There are more chickens than people in the world. Two-thirds of the world's eggplant is grown in New Jersey. The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched." On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag. All of the clocks in the movie "Pulp Fiction" are stuck on 4:20.

New Jersey is the eggplant capital of the world? Well, it is the garden state. I think New Jersey is also noted for its tomatoes. Both eggplants and tomatoes are related to deadly nightshade, so are potatoes. Do they grow potatoes in New Jersey?

Here I thought they were saying The Garbage State... Not much in the way of potatoes commercially. Long Island (New York) is the best. Lots of good stuff grows in the sandy soil of south Jersey - I was born there and their tomatoes and cantaloupes are wonderful. *hunger pangs raging inside*

What is it New Yorkers say? I know, it is that if you go to the top of the RCA Building, you can smell New Jersey. South Jersey has pretty much an identity of its own, much like Western Pennsylvania. In both cases in sometimes seems as if these fragments would prefer to seperate from their other halves, and form their own state.

That is true! The northwest of Jersey is lovely, but the northeast has all the chemical plants and the entire place stinks! Oh well, they had to build them someplace...

WHAT CREATURE PRODUCES SPERM THAT ARE 2/3 INCH LONG - THE LONGEST IN THE WORLD? Some fruit flies of the genus Drosophilia. Their sperm, more than 300 times longer than human sperm, are six times longer than the fly itself - but hair thin and are balled up. HOW MANY TIMES PER SECOND DOES A MOSQUITO BEAT ITS WINGS? Up to 600. HOW MANY CONSTELLATIONS ARE THERE? 100,000. HOW MUCH HORSEPOWER DOES THE TYPICAL HORSE PROVIDE? About 24. Horsepower is the power needed to lift 33,000 pounds 1 foot in a minute. Scientists came up with the 24 horsepower figure based on a horse weighing about 1,320 pounds.

Bizarre News for May 20, 2000 +------------------- Bizarre Lawyers ----------------------+ A former insurance official in Kansas hurt himself trying to life his briefcase from his car trunk. Even though he missed no work or even a golf game on account of the injury, he was awarded $95,000 because of the work-related injury. A law firm in New Orleans routinely billed four hours of work for letters that were only one sentence in length. a Chicago lawyer charged $25,000 for "ground transportation" while on business in San Francisco. A Kansas lawyer received close to $35,000 in workman's compensation because he hurt his shoulder reaching into the backseat of the car for his briefcase. A lawyer while working on a government contract, wrote a definition of the words "and/or" that was over 300 words in length. ---------------- Scientists Unleash "The Spoat" ------------- CANADA - Biotechnicians have created a new genetic miracle by implanting spider genes into goats. The result? Goats who produce milk with silky fibers fine enough and strong enough to be utilized as surgical sutures. Jeffrey Turner, the scientist who perfected the procedure, reported, "We have combined the old and the new. The old is represented by the goats and their milk...the new is genetic engineering." Other potential uses for the stringy lactose could be as a replacment for Kevlar, to cover dome stadiums or even applications in the aerospace industry. [Why goats? Why not chickens? Then you could have eight drums sticks per bird.] ----- Man Brings Stock Meeting To Close With Grenade ------ HOUSTON, TX - A former employee of R&B Falcon Corp. brought a shareholder meeting to a screaming halt when he began waving around a hand grenade. 72-year-old Andre Piazza regularly attends the oil drilling contractor's annual meetings and unfortunately the other stockholders have grown accustomed to listen to him argue with Chairman Paul Lloyd about the company's finances. After being asked to save his comments until later Piazza produced out his grenade and pulled the pin. About 60 fat cats b-lined for the exit and Piazza was overpowered in the rush. Bomb squad officers said the grenade was inert and could not have exploded. [The only way this story could be any better is if Piazza had said, "Excuse me while I whip this out."] -------- Baseball Players Take Lives Into Own Hands -------- CHICAGO, IL - Those Angolinos are tougher than I thought. A fight broke out at Chicago's Wrigley Field during Tuesday's Cubs-Dodgers game. Trouble started in the bottom of the ninth when a fan allegedly hit Dodgers catcher Chad Kreuter in the back of the head. The bizarre part occurred when several Los Angeles players climbed into the stands looking for the perpetrators. This was no Pellegrino sipping L.A. crowd, this was thousands of Chicagoans hopped up on beer and bratwursts. No lives were lost, however, and play resumed after a minimum of order was restored. -------------- Mr. Potato Head; Abducted ----------------- PROVIDENCE, RI - Poor Mr. Potato Head has suffered through yet another grizzly abduction. The 6-foot-tall, 136-pound spud sculpture was gracing the front of The Providence Journal building when witnesses saw two men loading it onto a truck. This statue is one of many placed around the city by the office of tourism proclaiming Rhode Island as the "Birthplace Of Fun." The note left behind simply said, "Don't worry, you'll get him back." Our starchy friend was later found on the Brown University campus covered with fake news articles about his theft. Similar crimes include vandalism, and a cold-hearted dismemberment. ------------------ Practice Makes Perfect ------------------ NEW ORLEANS - Trying to improve your driving skills? Carlton Jackson was accused of stealing truck cabs in order to improve his truck driving skills; not for the money. He would deftly unhitch the trailers from the cabs, then drive the rigs around for a couple of days before he would abandon them a few blocks from his New Orleans residence. Detectives first found the trailers with all cargo in tact before tracking down the 10 or more cabs near his home. After searching his home, they did indeed find several applications for local driving schools. [Sign reads: Caution Student Driver/Thief At The Wheel.] --------------- Saved Suicide Sap Sues -------------------- LIMA, Peru - Even though suicide is illegal in the country of Peru, this did not stop Juan Aliago from suing three policemen who saved his life. It seems that Aliago really wanted to do the act and was miffed that these dutiful policemen pulled him off a ledge. Instead of trying to his attempts at suicide, he decided to take his anger out on the rescuers and is suing for the equivalent of $700,000. Classic Bizarre Moments from the Archives *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* A cooking show in England has promised a nasty surprise in an upcoming "TV Dinners" episode-- placenta pate. An unnamed family invited 20 of their closest friends and a television film crew to dine on the frozen afterbirth of their daughter's child. According to the London Independent, the baby's father had "14 helpings", and his wife declared that "serving the placenta will be a family tradition now..." yeah, the Addams Family...

WHAT IS THE WORLD'S TALLEST GRASS, WHICH SOMETIMES GROWS 130 FEET OR MORE? Bamboo. WHAT WAS THE NAME FOR THE FIRST COMPUTER USED FOR WEATHER RESEARCH? MANIAC - an acronym for Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator and Computer. WHAT TEMPERATURE DO HONEYBEES MAINTAIN THERE HIVES YEAR-ROUND? An even 94 degrees Fahrenheit. WHAT COLOR IS THE BLOOD OF AN OCTOPUS? Pale bluish-green.

BIZARRE NEWS OF THE WEEK -------------- Moon Nearly Nuked In Cold War -------------- The Pentagon: It has been revealed that a secret U.S. project in the 1950's called for detonating an atom bomb on the moon as a demonstration of the nation's Cold War might. The project was never carried out. But the planning included calculations by astronomer Carl Sagan - then a young graduate student. Officials believed that viewing the nuclear flash from Earth might have intimidated the Soviets and boosted Americans' confidence. A missile was to carry a small nuclear device and launched toward the moon, where it would be detonated upon impact. Officials apparently abandoned the idea because of the danger to people on Earth in case of a failure. [Thanks Harold for putting us on to this story in Air Force Times. Bizarre knows no bounds...] --------------- Just Call Him Bishop Naughty --------------- NEW YORK - Here's an award-winning career change; from bishop to cybersex writer. John Shelby Spong, former leader of the Diocese of New Jersey will be writing a new monthly column that will address issues of sexuality and how they relate to religion. "It's an attempt to discuss sexuality in a serious way... some people are treating this as some sort of salacious thing," remarked Spong. His new site ThePosition.com is being set up by former Penthouse editor, Jack Heidenry where the first issue questions if the Ten Commandments are biased against women. [Hey, its all in the name in higher spirituality right?] ---------------- Robber "Picked" By Victims ---------------- MEXICO CITY - Passengers on a Mexico City bus rallied together against their would-be robber, and killed him with his own ice pick. The robber/victim boarded a downtown bus, took out his weapon, and demanded cash from the other 20 passengers. They quickly obliged his request by taking his ice pick away; then they stabbed him to death ending his crime spree. Mexico City has a reputation for rampant street crimes where the victims take justice into their own hands. [It could have been worse; he could have used a melon-baller.] ------------------ Sweaty Swedish Succeed ------------------ STOCKHOLM - If you thought professional wrestling skimmed the surface of legitimate sporting events; you have to witness the Swedish national sauna championships. This grueling event requires men and women to outlast each other in a 212 degree Fahrenheit steam bath. The new women's champion Hilkka Loimi had a profound reflection about her victory, "It was hot." Her sweltering success took an entire four minutes and 28 seconds following closely behind the men's title time of five minutes and 10 seconds. [Who knew that sitting and sweating was a legitimate sport?] ------------------- Hemp Discrimination -------------------- The government agency that runs Boston's public transportation network is being sued in federal court for rejecting three advertisements from a group that wants police to stop arresting people who smoke marijuana. A spokesman for "Change the Climate" complained that the MBTA routinely carries government-produced anti-drug ads - and these infringe upon their rights. The lawsuit - filed on behalf of the group by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts - alleges the MBTA is ignoring federal court rulings that prohibit it from rejecting ads whose point of view it disagrees with. MBTA spokesman Brian Pedro, however, said the transit agency has the right to turn down ads it deems offensive or contains "promotional material that is harmful to juveniles." He added that the MBTA also doesn't allow tobacco ads on its trains, buses or subway stations. [Change the Climate should join with Act Up just for grins.] ------------ Doctor Blows House To Kingdom Come ------------ MASSACHUSETTS - Dr. William Moore of Boxford, Mass. was doing a little home improvement with a rented backhoe in his yard when he noticed a strong smell of natural gas. He called the gas company to report it, but before they could send anyone out the good doctor called back to tell them not to bother. His house was gone. The explosion and resulting fire completely consumed his five-bedroom, half-million dollar home. [We can only pray that Dr. Moore is better with a knife than he is with a backhoe.] Classic Bizarre Moments from the Archives *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Alberto J. Vasquez did pretty well when donned a mask and robbed a Dunkin' Doughnuts last week. He and a friend made off with over $1400. But he did some dumb stuff too. Alberto used to work at this same Dunkin' Doughnuts, and an employee thought he recognized Alberto's voice during the robbery. He was even more certain when Alberto's accomplice called him by his nickname "A.J." Police then followed a trail of coins and footprints leading directly to his apartment building, two doors down from the shop... you have the right to remain stupid...

