News of the Weird, June 8, 2008
Minister Chuck
by Chuck Shepherd
Copyright 2008 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
* The Fates of Three Class of '08 Students in Durham, N.C.: Two
men did not graduate from Duke University in May because they
were two of the three lacrosse players accused of rape in March
2006 and who were forced to suspend their academic pursuits in
order to defend themselves against the charges that were later
dismissed. Another '08 student did graduate in May in Durham,
from North Carolina Central University: Crystal Mangum, the
drug-abusing, part-time stripper who had relentlessly accused the
three of raping her but whose story was later found to be
completely unsupported. Mangum's degree is in Police
Psychology. [WRAL-TV (Raleigh), 5-19-08]
Recurring Themes
NOTE: As evidence that the weird news keeps repeating itself,
this week's collection consists of recent instances of people doing
the same old things that we've seen before in News of the Weird.
* In what would be a new modern record for the lapse of time
between a death and its notice, neighbors found the mummified
body of a Croatian woman in her Zagreb apartment in May, and
police said no one remembered seeing her alive after 1973. (A
Croatian news organization said the last sighting was in 1967.)
She missed no maintenance payments because her building, which
was state-owned when she was last seen, has since become a
cooperative, and aggregate charges were paid for collectively by
the other residents. [CNN-AP, 5-16-08]
* News of the Weird informed you in 2007 of camel beauty
pageants in Saudi Arabia, but the obsession with the animal runs
deeper, based in part on nostalgia for the days when camels were
important for transportation. Breeders cuddle and nuzzle them and
at the country's largest camel market near Riyadh in March 2008,
they bought and sold based, one breeder told the New York Times,
on the standards of "judging a beautiful girl. You look for big
eyes, long lashes, and a long neck." Said another, "See this one?
She isn't married yet, this one. She's still a virgin. Look at the
black eyes, the soft fur . . .. Just like a girl going to a party." He
added (after kissing the camel on the mouth), "My camels are like
my children, my family." (In January, a prominent cleric issued a
decree condemning the pride people take in their camels.) [New
York Times, 3-17-08]
* March is the season for Shinto religious fertility festivals in
Japan at which symbolic phalluses are offered to the gods for
business fortune as well as good sexual and marital luck. In the
small town of Komaki, a two-meter-long phallus is carried through
town every year and presented to the local temple. The best-known
celebration is the Kanamara Matsuri ("Festival of the Iron Penis")
in Kawasaki, where colorful phallus floats abound and delight the
children of all ages who line the streets. [Mainichi Daily News, 4-
7-08]
* Because Japan's suicide rate is so high, there is sometimes
collateral damage. In April 2007, News of the Weird reported yet
another instance in which a despondent person leaped off of a
building (a nine-story edifice in Tokyo), only to land on someone
else (a 60-year-old man, who was only bruised). These days,
chemical ingestion is the trendy method, and in May 2008, a
despondent farmer drank a chlorine solution and was rushed to
Kumamoto's Red Cross Hospital, but as doctors tried
unsuccessfully to save him, he vomited, and the fumes sickened 54
workers, including 10 who had to be hospitalized.. [Mainichi Daily
News, 5-22-08]
* With rising prices paid for scrap metal come the increased threat
of theft, and metal dealers are on alert, as well as power
companies, which use valuable copper wire. However, as the
number of thieves increases, so does the number of clumsy ones
who fail to respect that electrical substations are live. In May, at
least three men were killed and three others badly injured in
attempts to steal wire from substations in Lancaster County, Pa.,
Somerset County, Pa., Savannah, Ga., Chicago, and Edmonton,
Alberta. [Intelligencer Journal (Quarryville, Pa.), 5-6-08]
[Pittsburgh Post-Gazette-AP, 5-15-08] [Atlanta Journal-
Constitution-AP, 5-13-08] [Chicago Tribune, 5-27-08] [Edmonton
Sun, 5-30-08]
* In April in Marion, Ill., an alert newspaper carrier discovered an
84-year-old woman who was alive but had been pinned to the floor
for four days without food or water because her much larger
