of a Dungeons and
Dragons game that the police officer failed to get the
drift of, but friends and co-workers testified that she
was an out-of-control shopper who needed her husband's
estate to cover her debts. A co-worker said Kallinen
was "obsessed" with dressing well, and her husband said
she owned 150 dresses, 40 golf outfits, 100 blouses,
and 150 pairs of shoes.
The Weirdo-American Community
* In October, prominent Easton, Md., lawyer George
Goldsborough was found to have lied under oath to a
state bar association examiner. Goldsborough thus will
face disciplinary action concerning charges that he had
spanked an employee and two clients in his office in
incidents going back to the early 1980s. One of
Goldsborough's ex-partners said he had discovered a
copy of a book, Spanking and the Single Girl, in
Goldsborough's desk drawer, and the female complainants
said Goldsborough often told them they had been "bad
girls" and needed spankings. (Present and former
lawyers in Goldsborough's firm came under criticism, as
well, for failing to move against him sooner; rumors of
other incidents had been circulating for years--so much
so that the firm was referred to around Easton as
Spanky and the Gang.)
Least Competent Person
* Raymond Moyher, 30, was arrested in West Haven,
Conn., in November after a police officer stopped him
near a WaWa convenience store that had just been
robbed. According to the arresting officer, when he
asked Moyher what he had been doing, Moyher said, "I
just left the WaWa store that I robbed."
Inexplicable
* Last spring, the Alabama Medicaid office in
Birmingham began requiring Polaroid photographs of the
breasts of women who wanted breast-reduction surgery.
A spokesperson told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
that the photos were necessary to prove that the
surgery was medical and not cosmetic in nature (which
Medicaid would not pay for). A University of Alabama
sociologist was critical, pointing out that the photos
still did not prove the medical need for the surgery,
and that Medicaid officials take the physician's word
for it, anyway.
END
Sorry I've been derelict. If you think there is demand for
this, I'll keep doing it. Happy trails, Chuck.
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End of Subgenius Digest
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