WHAT POPULAR TREAT DID 11-YEAR-OLD FRANK EPPERSON ACCIDENTALLY INVENT IN 1905 AND PATENT IN 1924? The Popsicle, which he originally marketed as the Epsicle. Epperson inadvertently made the first one when he left a glass of lemonade with a spoon in it on a windowsill - and it froze overnight. IN WHAT DIRECTION DOES THE JET-STREAM FLOW? From west to east. HOW DID THE HORSE CHESTNUT TREE GET ITS NAME? From the early use of its chestnuts as a medicine for horses. WHY ARE MERCURY AND VENUS KNOWN AS INFERIOR PLANETS? Their orbits are closer to the sun than Earth's orbit. Planets orbiting the sun beyond Earth are referred to as superior planets.

News of the Weird * In April, Japan's ultra-serious Seibotu Raiders easily beat a more relaxed European team in the finals of the Kemijarvi international snowball championship in Finland, and afterward, several Japanese players urged Winter Olympics officials to recognize their sport. (Teams start with seven players and 270 snowballs on a field just larger than a tennis court, with some protective barriers; a direct hit eliminates a player, and the first team to seize the other's goal flag wins.) * Punch-Drunk From Litigation: The Brown & Williamson Tobacco company recently added another quixotic 800-number telephone message, this time featuring a male chorus serenading callers with "Oooh, the tobacco plant is a lovely plant / Its leaves so broad and green / But you shouldn't think about the tobacco plant / If you're still a teen." A 1999 message featured a sexy male voice intoning, "Brown & Williamson Tobacco is in love. We're a giant corporation, and you make us feel like a little kitten." "Thank you, lover." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Active Seniors At a January hearing in LaCrosse, Wis., child-molester Ellef J. Ellefson, 95, was ordered to remain confined beyond his sentence because experts said he was still incorrigible. Mr. Deo Dubbs, 88, was sentenced to probation-only in April in Sarasota, Fla., for buying crack cocaine, which he said gives him "pep." In April, first-time arrestee Ruth A. Goelz, 81, was charged in Hollywood, Fla., with running a $200,000 Ponzi scheme. Retiree Charles John Swanson, 71, was arrested in January for two armed bank robberies, allegedly committed because he was having trouble affording his rent in Palo Alto, Calif. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Cultural Diversity * Camel Mania: A January New York Times report from Selcuk, Turkey, described the massively popular sport of camel-fighting (in which one-ton camels in mating season simply push against each other until one falls over), which brings fame to the winning owner. And in a March New York Times profile, well-to-do Istanbul builder Ethem Erkoc revealed that he has constructed 10 swimming pools for Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, who permits his favorite camels to frolic in them. * Henk Otte, 43, lives most of the year as an unemployed construction worker in an Amsterdam, Netherlands, housing project, but he is also the chief of about 40 villages (100,000 people) in a region of Ghana about 45 miles from the capital of Accra. According to a January Associated Press dispatch, Otte was visiting with his Ghanan-born wife in 1995 when suddenly natives concluded he was their reincarnated king. At that time, Otte's reaction was that the villagers were "insane," but now says that being king "is my destiny." * The Hanoi (Vietnam) Institute of Social Sciences reported in February that many men, fearful toward the end of the lunar new year, had apparently turned to sex with pregnant prostitutes as a way of releasing evil spirits. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Well, Sure! * Male Stereotypes Come to Life: In January, Quebec researcher Jim Pfaus told the Montreal Gazette that the rat is the "ultimate example" of the male mammal always on the lookout to copulate with new females and that when given alcohol, male rats notoriously re-attempt sex with females who had just rejected them. And schoolbus driver Alexandre Belvu, 31, was arrested in Brooklyn, N.Y., in January for taking three kids on a ride that lasted eight hours because he couldn't find their school and apparently would not stop to ask directions. * Unfair Ethnic Stereotypes Come to Life: In March, police chasing an escaped circus tiger in a suburb of Warsaw, Poland, accidentally shot and killed the veterinarian trying to tranquilize it. And according to a February New York Times story, the textile company Francital has developed a fabric specially treated to absorb perspiration and body odors for people who can't bathe for up to 30 days at a time; the company is headquartered in France. * Jose Chavarria, 37, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Adel, Iowa, in February. He had killed his friend Jorge Villalobos only minutes after lamenting to friends that a psychic had told him that Villalobos was planning to kill him first. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Well-Put Sang Lee, the owner of a custom slaughterhouse near Minneapolis-St. Paul that serves the Hmong-American community (and speaking to a St. Paul Pioneer Press reporter in January concerning complaints about heavy slaughterhouse traffic): "We (Hmongs, natives of Laos and Thailand) have a complex culture, and we have to sacrifice animals a lot." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Learning to Kill Before They Learn to Shave In February, an 8-year-old boy, coming to his mother's aid, stabbed her abusive boyfriend to death in Coker Creek, Tenn. And in an Islamic public execution in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in February, a 10-year-old boy, now the eldest male in the family, took a rifle and did the honors to the man who had killed his father. And in Dover Township, N.J., in March, a 10-year-old boy argued with his father over missing chocolate icing and then, when the father sarcastically suggested the kid just take a knife and kill him, the kid complied. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Update In the five years since Bill Davis made News of the Weird by settling his 20-year dispute with Rhode Island over the pile of 10 million used tires (he says it's 30 million) on his property in Smithfield, contractors have gradually removed 4 million tires, at 79 cents each, and sold them as fuel. Federal and state officials still believe that a fire on the land would cause catastrophic environmental damage to Narragansett Bay, in that each melted tire would release about a quart and a half of oil. (A similar fire in Westley, Calif., in September burned for a month.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Least Competent Criminals Ill-Conceived Crimes: In Biloxi, Miss., in January, Ronald Dean Cherry, 52, was arrested after he called the Treasure Bay Casino and threatened to start shooting their customers unless the company delivered $100,000 within two hours to his home (address helpfully provided by Cherry). And Ronald Keith Graham, 45, was arrested in Des Moines, Iowa, in February and charged with burglary; according to police, he had stolen a TV set but rather than try to sell it to one of Des Moines' other 200,000 residents, he invited its former owners to his apartment, where he offered to sell it back to them for $150 and even suggested an easy payment plan. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also, in the Last Month ... A 26-year-old woman started an agency to say prayers for people too busy to say their own (at $1.50 a day and up) (Milan, Italy). A woman was convicted of arranging for her lover to get a penile implant using her estranged husband's health insurance (New York City). A 20-year-old, brand-new mother was arrested in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; she had allegedly dealt $650 worth of cocaine from her room in the maternity ward. An Israeli rabbinical council authorized three tons of bread for starving Ethiopians but, because it was Passover week, was forced to send only religiously correct but notoriously hard-to-digest unleavened bread. The Centers for Disease Control estimated that a 20-cent tax increase on a six-pack of beer would reduce gonorrhea in young adults by 9 percent. ################################################################ News of the Weird(tm) by Chuck Shepherd 2000(c) Chuck Shepherd. Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate All Rights Reserved. The name News of the Weird is a registered trademark of Chuck Shepherd.

Moose Muggings Plague Toronto TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's largest city is mounting a special patrol of police and parks officials to protect its downtown ``moose'' from more attacks by big-game vandals. The fiberglass, life-size moose, installed around Toronto as part of its Moose in the City promotion, have become the targets of vandals and graffiti attacks. Local companies bought the moose to help raise charity funds and boost tourism. Since they appeared, several have had their antlers torn off. That's outraged Toronto mayor Mel Lastman, who denounced the vandals as ``irresponsible'' and ``stupid'' and announced on Tuesday the creation of the special patrol, as well as a 24-hour hotline for citizens to call if they see any more moose muggings. ``These (moose sculptures) are done by Toronto's finest artists,'' the mayor said. Five of the 28 moose so far exhibited in Toronto streets were vandalized. One, purchased by the Canadian Red Cross, had its companion, a fiberglass beaver, kidnapped. But the moose in the heart of the city's financial district was got the worst treatment. Its antlers were ripped off four times in the last month, said its creator Michale Payeur, who suspects the mischief was committed by party-goers coming out of downtown night clubs or dejected hockey fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs. ``The first couple of times, I really just thought it was because the antlers were not strong enough and people were not doing it deliberately, but that they were just trying to lift themselves on top of the moose,'' he told Reuters. Companies can buy a moose sculpture for C$6,500 ($4,300). Mayor Lastman personally launched the Moose in the City promotion last February, aiming to attract about 2 million tourists to Toronto this summer. It was inspired by last year's Chicago Cow Parade, which was credited with attracting about 2 million tourists and boosting the local economy by about $200 million. About 300 moose are expected to be around Toronto streets until October.

Oh, The Time To Paint Those Nails Anne Boleyn had six fingernails on one hand, even though there were only five fingers on that hand. She had a small extra fingernail coming out of the side of her little finger. Some early accounts claimed that she actually had six fingers, although this was later corrected by George Wyatt to be the extra fingernail, rather than a whole finger. Some still disbelieve this tale, while others claim it to be true. (I thought she was reputed to have extra other things, as well...)

