O/T stories 09/08
PUSSSYKATT
Bill Hoffmann, NY POST Wire Services
--Edward Cheney was cruising a Pennsylvania highway when an airplane landed on
the road and barreled head-on toward his pickup truck. The 79-year-old retiree
was able to crash his vehicle into a ditch to avoid the small Cessna, which had
engine trouble over Buckhorn. "It certainly was the most bizarre incident in my
life. What else can you call it?" Cheney said.
--A Minnesota man fired 11 bullets into the hood of his brother's car in an
attempt to "kill" it, cops say. Damian Petersen of Oak Grove allegedly emptied
his 10mm semiautomatic pistol into brother Devin's 1989 Mercury Cougar after
the pair argued and Devin drove over Damian's lawn, tearing it up, before
hitting his house. "He was ruining my property, and he wouldn't stop. The only
thing I could do, I thought, was get my gun and shut his car down," Damian
said.
--Who did cops in Shelbyville, Ky., call when their headquarters were plagued
by rattling doors and creaky stairwells? The ghostbusters. "The way I treat it
is not that there is a ghost, there's just things that I can't explain," said
Officer John Wilson, who contacted the Scientific Investigative Ghost Hunting
Team, based in Louisville.
--The Pennsylvania county of Beaver hosted the 33rd annual Nude Volleyball
Super Bowl over the weekend, and competitors were happy to let it all hang out.
"You don't sweat as much," said Jeff Poland, who played at the White Thorn
Lodge nudist park in South Beaver Township. "You don't get overheated because
you don't have clothes keeping the heat in."
--A family has kept a chain letter going for 87 years. The Pletchers have
maintained it for three generations, says Doug Pletcher of Savannah, Ga., who
gets dozens of envelopes each year with letters and photos from uncles and
cousins of 24 branches of his family tree from Florida to California. "They are
close-knit family and they wanted to keep in touch, so they started this letter
that had a regular pattern,"said 83-year-old Jim Pletcher of Green Valley,
Ariz., who is Doug's uncle.
* * *
Melee Erupts Following NASCAR Richmond Race
By HANK KURZ Jr.
The Associated Press
RICHMOND, Va. - Ricky Rudd thought he'd seen just about everything in a long
racing career with plenty of beating and banging.
Then he made what must have seemed like a wrong turn into the wrong
neighborhood of Richmond International Raceway, finding himself and his car the
subject of a moblike confrontation by Kevin Harvick's team.
"I haven't seen anything like that in 28 years of racing," Rudd said of the
scene NASCAR officials rebuked as a "bench-clearing mentality."
"It was just totally crazy," Rudd said.
The feud started with less than nine laps to go in the Chevrolet 400, when Rudd
was trailing Harvick into the first turn and both were trying to catch Ryan
Newman, who was already starting to pull away.
Harvick's car seemed to wiggle a bit, and then Rudd nudged him from behind.
Harvick's car was sent slamming into the wall as Rudd raced on. Newman
continued, too, going on to his series-best sixth victory of the season.
Harvick, who is third in the points race and running out of races to catch
front-running Matt Kenseth, was fuming after the accident denied him a chance
to catch Newman and a possible sixth-straight top-five finish.
"I can't help but be angry," he said. "We are running for the championship and
I thought we had another second (place) locked up."
Instead, he finished 16th and drove his battered car to pit road, the place
where the second- to fifth-place finishers are supposed to be.
Harvick's team members headed there, too, and when the driver banged his
Chevrolet into the side of Rudd third-place Ford, the crew members began making
like a mob, banging on Rudd's car and mangling the hood.
Rudd admitted he'd hit the back of Harvick's car in the turn, but said
Harvick's car was already having trouble and he'd tried to avoid him.
Sitting in his car, Rudd said he still didn't know there was a confrontation
starting until he saw Harvick's crew members "walking up and down my car like
it's a dadgum runway or something, jumping up and down."
NASCAR officials arrived quickly and broke it up, first imploring the furious
Harvick to get off the roof of his own car and stop screaming at Rudd, and then
ushering both teams to the trailer for a tongue-lashing.
