News of the Weird, March 26, 2006
Minister Chuck
by Chuck Shepherd
Copyright 2006 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
* Because perhaps hundreds of Japanese Yakuza gangsters are
nearing retirement age, the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare
has drafted rules for the former gambling, loan shark, and
protection workers to qualify for benefits, according to a March
dispatch from Tokyo in The Times of London. Since organized
crime leaves no employment paper trail, ex-mobsters must supply a
letter of retirement from their crime boss in order to sign up,
although local governments are expected to accept as partial proof
gang tattoos, criminal records, demonstrations of missing finger
tips (the sign of traditional Yakuza punishment for mistakes). [The
Times (London), 3-3-06]
Can't Possibly Be True
* Victoria Lundy, 41, in custody in Chillicothe, Ohio, in January
for a barroom shooting, apparently smuggled her gun into the jail
at the time of her arrest by putting it inside her vagina. A shot was
fired in a holding cell, and according to a fellow prisoner
interviewed by the Chillicothe Gazette, the gun had gone off when
Lundy sat down on a bench in the cell. (No one was hit.)
[Chillicothe Gazette, 2-1-06]
* Among the places of business particularly affected by
Americans' cell-phone rudeness was the Green Oaks Family
Dentistry clinic in Arlington, Tex., according to a February USA
Today story. Office manager Lisa Teague said patients were
carrying on phone conversations while hygienists worked in their
mouths. "It was very disruptive," she said. [USA Today, 2-7-06]
* Chicagoland Schools in Crisis: (1) In February, a 6th-grader at
Waldo Middle School was suspended, and charged with a felony
by Aurora, Ill., police, when he brought powdered sugar to class
for a science project and jokingly told another student that it was
cocaine. A custodian overheard the conversation and reported him.
(2) The Chicago Tribune reported in March that dozens of blind
students in Chicago public schools are nonetheless required to take
driver education classes. One sightless but otherwise optimistic
student told the Tribune she resented the requirement because it
made her uncharacteristically dwell on something that she cannot
do. [Chicago Sun-Times, 2-11-06] [New York Times-AP, 3-10-06]
* Andrew Thurnheer, 45, was elected in January as the highway
superintendent in Danby, N.Y., even though he still lives with his
parents. He doesn't sleep in his old bedroom, though; he sleeps in
his tree house, 40 feet up, which he built nearly 20 years ago, and
which has a generator-powered elevator, a shower, and a propane
heater, according to a January Associated Press dispatch. (Mr.
Kapila Pradhan, also 45, has also been living in a tree, for the past
15 years, but that is in a village in Orissa state in India. He sought
solitude after a fight with his wife, according to a January BBC
News dispatch.) [WTSP-TV-AP, 2-2-06; Ithaca Journal, 1-5-06]
[BBC News, 1-25-06]
Names in the News
* Arrested in February in Town Creek, Ala., on drug-related
charges: University of North Alabama basketball player
Reprobatus Bibbs ["reprobate," in the dictionary, is "morally
depraved" or "beyond hope of salvation"]. And sought in a
February shooting death in New Orleans: 20-year-old Ivory Harris,
whose nickname is "B Stupid." [Florence Times Daily, 2-18-06]
[Times-Picayune, 3-9-06]
Unclear on the Concept
* (1) When the U.S. Department of the Interior was ordered to
reimburse lawyers for American Indians $7 million for their
successful lawsuit over missing royalty payments on Indian land,
the Department decided that budget considerations would force it
to raise almost half that $7 million by cutting back programs of the
Bureau of Indian Affairs. (2) According to a November
Washington Post poll (whose results were published in February),
94 percent of Americans said they are "above average" in honesty,
89 percent "above average" in common sense, 86 percent "above
average" in intelligence, and 79 percent "above average" in looks.