Vampire Fans on the Track of Drac POIANA BRASOV, Romania (Reuters) - Six hundred years after he earned the nickname ``Vlad the Impaler'' for disposing of victims on stakes, the warrior who inspired Bram Stoker's horror novel Dracula still has bite. Scholars, artists and fans from around the globe gathered in Romania Thursday for the Second World Dracula Congress, four days of lectures and debate on the blood-sucking legend. Time not consumed by academic pursuits was to be devoted to vampire-oriented entertainment, local wine (red) and repeated exposure to garlic, a feature of Transylvanian cuisine despite its alleged efficacy as a vampire repellent. The inspiration for Dracula was Vlad Tepes, the son of Vlad Dracul, a humble guard commander who was made ruler of Wallachia for fighting against the Turks, before he was murdered. Blood-curdling local legends about his son, who reclaimed the throne after a rebellion, helped inspire the Irish novelist Stoker's 1897 novel, as well as more than 180 films and other undead entertainments. ``Romania is the spiritual home for people interested in ghosts, vampires and the paranormal,'' said Alan Murdie, head of Britain's Ghost Club, as the event got under way in a dim, communist-era conference hall in this Transylvanian resort in forested mountains 105 miles north of Bucharest. Screenings of Gothic horror classics also are on the menu, and the launch of the latest learned book of the genre ''Dracula: Sense and Nonsense,'' by Elizabeth Miller of Newfoundland, Canada. ``I would like to bring DVD (digital-videodisc technology) and the Gothic together,'' said Paul Whiffen, from the British island Guernsey, who is developing a version of British author Sheridan Le Fanu's 19th century Gothic thriller Carmilla using the technology. Whiffen's DVD project, called ``Daughters of Darkness,'' stars two buxom blond British models and mixes rock music with the voices of Bulgarian women singers. Another event at the congress will be an evening session with Ingrid Pitt, a famed star of British Hammer horror thrillers, who will screen her cult classic ``Vampire Lovers.'' Pitt, hidden behind dark sunglasses, said her next project was a ``Dracula turns vegetarian'' movie. The film is in the pipeline, she says, mysteriously declining to disclose any details. Local organizers from the Transylvanian Society of Dracula (TSD) are trying to use the Dracula legend to draw tourists to Romania. But their efforts have been thwarted so far by three years of economic recession, which show in potholed roads and a still predominantly state-owned tourist infrastructure, badly in need of major capital investments. ``Dracula is a Western myth, and we want to put its magic to work here in Transylvania,'' said TSD president and conference host Nicolae Paduraru. His society organizes tours of Transylvania for Dracula aficionados and sells fiery local spirits, such as The House of Dracula plum brandy, or Alucard Dracula backward -- another brandy, at $2 per flask as souvenirs. Souvenir hunters at the conference also could take home palm-sized wooden coffins, certified to contain particles of earth from under Castle Dracula in Transylvania.

BIZARRE NEWS +---------------------- Bizarre Laws ----------------------+ Arizona 1. Cars may not be driven in reverse. 2. Cards may not be played in the street with a Native American. 3. Hunting camels is prohibited. 4. You may not have more than two dildos in a house. 5. Women may not wear pants. 6. A decree declares that anyone caught stealing soap must wash himself with it until it is all used up. 7. It is illegal for men and women over the age of 18 to have less than one missing tooth visible when smiling. 8. It is unlawful to refuse a person a glass of water. *** ------------------ The Lord Loses Lawsuit ------------------ MUNICH, Germany - Three theologians filed a lawsuit by proxy for Jesus Christ. They decided that both Protestant and Roman Catholic churches have brought the Lord's name into disrepute. The plaintiff's calling themselves, "brothers in spirit" argue that the church's roles contributing to wars had disqualified them from calling themselves Christians. They tried to invoke a law that allows people to defend the reputations of their dead relatives. "In view of their bloody history, it's a fraud," one member told the court. The judge threw the case out of court because Christians believe that Christ rose from the dead, thereby disqualifying him for posthumous representation. -------------------- Moose Mugging Melee ------------------- TORONTO - More tales of Canadian grief to report concerning the city's new promotional moose sculptures. The life-sized novelties have been vandalized, kidnapped, and sprayed with graffiti. Toronto's outraged mayor, Mel Lastman, publicly denounced the vandals and arranged for a special patrol, as well as a 24-hour hotline to ward off the moose malignments. So far five of the 28 exhibited throughout the city have been vandalized, and one purchased by the Canadian Red Cross came with a special pal; a fiberglass beaver. Said beaver has also been kidnapped. ------------- I'm Dreaming Of A Lewd Christmas ------------- NEW YORK - The creators of the lampoon music c.d., "Matt Rogers' Rated X Mas" are fighting a lawsuit filed in U.S. federal court by the company who owns the copyrights to some of our most popular holiday tunes. "Rudolf the Deep Throat Reindeer" and "Frosty the Pervert" might be missing from under the tree this year because the plaintiffs allege that the songs are not parodies as claimed by the defendants. The suit alleges that the songs are, "...simply unauthorized exploitations of the plaintiffs' famous holiday songs for cynical commercial gain, with the lyrics of the original works replaced by lewd lyrics." The final results of the lawsuit could officially put an end to Rudolf's life as a transvestite. ------------- Man On Time For His Own Funeral -------------- MADISON, Wisconsin - Bill Robert was on a mission to leave this world in style, but he didn't want to miss the tributes and accolades from his friends. He decided to throw his own funeral. The 89-year-old walked in front of his coffin and the six pallbearers during the Dixieland jazz procession. He invited hundreds of people as a gesture to pay back all of the wonderful friends he had made during his life. He got the idea when his friend Ginny O'Brien was asked to sing at a funeral last year. He commented about how sad it was that the deceased couldn't hear her music. ----------------- OJ Gets Bitch-Slapped ------------------- CALIFORNIA - OJ just can't catch a break. It seems that he is just destined to "have bad luck" as police were called to the scene to protect him from his enraged girlfriend. That's right, police entered his house after neighbors grew concerned at the loud ruckus. OJ's lady friend was restrained after she continued to pull his hair, scratch his face and generally "beat him up." No charges were levied. ------------------ Thanks For Dropping In ------------------ DERRY, N.H. - While it's unclear how the car actually got onto the roof of the house, police estimate that it was airborne for about 150 feet before crashing into the bedroom of Joanne and Mahlon Donovan. "The thing was right in front of my face," Mr. Donovan, 65, said. "I could feel the heat from the exhaust system coming through the sheets." The 20-year-old who was driving the car was later arrested for drunk driving. The unexpected arrival of an automobile into her bedroom was insufficient to awaken Mrs. Donovan, however, who had to be shaken awake after the crash. Classic Bizarre Moments from the Archives *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* A man in Dublin is suing the Bank of Ireland for damages after he lit himself on fire. John Coffey was denied a $2900 loan by bank officials, so he went to his car, returned with a can of gasoline, and doused himself. He took out his cigarette lighter and asked to "see his file again." When three police officers grabbed him, the lighter sparked, and Coffey went up in flames...

David sent these: 1 WILL THE REAL DUMMY PLEASE STAND UP AT&T fired President John Walter after nine months saying he lacked intellectual leadership. He received a $26 million severance package. Perhaps it's not Walter who's lacking intelligence. 2 WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS! Police in Oakland, California spent two hours attempting to subdue a gunman who had barricaded himself inside his home. After firing ten tear gas canisters, officers discovered that the man was standing beside them, shouting out to give himself up. 3 WHAT WAS PLAN B??? An Illinois man, pretending to have a gun, kidnapped a motorist and forced him to drive to two different automated teller machines. The kidnapper then proceeded to withdraw money from his own bank account. 4 SOME DAYS, IT JUST DOESN'T PAY! Fire investigators on Maui have determined the cause of a blaze that destroyed a $127,000 home last month - a short in the homeowner's newly installed fire prevention alarm system. "This is even worse than last year," said the distraught homeowner, "when someone broke in and stole my new security system..." 5 THE GETAWAY! A man walked into a Topeka, Kansas Kwik Shop and asked for all the money in the cash drawer. Apparently, the take was too small so he tied up the store clerk and worked the counter himself for three hours until police showed up and grabbed him. 6 DO-IT-YOURSELF BRAIN SURGERY?? In Ohio, an unidentified man in his late twenties walked into a police station with a 9-inch wire protruding from his forehead and calmly asked officers to give him an X-ray to help him find his brain, which he claimed had been stolen. Police were shocked to learn that the man had drilled a 6-inch deep hole in his skull with a Black & Decker power drill and had stuck the wire in to try and find the missing brain. 7 DID I SAY THAT??? Police in Los Angeles had good luck with a robbery suspect who just couldn't control himself during a lineup. When detectives asked each man in the lineup to repeat the words, "Give me all your money or I'll shoot," the man shouted, "that's not what I said! 8 OUCH, THAT SMARTS!! A bank robber in Virginia Beach got a nasty surprise when a dye pack designed to mark stolen money exploded in his Fruit-of-the-Looms. The robber apparently stuffed the loot down the front of his pants as he was running out the door. "He was seen hopping and jumping around with an explosion taking place inside his pants," said police spokesman Mike Carey. Police have the man's charred trousers in custody. 9 ARE WE COMMUNICATING?? A man spoke frantically into the phone, "My wife is pregnant and her contractions are only two minutes apart!" "Is this her first child?" the doctor asked. "No, you idiot!" the man shouted, "this is her husband!" 10 NOT THE SHARPEST KNIFE IN THE DRAWER!! In Modesto, CA, Steven Richard King was arrested for trying to hold up a Bank of America branch without a weapon. King used a thumb and a finger to simulate a gun but unfortunately he failed to keep his hand in his pocket.

