Copyright 2008 by Chuck Shepherd.  All rights reserved.

Lead Story

* Dakota Abbott, 16, edged Samantha Phillips, 17, to become Miss
Outdoors 2008 in February in Maryland's Eastern Shore region's
annual beauty-contest-and-muskrat-skinning festival.  The two
were the only beauty contestants (out of eight) who entered both
competitions.  Abbott won her skinning division, but while she
sang a song for the judges, Phillips won the talent trophy by
skinning a muskrat on stage. "I'll be honest," she said to a
Washington Post reporter.  "I can't sing.  I can't dance, and I don't
play any musical instruments."  But she took her four-inch blade,
sticking it just above the tail, and sliced.  "You want to take your
knuckles and separate the meat from the hide, just like this," she
told the judges, with her hand inside the muskrat (as one of the
judges recoiled in shock). [Washington Post, 3-1-08]

Compelling Explanations

* In the 2006 take-off crash of a Comair commuter airliner at the
regional airport in Lexington, Ky. (which the FAA blamed on pilot
error), all 47 passengers were killed, and 21 lawsuits have been
filed, with attorney William Johnson defending the only cockpit
survivor (the first officer).  The Lexington Herald-Leader reported
in January that, in court papers filed in the lawsuits, Johnson had
offered the defense that the seat-belted-in passengers should share
the blame for their own deaths, in that they should have chosen
other airports that might have been safer. (Shortly after the
newspaper report, Johnson withdrew the defense.) [Lexington
Herald-Leader, 1-25-08]

* A prominent British novelist (former winner of the prestigious
Whitbread Prize) announced in January that she had won a
settlement of the equivalent of more than $200,000 from a shoe
manufacturer in the town of Totnes because fumes from its factory
so sapped her creativity that she was forced to write down-market
thrillers instead of literary works.  Joan Brady said numbness in her
hands and legs, caused by pollutants, made her settle on simpler
plotlines involving violence as she worked out her aggression
toward the factory owners. [The Times (London), 1-24-08]

* William Harvey, defending a DUI charge in court in Perth,
Scotland, in February, told the judge that his high blood-alcohol
reading was because he has a "balloon-like" pouch in his neck (sort
of like a pelican's) that collects most of the alcohol he swallows
and therefore makes it seem that he is much more inebriated than
he really is. (He was convicted.) [BBC News, 2-18-08]

Ironies

* Instant Karma:  (1) In January, a man in Citrus Heights, Calif.,
had a one-car accident that left him with serious head and body
injuries that were perhaps exacerbated because he was not wearing
a seat belt (even though the 12-pack of beer on the seat beside him
was securely buckled, and survived).  (2) Daniel Thompson, 31,
who was so upset by the sex, profanity, and violence in movies
today that he opened a video store in Orem, Utah, offering major
Hollywood films but with the objectionable parts manually
removed.  Hollywood studios got a court order shutting down the
store in December because of copyright infringement, and in
January, Thompson was arrested after police said he paid two 14-
year-old girls for sex. [Sacramento Bee, 1-8-08] [Salt Lake
Tribune, 1-25-08]

* Miss Fayetteville (N.C.) 2007 Jenna Walters is scheduled in
court in April to answer for her November arrest in which police
said she had veered recklessly through traffic in Southern Pines,
N.C., in order to harass driver Angela Thomas.  She pulled in front
of Thomas, blocked her path, then got out, screaming and taunting
the woman, but then quit and drove off, only to return moments
later from the other direction, bump Thomas's car, and resume
screaming, then left but returned yet again, bumped Thomas's car
from behind, and yelled some more.  In the 2006 Miss Fayetteville
pageant, Walters was voted Miss Congeniality. [Fayetteville
Observer, 2-2-08]

* Almost half of the 47 members of the United Nations's "Human
Rights Council" are not "free democracies" (according to Freedom
House rankings), and several, such as China, Cuba, Russia, and
Saudi Arabia, have been widely criticized as human rights
violators.  Consequently, the Council has failed to address any of
the most prominent rights abuses around the world (including some
that were called genocide) in Sudan, North Korea, Chad,
Zimbabwe, and Iran, among other places, but in January, the
Council voted its 12th "condemnation" of Israel (out of only 13
condemnations it has ever issued). [Wall Street Journal, 1-29-08]

