From cate3@netcom.com Thu Aug 31 09:50:59 1995 From: cate3@netcom.com Subject: Life E.P To: jwry.dli@netcom.com Reply-to: cate3@netcom.com --------------------------------------- Date: 10 Aug 94 14:39:59 PDT (Wednesday) Subject: Life E.P Chuck Shepherd has a newspaper column called News of the Weird The following selections are from the list: notw@nine.org To add yourself send a request to: notw-request@nine.org ---------------------------------------------------- * Darpan Patel, 20, was arrested in Glastonbury, England, in August after he had gone to the local police station to ask a question about his driver's license. According to police, when they asked, Patel freely gave his name. However, he also told officers that there might be a warrant currently outstanding for his arrest, that he didn't have time to deal with it right then, but that he would come back later to take care of it. Officers checked, found the the warrant, and promptly arrested him. [Glastonbury Citizen, 9-2-93] * According to a report in the Arizona Republic, artist Fritz Scholder of Scottsdale, who said he "buys a book a day," divides his library into two parts: books that mention him and books that don't. [Arizona Republic, 1- 26-94] * In January, the U. S. Postal Service withdrew from circulation most of the rare, misprinted 29-cent stamps honoring cowboy Bill Pickett but picturing his brother Ben. To recover one outstanding stamp, which may be worth $1 million to collectors, the Postal Service offered the owner, Dan Piske of Bend, Ore., 29 cents and a USPS coffee mug. (Piske declined.) [Des Moines Register-AP, 1-23-94] * Courthouse officials in Durham, N. C., suspect that in February a disgruntled lawyer or lawyers stole a big stack of brochures that explained how battered women could obtain court orders against their husbands without resorting to a lawyer. [Durham Herald-Sun, 2- 28-94] * In September, The Economist magazine reported that Japan's meteorology agency had recently completed a seven-year study to ascertain the validity of the Japanese legend that earthquakes are caused by catfish wiggling their tails. After trying to match catfish tail-wagging with a number of small earthquakes, the agency abandoned the study, refusing to confirm or criticize the legend. [The Economist, 9-4-93] * The Vancouver Sun reported in July that the local school board was aware of more than a dozen cases of Asian parents who immigrated to Canada with their children and then moved back home when they could not find work, leaving the kids, mostly 15- and 16-year- olds, behind so that they could attend school for as many as two years. Canadian law calls it "abandonment" only when the child is under 10. [Edmonton Journal- Vancouver Sun, 7-22-93] * The Lebanon (Pa.) Daily News reported in March that an ear-piercing establishment at the local mall had pierced the ears of an 11-month-old girl who was brought in by her 16-year-old mother, but had refused to do the mother's. The proprietor explained that the daughter had her mother's permission, but that he couldn't do the mother's ears because she was under 18 and thus needed [ITALICS]her mother's permission. [Lebanon Daily News, 3-4-94] * In September, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in Washington, D. C., announced that it had issued 60 citations and $90,000 in fines for unsafe workplace conditions at the Federal Building in Kansas City, Mo., which is the regional OSHA office. [Macon (Mo.) Chronicle-Herald-AP, 9-2-93] * In June at the Biennale art show in Venice, Italy, an animal activist filed abuse charges against Japanese artist Yukinori Yanagi, who had used more than 200 ants in a labyrinth of colored sand dunes and tunnels shaped like nations' flags that he called "Can Art Change the World?" Following the show, Yanagi freed the ants. [Wilmington Morning Star-AP, 6-19-93] * Sheriff's Lt. Armand Tiano, a candidate for Santa Clara County sheriff, apologized to voters in March when a recent photo surfaced of him with a motorcycle and three topless dancers. Tiano said he had agreed to pose with the dancers only as a favor to a friend and said, "If I had known they were going to [expose their breasts], I wouldn't have [done it]." [San Francisco Chronicle, 3-16-94] * Oklahoma District Judge Melinda Monnet, 33, was accused recently by the state's supreme court chief justice of mental incompetence based on a series of incidents and faces a trial in June to oust her from her job. Among the charges: After divorcing her first husband, she allowed him to adopt her two months later. A classmate from law school said Monnet was "weird even back then." [Daily Oklahoman, 4-11-94] * Frances Bobnar of Adamsburg, Pa., filed a lawsuit against the Pennsylvania Lottery Commission in March, claiming that she and family members have spent over $150,000 on lottery tickets during the last ten years but have never won. [Philadelphia Inquirer-AP, 3-23-94] * In November Tom Stafford of Mission Viejo, Calif., won $8,500 in a lawsuit against a local golf course. He hit an errant shot that ricocheted off a steel pole and smacked him in the forehead. [Globe & Mail, 11-12- 93] * Fargo, N. D., police reported that late in the evening on April 9, a person stole a car and tried to get past a quagmire of mud and water on a road but became stuck. That person then stole another car three blocks away and tried to pass through the same mess, again becoming stuck. He