NEWS OF THE WEIRD * Seven Brigham Young University students recently organized a Fight Club, inspired by the Brad Pitt movie and periodically drawing as many as 300 screaming spectators to watch college-age men pound each other into submission. Unlike in the movie, boxing gloves are used, and hunk-admiring women constitute almost half the audience, according to an April Salt Lake Tribune report. (Fighting is not against the BYU Honor Code, although watching the R-rated "Fight Club" movie is, and the fights are held late enough at night so as not to violate the Mormon "family home evening" concept.) * More than 500 accidental electrocutions were reported in Russia last year from people stealing power line electrical cables for resale as scrap metal. According to an April New York Times dispatch, more than 15,000 miles of power lines have been pulled down in recent years, rendering millions of households dark for weeks at a time. One recent victim, interviewed in intensive care, said he was confident when he saw a single line left on a pole, believing that thieves had taken the other lines safely; he is now without his left arm, right leg and colon. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Americanization of China According to a January Associated Press report, China has a government-sanctioned UFO research organization with 50,000 members, processing 500 alleged sightings a year, which is to be expected, said the director, because extraterrestrials, too, are interested in the country's rapidly developing markets. And Professor Liu Dalin opened a sex museum last year in Shanghai, with 1,000 exhibits, including a historical, imperial-palace stamp used to mark the derrieres of virgin girls. And according to an April Wall Street Journal story, there has been a recent "explosion" of successful litigation in China by elderly parents suing their children for failing to care for them in old age. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ooops! * The British supermarket chain Tesco announced in January that its film-processing department had collected a total of 24,000 photographs over the years in which customers had accidentally snapped shots with a finger on the lens (the right middle finger being the most popular). * Hussen Farah Mohammed, 46, was released from jail in Bloomington, Minn., in January after 16 months' incarceration for entering the U.S. illegally from Canada; he said he had accidentally wandered across the unmarked border while in the woods birdwatching, but after he was captured, Canada refused to take him back. And Houston car mechanic Edgar Garfield Gibbons, 41, returned to the U.S. in March after nine months in jail in Georgetown, Guyana, to which country he had been mistakenly deported when he was confused with a New Jersey man of the same name. * In December, former Gastonia, N.C., prison guard Timothy Ramey filed a legal challenge to his dismissal, saying the precipitating incident was merely a minor mistake. Ramey was arguing with his superintendent about something and became so frustrated that, in an effort to "ignore" what his boss was saying, Ramey reached into his briefcase, "pulled the first thing out" that he found, and pretended to concentrate on that. It was a copy of Playboy magazine, which infuriated the superintendent. * In December, a joint committee of the Colorado Legislature approved an emergency grant of $75,000 to Morgan Community College in Fort Morgan, Colo., after it dawned on administrators that, because of "an oversight in the plan for the project," the just-finished student center building had no restrooms. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I Don't Think So * Latest Unsuccessful DUI Excuses: John B. Byrnes, Windsor County, Vt. (January): claimed he was in the passenger seat, and that it was his setter ("Becky") that was driving. Ronald McDonald Jr., 40, Norristown, Pa. (November): claimed he drove a short distance only so his girlfriend could clean her hands after changing a diaper so she wouldn't dirty the steering wheel. A 76-year-old man, Milwaukee (February): claimed he was under a doctor's orders, driving or not, to have two drinks a day. * In 1996, a federal court in Miami ordered Cuba to pay $187 million to the families of three Cuban-American men on protest flights shot down by Cuban military jets in open waters. In November 1999 (three weeks before Elian Gonzalez was rescued off the Florida coast), in perhaps a retaliatory court proceeding at Havana's Provincial Popular Tribunal, the United States was found to have harmed Cuba through 40 years of "aggressi(on)" and was ordered to pay the Castro government $181 billion. * In February in Largo, Fla., James Brian Kuenn, 40, was convicted of killing a teen-age girl, despite his claim that she had accidentally fallen and hit her head; Kuenn said he was so embarrassed at the accident that he made it look like murder to throw police off. And Thomas Storey, 27, was sentenced to 26 years in prison in Santa Ana, Calif., in December for murdering his wife, despite his claim that she had actually killed herself; he said he stabbed her dead body 25 times only to simulate murder to spare their son the shame of his mother's suicide. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Well-Put Saskatchewan legislator Brad Wall, lamenting in December the invasion of bats at Regina General hospital: "I'm not sure what is more disturbing: the fact that nurses spend part of their day catching bats or that nurses were advised not to catch these particular bats because they could be rabid." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Recurring Themes * Twice in the last five weeks, News of the Weird has reported on dental-office abuses in the U.S. In November, a Melbourne, Australia, dentist was accused by the Victorian Dental Board of professional misconduct for allegedly engaging in the unauthorized (but not unheard of) facial-pain remedy of administering ozone through the patient's rectum, including 15 treatments to one patient in a three-week period. Advocates of the treatment say it can also be administered in the ear. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Least Justifiable Homicides At a village near Jericho in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, police said a Muslim woman beat her 10-day-old son to death in January because he preferred to be breastfed by his father's other wife. And in Tokyo in March, Mitsuko Yamada, 36, pled guilty to killing a 2-year-old girl, apparently solely so that Yamada would no longer have to face the girl's mother, who had allegedly ignored Yamada during the neighborhood playground's social hour when mothers gather while their kids play. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also, in the Last Month ... A German shepherd police dog was caught shoplifting a slab of prime rib from a grocery store (Waukesha, Wis.). Police said two arrested drug dealers had been routinely issuing customers receipts but also charging them sales tax (Victoriaville, Quebec). A man pled guilty to burglary and the theft of Big Mama, a 50-pound halibut that was the main attraction at a showcase hatchery (and which the man also ate) (Redondo Beach, Calif.). Police phone taps of computer hacker "Mafiaboy" inadvertently uncovered an unrelated plot by the hacker's father to beat up a business associate (Montreal). Honolulu Heart Program researchers linked consumption of tofu during middle age to subsequent decline in brain function. ################################################################ News of the Weird(tm) by Chuck Shepherd 2000(c) Chuck Shepherd. Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate All Rights Reserved. The name News of the Weird is a registered trademark of Chuck Shepherd.

TOP 10 USELESS FACTS FOR THE WEEK ? - The original name of Pepsi-Cola was Brad�s Drink. ? - It has been medically proven that pessimism raises blood pressure. The more pessimistic a person is, the more likely he or she is to die earlier than optimistic counterparts. ? - Chicken feet are an extremely popular dim sum dish in Asia. Not surprisingly, they aren't popular with Americans. Simply prepared, chicken feet are cooked in a black-bean sauce. The proper way to eat them is to put the entire foot in one�s mouth, suck off the meat, and spit out the bones. ? - Bill Cosby�s wife, Camille Hanks, is a direct descendant of Nancy Hanks, Abraham Lincoln's mother. ? - Reindeer have scent glands between their hind toes. The glands help them leave scent trails for the herd. Researchers say the odor smells cheesy. ? - The bulbs and leaves of the daffodil contain poisonous crystals, which only a select few insects can eat without suffering an agonizing death. While squirrels and other rodents won't eat them, they may dig up the bulbs. ? - Author of "Animal Farm" and "1984", George Orwell worked as a policeman before turning to a writing career. ? - The godfather of actress Winona Ryder was the late Dr. Timothy Leary, LSD guru of the 1960s. Winona�s father, Michael Horowitz, served at one time as Leary�s archivist and ran a bookstore called Flashback Books. Additionally, her parents were politically active intellectuals, and Beat poet Allen Ginsberg was a good family friend. ? - Oysters were a major part of life in New York in the late 1800s. They were eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; they were pickled, stewed, baked, roasted, fried, scalloped, and used in soups, patties, and puddings. Oystering in New York supported large numbers of families, and oyster theft was a prevalent problem. ? - Hockey netminder George Vezina picked up the nickname ``The Chicoutimi Cucumber'' based on the name of his birthplace in Quebec and because opponents said he was as cool as a cuke when he tended nets for the Montreal Canadiens from 1917 to 1926. The trophy for NHL goalies is named after Vezina.

USELESS LIST OF THE WEEK 10 World Cities With The Most Skyscrapers City # of Skyscrapers 1. New York City 140 2. Chicago 68 3. Houston 36 4. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 25 5. Los Angeles 24 6. Dallas 22 7. San Francisco 20 8. Shanghai, China 20 9. Singapore, Singapore 13 10. Sydney, Australia 18 The first modern, steel-framed skyscraper was the Woolworth Building in New York, built in 1913. The Woolworth Building cost $13.5 million - which F.W. Woolworth paid in cash. Its 29 elevators were the world's fastest.

What's the definition of a skyscraper? Wow, Kuala Lampur is up there along with Houston and Dallas.

