News of the Weird, October 18, 2009
Chuck Shepherd
by Chuck Shepherd
Copyright 2009 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
* Love Can Mess You Up: Before Arthur David Horn met his
future bride Lynette (a "metaphysical healer") in 1988, he was a
tenured professor at Colorado State, with a PhD in anthropology
from Yale, teaching a mainstream course in human evolution.
With Lynette's guidance (after a revelatory week with her in
California's Trinity Mountains, searching for Bigfoot), Horn
evolved, himself, resigning from Colorado State and seeking to
remedy his inadequate Ivy League education. At a conference in
Denver, Colo., in September, Horn said he now realizes that
humans come from an alien race of shape-shifting reptilians that
continue to control civilization through the secretive leaders known
as the Illuminati. Other panelists in Denver included enthusiasts
describing their own experiences with various alien races. [Rocky
Mountain Collegian, 9-28-09]
Can't Possibly Be True
* Health Insurance Follies: (1) Blue Shield California twice
refused to pay $2,700 emergency-room claims by Rosalinda Miran-
Ramirez, concluding that it was not a "reasonable" decision for her
to go to the ER that morning that she awoke to a shirt saturated
with blood from what turned out the be a breast tumor. Only after
a KPIX-TV reporter intervened in September did Blue Shield pay
the claim. (2) National Women's Law Center found that the laws
of eight states permit insurance companies to deny health coverage
to a battered spouse (as a "pre-existing condition," since batterers
tend to be recidivists), according to a September report by Kaiser
Health News. [KPIX-TV, 9-25-09] [MSNBC, 10-7-09]
* Child "Protection" Caseworkers: (1) In November 2008, the
Illinois Department of Children and Family Services returned an
infant to her mother's care two weeks after the woman had,
according to police, left her in a toilet bowl. (Three months later,
following further investigation, the woman was charged with
attempted murder, and the baby was taken away.) (2) Texas child
agency caseworkers assigned a low priority (non-"immediate" risk)
after a home visit in May in Arlington revealed that a violent, long-
troubled mother routinely left three children, ages 6, 5, and 1, home
alone all day while she was at work. In September, the 1-year-old
was found dead. [Belleville News-Democrat, 9-17-09] [Dallas
Morning News, 10-2-09]
* On August 28th, a suicide bomber approached Saudi Prince
Mohammed bin Nayef, intending to kill them both using a new,
mysterious device that an al-Qaeda video had earlier proclaimed
would be impossible to detect. The terrorist blew up only himself,
though, and security investigators concluded that his "bomb" was a
three-inch-long explosive hidden in his rectum. A Transportation
Security Administration official downplayed the puny power of
such a small device (but its effectiveness in bringing down an
airplane is still an open question). [Sunday Star Times (Wellington,
N.Z.)-Australian Associated Press, 9-4-09]
Inexplicable
* While state and local governments furiously pare budgets by
laying off and furloughing workers, retired bureaucrats who receive
defined-benefit pensions (rather than flexible "401" retirement
accounts) continue to receive fixed payouts. According to a
California organization advocating that government retirement
benefits be changed from pensions to 401 accounts, one retired fire
chief in northern California gets $241,000 a year, and a retired
small-town city administrator's pension is $499,674.84 per year,
guaranteed. [Wall Street Journal, 6-24-09]
Unclear on the Concept
* In September, Hadi al-Mutif, 34, who has been on death row in
Saudi Arabia for the last 16 years, following his conviction for
insulting the Prophet Mohammed, was given a five-year prison
sentence for insulting the Saudi justice system in a TV interview.
