Copyright 2011 by Chuck Shepherd.  All rights reserved.

Lead Story

* The New York Yankees' Derek Jeter achieved his milestone
3,000th major league hit in July, and Steiner Sports Marketing of
New Rochelle, N.Y., was ready (in partnership with the Yankees
and Major League Baseball).  Dozens of items from the game were
offered to collectors, including the bases ($7,500 each), 30 balls
used during the game ($2,000 each, unsigned), and even Jeter's
sweaty socks ($1,000).  Steiner had also collected five gallons of
dirt (under supervision, to assure authenticity), and uberfans can buy
half-ounce containers of clay walked upon by Jeter during the game
(from the shortstop area and the right-hand batter's box)--for a not-
dirt-cheap $250 each. [New York Post, 7-7-2011; New York Times,
6-22-2011]

Compelling Explanations

* Military veteran Joshua Price, 26, was arrested in March after
police in a Chicago suburb found child pornography and 1,700
photos of dismembered women on his computer, but at a court
hearing in May, Price explained that his photographs were a
necessary escape from war-related trauma.  In fact, Price told
prosecutors that were it not for the distracting photos, his stress
disorder would surely have caused him to kill his wife and two
daughters.  (Prosecutors accepted that Price's crime was a "cry for
help," but the judge, less impressed, quadrupled Price's bail, to $1
million.) [Chicago Tribune, 5-19-2011]

* Unclear on the Concept:  (1) The initial explanation by Melvin
Jackson, 48, upon his arrest in June for sexually assaulting an
unconscious woman in Kansas City, Mo., was to deny that he would
ever do such a thing.  Rather, he said, "I thought the lady was dead."
(2) The initial explanation by Thomas O'Neil, 47, upon his arrest in
Wausau, Wis., in June for criminal damage to property (breaking
into a neighbor's garage and defecating on the floor) was to claim
that he thought he was in his own garage. [Kansas City Star, 6-30-
2011] [Sheboygan Press, 6-28-2011]

Democracy in Action!

* Emerging democracies typically exhibit growing pains as they
develop stability.  For example, in July in Afghanistan's parliament,
one female legislator attacked another with her shoe (and then
dodged the second lady's flying water bottle, before colleagues
separated them).  Older democracies, however, act more maturely--
except perhaps in California, where in June, an Italian-American
legislator got into a shoving match with a colleague who he thought
had made a "Sopranos"-type slur about recent legislation.  And in
the mature democracy of Wisconsin in June, one state Supreme
Court justice was accused of roughing up another (though who
started it is in dispute) as the justices privately discussed a case.
[BBC News, 7-6-2011] [KTLA-TV (Los Angeles), 6-15-2011]
[Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 6-25-2011]

Ironies

* Budget cuts forced the closure of two of the three firehouses in
Chillicothe, Ohio (pop. 22,000), and even that station failed a state
fire marshal's inspection in March.  Because the station's own alarm
system was broken, the chief was required, until the new system is
installed, to assign one firefighter per shift to be on full-time patrol
at the station, walking around the grounds constantly, upstairs,
downstairs, looking for fires. [Columbus Dispatch, 3-30-2011]

* Run That By Me Again:  (1) In New Orleans in July, Thomas
Sanders, 53, pleaded guilty to murdering a 12-year-old girl.
According to the neighboring state of Mississippi, Sanders has been
dead for 17 years (having been ruled deceased in 1994 on petition of
his parents, brother, and ex-wife).  (2) In July, the city of Daytona
Beach Shores, Fla., agreed to pay $195,000 to settle a lawsuit in
which six people claim they were strip-searched unlawfully by
police.  Four of the six were strip-searched during a raid at the
Biggins Gentleman's Club, where they work as strippers. [WWL-
TV-AP, 7-8-2011] [Orlando Sentinel, 7-7-2011]

Easily Offended

* Norris Sydnor III's $200,000 lawsuit against Rich's Nail Salon of
Landover, Md., for "humiliat[ing]" him last December is scheduled
for trial as News of the Weird goes to press.  Sydnor was upset that
males have to pay $10 for a manicure but females only $9.
[WUSA-TV (Washington, D.C.), 6-15-2011]