Skyscraper: (getting out my Webster's Collegiate)n. very tall building How vague can you get?! NEWS OF THE WEIRD * The chief justice of oil-rich Brunei ruled in March that Prince Jefri, the 46-year-old brother of the Sultan of Brunei, was entitled to an allowance of about $300,000 a month while awaiting trial on the Sultan's lawsuit that Jefri misspent $15 billion while in charge of the country's investments. A preliminary audit showed that playboy Jefri had bought himself $2.7 billion worth of toys in 10 years, including 17 airplanes, 2,000 cars, and a huge yacht that he named "Tits," and whose two dinghies he named "Nipple 1" and "Nipple 2." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ An Urban Legend Come to Life Two years ago, in a bogus Internet news story, a South African hospital with a high fatality rate had discovered that a cleaning lady had been plugging her floor polisher in each night by briefly unplugging an appliance that was, unknown to her, a life-support machine. In November 1999, Chicago's TV Channel 7 lost sound for 25 minutes on the final night of the crucial ratings "sweeps" week when cleaning-service personnel plugged a floor buffer into the station's master control outlet, overpowering an audio circuit and driving away 40 percent of the prime-time audience. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Government in Action * After Ivory Coast's soccer team was eliminated from the African Nations Cup in January, the country's military ruler, Gen. Robert Guei, had the team arrested and put in a military prison for two days. Addressing the players, Guei said, "I asked that you be taken there so you reflect awhile. Next time (if you play badly) you will stay there for military service ... until a sense of civic pride gets into your heads." * In January, a Philadelphia city-funded community organization published a pamphlet on health and safety tips for prostitutes, which recommended always getting on top, negotiating price before getting into a car, and getting the money in advance. Also in January, a member of the Canadian Parliament released a list of recent pamphlets directly funded by the government, including "How to Communicate With the Dead," "How to Stimulate the G-spot," and "How to Understand and Enjoy an Orgasm." * Despite many anti-smoking programs sponsored by the U.S. government, a Senate subcommittee found last year that the Department of Housing and Urban Development had spent $4.2 million since 1996 to help American Indians build discount cigarette stores as part of the federal community block-grant program. (In April 2000, legislation was introduced in the Senate to end the practice.) * In January, a New York state administrative law judge ruled after four hearings in three years that Krystyna Maliszewska, 51, of Brooklyn was not eligible for worker compensation because she had not provided the proper "medical evidence" that her leg had been amputated (even though voluminous hospital records were in her file). Maliszewska attended each hearing and could have shown her artificial leg and the stump that ends at her right knee but was never asked even to speak. (After a February New York Daily News story, the state quickly reopened the case.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ People With Issues * Wynema Faye Shumate, 65, was arrested in Ladson, S.C., in March on two charges of mishandling a dead body. The case came to light when a 27-year-old Englishman flew to America to marry Shumate after a hot Internet romance but discovered that Shumate was not the age-30ish woman she had portrayed online. According to police, when the man asked Shumate if she had other surprises, she told him about the carved-up body in the freezer, which was that of her male former housemate, who Shumate said had died the year before of natural causes. Shumate was cleared of causing the death, but, according to the Englishman, the wedding is off. * In a case unique among women who keep too many cats at home, a judge in Fairfax County, Va., told U.S. Navy program analyst Kristin Kierig in November that she could keep the 104 cats that share her Annandale, Va., townhouse because the house is apparently clean and the cats groomed and in good health. Kierig produced medical records on the cats, showed that she cleans the 101 litter boxes twice a day and keeps the 15 water bowls and 20 food bowls stocked, and said she can recognize each cat by name (but she did confess that her house might have an "odor"). * In March, Benjamin Thomas Douglas, 34, was sentenced to 180 days in jail for the latest in what police call serial public masturbation incidents in the middle of department stores in Dallas and its suburbs of Plano and Mesquite. And the month before that, Philadelphia police were hunting a man in his early 20s for seven incidents of public masturbation at area fast-food outlets over a four-month period; in each case, according to the police reports, the man reached a climax quickly and then left without his order. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Recurring Themes * News of the Weird has regularly reported highway truck spills over the years, but a December spill in Providence, R.I., interwove another News of the Weird theme: the tacky, wayward public official. Rhode Island Department of Transportation maintenance supervisor Thomas E. Jackvony Jr. was charged with larceny because, according to police, when he was supervising the cleanup of grocery-store items from an 18-wheeler's spill, he also grabbed whatever items he could and put them into his car. Police recovered 15 packages of cookies, 15 home electronic scales and 20 cassette tapes. * More Divine Dentistry: A News of the Weird roundup in July 1999 listed several cities in which worshipers recently have claimed that, following prayer, gold teeth and fillings appeared in their mouths in place of the previous porcelain and silver. Later that year, similar divine outbreaks occurred, at a New Life Community Church revival in Weatherford, Texas, and with Pentecostals in Orangevale, Calif. As with the earlier instances, some of the faithful stuck to their claims even when their own dental records showed they had gold fillings all along. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Only Way Out A 57-year-old Halifax, England, man, distraught at his wife's death, decapitated himself with his homemade guillotine (December). A 30-year-old man attempting suicide in Rustenberg, South Africa, put a firecracker in his mouth and lit it; the explosion shook his house and mangled his face, but he survived (January). A 29-year-old man, driving to work at rush hour near Washington, D.C., and arguing with his fiancee on his cell phone, shot himself to death, with the resulting collision tying up traffic for hours (February). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also, in the Last Month ... A man in a wheelchair and wearing a beanie robbed a Wells Fargo Bank, instructing the tellers to fill the beanie with cash (Pleasant Hill, Calif.). A woman won $171,000 from a jury for slipping on a piece of broccoli in a Grand Union supermarket (Bennington, Vt.). A Washington, D.C., police officer was found guilty of sexual assault, becoming the 16th officer on the force in 15 months to be convicted of a crime. The Ohio liquor control agency banned as offensive the Belgian ale Manneken Pis because its label features a boy urinating. At least two viewers smashed their TV picture tubes trying to kill the high-definition cockroach crawling across the screen as part of a recent Orkin commercial. News of the Weird(tm) by Chuck Shepherd 2000(c) Chuck Shepherd. Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate All Rights Reserved. The name News of the Weird is a registered trademark of Chuck Shepherd.

They not only tried to kill the cockroach in the commercial, they tried to sue Orkin. With no success.

I know - I think that is hilarious......and all too real in the tropics! BIZARRE NEWS +------------------- Bizarre Judgments --------------------+ Frustrated by the routine release of women convicted of misdemeanor prostitution, one judge in San Francisco set a hooker's bail at $5 billion. In 1981 Deuel Wilhelm Davies of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, was sentenced to 10,000 years in prison for a triple murder, one of his victims being his mother-in-law. A man in Winthrop, Maine, divorced his wife because she "wore earplugs whenever his mother came to visit." In 1995 Leon Taylor, convicted of murdering a man during a 1994 robbery in Kansas City, Missouri, was sentenced to death, PLUS life in prison, with an additional 315 years tacked on for good measure. --------------- The Crown Jewels They Ain't ---------------- LONDON - London's Design Museum is revealing their new under- wear exhibit. The nation famous for its reserve is displaying sheepskin corsets, silicon-gel-insert brassieres, vacuum-packed thongs, radiation-proof panties, and a glow-in-the-dark bra, among other provocative, titillating and tassled items. One of the hottest features is Alexander McQueen's pink satin corset crusted with black Swarovski crystal suspended inside giant inflatable women's legs in transparent plastic. When they're finished in the UK the exhibition will tour Japan and Australia. -------- You Can Take The Boy Out Of The Country... -------- A lawyer for country superstar Tim McGraw says it was all a mistake when McGraw and fellow country artist Kenny Chesney were arrested outside Buffalo, N.Y.'s Ralph Wilson Stadium. The arrest came after Chesney rode off on a police horse and McGraw allegedly attacked deputies who tried to stop him. The Erie County Sheriff's Office says Chesney rode off, and ignored orders from deputies to stop. When the deputies tried to round him up, the sheriff's office says McGraw and several members of his roadies set upon the deputies. ----------- Widow Turned Sleuth Catches Her Man ------------ SOMMATINO, Italy - A recently widowed lady, Maria Gentile, has a technique Columbo never used to get his man. After becoming suspicious regarding the murder suspect of her husband, she decided to take matters into her own hands. Simon Burgio knew Maria and her husband and was infatuated with her. So after he asked Maria out days after burying her husband, she concocted the plan to sleep with him. After she professed her love for him, he confessed to the murder. Maria went to authorities the next day and Simon is now in prison. -------------------- Kids Will Be Kids --------------------- DUBLIN, Ireland - Law enforcement officials are not immune from being bitten by the stupid bug. Rookie cop Andrew Blanton was a proud uncle and father. His eight-year-old son and nephew sneaked into his room at night and found his handcuffs carelessly left on the nightstand. They did what any normal kid would do. They handcuffed Andrew�s hands together while sleeping and threw away the key. Upon waking, Blanton had to drive to a local locksmith to free himself. -------- Swedish Inventor Makes Paper From Elk Dung -------- STOCKHOLM - Here's another one in the mmmmm... what made them even try this? A Swedish inventor has discovered a new way of making paper...from elk dung. Sune Haggmark and his partner, Ann-Mari Remahn, experimented with a food-mixer and an oven before finding the right consistency that would make paper, the tabloid Expressen reported on Monday. They take eight to 10 elk pats, add water and a secret binding agent and turn the dung into a small sheaf of A5-size paper. The really strange phenomenon to come out of this new invention is that tourists from Russia, France and Germany have trekked to the couple's place of business to buy the paper and Sune's latest product, elk dung visiting cards! [You wouldn't invite these folks to a wedding just to avoid the thank-you note.] ----------------- A Heap of Hillbilly Help ----------------- MOUNTAIN VIEW, Arkansas - This is for readers around the globe who are a bit short on how Hillbilly folks cure their sick. The Ozark Folk Center Cookbook is filled with "great" advice like curing a common cold by kissing a mule. Have a hangover? Simply mix up a mess of owl eggs, scramble 'em and eat your heart out. [Is it me or are the cures worse than the problems? Move over Alabama...Arkansas is moving in on you as the most Bizarre state in the union.] Classic Bizarre Moments from the Archives *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* A Detroit man committed suicide this week with an AK-47 and took his friend with him. Elrod J. Hill fired the semi- automatic rifle into the right side of his head. The bullets came out the left side and killed his friend Brian Olesky, who was sitting next to him on the couch.

THE INTERNET AS A JOB CREATOR According to new research, nearly 2.5 million people worked at Internet jobs at the end of 1999 -- up 36 percent from the end of 1998. Researchers at the University of Texas Austin -- funded by Cisco Systems Inc. of San Jose, Calif. concluded that the Internet has raised productivity and has established itself as a key factor in the sustained economic expansion. According to CNN, the study found that nearly 2 percent of all U.S. workers owe their jobs to the Internet -- including jobs in dot.com companies, making computers used to surf the Web and even laying cable that carries online data. A business professor who helped write the report -- Anitesh Barua -- says the rapidly growing Internet economy is facing a shortage of qualified workers. Her conclusion was supported by none other than Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who said in Washington this week that, "Anybody in this country who has an -- even just an undergraduate degree in computer science -- will get 10 or 12 job offers, you know, fantastic job offers." ROCKER DOESN'T WANT TO DEAL WITH 'THIS GARBAGE' Controversial Atlanta Braves relief pitcher John Rocker was a no-show for a second straight night at his new job -- with Atlanta's Triple-A farm team, the Richmond Braves. Rocker told an Atlanta radio station Wednesday he might just give up baseball and become a stock broker. He said: "I don't know if I'm even going down (to the minors) or not. I'm still pretty chapped about the whole situation." The Braves say they demoted Rocker in order for him to work out his pitching problems. Sports writers and analysts across the country are nearly unanimous in their skepticism -- they think Rocker is being punished for threatening the writer of the Sports Illustrated article that made him infamous for his offensive comments about minorities, gays and immigrants. He said Wednesday he's "just not wanting to play anymore," and "there's plenty of things I can do besides deal with the headaches of this garbage every day." If he does report to the Richmond Braves, Rocker can expect a mixed reception in the former capital of the Confederacy. City Council member John Conrad told the Post, "We have enough loudmouth racists in Richmond already -- we don't need any more." Salim Khalfani, executive director of the NAACP'S Virginia chapter, told the paper Rocker is coming into a city that "has much racial tension and in fact, there's one side that's still fighting the Civil War." Ron Doggett, president of the Virginia chapter of the National Organization for European-American Rights, tells the paper he expects to be part of a standing ovation when Rocker first takes the mound for the Triple-A Braves. He says, "We're not as politically correct in Richmond." EMINEM FREE ON BAIL Eminem -- the rapper with the No. 1 album on Billboard's chart -- was freed on $100,000 bond Wednesday, after his arraignment on two felony weapons charges in connection with a fight outside a Detroit-area nightclub Sunday night. The Grammy-winning rapper pleaded not guilty to one count of carrying a concealed weapon and one count of assault with a deadly weapon. In contrast to his stage persona, Eminem wore a black suit, a shirt and a tie to court -- accessorized by handcuffs. Judge Susan Chrzanowski gave the rapper permission to go through with plans for a national tour, but she ordered him to provide prosecutors with his itinerary any time he leaves the state. She told the rapper whose real name is Marshall Mathers -- that if she finds out he has possession of "any sort of weapon...your bond will be revoked and you will be sitting in the county jail." The rapper told authorities he carried the unloaded pistol for protection because he did not want a bodyguard. He reportedly went to the club to spy on his wife, Kimberly Mathers, who wrote in a letter to the Detroit Free Press, "I don't think anybody in their right mind would cheat on a millionaire husband -- especially with a nobody at a neighborhood bar." The publicity comes at the same time as news in Hollywood that Eminem is preparing to star in a movie based on his life. Eminem plans to join Dr. Dre in San Diego next Thursday for the "Up In Smoke" tour.