or she then stole a pickup truck a block away and tried yet another pass through. All three vehicles were found the next morning firmly stuck in the mud. [Fargo Forum, 4-13-94] * In court papers submitted in July, federal prosecutors moved to revoke the parole of convicted Irvine, Calif., bank swindler Charles J. Bazarian, who was then on the lam. In those papers, the prosecutors accused Bazarian of a second swindle: In 1992, he had convinced the man who prosecuted him three years earlier in the Irvine swindle to personally invest $6,000 in an Oklahoma company that turned out to be worthless. [National Mortgage News, 10-4-93] * The winner of a January contest sponsored by the Washington Mutual Bank, to select the most unusual places or events in the Washington-Oregon area, was the Douglas fir tree in Vashon Island, Wash., that contains a bicycle trapped inside the tree's bark. Local residents say that the bicycle was parked beside the tree years ago and that the bark eventually grew around it and completely enveloped it. The tree's growth has lifted the bicycle seven feet off the ground. [Seattle Times, Jan94] * In November, a jury in Montrose, Pa., acquitted Samuel J. Cosmello, Jr., who had confessed to killing his brother and burning his house down. The jury accepted the testimony of a psychiatrist who said Cosmello suffered from an obsessive-compulsive disorder that made him need to confess falsely. [Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, 11-17-93] * In New Orleans in July, Kevin Dominique was acquitted of possession of stolen property, a crime for which he would have received only a short jail sentence. On hearing the verdict, and despite the judge's warnings on courtroom decorum, Dominique leaped to his feet, yelled "Thank God!" and bearhugged his lawyer. Judge Leon Cannizzaro then sentenced Dominique to six months in jail for contempt of court. (An appeals court freed Dominique after nine days.) [[Times-Picayune, Jul93]] * In December, David Posman (serving time for a crime for which I labeled him in my book as one of America's Least Competent Criminals) escaped, and on January 6, according to police, entered a Providence, R. I., bank armed with a gun, walked up to a clerk, and demanded money. The woman informed Posman that he was in the loan department and that the tellers were on the other side of the lobby. After pulling off the robbery and jumping in the getaway car, he briefly got lost trying to elude police and was finally subdued after a brief chase. [Providence Journal, 1-7-94] * The Toronto Transit Commission voted in February to reinstate a 33-year-old man who had been fired because he took time off from a rail-repairing job in the middle of the day to go have sex with a prostitute in a nearby alley. [Sault Star-CP, 2-16-94] * In September, St. Paul, Minn., police stopped Jimmy Monk, 39, and confiscated from his car's roof a 20-foot ladder, which had been reported missing. At the time, he was awaiting sentencing on two other ladder thefts and was a suspect in a rash of about two dozen others. Said a police sergeant, "He just can't seem to walk past [a ladder] without taking it." [St. Paul Pioneer- Press, 9-18-93] * The "Director's Message" column of the March newsletter of the Florida chapter of Rev. Donald Wildmon's American Family Association referred 14 times to an inside group of "journalists, reporters, and media mongers" by the term clique, which was misspelled each time as "click." [Folio Weekly, 3-29-94] * The Boston Globe reported in February that Eulalia Rodriguez and her extended family receive government assistance payments totaling nearly $1 million a year. Rodriguez, who has been on public assistance for 26 years, has 14 children on welfare, 74 grandchildren, and 15 great-grandchildren. Said she, "I'm sick of people acting like I'm some crook. We've got a lot of kids to feed." Rodriguez lives in a six-bedroom, three-story apartment in a gated Boston community called Harbor Point. [Boston Globe, 2-20-94] * In March the Providence Journal-Bulletin reported that the Internal Revenue Service office in Rhode Island was specializing in pursuing tax underpayments by pizza parlors. The office calculated a standard amount of flour in a pizza, divided that by the total flour the restaurant purchased, found the number of pizzas made, and then determined the likely income of the store, which was often more than what the store reported. [Providence Journal-Bulletin, 3-1-94] * Reading, Pa., Fire Department official Michael J. Moyer was suspended for a day on October 12 for having violated a directive not to drive his Department car in the town's Labor Day parade. Moyer was thus not paid for his regular 8 a.m.