[Washington Post-AP, 2-5-06] [Washington Post, 2-8-06]
Bring the Pain
* (1) In January in Kyoto, Japan, a 32-year-old nurse was
sentenced to more than three years in prison after she was
convicted of relieving her overwork-induced stress by tearing off
the fingernails and toenails of immobilized patients. (2) British
dentist Mojgan Azari was de-licensed in January after a conviction
for allowing her unqualified boyfriend to do fillings on more than
600 patients. (3) Terra Linda High School (San Rafael, Calif.)
wrestler D. J. Saint James, a senior, was profiled in February in the
Marin Independent Journal for his sterling record, including a
freshman match in which he suffered a ruptured testicle (which
eventually swelled to the size of a fist) but toughed it out for three
minutes before summoning up an almost-miraculous burst of
energy to pin his opponent. [Reuters, 1-23-06] [Reuters, 1-17-06]
[Marin Independent Journal, 2-14-06]
Cliches Come to Life
* Life Imitates a GEICO Commercial: A teenager lost control of
his car in Kettering, Ohio, in March, and smashed into a house,
causing major damage. According to police, he had swerved to
avoid hitting an albino squirrel (which, unlike in the commercial,
did not survive). Another squirrel caused a four-car collision in
March in Mount Pleasant Township, Pa., but no injuries were
reported. Neither human was cited by police. [WHIO-TV
(Dayton), 1-12-06] [York Daily Record, 3-14-06]
* "What She Really Wants to Do Is Direct": When Tamara Anne
Moonier filed rape charges against six young men in Fullerton,
Calif., in June 2004, she seemed the disconsolate victim of vicious
predators. However, shortly afterward, one of the accused gave
police a video of the entire incident, and Moonier consequently
was indicted in 2005 for filing a false police report and defrauding
a victim assistance fund. In February 2006, Orange County
Weekly published several pieces of dialog from the video and
described numerous "scenes" in which Moonier is shown laughing
(27 different times), dominating action, ordering certain sex acts
and positions, complimenting the men's bodies, and barking out
exhortations for the men to improve their virility and
performances. [Orange County Weekly, 2-9-06]
Well, of Course!
* (1) Russian president Vladimir Putin apparently surprised
diplomatic observers in Britain in January when he declined to
expel four UK diplomats who had been accused of espionage.
Reasoned Putin, according to a January dispatch in Britain's
Guardian, these four weren't smart enough to avoid getting caught,
and if he expelled them, the UK would just send replacements who
are more clever. (2) A recent study by economists Naci Mocan and
Erdal Tekin concluded that unattractive teenagers grow up to
commit more crimes than do attractive people. A February
Washington Post summary of the research posits that fewer job
opportunities and social opportunities might be what accounts for
the "consequences of being young and ugly." [The Guardian
(London), 1-26-06] [Washington Post, 2-17-06]
No Longer Weird
* Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which
now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from
circulation: (77) The disgruntled debtor who finally agrees to pay,
but obnoxiously delivers it all in pennies, or in $1 bills, as William
Lewis Jr., did on a foreclosure judgment in Sebring, Fla., in March.
(78) The latest recycling laboratory breakthrough that makes
possible the conversion of manure, urine, or methane gas into a
new energy source, as was Japanese professor Sakae Shibusawa's
March announcement that, by pressure and heat, he can produce an
ounce of gasoline from 5 lbs. of cow dung. [Highlands Today
(Sebring), 3-4-06] [MSNBC-AP, 3-3-06]
Readers' Choice
* A February BBC News story, citing a local newspaper in Upper
Nile state in Sudan, reported that village elders had required a Mr.
Tombe, as punishment for having been caught having sex with a
female goat, to pay a dowry to the goat's owner and to care for the
nanny as if they were "married." (The story ran worldwide, with
Australia's News Limited's website reporting it with a file photo of
a goat, adorned with a black bar across its eyes, to protect its
privacy.) [BBC News, 2-24-06]
Thanks This Week to Jon Ekvall, Mike Prenier, Dustian
Countryman, Mark Whybird, Mike Ligon, David Miller, Karen
Mell, Peter Hine, George Ronczy, and William Lewis, and to all
those who tipped me to the Readers' Choice story and finders of
the Readers' Choice and blind driver education stories, 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).