? ? ? ? THIS WEEK'S USELESS KNOWLEDGE ? ? ? ? ==================================================== TOP 10 USELESS FACTS FOR THE WEEK ? - Japan consists of the four large islands of Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu, and about three thousand smaller islands. ? - Okonomiyaki is considered to be Japan's answer to pizza. It consists of a potpourri of grilled vegetables, noodles, and meat or seafood, between two pancake-like layers of fried batter. ? - Almost every weekday morning, Kleenexes are handed to the commuters in front of Japan's rail and bus stations for free. The tissues are distributed by workers of the companies whose messages and advertisement are printed on the packages. The reason for this.... most public bathrooms do not have paper towels or toilet paper! ? - While many Japanese customs are disappearing, the practice of sending New Years cards and seasonal gifts called O-chugen and O-seibo is as strong as ever. The Japanese Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications delivered nearly 4.5 billion New Years cards in 1999, or about 32 cards for every man, woman and child in Japan. ? - The Japanese business environment requires strict adherence to rules of etiquette. Graduating students prepare for important job interviews by first learning how to bow properly and show proper manners when entering and seating themselves in the interview room. Japanese Bowing carries different meanings at different angles. - A Bow at an angle of five degrees means "Good day" ( simple greeting). - A Bow at an angle of fifteen degrees is also a common salutation, a bit more formal it means "Good morning". - A Bow at an angle of thirty degrees is a respectful bow to indicate appreciation for a kind gesture. - A Bow at a forty five degree angle is used to convey deep respect or an apology. ? - Few Japanese can use chopsticks as well as their parents, due in part to the popularity of Western cuisine. As a result, an increasing number of elementary schools in Japan are introducing chopstick etiquette into their programs. Traditionally young children are taught to distinguish left from right by teaching them that their right hand is the one they hold their chopsticks in, while their left is the one that holds the rice bowl. ? - The children's game Rock, Scissors, Paper is popular in Japan also. Called "Janken", the game is also played by some children using their feet. Closed feet equal stone (gu). Spread legs equal paper (pa). One foot behind the other equals scissors (choki). ? - Japanese people do not have a middle name. In Japan, last name comes first, and the first name comes last. ? - In Japan, some restaurants serve smaller portions to women even though the charge is the same as a men's portion. ? - Blowing your nose in public is considered rude in Japan. The handkerchief is uses primarily for wiping the mouth or drying your hands when leaving a restroom.

USELESS LIST OF THE WEEK Top 10 Most Common Words In The English Language Spoken Written 1. the the 2. and of 3. I to 4. to in 5. of and 6. a a 7. you for 8. that was 9. in is 10. it that Various surveys have been conducted to establish the most common words in spoken English of various types, from telephone conversations to broadcast commentaries. Many other words such as yes and well, also appear with far greater frequency in everyday speech than in the comparative list of the most common words in written English, which is based on a survey of newspaper usages.

The top ten percent of a high school class shall not contain more than ten percent of the total class size. ... -Clarifying Rules by the Coordinating Board Concerning HB 588, Automatic Admission of Students in Top 10% of Graduating Class *********************** When tftd first published the above it was thought to be a nonsense item. However even with the clarifying rules some high schools in Texas have managed to have the top ten percent of the class be larger than 10% of the total class size. One ruse was in the case of a tie for number one ranking the third person was given the ranking of 2nd rather than third. Other schools determined the top 10% ranking based on the average GRP for the school for the past several years.

The above is from Thought for the Day from TAMU

BIZARRE NEWS +-------------------- Bizarre Festivals -------------------+ CHEESE-ROLLING (U.K, May). Cheese-rolling has taken place on the slopes of Cooper's Hill, near Birdlip in Gloucestershire, since the 15th Century. When the cheese is released, competitors run down the hill and attempt to catch it before it reaches the bottom. The event was permanently cancelled when eight people were injured in 1992. DAY OF THE DEAD (Mexico, 2 November). According to Indian folklore, this is the day when the deceased return to life. Families conduct macabre graveside picnics, offering food to the dead, and then tuck into a feast of their own, eating chocolate coffins, sugar wreaths and fancy breads adorned with skulls and crossbones. GOTMARR FESTIVAL (India, September). During the full moon, the 45,000 inhabitants of Pandhura divide into two groups and start hurling rocks at one another until sunset. In 1989, there were 616 casualties, including four deaths as a result of the event. GRANDMOTHERS' FESTIVAL (Norway, July). First held at Bodo in 1992, the festival sees grannies riding motorbikes, racehorses skydiving and scuba diving. The star of the inaugural event was 79-year-old Elida Anderson who became the world's oldest bungee-jumper. RUNNING OF THE SHEEP (U.S., September) Reedpoint, Montana stages a gentle alternative to Spain's famous Running of the Bulls. Hundreds of sheep are released down Main Street for six blocks. There are also contests for the ugliest and pretties ewes while shepherds assemble to recite poetry. ----------- Clinton Fumes Over German Cigar Gift ----------- GERMANY - President Clinton's evening went up in smoke after being presented with a box of cigars as a gift. The cigars came from Cuba and the President reportedly lost the smile on his face when it was presented to him. It was not known whether he was embarrassed because of the role cigars played in the Lewinsky affair or because they are considered contraband in the US. ------------- Deer Found Taking Bubble Bath --------------- HOWARD, PA - When Connie Beck and her husband awoke to strange noises, they thought high winds were rattling their windows. What they found was even more unexpected: A deer was taking a bubble bath in their tub. The deer burst through the front door, ran past the couple's bedroom and into the bathroom, somehow managing to turn on the water in the tub and knocking over a bottle of bubble bath. He then submerged himself in the frothy water. The Becks called state Game Commission officials, who arrived at their Center County home with tranquilizers and a lot of laughter. The animal was subdued, removed from the house and released. ------------ So They Sell Different Kinda Tools ------------ WEST PALM BEACH, FL - It's nothing like Home Depot on the inside. A strip club called Adult Depot has been sued in federal court by the Atlanta-based home improvement chain. Home Depot claims the club copied its trademark, and is using a mascot similar to their Homer. Company attorney Steve Levy, "We don't want any confusion between our company and a business we don't want to be associated with." The lawsuit seeks to remove Adult Depot's signs from its clubs in Lake Worth and Boynton Beach. Lawyers for Adult Depot, which also sells X-rated videos, books and toys, said they think Home Depot is just over-reacting. ------------------- Watch What You Say! -------------------- WATERFORD TOWNSHIP, MI - All someone said was "Hi, Jack!" but at a suburban Detroit airport, that was enough to create a crisis. A microphone happened to be open Monday when someone greeted the co-pilot aboard a corporate jet, and the tower heard "hijack," police Lt. Rick Crigger said. Oakland International Airport tower officials called the Waterford police, who in turn called in a whole extra shift of police, the Oakland County Sheriff's Department SWAT team, the FBI and other federal authorities, Crigger said. The plane was told to return to the tower, and the pilot's identification was checked. Once the alarm was over, the law officers could laugh about it.