Later, NASCAR vice president Jim Hunter announced that the governing body would
not tolerate the recent tendency toward post-race fisticuffs.
Three weeks ago, Jimmy Spencer was suspended for a week and place on probation
after punching Kurt Busch in the face in a similar confrontation.
"I can assure you, we're not going to condone the kind of bench-clearing
mentality that occurred after the race tonight," Hunter said, adding that the
teams could expect penalties to be announced Monday.
Harvick emerged from the meeting with NASCAR president Mike Helton and Winston
Cup director John Darby, saying the episode was over, but that he thought his
actions were understandable given the circumstances.
"That was pure adrenaline out there on pit road," he said. "I was hot and I
wanted to let Ricky know that. ... Everything's cool now, I guess. I'm just
still hot. He never even tried to pass me; he just wrecked me."
Harvick being mad is understandable, Rudd said, "but I think if he sees the
tape and figures out what happened, he'll probably cool down a bit. That
happens. Close racing, 10 laps to go on a short track, you got a bunch of guys
on the lead lap. The race is on. It's a dogfight."
But, he added, what happened after that was "absolutely absurd."
* * *
Man Spends 6 Days Trapped In Bathtub
http://www.local6.com/news/2462055/detail.html
HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo. -- A man who spent six days trapped in his bathtub said
he is thankful for the bus driver who helped rescue him.
Retired spacecraft engineer Bruce Ashworth, 55, slipped while taking a shower
around lunchtime Aug. 29. Ashworth, who has multiple sclerosis and uses a
wheelchair, couldn't reach the safety handles on his tub to rescue himself.
His service dog, Libby, retrieved his phone for him, but it wasn't charged.
He managed to reach a cleaning spray bottle, rinse it out and use it to get
water.
As the days stretched on, he would drift in and out of consciousness. Libby
would lick his face to get his attention and slap her paws on the floor to wake
him up, Ashworth said.
''I actually spent a lot of time hallucinating. I wasn't aware of what reality
was,'' he said.
By about the sixth day, Ashworth worried he would die.
Enter Global Transportation employee Julie Johnson, whose job is to give the
elderly and disabled rides to where they need to go.
Johnson, 36, was scheduled to pick up Ashworth on Thursday. When she arrived,
Ashworth's front door was open, but the screen door was locked. No one answered
her knock.
Johnson asked a neighbor to call 911, then reached through a doggie-door in the
back of Ashworth's house to unlock the door, and went in. She found Ashworth in
his bathtub, barely coherent.
Littleton firefighters arrived and scooped him out of the tub.
Ashworth sat in his bed Friday at Littleton Adventist Hospital, with Johnson at
his side.
''I am so thankful for this lady,'' Ashworth said.
Johnson said she's thrilled that she could help someone.
* * *
By Jennifer D'Angelo/FOX NEWS....
Cat-eye contact lenses, facial tattoos, toe-shortening surgery: These
“trends” may sound humorous to the layperson, but health and social experts
aren’t laughing.
“Vanity” contact lenses resembling cat and reptile eyes are available on
the Internet without a prescription. Mike Tyson isn't the only person wild
enough to cover his face with tattoos; And at least one New York City
podiatrist is helping patients squeeze into pointy shoes by shortening their
toes.
In addition to health concerns, experts say people who go to such lengths to be
noticed may suffer from undiagnosed psychological issues.
"People who will go to these extremes to fit in or get attention, even to the
point of mutilating their own bodies, there's something lacking there," said
Oregon psychologist Marilyn Sorensen. "It's one thing when it's a clothing
style or fad — that's cute — but when it's hurting or changing your body,
that's a self-esteem problem."
In some cases, trend followers might not be aware they're jeopardizing their
health. Dr. Jonathan Primack of Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York
said that's a likely explanation for dare-to-be-different contacts.
"Kids think they’re cool. They're attracted to the stand-out effect. But they
need to be aware that contact lenses should only be used under a doctor’s
care,” said Primack, a cornea specialist.
Some Web sites like sporteyes.com sell "fire" and "wolf" lenses only to
customers with a doctor's prescription. But other sites, and some stores, sell
the lenses even without a prescription.
