News of the Weird, February 10, 2013

[Chuck Shepherd]

WEIRDNUZ.M305 (News of the Weird, February 10, 2013)
by Chuck Shepherd

Copyright 2013 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

Lead Story

* Cliche Come to Life: The Kerry, Ireland, county council voted in
January to let some people drive drunk. The councillors reasoned
that in the county's isolated regions, some seniors live alone and
need the camaraderie of the pub but fear a DUI arrest on the way
home. The councillors thus empowered police to issue DUI permits
to those targeted drivers. Besides, reasoned the councillors, the area
is so sparsely-populated that some such drivers never encounter
anyone else on the road at night. (The councillors' beneficence
might also have been influenced, reported BBC News, by the fact
that "several" of the five voting Yea own pubs.) [BBC News, 1-22-
2013]

Can't Possibly Be True

* Spare the Waterboard, Spoil the Child: William Province, 42,
was arrested in Jefferson County, Mont., in December and charged
with waterboarding four boys at his home in December. The
relationship between Province and the boys was not clear from the
Montana Standard report. (Also in January, Kirill Bartashevitz 52,
was charged with making "terroristic" threats to his high-school-age
daughter after he allegedly pointed his new AK-47 at her because
her report card showed 2 B's instead of all A's. He said he had
recently purchased the gun because he feared that President Obama
intended to ban them.) [Montana Standard (Butte), 12-21-2012]
[St. Paul Pioneer-Press, 1-16-2012]

* Emma Whittington, of Hutchinson, Kan., rushed her daughter to
the ER in December when the girl, 7 months old, developed a golf-
ball-sized lump on her neck. Two days later, at a hospital in
Wichita, a doctor gently pulled a feather out of the lump and
hypothesized that it had been in the midst of emerging from her
throat. Doctors said the girl probably swallowed the feather
accidentally, and that it got stuck in throat tissue, and that her body
was trying to eject it through the skin. [KWCH-TV (Wichita), 12-
13-2012]

* As if 9-11, and the resultant air travel restrictions, had never
happened, travelers for some reason continue to keep Transportation
Security Administration agents busy at passengers' carry-on bag
searches. From a TSA weekly summary of confiscations in
January: 33 handguns, eight stun guns, and a serrated wire garrote.
Among highlights from 2012: a live 40mm grenade, a live blasting
cap, "seal bombs," and six pounds of black power (with detonation
cords and a timing fuse). [The TSA Blog (tsa.gov), 1-11-2012]

* A man with admittedly limited English skills went to a courthouse
in Springfield, Mass., in December to address a traffic ticket but
somehow wound up on a jury trying Donald Campbell on two
counts of assault. Officials said the man simply got in the wrong
line and followed jurors into a room while the real sixth juror had
mistakenly gone to another room. The jury, including the accidental
juror, found Campbell guilty, but he was awarded a new trial when
the mistake was discovered. [The Republican (Springfield), 12-13-
2012]

The Redneck Chronicles (Tennessee Edition)

* (1) Timothy Crabtree, 45, of Rogersville, was arrested in October
and charged with stabbing his son, Brandon, 21, in an argument
over who would get the last beer in the house. (2) Tricia Moody,
26, was charged with DUI in Knoxville in January after a 10-minute
police chase. The officer's report noted that Moody was still
holding a cup of beer and apparently had not spilled any during the
chase. (3) Jerry Poe, 62, was charged in a road-rage incident in
Clinton on Black Friday after firing his handgun at a driver in front
of him "to scare her into moving" faster, he said. (Poe said he had
started at midnight at one Walmart, waited in line unsuccessfully for
five hours for a sale-priced stereo, and was on his way to another
Walmart. [Kingsport Times-News via KnoxNews.com (Knoxville),
10-16-2012] [Knoxville News Sentinel, 1-22-2013] [Knoxville
News Sentinel, 11-26-2012]

Sounds Like a Joke

* Twin brothers Aric Hale and Sean Hale, 28, were both arrested on
New Year's Eve in Manchester, Conn., after fighting each other at a
hotel and later at a residence. Police said a 27-year-old woman was
openly dating the two men, and that Sean thought it was his turn
and asked Aric for privacy. Aric begged to differ about whose turn
it was. [Hartford Courant, 1-3-2013]