News of the weird: LEAD STORIES * In past years, a favorite summer fund-raising game for some parishes in the Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati has involved placing a small rat on a roulette-type wheel, spinning the wheel, and selling bets on which slot the rat will stagger to. This year, however, according to a Scripps Howard News Service report, local animal rights activists have protested, but in early responses, at least one parish has vowed to continue the game anyway. Said one activist, "The Church said it was OK to spin animals. What's to keep someone from going home and putting their cat in a dryer?" * Fox Network's Far-Ranging Influence: On April 27, a reporter for Russia's RTR television arrived in the town of Ivanovo to shoot a piece on a housewife merrily feeding her family while her soldier-husband was away serving as a peacekeeper in Kosovo. However, the reporter had received word minutes before that the husband had just been killed on duty. Thus, the reporter shot some "before" scenes, in which the carefree wife earnestly spoke of her husband's imminent return, and then the "after" scene, featuring uncontrollable crying after the reporter broke the news to her. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Latest Hate-Crime News In January, the general manager of a Ford-Toyota dealership in Lake City, Fla., told reporters that the acid-splashing vandalism on his lot should be punished as a hate crime because only Fords were hit. And in Berlin, Germany, owners of pit bulls and other aggressive breeds planned a May protest against proposed legislation to ban the dogs; organizers planned to dress their dog-victims with yellow Stars of David, which is what Third-Reich-era Jews were forced to wear as identification. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Police Blotter * Recent Weapons: In a bar fight, one woman hit another on the head with a toilet lid (Rock Island, Ill., January). A 21-year-old man wielding a small python robbed a convenience store (Oklahoma City, December). A man holding a dildo and wearing a jockstrap over his head robbed a Hungry Howie's of $40 (Toledo, Ohio, February). A man robbed an adult sex shop, menacingly waving a vibrating tongue at the clerk (Pinellas Park, Fla., February). * Those Compassionate Canadians: The man who cleaned out the cash register at a Tim Hortons doughnut shop in Hamilton, Ontario, in February came back a few minutes later and returned the portion of the money that had been segregated as employees' tips. And in April, recently released sex-assaulter Jody Robinson, 33, offered one of his kidneys to his 1996 victim, who is awaiting a transplant. * Great Detective Work: Suspicious police in Spokane, Wash., after questioning Harold Anthony Mazzei, 32, at a January traffic stop, decided to arrest him: The only way Mazzei could turn off his car's engine was using pliers and a screwdriver (and, indeed, the car was stolen). And in February, suspicious police in Chicago decided to arrest Steven Coleman, 24, for robbing a family sewing-machine shop and provoking a fracas while the owner was heating chicken noodle soup for lunch: Coleman was later spotted nearby with noodles in his hair. And in November, suspicious police in Sydney, Nova Scotia, decided to arrest a 38-year-old man on drug charges after encountering him dazed with syringes hanging from both arms. * Police in Dublin, Ohio, arrested alleged veteran thief Rudolf Nyari, 64, in April for taking a diamond bracelet from Leo Alfred Jewelers. Nyari had handled the bracelet, then left the store, after which an employee noticed it missing. Police, aided by a license-plate number, stopped Nyari just outside town, searched his car fruitlessly, and threatened to take him for x-rays. Later, according to a detective, Nyari "drank several glasses of water and smoked cigarettes to build up enough phlegm to cough (the bracelet) up." The bracelet was 7 inches long and contained 39 diamonds. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Continuing Crisis * A court in Lusaka, Zambia, issued a final divorce decree in March to John Sakapenda and Goretti Muyutu, despite Ms. Muyutu's last-second, unsuccessful attempt to persuade the judges that, by custom of her village of Chingola, the couple was obligated for one last round of sexual intercourse. * In December, the longtime North Korean ambassador to China issued another of his periodic rants in Beijing denouncing the 150-mile-long, high (16 to 26 feet tall) and thick (33 to 62 feet wide) concrete "wall of division" that South Korea built 20 years ago that "artificially bisects" Korea. Despite the vividness of the description, according to The New York Times and numerous diplomats from many countries who have visited the area, there is no wall there of any kind and never has been. * In Englewood, Fla., in February, minutes after Judy Neuhaus had scolded her son Ryan for not taking better care of his 1995 Mercury Cougar, a sputtering, single-engine Cessna cleared some trees and fell nose-first onto the car, doing considerable damage to both vehicles but not seriously injuring the pilot. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Well-Put Mob informant Tommy Del Giorno, living a new life under the federal witness security program (quoted in a New York Times story in January): "Legitimate people are worse than mob people. All the time I was in the mob, I never really wanted to kill anybody. Out here in the legitimate world, there's 10 people I've met that I would kill." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Recurring Themes In 1997 News of the Weird reported that a female murder suspect had sued Kiowa County, Okla., after an inmate had sex with her, impregnating her, through the bars of their respective cells in the county lockup. In February 2000, Britain's Prison Service launched an inquiry after Donna Stokes, 19, became pregnant after her boyfriend had sex with her through the bars of their temporary cells in the Swansea Crown Court building while both were awaiting a hearing on burglary and theft charges. Said Stokes of the couple's brief encounter: "We hadn't seen each other for months." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Thinning the Herd * In April, a 43-year-old recreational snow-machiner was killed in an avalanche in Alaska's Hoodoo Mountains while "highmarking," or driving to hit ever-higher peaks on the slopes; earlier that day, he had been pulled, in shock, from another avalanche after highmarking and advised by rescuers to quit. And a 30-year-old motorcyclist was crushed to death near Phoenix in December after an apparent road-rage incident in which he sped up quickly to overtake a pickup truck, swerved in front of it, and then deliberately slammed on the brakes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also, in the Last Month ... A 39-year-old man was convicted of selling cocaine, with an enhanced penalty because the deal took place near Rosemary Minor Park, which is named for a deceased community activist, who was the man's mother (New Orleans). A handcuffed stolen-car suspect allegedly took $23 from a state trooper's wallet while in custody in the front seat of a cruiser (Frederick, Md.). A 39-year-old driver, scheduled to report to prison in two weeks for his fourth DUI conviction, drove drunk and collided with another car, killing a 5-year-old boy (Stockton, Calif.). Thieves dug up and stole almost an entire backyard garden (trees, ornaments, shrubbery and cement pond) (Bristol, England). A medical journal reported that large-breasted women are more likely to suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome than small-breasted women (Tuscaloosa, Ala.).

+---------------- Bizarre Court Statements ----------------+ "I object to your calling me a person, your honor." [Rodney Skurdal in 1996 when asked by a federal magistrate if he had the right person before him.] "What are you talking about, some 'witness,' man, There was only me and her in the store." [Blurted out by a defendant in objection to testimony by a police officer who accidentally used the term "witness" instead of victim.] "I enjoyed drinking while driving. It's one of the most pleasurable habits I've had. [Steven L. Johnson explaining his situation to the judge who had sentenced him to two years in prison.] "I sued for $2,500 and the judge gave me $837.29. I don't think he realizes how much a girl's hair means to her. [Lauryl Boyer on the award she received for a bad perm.] *** --------------- World Record Toast Tosser ----------------- DUBLIN, Ireland - Just when you thought that the Olympics had the best that amateur sports had to offer comes Peter McGouran. It seems that he was obsessed with having a world record under his belt so he set out to break the record for tossing a piece of toast further than any human had ever thrown. The new record is 191 feet, 4 inches and Peter is now the world�s greatest toast tosser. --------- Man Drops Dead in Search of Living Proof --------- BOGATA, Colombia - A search for living proof ended in a dead end for an 87-year-old man. Arturo Suspe died of heart attack while waiting in line to obtain a certificate to prove that he was still alive. The "survival certificate" would have allowed Suspe to continue receiving his $133 monthly pension. Authorities in central Cundinamarca introduced the certificate in late November to reduce the number of incidents of con artists collecting pensions issued in the name of deceased recipients. "This was a pure accident and a very lamentable incident," Cuandinamarca governor Andres Gonzalez said of Suspe's death. ------------- Man Rescued From Portable Toilet ------------- HUNTINGDON VALLEY, PA - Here's one that you just want to yell at the guy, "What were you thinking!" Authorities were dispatched to rescue a man who got stuck in a portable toilet. How? The genius lost his keys down the opening and decided he'd better go down and get them. Luckily for him, some kids were playing nearby and heard his cries for help. The police arrived to find the man stuck in the toilet's lower chamber up to his hips. The man, who was not identified, had taken off his shoes and pants for the unpleasant task. He told police he had been in the predicament for at least 45 minutes. The man was treated for cuts and bruises. Doctors also had to remove the toilet seat, which had become wedged around his torso. Classic Bizarre Moments from the Archives *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* An LA doctor extracted sperm from a corpse that had been dead for over 30 hours. Sperm cells were frozen and years later introduced into the dead man's widow. "The birth opens up a whole new area of reproduction," says Dr. Rothman. There are no shortages of critics. Some say that property rights will be manipulated as women rush to steal sperm from dead men without wills to impregnate themselves and therefore have the resulting children rightful heirs.

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321 If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes. No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple. Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired." Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village." There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.

Great Moments in Physics The following concerns a question in a physics degree exam at the University of Copenhagen: "Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer." One student replied: "You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building." This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed. The student appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case. The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct, but did not display any noticeable knowledge of physics. To resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer which showed at least a minimal familiarity with the basic principles of physics. For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought. The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn't make up his mind which to use. On being advised to hurry up the student replied as follows: "Firstly, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out from the formula H = 0.5g x t squared. But bad luck on the barometer." "Or if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper's shadow, and thereafter it is a simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work out the height of the skyscraper." "But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the gravitational restoring force T = 2 pi sqroot (l / g)." "Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up." "If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course, you could use the barometer to measure the air pressure on the roof of the skyscraper and on the ground, and convert the difference in millibars into feet to give the height of the building." "But since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to knock on the janitor's door and say to him 'If you would like a nice new barometer, I will give you this one if you tell me the height of this skyscraper'." The student was Niels Bohr, the only person from Denmark to win the Nobel prize for Physics.

+------------- Bizarre Product Warning Labels -------------+ Air Conditioner - Caution: Avoid dropping air conditioners out of windows. Blow Dryer - Warning: Do not use while sleeping and keep away from water. Rowenta Iron - Warning: Never iron clothes on the body. Vacuum Cleaner - 1. Do not use to pick up gasoline or flammable liquids 2. Do not use to pick up anything that is currently burning. Earplugs - These ear plugs are nontoxic, but may interfere with breathing if caught in windpipe Mattress - Warning: Do not attempt to swallow Matches - Caution: Contents may catch fire. Korean Kitchen Knife - Keep out of children. Pepper Spray - Caution: Never aim spray at your own eyes.