* John Luckett filed lawsuits on 11 different complaints earlier this
year against the Las Vegas arcade Pinball Hall of Fame, claiming
that he was wrongfully barred from the premises for obnoxiously
complaining about out-of-service machines, especially "Xenon,"
which he says he has mastered so well that he can play almost
indefinitely on an initial 50 cents. Among the damages requested,
Luckett is demanding $300 for each "therapy" session he might
have to undergo to overcome the trauma of being ejected.  Luckett
has filed more than 40 lawsuits in his role of, as he put it, avenging
people's attempts to "screw" him. [Las Vegas Weekly, 6-30-2011]

Should've Kept Their Mouths Shut

* According to a bailiff, convicted car thief Thomas Done, 33, spent
almost a half hour at his June sentencing "shucking and jiving"
Ogden, Utah, Judge Michael Lyon before finally finagling probation
(instead of 15 years in prison)--by expressing parental love for his
young daughter and blaming his recidivist criminality on his
girlfriend's infidelity.  However, literally seconds after Judge Lyon
announced probation, Done, noticing his girlfriend in the
courtroom, made a gun-triggering motion with his thumb and
fingers and said, "Boom, bitch."  A bailiff reported the gesture to the
judge, who declared Done in violation of his brand-new probation
and ordered him re-sentenced. [Standard-Examiner (Ogden, Utah),
6-23-2011]

* Initially, all Jay Rodgers wanted was for the fellow Atlanta gas
station customer to say "thank you" when Rodgers held the door for
him, but the man remained silent, and Rodgers pressed the issue,
confronting him and even following the man out to his car--where
the man pulled a gun and shot Rodgers in the abdomen, sending him
to the hospital for nine days.  (Interviewed on WSB-TV in May,
Rodgers resumed nagging the man, urging him to "do the right
thing" by turning himself in.) [WSB-TV (Atlanta), 5-13-2011]

Recurring Themes

* It is not the most popular fetish, but a few men do don raincoats
and climb down into public outhouse pits.  Luke Chrisco, 30, was
apprehended by police in June in a portable toilet at the Hanuman
Yoga Festival in Boulder, Colo.  Chrisco actually "slipped" away
from police but was arrested days later in nearby Vail.  According
to his Facebook and YouTube pages (reported by The Smoking
Gun), Chrisco offered himself as a male escort (sample rate: $620
for seven days) and recalled in one video that, on the road in April,
he once avoided sleeping overnight at a Greyhound Bus station
because it "smelled weird." [Daily Camera (Boulder), 6-25-2011;
The Smoking Gun, 6-24-2011]

Update

* The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has become an increasingly
larger and more permanent part of the ocean--plastic and other
floatables, along with concentrations of chemical sludge, estimated
to measure from 0.4 percent to 8 percent of the entire Pacific and
responsible for disruptions of the food chain affecting various
species of aquatic life.  Now, thanks to the March tsunami near
Japan, the estimated 25 million tons of debris from cars, homes,
appliances, shipping containers, chemicals, etc., from coastal
Fukushima that washed back out to sea will soon be caught in the
same Pacific swirls, in what a French environmental group forecast
would be a pair of ocean-navigating journeys that will last at least
10 years, gradually breaking off and joining (thus substantially
enlarging) the two distinct legs of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
[Agence France-Presse, 6-21-2011]

A News of the Weird Classic (May 1992)

* Bruce Damon, attempting to work a plea bargain in February
[1992] to charges that he knocked off a bank in Whitman, Mass.,
argued to the judge that the 8- to 15-year term suggested by the
prosecutor was way too long.  Damon cited an article from the
Brockton Enterprise newspaper showing that the bank had enjoyed
record earnings in the months after the robbery and expected to
continue doing well.  Said Damon, "I didn't hurt this bank at all."
(When the judge asked Damon if he would rob banks again if he
were free, Damon replied, "I'd like to plead the Fifth Amendment on
that.")  [Brockton Enterprise, 2-11-92]

     Thanks This Week to Sandy Pearlman, Marc Mandeltort,
Lynn Willis, Ted Snow, and Seth Chernoff, and to the News of the
Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

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