News of the Weird, August 22, 2010
Chuck Shepherd
by Chuck Shepherd
Copyright 2010 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
* A recent surge of Neo-Nazism in several countries--including,
improbably, Israel, and Mongolia (where some dark-skinned natives
are rabidly anti-Chinese)--has generally been denounced, but
Corinna Burt credited it with rescuing her from a life of acting in
pornographic videos. According to a hate-group watchdog, the
Portland, Ore., woman is "the most prominent National Socialist
Movement organizer in the Pacific northwest." In an August
interview with Gawker.com, the white-supremacist Burt (a mother
of two and a professional embalmer who is also into bodybuilding)
said she terminated her porn career (as "Cori Lou," doing mostly
bondage and "torture" films) because, "If we [caucasians] consider
ourselves a master race then we have to act like a master race, not
degenerates." [The Guardian (London), 8-2-10; Gawker.com, 8-3-
10]
Government in Action
* Though volunteers got the project started in May, Ventnor City,
N.J., continued through the summer to seek financial donations to
finish the new restrooms that provide relief for those visiting the
town's Atlantic shore. Said Commissioner Stephen Weintrob,
"How would someone like to have a toilet named after themselves,
or a urinal or sink . . ..?" [Shore News Today (Seaville, N.J.), 5-13-
10]
* A Treasury Department inspector general reported in June that,
out of 2.6 million applicants for federal mortgage relief, 14,000
"home buyers" wrongly received tax credits and that in fact, 1,300
of them were living in prison at the time of filing, including 241
serving life sentences. Sixty-seven of the 14,000 received tax
credits for the same house, and 87 more potentially fraudulent tax-
credit applications were filed by Internal Revenue Service
employees. [ABC News-AP, 6-23-10]
* Things That Shouldn't Get Backlogged: (1) California requires
that if a sex offender's GPS tagging device signals that he's in a
prohibited area, parole agents must immediately respond, but that
law was easier to pass than to implement. As of June, according to
a San Diego Union-Tribune investigation, the state had fallen about
31,000 responses behind. (2) A July Illinois law requires that all
hospital "rape kits" on victims be tested for blood and DNA (in that
finding a rapist, and certainly convicting him, without such
evidence is often hopelessly difficult). Until now, 80 percent of the
rape kits taken in the state had sat, untested. (As TV police dramas
emphasize, many rape victims are reluctant to submit to the
indignity of swabbing and photographing so soon after being
violated and comply only because detectives assure them of the rape
kit's importance.) [San Diego Union-Tribune, 6-16-10] [New York
Times, 7-8-10]
* It is common knowledge that American corporations avoid taxes
by running U.S. profits through offshore "tax havens" like the
Cayman Islands and Bermuda, but a May Bloomberg Business
Week investigation traced the specific steps that the pharmaceutical
company Forest Labs takes to short the U.S. Treasury. Although
Forest's anti-depressant Lexapro is sold only in the U.S., the
company's patent is held by an Irish subsidiary (and since 2005,
shared with a Bermuda subsidiary in a tax-code hocus-pocus that
insiders call the "Double Irish"), which allows the vast majority of
the $2 billion Forest earns a year on Lexapro to be taxed at Ireland's
low rate (and at Bermuda's rate of zero). Bloomberg estimates that
the U.S. Treasury loses at least $60 billion annually by corporations'
"transfer pricing"--enough to pay for the entire Department of
Homeland Security for a year. [Bloomberg Business Week, 5-13-
10]
Great Art!
* Time magazine reported in August that among the entrants in this
year's "Detroit Hair Wars" (showcasing 34 stylists working with 300
models) were The Hummer (stylist: "Little Willie"), in which a
mass of extensions is shaped to resemble the vehicle, including four
large tires--with "metal" wheels and front grid added--sitting upon
the styled hair of model Sharv Bailey; and Beautiful Butterfly
(stylist: Niecy Hayes), featuring extensions thinned, teased, and
stretched into four artistic "wings" arising from the styled hair of
model Taja Hill. Both stylings appear to be at least two feet long,
dwarfing the models' heads, and take at least 10 hours to prepare.