husband, 77, had died of a heart attack and fallen on top of her. (In
a notorious 1984 incident at a strip club in San Francisco, a dancer
had been pinned down overnight underneath the body of club
manager Jimmy Ferrozzo, who had had a fatal heart attack while
having sex with her. She could not move because they were lying
on top of a stage piano that descended on a pulley, for the dancer's
grand entrance, and Ferrozzo, in the throes of ecstasy, had
accidentally tripped the switch sending it back up, where it jammed
against the ceiling.) [WEWS-TV (Cleveland)-AP, 4-30-08]
* There was yet another fight in Jerusalem's Church of the Holy
Sepulchre this past Easter (celebrated in mid-April by Orthodox
Christians). This time, Armenians (one of the six Christian
branches that share management of the holy site) believed that a
Greek Orthodox priest has encroached on their part of the church
and tried to eject him, leading to a brawl in which some in
attendance used Palm Sunday fronds as weapons. It usually falls
on Jerusalem's Muslim police officers to restore order. [Agence
France-Presse, 4-20-08]
* For Easter every year in Vrondados on the Greek island of Chios,
villagers carry on a 19th century tradition in which parishioners of
two churches attack the other's building with homemade rockets
during midnight mass. Villagers spend the days before Easter
boarding up windows in order to minimize damage, and the goal is
to be first to hit the other church's bell tower. [WTAM
(Cleveland)-Reuters, 4-27-08]
* In 2006, News of the Weird featured the 5-year-old boy who was
set to enter kindergarten as a 5-year-old girl after his parents agreed
with therapists that five is not too young to be formally switching
genders. In 2007, pediatric endocrinologist Norman Spack started
a gender-identity clinic at Children's Hospital Boston, motivated
by his observation that even preadolescents can be at risk to harm
themselves if they are confused or angry about their sexual
orientation. According to a March 2008 Boston Globe report,
Spack first recommends drugs to delay puberty, to give the child
more time, before moving on to the usually irreversible effect of
gender-changing hormones. [Boston Globe, 3-30-08]
Updates
* In a well-publicized story in January, two New York City men
were charged with fraud after they rolled a dead friend's body in a
chair from their apartment to a check-cashing store, propping him
up to suggest that was alive and wanted the men to cash his Social
Security check for him. In May, a judge set the men free after they
told him that the three had an income- and expense-sharing
arrangement and that they thought their friend was merely
incapacitated. Since the autopsy was inconclusive as to time of
death, the charges were dropped. [New York Post, 4-23-08]
* An Indonesian man whose skin disorder caused him to grow
hideous, root-like tissue that overwhelmed his hands, feet, and
face, and who was featured on a Discovery Channel program in
November, has now lost four pounds' worth of the wart-like
growths through surgery and a vitamin A regimen and at last can
grip a pen. American dermatology professor Anthony Gaspari,
who is helping him, concluded that he has the human papilloma
virus, which normally causes tiny warts, but because of an immune
deficiency, the man was unable to restrain their growth. [Daily
Telegraph (London), 4-14-08]
* In April retired engineer William Lyttle, 77, was ordered by the
town council in Hackney, England, to pay the equivalent of about
$560,000 for repairing the damage he has caused to neighbors in
his 40-year obsession of digging deep into the ground on his
property, causing not only collapses of parts of his own home but
in some cases the integrity of surrounding houses and the street.
Authorities discovered a maze of tunnels underneath the 20-room
house, in addition to the many holes in the yard, into which Lyttle
had dumped cars and boats. [The Times (London), 4-15-08]
Thanks This Week to Jan Lewis, Jessica McRorie, Beth
McGee, Tim Kennedy, Scott Schrier, Caroline Lawler, Thomas
Sullivan, Don Schullian, Perry Levin, Paul Vogt, Skip Munger,
Mark Hiester, Mike Penix, and Bertille Donohue, and to the News
of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
* * * * *
Visit Chuck Shepherd daily at
http://NewsoftheWeird.blogspot.com (or
www.NewsoftheWeird.com / WeirdN...@Yahoo.com / P.O.
Box 18737, Tampa FL 33629).