“I had a patient who bought colored contact lenses over the counter, slept
with them in his eyes overnight and developed a sight-threatening infection on
the surface of his cornea,” said Primack.
Appealing to a totally different crowd, toe-shortening procedures — another
potentially dangerous trend — are being sought among some fashion-conscious
women.
“I had a patient yesterday who had a second toe that was too long. She wanted
to wear stylish shoes, so she got the shortening procedure," podiatrist Dr.
Suzanne Levine told the New York Post. Levine also said she practices what she
preaches — and had the surgery herself.
Pointy-toed "Sex and the City"-like shoes have been popular for several
seasons, but most medical professionals blanch at the fashion-driven procedure.
“Young people in their 30s who get the procedure might in their 60s have
significant problems," said Dr. Leroy Young, chairman of the emerging trends
committee at the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
“You have to worry that people like that who come in with a major concern
over a minor defect might have body dysmorphic disorder,” he added, referring
to the disorder in which normal-looking people are preoccupied with an imagined
defect in appearance. "And what if open-ended shoes come back in style?”
In fact, Young, who is based in St. Louis, recently sent a patient home who
thought her fourth toe was too short. He convinced her surgery was unnecessary,
but said if she'd persisted, he would have recommended she see a mental health
professional.
A third trend worrying doctors and social service works is facial tattoos.
Spotted on some teens, gang members and boxer Mike Tyson, the tattoos can stop
people from finding work and be hazardous to their health.
Pizza Schmizza chain founder Andre Jehan, who was recently in the news for
allowing homeless people to carry signs for his store in exchange for food,
said one youth he “employed” had a face full of tattoos.
“McDonald’s wouldn’t even hire him,” he said.
With the tattoos, there's also a risk of harming the veins that go straight to
the brain, said Dallas-based dermatologist Dr. Forrest C. Brown, who added that
the greater concern is psychological.
"Do you really want a tattoo in the middle of your face for the rest of your
life?" he asked. "And even if you remove it, your skin will never be the same."
Kathy Oliver, executive director of Outside In, a Portland, Ore.-based social
service agency that serves low-income and homeless people, said she has a
waiting list of youths who want their tattoos removed for free through Project
Erase.
The saddest part, Sorensen said, is that many of these "fashion" victims are
actually doing very little to improve their social situations.
"Those trying to fit in get so caught up being like everyone else ... that they
don’t see how ridiculous it is," she said. "People will realize there is
something lacking in them. And those trying to stand out wind up getting the
wrong kind of attention."
PHOTOS: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,96659,00.html
* * *
Web Site to Help Find Art Stolen by Nazis
By CARL HARTMAN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - People searching for art that was stolen by the Nazis have a new
tool: a Web site that allows U.S. museum collections to be checked for
long-lost pieces.
The Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal — http://www.nepip.org — is a
searchable registry for people looking for items that disappeared in Europe
between 1932 and 1946. It goes online Monday.
So far 66 museums have signed up to participate in the program overseen by the
American Association of Museums. They include the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York and the Chicago Institute of Art. The Web site has indexed 5,761 of
their objects and an additional 1,663 are in process.
Similar sites in Europe will be reachable through a link with the U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
The Nazis and their allies may have stolen as many as 1.5 million objects by
the end of World War II.
Estimates of the number still missing run as high as 100,000 works of museum
quality. Some have found their way to the United States.
The association's president, Edward H. Able Jr., counted 17 claims settled for
paintings, sculptures, textiles and pieces of armor found in American museums
since 1997. Among them are a pastel by Edgar Degas, the French Impressionist
painter, that had been bought by a trustee for the Art Institute of Chicago,
and a painting by Henri Matisse that had been at the Seattle Art Museum.
The Nazis not only confiscated property but also forced dealers and agents to
sell, at artificially low prices, art owned by Jews and the Nazis' political
enemies. Confiscations and forced sales included books, religious objects,
stamp and coin collections, furniture and other antiques and rarities.
Able said for that reason the Web site initiative includes more than just art
museums. "We have museums of all kinds — an item could have seeped into a
history museum, for example," he said.
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: http://www.ushmm.org
American Association of Museums: http://www.aam-us.org
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