[Time, 8-2-10]
* Featured at London's Royal College of Art in June was Hiromi
Ozaki's "Menstruation Machine"--a wearable contraption that
enables men to experience the two primary symptoms of the
"curse." It periodically generates abdominal pain, and its reservoir
permits liquid ("blood") to be stored and released over several days'
time. [Wired.com, 6-28-10]
Police Report
* In July, Manuel "Lefty" Hernandez, 28, was charged in
Springfield, Mass., with snatching a man's wallet (which he
probably did with his left hand, which is his only hand). (If he had
had a weapon, police could have charged him with a felony, but it
was only a misdemeanor because Hernandez was unarmed.) [The
Republican (Springfield), 7-14-10]
* A frightening August headline in The Union (Grass Valley,
Calif.): "S.W.A.T. Team Requested for Violent Midgets." In fact,
they were steroid-using, body-builder midgets, headed by an
apparently particularly dangerous "lead female." [The Union, 8-5-
10]
Least Competent Police
* In March, four NYPD officers, acting on department intelligence,
went to the home of Walter and Rose Martin in Brooklyn, N.Y.,
looking for a suspect, and broke a window as they worked their way
inside. The Martins, retired and in their 80s, were clean, and a
police spokesman later admitted that officers had wrongly visited or
raided the Martins' home more than 50 times since 2002 because of
a stubborn computer glitch. When the software was originally
installed, an operator tested it by mindlessly typing in a random
address, but that happened to be the Martins' house, and thus the
visits and raids began. The Martins say they have been assured
several times that the problem had been corrected, but evidently
their address has wormed its way too deep into the system. [New
York Post, 3-19-10]
Least Competent Criminals
* Recurring Themes: Eugene Palmer, 40, wearing a ski mask and
carrying a gun, was arrested in Brunswick, Ga., in March as he tried
to rush into a SunTrust bank during business hours but became
frustrated by the locked doors--in that it was a drive-thru-only
branch. (2) Danny Spencer, 31, and a partner were arrested in
Bridgeport, Conn., in December as they called attention to
themselves by driving through the city dragging a half-ton safe they
could not crack open at the Madison Auto store they had just
burglarized. (3) Ethan Ayers, 18, and a partner were arrested in
Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in March after an alleged mugging. Police
found them easily, as their transportation that night was a relative's
van advertising in large lettering, "Big Earl's Gold Mine," a Des
Moines strip club. [Florida Times-Union, 3-7-10] [Connecticut
Post, 12-22-09] [WCRG-TV (Cedar Rapids), 3-19-10]
Thank Goodness for Researchers
* (1) After surveying 374 waitresses, Professor Michael Lynn, who
teaches marketing and tourism at Cornell University, concluded that
customers left larger tips to those with certain physical
characteristics such as being slender, being blond, or having big
breasts. Lynn told the Cornell Daily Sun in May that his study was
important in helping potential waitresses gauge their "prospects in
the industry." (2) Perhaps more usefully, University of Central
Lancashire (England) researchers writing in a recent Archives of
Sexual Behavior reported that women achieve orgasm more often
during foreplay than intercourse but that they more frequently emit
orgasm-signaling "vocalizations" just before, or simultaneously
with, male ejaculation. [Cornell Daily Sun, 5-7-10] [PubMed
(National Institutes of Health), 5-18-10]
A News of the Weird Classic (May 1996)
* In May [1996], Minneapolis artist Judy Olausen's hardcover
photographic essay, "Mother," went on sale, featuring her 70-year-
old mom as a series of passive, subordinate characters. Included
were her mother kneeling on all fours with a pane of glass on her
back ("Mother as Coffee Table"), lying alongside a highway
("Mother as Road Kill"), and sprawled at an entrance ("Mother as
Doormat"). Said Olausen, "My brothers think I'm torturing my
mother," but actually, "I'm immortalizing her." [U. S. News &
World Report, 5-6-96]
Thanks This Week to Beth Beggs and Jeff Yoder, and to the
News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
* * * * *
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