Today's Topics:
News of the Weird
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Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 18:07:50 PST
From: Chuck Shepherd <cshepherd@igc.apc.org>
Message-Id: <9302240207.AA29245@igc.apc.org>
To: subgenius@mc.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: News of the Weird
WEIRDNUZ.265 (News of the Weird, March 5, 1993)
by Chuck Shepherd
Lead Story
* On February 5, police in Tallahassee, Fla., charged
Sean David McDonald and Kristen Elizabeth Tice, both
20, with disorderly conduct after they spotted the
couple engaged in sexual intercourse while dancing at a
nightclub. Police said McDonald had his pants down and
that about 100 patrons were watching. McDonald told
police he did not even know the woman's name but had
merely asked her to dance. And one week earlier,
police in Calgary, Alberta, were called to a shopping
mall at 4 p.m. to disentangle a copulating couple in
front of Norm's Ski Hut. [Northwest Florida Daily News,
2-6-93; Edmonton Journal-CP, 1-27-93]
Cliches Come to Life
* In September in Chicago, Frank D. Zeffere III filed a
lawsuit for $40,000 in lost courting expenses against a
woman who had broken off their engagement. However,
Zeffere, who is a lawyer, wrote her an offer of an out-
of-court settlement: "I am still willing to marry you
on the conditions hereinbelow set forth. . . . Please
feel free to call me if you have any questions or would
like to discuss any of the matters addressed herein.
Sincerely, Frank." [L. A. Daily News-N. Y. Times,
Sept92]
* And in St. Louis, lawyer Richard Jacobs argued after
his conviction for stealing court documents that he was
the victim of prejudice because the judge had allowed
the jury to learn Jacobs's occupation. [St. Louis Post-
Dispatch, 9-26-92]
* In January, Mission Control in Cape Canaveral,
responding to a sensor alarm, scolded the space shuttle
Endeavor astronauts to please remember to put the
toilet seat down. [Chicago Tribune-AP, 1-15-93]
* One teenager was killed and four were wounded in an
explosion at a Chevron oil storage facility in Sherman,
Tex., in September. The boys had trespassed onto the
top of a large tank, removed a manhole-type cover,
peered inside, and, when they couldn't see anything
because of the darkness, lit a match for illumination.
[Tyler Courier-Times-AP, 9-22-92]
* Citing a need for "caseworkers" and "staff analysts"
in the city government, New York City announced in
December that anyone with a college degree (which is a
minimum requirement for either job, anyway) will
automatically get 70 bonus points on the written civil
service exam--on which 70 is passing and 100 is the
maximum--and that anyone with experience in those
classifications will automatically get 30 more.
[Newsday, 12-3-92]
* In November, the Selectmen (city council) of Salem,
N. H., reluctantly renewed the contract of city manager
Barry Brenner for 1993, provided that he cleans off his
desk. According to one of the Selectmen, Brenner had
such huge piles of papers on his desk that he refuses
to let people see his office and in fact earlier in
1992 misplaced town check vouchers and could not find
them for six months. [Washington Times, 11-2-92]
* In September at the Southern Ohio Correctional
Facility near Lucasville, electrician Charles Bobst
suffered burns by electrical shocks while performing
routine maintenance on the electric chair. [Columbus
Dispatch, Sept92]
People with Too Much Time on Their Hands
* Last summer, the cable television company that serves
Columbia, S. C., aimed a camera full-time at an
aquarium to occupy a vacant channel, which was awaiting
the September start-up of the Science-Fiction Channel.
When Sci-Fi replaced the "fish channel," complaints
were so numerous that the company was forced to find
another channel for the aquarium, which now runs 14
hours per day, sharing time with the Bravo channel.
[The State, 1-5-93]
* Last fall, country & western singer Sammy Kershaw
introduced a private-label Starclone perfume, to be
marketed at record stores and Kershaw concerts,
featuring as one ingredient Kershaw's own perspiration.
[Country America, February 1993]
* Compton, Calif., mayor Walter R. Tucker III proposed
last fall that a local apartment house in which George
and Barbara Bush lived for six months in 1949 be made
an official national landmark. At the time of the
mayor's proposal, it was a crack house. [L. A. Daily
News, 8-4-92]
* In Omaha, Neb., Michael and Brian McCormack
celebrated the 20th anniversary of their World Hello
Day on November 21. They send letters to celebrities
and heads of state and otherwise publicize their thesis
that people would be happier if they just said hello to
ten people a day. [[Montgomery Advertiser, 11-21-92]]
The Weirdo-American Community
* A Tulsa, Okla., physician, writing in a 1992 issue of
the Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine, reported
on a 32-year-old woman whose neighbors had just had a
large satellite dish installed in their yard. The
woman became convinced that she was being wooed by
Donald Duck and that the dish had been placed there to
facilitate his communicating with her. She spent lots
of time "hovering" around the dish and eventually
undressed and climbed into it, where she later said she
consummated marriage to Mr. Duck. [Irish Journal of
Psychological Medicine, 1992, #9, p. 134]
Undignified Deaths
* In September, a 22-year-old lifeguard in Towson, Md.,
drowned, apparently while trying to match a friend's
feat of swimming two laps underwater on one breath of
air. [Baltimore Sun, 9-8-92]
* Christopher Scott Carver, 27, died just outside a
Raleigh, N. C., dentist's office in February. He was
found with a plastic bag over his head and had
apparently overdosed on laughing gas, for which police
theorized he had broken into the office. [Raleigh News
& Observer, 2-9-93]
END
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End of Subgenius Digest
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