News of the Weird, January 1, 2012
Chuck Shepherd
by Chuck Shepherd
Copyright 2012 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
* A regional development commission in Michigan, purchasing
equipment for 13 counties in May using homeland security grants,
bought 13 machines that make snow cones, at a total cost of
$11,700 (after rejecting one county's request for a popcorn
machine). Pressed to justify the purchases, officials pointed out that
the machines make shaved ice, which might be useful for medical
situations stemming from natural disasters and heat emergencies
(but that they also make snow cones to draw crowds at homeland
security demonstrations). [The Daily News (Montcalm County,
Mich.), 12-3-2011]
NOTE: Once again this week, check out a few more recent
instances of Recurring Themes of weird news (plus important
Updates of previous stories):
* Once again, a genius tried to pass a piece of U.S. currency in an
amount not even close to being legal tender: a $1 million bill. (The
largest denomination is $100.) Michael Fuller, 53, was arrested in
Lexington, N.C., in November when a Walmart cashier turned him
in after he attempted to buy electronics totaling $475.78 (apparently
expecting change of $999,524.22). [The Dispatch (Davidson
County, N.C.), 11-18-2011]
* Most News of the Weird epic cases of "scorned" lovers who
seemingly never give up obnoxiously stalking their exes are of
Japanese women, but "dumped" Americans surface occasionally. In
October, Toni Jo Silvey, 49, was arrested in Houston, Tex., when
her ex- (artist Peter Main) reported that she made 146 phone calls in
one day and more than 1,000 (and 712 e-mails) in three months,
following their 2009 breakup over his seeing a younger woman.
She was also charged with attacking his home with a tire iron, eggs,
and a sword. [Houston Chronicle, 10-12-2011]
* "Take Your Daughter (Son) to Work" days are still popular at
some companies, to introduce children to their parents' cultures.
Inadvertently, even criminals mimic the phenomenon. Joseph
Romano, two-year-old son in tow, was allegedly selling drugs when
police picked him up in September in Tunkhannock Township, Pa.,
And Edward Chatman Jr, 32, who was arrested for raping a woman
in Oak Ridge, Tenn., in August, had brought his six-month-old baby
with him when he climbed through the woman's window (though,
police said, he stashed the kid in another room during the assault).
[Morning Call (Allentown), 9-16-2011] [Knoxville News, 8-22-
2011]
* A cutting-edge treatment when News of the Weird first heard of it
in 2000 is now mainstream for those suffering extreme diarrhea due
to a lack of "predator bacteria" in the colon (perhaps caused by
antibiotics). Among the primary treatments now is a transplant--a
transfusion of "fecal flora" from the gut of a bacteria-normal person,
to restore the natural balance (introduced by a colonoscope after the
stool is liquified in a blender). Following months of failed
alternatives, Jerry Grant, 33, said in October that his transplant, at
the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz., worked remarkably well. (A
recent study reported success in 70 of 77 patients.) [Arizona
Republic, 10-31-2011; Huffington Post, 11-7-2011]
* The law of child support changes only slowly in the U.S. (but
maybe less so in Australia). American courts are reluctant to end
payments even if the man later disproves paternity (citing the harm
to the child if the payments stop). However, in October, the Federal
Magistrates Court in Melbourne, Australia, acting on fertility-test
results, ordered a mother to reimburse the man she swore was the
father after he proved he had been sterile. The woman also
"recalled," after extensive therapy, that she might have had a one-
night stand with a stranger around the time of conception. [Herald
Sun (Melbourne), 10-8-2011]
* Perversion Du Jour: The ten-year-old law-enforcement
crackdown on Internet child pornography has lately hit a
technicality-based roadblock. Several times recently, perverts have
beaten charges after creating "child pornography" that consisted of
nude adult female bodies onto which facial photos of young girls
had been pasted. This handiwork was apparently arousing to two
Lakeland, Fla., men, Danny Parker, convicted in 2011 and John
Stelmack, convicted in 2010, but both ultimately had their
convictions overturned because no actual child was involved in sex.