Unclear on the Concept

* Voted in December as vice-presidents of the United Nations
Human Rights Council for 2013 were the nations of Mauritania and
Maldives, both of which permit the death penalty for renouncing
Islam. In Mauritania, a person so charged has three days to repent
for a lesser sentence. (An August 2012 dispatch in London's The
Guardian reported widespread acceptance of slavery conditions in
Mauritania affecting as many as 800,000 of the 3.5 million
population. Said one abolitionist leader, "Today we have the
slavery [that] American plantation owners dreamed of [in that the
slaves] believe their condition is necessary to get to paradise.")
[Reuters via Yahoo News, 12-10-2012; The Guardian, 8-14-2012]

* Non-medical employees of the University of Pittsburgh Medical
Center have been campaigning for union representation, suggesting
that their current wages leave many workers dangerously close to
poverty. Though raises have not materialized, UPMC (according to
a November Pittsburgh City Paper report) has now shown sympathy
for its employees' sad plight. In a November UPMC newsletter, it
announced that it was setting up "UPMC Cares" food banks.
Employees (presumably the better-paid ones) are urged to "donate
nonperishable food items to stock employee food pantries that will
established on both [UPMC campuses]." One astonished worker's
response: "I started to cry." [Pittsburgh City Paper, 12-11-2012]

* In December, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch revealed, through a
public records-check, that the appointed Collector of Revenue for
St. Louis County has failed since 2008 to pay personal property
taxes. Stacy Bailey and her husband owe taxes on three cars and in
fact filed for bankruptcy in 2011. Bailey's boss, Director of
Revenue Eugene Leung, told the Dispatch that he had checked
Bailey's real-estate tax status but not personal property taxes.
Nonetheless, he said, "Knowing what I know now, she's still the
most qualified person for the job," among the 155 applicants. [St.
Louis Post-Dispatch, 12-13-2013]

Perspective

* First-World Problems: Before "cellulite" appeared in popular
culture around 1972, almost no one believed the condition
especially remarkable, wrote London's The Guardian in December.
Similarly, the new concern about "wobbly" arms--flesh dangling
loosely when a woman's arm is raised horizontally--seems entirely
made-up. However, Marks & Spencer and other upscale British
retailers now sell "arm corsets" to fashionably hold the skin tighter
for sleeveless tops. Wrote the Guardian columnist, "I wish I didn't
know that my arms weren't meant to wobble. I'd be happier." [The
Guardian, 12-8-2012]

People Different From Us

* Julie Griffiths, 43, of Newcastle-Under-Lyme, England, received
her first Anti-Social Behavior Order in 1999 for too loudly berating
her husband (who one neighbor told the Daily Telegraph is "the
sweetest man you could ever meet"). After many complaints (from
neighbors, never from Norman), Griffiths was fined the equivalent
of about $700 in 2010 and vowed to be quieter. The complaints
hardly slowed, and in July 2012, environmental-health officials
installed monitoring equipment next door and caught Griffiths
venting at Norman 47 times in three months. However, the Stoke-
on-Trent Magistrates Court merely issued a new, five-year ASBO.
[Daily Telegraph, 12-20-2012]

Readers' Choice

* (1) Recently a 67-year-old woman set out to drive to a train
station in Brussels, Belgium, 38 miles from her home to pick up a
friend, but her GPS was broken, and she wound up three countries
away, in Zagreb, Croatia, before she sought help. Drivers older than
her have been similarly lost, but not to the extent of crossing five
borders, passing road signs in three languages, while traveling 900
miles. (She said only that she was "distracted.") (2) In January, a
68-year-old man got out of a van to open a garage door so that his
friend could back in, but he left the van door open, and the driver's
dog leaped excitedly into the vehicle and landed on the gas pedal.
The man was fatally crushed against the garage door. [Daily Mail
(London), 1-14-2013] [Panama City News Herald, 1-15-2013]

Thanks This Week to Chris O'Hare, Margaret Thomas,
Kelly Egnitz, Rey Barry, John.McGaw, Michael Hull, Mark Svevar,
Annie Thames, and Jan Linders, and to the News of the Weird
Board of Editorial Advisors.

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