Great Moments in Maturity

* Lawyer Kathy Brewer Rentas, 49, was charged with assault in
February after asking to shake hands with federal lawyer Jennifer
Keane (who was prosecuting Rentas's husband for probation
violation).  The handshake began in businesslike fashion, but
according to a court security guard, Rentas squeezed the hand, then
yanked it up and down hard, "almost pull[ing] Keene's arm out of
its socket" and nearly sending her tumbling to the ground. [USA
Today, 2-9-08]

* When a 72-year-old Levis, Quebec, woman cleared her walk with
a snowblower in December, sending some of the snow onto the
adjacent property, the 43-year-old neighbor grabbed his blower and
sent it back, and the two spent about 10 minutes blowing snow on
each other before they stopped.  (They "faced each other," "engines
roaring," wrote the Canadian Press.)  The neighbor then allegedly
punched the woman (and her husband, who had come to help her)
and was charged with assault. [Edmonton Sun-CP, 12-5-07]

Can't Stop Myself

* In February, a court in Cardiff, Wales, once again released
Thelma Dennis, 50, to get therapy for her addiction of making
bogus emergency ("999") telephone calls, even though she has
been prosecuted about 60 times in 24 years on similar charges.  In
an earlier case, Dennis agreed to a therapy that sent painful shocks
through her body every time she dialed 999, and she recently
remained free of problems for four years but reoffended recently by
making up a bomb threat against a store. [BBC News, 2-8-08]

Least Competent Criminals

* (1) William Anderson, 51, was arrested in February after he
attracted a lot of attention by parking a Hummer (with Michigan
plates) outside the small-town county welfare office in Jonesville,
Va., while he applied for benefits; a quick investigation revealed
that the vehicle had been stolen.  (2) Frederick Watson, 57, was
arrested in February in DeLand, Fla., after he attracted attention by
pushing a heavy safe in a shopping cart through the lobby of the
Putnam Hotel.  When questioned, Watson tried to convince police
that he had "found" the safe (but actually, it had been stolen from a
fourth-floor office). [Times News (Kingsport, Tenn.), 2-11-08]
[Orlando Sentinel, 2-15-08]

Recurring Themes

* Some parents, in exuberant yet inexplicable expressions of
devotion to their babies' supposed happiness, stage lavish birthday
parties at such young ages that the precious beneficiaries could not
possibly remember or appreciate them.  For example, the party by
Sheila Chapman and Ray Reed for their precious "Prince"
Clayburn Reed in February in Tampa Palms, Fla., celebrating
Prince's first birthday, featured 60 guests and a professional party-
planner, pony rides, a magician, a pinata, centered around a rented
room at the local country club.  Said Chapman, to a St. Petersburg
Times reporter, "These are the memories I want him to have.  I
want him to know how important and special I think he is." [St.
Petersburg Times, 2-24-08]

Undignified Deaths

* A 50-year-old Buddhist monk, who had already lost parts of three
fingers in one lawn-mower accident, was killed in February when
another mower got away from him, and in the ensuing chase and
capture of it, he somehow fell and was fatally slashed by the blade
(Buckinghamshire, England).  And a 36-year-old man attempted to
hang himself in a closet in January, but his girlfriend discovered
him in time and pulled him down, but that just angered the man,
and he fought with the girlfriend.  A passerby stepped in to help the
woman, and in the process applied a wrestling hold to the suicidal
man's carotid artery, inadvertently killing him (San Diego, Calif.)
(Irrelevant fact:  The deceased's last name was Kevorkian.) [Daily
Mail (London), 2-25-08] [KNSD-TV (San Diego), 2-1-08]

     Thanks This Week to Lurene Haines, J.D. Holsinger, Jim
Dourning, Tom Landsgraf, Tim McDougal, Lew Miller, Stephen
Taylor, Brad Gray, Gale Walters, and Steve Dunn, and to the News
of the Weird Senior Advisors (Jenny T. Beatty, Paul Di Filippo,
Geoffrey Egan, Ginger Katz, Joe Littrell, Matt Mirapaul, Paul
Music, Karl Olson, and Jim Sweeney) and the News of the Weird
Editorial Advisors (Paul Blumstein, John Cieciel, Harry Farkas,
Fritz Gritzner, Herb Jue, Emory Kimbrough, Scott Langill, Steve
Miller, Christopher Nalty, Mark Neunder, Bob Pert, Larry Ellis
Reed, Rob Snyder, Bruce Townley, and Jerry Whittle).

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     Visit Chuck Shepherd daily at
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