[The Ledger (Lakeland), 9-28-2011]
* Forgetting to pay the monthly rental fees on a storage locker can
have serious consequences if the locker was used to store
embarrassing or even incriminating materials. News of the Weird
reported one such hapless client in 2007: a central Florida political
activist under investigation and whose locker yielded a rich trove
for a local reporter. Similarly, perhaps, Dr. Conrad Murray (then
under suspicion in the death of Michael Jackson) reportedly missed
three payments on a Las Vegas storage locker, and prosecutors
recovered items that appeared to contribute to their case (although it
is not clear that any of the items was ever presented in court).
[National Enquirer, 10-7-2011]
* Hospital protocols may be changing, but too slowly for Doreen
Wallace, who fell in the lobby of the Greater Niagara General
Hospital in Ontario in October and broke her hip. Though it was
less than 150 feet from the lobby to the emergency room, hospital
personnel, following rules, instructed her to call an ambulance to
take her around to the ER, though the nearest such ambulance, in
the next city, did not arrive for 30 pain-filled minutes. Hospital
officials said they would handle things better in the future. [Toronto
Star, 10-18-2011]
* A New York City jury awarded the family of a late teenager $1
million in November in its lawsuit against the city for mishandling
the boy's brain after his 2005 death. Following "testing," the
medical examiner kept the brain in a jar on a shelf, where it was
inadvertently spotted by the victim's sister during a school field trip
to the mortuary (treatment the family considered extremely
disrespectful). The case calls to mind that of Arkansas rapist
Wayne Dumond, who had been castrated by vigilantes in 1984 and
whose genitals the local sheriff had recovered and kept in a jar on a
shelf in his office as a symbol of "justice." Dumond subsequently
(in 1988) won $110,000 in a "disrespect" lawsuit against the sheriff.
[AzCentral.com-AP, 11-25-2011]
Updates
* Jennifer Petkov of Trenton, Mich., is still charming the neighbors.
An October 2010 Detroit News summary of a years-long feud
between Petkov and various neighbors reported that she had been
mercilessly taunting the family of Kathleen Edward, then 7 and
suffering from the degenerating brain disorder Huntington's disease,
which had taken her mother the year before. The more Kathleen's
disability showed, the greater was Petkov's Facebook-page glee. In
October 2011, Petkov, after a short promise of civility, returned to
mocking Kathleen and the memory of her mother, such as in recent
Facebook postings: "You thought the [past] 4+ years were bad you
[sic] haven't seen nothing yet!" and "Block party when that kid
dies." [WJBK-TV, 10-10-2011] [Trenton Patch, 12-20-2011]
* In October, Colorado state Sen. Suzanne Williams settled more-
serious 2010 traffic charges by pleading no-contest to a
misdemeanor and paying $268 to a court in Amarillo, Tex. State
troopers had accused Williams of driving with unbelted
grandchildren in her SUV when it drifted across a center line and hit
another vehicle, killing the driver and ejecting the kids. The Texas
troopers suggested that Williams scooped up the worse-injured
grandchild, returned him to the SUV and belted him into a child
seat, which was especially significant because Williams had
sponsored a mandatory child-safety belting law in Colorado in
2010. However, the grand jury declined to indict her, and she
refused to discuss the case further. [KMGH-TV (Denver), 10-7-
2011]
* No Longer Weird: Some Recurring Themes appear so frequently
as to be boring even to the creator of News of the Weird. For
instance, people steal scrap metal for sale to recyclers, even if it
winds up disrupting the infrastructure. Two brothers, Benjamin and
Alexander Jones, of New Castle, Pa., were charged in October with
having dismantled an entire, little-used, 15-ton bridge in the area,
anticipating a big payday but ultimately clearing only about $5,000
from laborious work with blow torches. (But Kirk Wise, 45, told the
Phoenix New Times in August that he had earned about $95,000 in
the previous year and a half selling scrap metal--though he admitted
blowing most of it on methamphetamines.) [Wall Street Journal, 10-
18-2011] [Phoenix New Times, 8-4-2011]
Thanks This Week to James Forrest, Cassidy Hunter, Chris
Porter, Bill Bloxham, John Ayer, Mike Mendenhall, and Jim
Howard, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
*****
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