[Reuters, 9-3-09]
* Among the ramblings on the blog of George Sodini (the gunman
who killed three women in a Pennsylvania health club, and then
himself, in August) was his belief that, having once been "saved,"
he would enter heaven even if he happened to commit mass
murder. Sodini attributed the belief to one of his church's pastors,
and another church official, Deacon Jack Rickard, told the
Associated Press that he personally believes Sodini is in heaven
("once saved, always saved"), though Rickard somehow split the
difference: "He'll be in heaven, but he won't have any rewards
because he did evil." [Salon-AP, 8-9-09]
* The San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals operates an assistance-dog program under a $500,000
grant and not only provides the trained dog but also yearly
"refresher" sessions to keep the dog sharp. However, client
Patricia Frieze told SF Weekly in September that the organization
had asked her whether it could do the refresher course this year by
telephone instead of a home visit by a trainer. [SF Weekly, 9-18-
09]
Fine Points of the Law
* Landlords Prevail: (1) In July, Chuck Bartlett was finally granted
legal possession of his house in Kenai, Alaska, overcoming a
squatter's delaying tactics aided by local laws that frustrated
eviction despite clear evidence of Bartlett's ownership. (Bartlett
waited out the two-month standoff by pitching a tent in his own
yard.) The squatter's final, futile challenge involved scribbling an
obviously bogus "lease" that, even though Bartlett never signed it
(or even saw it), the sheriff had to honor because only a judge,
following a formal hearing, can rule it invalid. (2) In Raleigh,
N.C., in July, Leslie Smith, 62, had no such problem. He was
arrested after calling the police to report that he had shot a woman
who had been living in his house. "She won't get out [of the
house]. So I shot her." [Peninsula Clarion (Kenai, Alaska), 7-30-
09] [News and Observer (Raleigh), 7-29-09]
People Different From Us
* (1) Douglas Jones, 57, was cited by federal park rangers in
September for having, over the course of a year, littered Joshua
Tree National Park in California with more than 3,000 golf balls.
Jones explained that he tossed the balls, from his car, believing he
was thus honoring deceased golfers. (2) John Manley, 50, breathed
pain-free in September for the first time in two years after surgeons
discovered the source of his coughing and discomfort. Manley said
he "like[s] to take big gulps of drink," which is his only
explanation for why a one-inch piece of a plastic utensil was
lodged not in his stomach but in his lung. Duke University
surgeon Momen Wahidi recalled the scene in the operating room as
they tried to make out what the fragment was: "We started reading
out loud, 'a-m-b-u-r-g-e-r'" (for Wendy's Old-Fashioned
Hamburgers). [Los Angeles Times-AP, 9-18-09] [ABC News-AP,
9-17-09]
Least Competent Victims
* Two men were arrested in a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, in
September after allegedly scamming four local businessmen out of
a total of A$160,000, but the scam may reflect worse on the
victims than the perpetrators. The victims (who might have
considered themselves savvy entrepreneurs to have earned that
much money) were somehow persuaded by the alleged scammers
that bills of currency can duplicate themselves if soaked in a secret
chemical overnight. The perpetrators "demonstrated" the
chemical's power by a sleight-of-hand, probably involving a hidden
$100 bill that, after soaking, appeared alongside an original $100
bill. (Readers who want to try chemically doubling their money
thusly will need bleach, baby powder, and hair spray, which the
perpetrators had recently purchased.) [Stonnington Leader, 9-22-
09]
Recurring Themes
* More Examples of Miracle Drugs: (1) Mitchell Deslatte, 25,
drove in and parked at a Louisiana state trooper station in Baton
Rouge in July, staggered inside, and asked the man behind the desk
for a room, thinking he was in a hotel. He was arrested for DUI.
(2) Terence Loyd, 32, pleaded guilty in Mansfield, La., in August
to possession of cocaine. He had been arrested in March when
construction workers saw him on his hands and knees, rolling in
(and eating) mud and growling like a dog. [WAFB-TV (Baton
Rouge), 7-27-09] [Houston Chronicle-AP, 8-7-09]
A News of the Weird Classic (September 2005)
* From a Legal Notice of a Name Change in the Honolulu
Advertiser, August 24, 2005: change name from "Waiaulia Alohi
anail ke alaamek kawaipi olanihenoheno Kam Paghmani" to
"Waiaulia Alohi anail ke alaamek kawaipi olanihenoheno Kam."
[Honolulu Advertiser, 8-24-05]
Thanks This Week to Stephen Taylor, Ivan Katz, Sam
Gaines, Barry Rose, and Tom Barker, and to the News of the
Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
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