-6 p.m. shift, but the person called in to replace him, at overtime pay, had to vacate his own subsequent shift, and according to regulations, the person who had to fill that later shift, also at overtime pay, was Michael J. Moyer, who thus earned $313 instead of the $155 he would have made had he not been suspended. [Reading Eagle, 10-23-93] * Vice President Al Gore's National Performance Review of federal government practices revealed recently that the Pentagon spends $4.3 billion a year on travel--$2.0 billion for the travel itself and $2.3 billion to process the paperwork. [AP wirecopy, 4-26-94] * On April 30, a driver, unidentified by police, was found in his car at the end of Interstate 8 in San Diego, Calif., with a map in his hand and a "perplexed look" on his face, according to a California Highway Patrol spokesman. He explained that he had come from New Mexico and was looking for Arizona. [Arizona Republic-AP, 5-1-94] * Michael Antonio Davis, 24, was arrested in Savannah, Ga., in April while inside a squad car parked in front of the Precinct 1 station house. According to an officer, who discovered the suspect sitting in the back of the car with a "most disgusted look" on his face, Davis had entered the car looking for guns but did not realize that police cars' back doors automatically lock, from inside and out, when closed. [Savannah Evening Press, 4-27-94] * Last July, Hidekazu Watanabe, 36, was arrested in Kawasaki, Japan, by a store security guard as he was attempting to shoplift a handbag and 16 other items. A search of his home turned up about 1,700 more stolen items, and according to a police officer, Watanabe said he had hoped to steal enough goods to open a discount shop. [Japan Times, 7-12-93] * Victor Shaw, 56, was arrested near White River Junction, Vt., in April after trying to break through a police "rolling roadblock" on Interstate 89. Shaw, who was charged with DUI and other offenses, said, "I saw it so many times in the movies I had to try it." [Lebanon Valley News, Apr94] * In May the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that George Puzak, a member of the city's Park and Recreation Board, had requested reimbursement for official travel at 29 cents a mile despite the fact that he travels by bicycle. State Rep. Phyllis Kahn said she has billed the state for official travel by bicycle since 1979 but not at the maximum rate. She said she always requests a per-mile rate that covers the cost of the bananas and yogurt she eats for "fuel," plus a penny a mile for bicycle depreciation. [Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 5-4-95, 5-5-94] * Timothy Sprous, 18, was arrested in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in May and charged with vandalism for painting graffiti on cars. Sprous had not used spray paint but rather ordinary cans of brush-on paint, and consequently police were able to follow a trail of paint drippings from a car to the front door of a house on Second Avenue, down the stairs, and into a storage closet, where they found the paint-speckled Sprous hiding. [Cedar Rapids Gazette, 5-4-94] * At least eight times during the past nine months in the U. S., people have been charged by police with imprisoning other family members at home, either as punishment or to subdue them. Among them were a Boulder, Colo., woman who locked her mother and aunt in the basement to free up some time for herself on Mother's Day, and a couple in Rudd, Iowa, who tied the wife's mother, 73, inside a cage in their yard in November (wind chill: minus-8 degrees) while they went to a movie. Also, 12 children in five incidents were found locked up alone over the Christmas holidays in England. [Denver Post, May94] [Des Moines Register, 11- 27-93, 11-28-93] [Columbus Dispatch-AP, Dec93] * In January of this, the Year of the Dog, the city of Beijing prohibited its citizens from owning dogs, even though many people still try to hide dogs in their homes. Recently, a park opened north of the city to rent dogs for patrons to walk at a price of about 23 cents for 10 minutes. In April, Feng Quantang filed a lawsuit in Shenyang, China, asking for damages from the government because inspectors allegedly beat his illegal dog to death in front of him. [New York Times- AP, 5-16-94; Washington Post, 2-7-94; Boston Globe- Reuters, 4-13-93] * As reported in the University of Arizona student newspaper's Police Beat column of May 4, a 19-year-old student filed a charge against a fellow student for theft of his fake Arizona driver's license. The complainant said he loaned the man the card, but after it was confiscated at a local club, the borrower refused to reimbuse the complainant the $40 he paid for it. [Arizona Daily Wildcat, 5-4-94] * In Eddyville, Ky., in May, the sample ballot required by law to be printed in the daily newspapers before the election showed one line already filled in--an "X" next to the name of J. R. Gray, one of five candidates for a state House seat. J. R. Gray is the cousin of David Gray, the county clerk, who told a reporter, "How it happened would be just pure speculation." David Gray agreed to pay for a second printing without the "X." [Louisville Courier-Journal, 5-24-94] * On May 23 shortly after 2 p.m. in Pomona, Calif., Tamika Johnson, 19, was issued a jaywalking ticket for making a dangerous street crossing in front of a county building. Minutes later, after the officer left, Johnson tried the crossing again, was hit by a car, and suffered a broken leg. [Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, 5-24-94] * In April in New Orleans, a fleeing bank robber fired several shots at a police officer but hit a nearby 38- year-old nun from the Sisters Servants of Mary Convent. The nun's wound was slight because the bullet first passed through the prayer book she was carrying. [Boston Globe, 4-24-94] -- Henry Cate III [cate3@netcom.com] To learn how to get a MS Windows 3.1 Application with 15,000 jokes from the Life Humor collection, send E-Mail to life@netcom.com with "Info" in the Subject. Or check out http://www.offshore.com.ai/LifeHumor
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