NEWS OF THE WEIRD LEAD STORIES * Accomplished toy inventor Brian Walker, 44, told the Newhouse News Service in June that he would, by next summer, launch himself on the world's first homemade space shot (blasting off at 4,000 mph, to a height of 30 miles, using 10 tanks containing 7,000 pounds of hydrogen peroxide as fuel, at an overall expense of $250,000). The spacecraft he built is 9 feet tall, will be propelled from a 30-foot-long trailer, and has a capsule that will return him to earth via parachutes. A jet-propulsion engineer at Cal Tech said Walker's plan was actually pretty sound, in theory. * Lean Times for La Cosa Nostra: Despite a massive federal, state and local law-enforcement operation against organized-crime gambling and loan-sharking in south Florida, capped by a six-count federal indictment in June, the evidence actually revealed rather dismal business prospects for the Colombo crime family in the area. According to the indictment, Colombo muscleman "Joey Flowers" Rotunno and his crew earned gambling income of less than $2,000 a day. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ O.R. Surprises Orthopedic surgeon Nicholas Cappello had his license lifted in April by the Arkansas Medical Board for as many as 20 botched surgeries featuring such errors as metal plates screwed to the wrong bones or screws missing the bone altogether. And patient Robert Banks sued the Earl K. Long Medical Center in Baton Rouge, La., in March, complaining that he went in for a heart bypass in 1995 but came out merely circumcised (which doctors said was a necessary antecedent to the surgery because he required kidney-monitoring equipment). (For unrelated reasons, the surgeons decided, after setting Banks up, not to do the bypass.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Compelling Explanations * In February, Nova Scotia provincial judge John MacDougall ruled that a doctor who had masturbated two teen-age boys numerous times in his office had not violated the law because he had thought his unorthodox procedure was a valid medical treatment for the patients (one of whom had complained merely of blurred vision after a fall). (Two weeks later, a prosecutor exercised a rare constitutional procedure and indicted the doctor directly before the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia.) * Calvin Jerold Burdine's 1983 Texas death sentence was overturned by a federal judge in September 1999 based on his lawyer's having slept during key parts of his trial. Because the judge ruled on the sleep issue, he was not required to decide a second issue that also might have contributed to the original death sentence: The prosecutor had been allowed to tell the jury that Burdine should not get a mere life sentence because "Sending (Burdine, an openly gay man) to the penitentiary (considering prisons' homosexual activity) isn't a very bad punishment." (In June 2000, a federal appeals court heard oral arguments on Burdine's sleeping-lawyer issue.) * In March, in the heat of a battle in the Mexican legislature over adopting daylight savings time, opponent Sen. Felix Salgado put forth his strongest argument: Advancing the clocks an hour will reduce daylight time in the morning, curtailing many "mananeros," or couples' morning sex. "(N)ow when you wake up," said Salgado, "your partner is no longer there because she had to take the kids to school." * In Boston in June, federal judge Mark L. Wolf ruled that convicted wife-murderer Robert "Michelle" Kosilek is entitled to go to trial on his demand that the state prison system provide him free "sexual reassignment" surgery so that he can serve his life-without-possibility-of-parole sentence as a woman. A court-appointed psychologist recommended that Kosilek get not only sex-organ substitution but the feminization of his face, removal of body hair, and access to makeup, hair care and nail polish because to ignore his needs would further Kosilek's "sadness and sense of loss" at having been born of the incorrect gender. * In a Norfolk County, Mass., court in March, Andrew Clary, 36, pled not guilty to murdering his girlfriend, a death that occurred when his car rammed hers twice after an argument and forced her into the path of an oncoming car. However, Clary told the judge that he really only "tapped" the woman's car in order to get her to turn around and head to a hospital so she could be treated for having ingested illegal drugs. * In 1999, James Weber of Calgary, Alberta, paid his tax bill (equivalent to about $75,000 U.S.) dollar-for-dollar with Colombian pesos (worth about $50 U.S.), arguing that the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency failed to print its dollar signs with two bars through the "S." A dollar sign with only one bar through the S, he said, is used only by several South American currencies, and thus he is now paid in full. (In March 2000, an appeals court ruled against him, despite his having produced several favorable historical banking documents from as far back as 1910.) * In April, after her arrest for robbing a Springfield, Mo., Bank of America, Joyce Lingle told police that she had not read the note that she had handed a teller (and for which she received a bag in exchange) and only began to suspect there had been a bank robbery after she walked out the door and saw employees lock it behind her. Lingle is married to a jailed murder suspect, was in the company of a second man during her bank transaction, and implied to police that the two men were just using her. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ So Much for the Revolution in Corsica The guerilla separatist movement in Corsica was dealt a severe blow in June when its leader for the last 20 years, Marcel Lorenzoni, 50, and his son, Pierre, 21, stabbed each other to death during an argument in their hometown of Bastelica. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Update News of the Weird reported in 1994 that then-recent government figures showed the death toll of young women in India killed by their mothers-in-law for insufficient dowries had risen to 4,700 per year. In May 2000, Canada's Southam news service reported that a jail in Delhi, India, is seriously overcrowded with such mothers-in-law (including also those who merely have threatened, assaulted or imprisoned their sons' wives) and that the death toll is now 6,300 per year. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Least Competent Criminals Bad Decisions: Ernest Michaelson, 45, was arrested in Bridgeport, Conn., in January, just after allegedly robbing a United Bank; he was discovered around back, where he had interrupted his getaway in order to count the money ($857). And two women were arrested near Carlsbad, N.M., in January, where their car had run out of gas; acting on a hunch, a patrolman found that the gas tank held surprisingly little gasoline because the inside of the tank was taken up with packages containing about 80 pounds of marijuana. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also, in the Last Month ... A Leesburg, Va., Safeway employee of 30 years' standing won a $27,500 settlement for being fired for buying a few blemished, discounted fruit without management authorization. One female guest bit off part of another's nose in a wedding-party brawl (Prince Albert, Saskatchewan). Police finally caught the man they suspect in the nine-month exhibitionist spree of the "Big Bonnet" (previously in News of the Weird), who dresses in oversized baby clothes (North Platte, Neb.). A judge reduced a statutory rapist's sentence because of the 14-year-old victim's "advanced" "maturity" at 5 feet 11 inches, 200 pounds (Spartanburg, S.C.). A man lunging to kill a housefly fell 59 feet out of a window onto two roofs and into a river (but suffered only minor injuries) (Ennetbaden, Switzerland).

An ostrich's intestinal track is up to 45 feet long. The name of the dog on a box of Cracker Jacks is Bingo. Ernest Lawrence Thayer, who penned "Casey at the Bat," received five dollars for penning that particular piece in 1888. Wilt Chamberlain, who was 7 feet, one inch tall - his parents were only five feet, eight inches tall. Pigs can become alcoholics, according to the US government. Why would they ever want to know that particular fact?

Government Verbosity: Pythagorean theorem: 24 words. The Lord's prayer: 66 words. Archimedes' Principle: 67 words. The 10 Commandments: 179 words. The Gettysburg address: 286 words. The Declaration of Independence: 1,300 words. U.S. Government regulations on cabbage sales: 26,911 words.

News of the Weird(.649) LEAD STORIES * No Way -- An Insincere Lawyer! Attorney Michael Lazaroff, 50, pled guilty in St. Louis in June to federal charges that he gave clients extravagant gifts over the past seven years, totaling $380,000, but then surreptitiously inflated their bills with phony charges in order to make clients pay for their own gifts. Lazaroff's "generosity" included concert tickets and trips to Las Vegas. * Lost in the public debate over whether DNA testing should be done on death-row convicts is the case of Texan Roy Criner, now 33, who is in no danger of execution but has been imprisoned since 1990 (sentence: 99 years) for rape, despite a subsequent DNA test concluding that the sperm in question was not his. One appeals court had overturned Criner's conviction even before the DNA test was performed, but the state's highest court reimposed the conviction, and in interviews with the PBS TV program "Frontline" in January, Judge Sharon Keller of that court said that Criner was nonetheless properly convicted even though the sperm did not match.

* Pedro Valls Feu Rosa, a state supreme court judge in Brazil, has developed the artificial-intelligence software program Electronic Judge so that clerks operating laptop computers at the scenes of traffic accidents and other disputes can dispense even-handed justice by inputting facts and having the program reach judicial decisions instantly. According to an April report in London's The Independent, most parties seem satisfied to have their cases tried while they are still fresh, with witnesses present, but the inventor acknowledges that his program is not appropriate for cases requiring complex interpretations of the law. * Several press accounts from Cambodia recently reported on the emerging preferred form of retaliation by that country's spurned boyfriends: to splash battery acid in the woman's face. A Deutsche Presse-Agentur story found a dozen victims in Phnom Penh during the winter. A similar but short-lived fad in 1997 saw dozens of jilted men toss hand grenades at their would-be girlfriends. * The Manchester (Conn.) Journal Inquirer reported in March that heroin was so cheap in nearby Hartford that one police lieutenant had seen the price as low as $2.50 per dose (a 10th of a gram), which would mean that someone buying it in a convenience store parking lot, for example, would be paying less for it than a pack of cigarettes sold inside. * In March, Remy Bricka set out from Los Angeles to "walk" to Sydney, Australia, using a pair of boatlike skis and a long paddle and towing a catamaran behind him containing supplies and a place to sleep. And in April, Belfast, Northern Ireland, hospital worker Willie Nugent raised money for charity by "swimming" across a river in downtown Dublin, Ireland, despite the fact that he cannot swim; instead, Nugent crawled across a bridge, in movements resembling a breast stroke. (The swimmer made it, but the walker's catamaran was wiped out by a storm on the first day, and he had to quit.) * The Environmental Protection Agency told reporters in May that it could not begin cleanup of the toxic Kim-Stan landfill near Roanoke, Va., because whoever owns it has been hiding out ever since a bankruptcy proceeding in 1990. The government cannot legally begin to stop the leaking of cadmium, manganese, zinc and aluminum into the nearby Jackson River without the owner's permission. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In Their Own Words Wesleyan University (Middletown, Conn.) freshman Cara Herbitter, explaining in April the rationale for the 35-member campus club formed to celebrate women's sexuality (and which was born out of the university's production of the off-Broadway play "The Vagina Monologues"): "If you don't make a point of talking specifically about vaginas, then they don't get talked about." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Recurring Themes In 1998, News of the Weird reported on a married couple forced to live apart because the American husband was barred from Canada, and the Canadian wife was barred from the U.S. (both because of criminal records), and who could spend time together only on the U.S.-Canada bridge at Niagara Falls, which they regularly did. Another couple in the same situation apparently had decided a while back that meeting on the bridge was not good enough, and in February 2000, Shawn Gibson was convicted in St. Catharines, Ontario, for the sixth time for entering Canada illegally to see his wife, and sentenced to five months in jail.

+----------------- Bizarre Canadian Laws ------------------+ You may not pay for a fifty-cent item with only pennies. Citizens may not publicly remove bandages. In British Columbia, it is illegal to kill a sasquatch. In New Brunswick, driving on the roads is not allowed. In Montreal, you may not swear in French. Also in Montreal, citizens may not relieve themselves or spit on the street. Punishable by a fine of over 100 Canadian dollars. In Beaconsfield, it is considered an offense to have more than two colors of paint on your house. In Toronto, you can't drag a dead horse down Yonge St. on a Sunday. The city of Guelph is classified as a no-pee zone.

-- Emergency Landing On Truck Complete Surprise to Pilot --- CHILOQUIN, Oregon - Howard Hamer, 63, had just taken off from the airport in the desert town of Chiloquin when his single- engine plane lost power. He decided to attempt an emergency landing northbound on U.S. 97 when a flatbed truck pulled up underneath him. The plane's propeller snagged on the sleeper of the truck while the tail crashed down onto the empty trailer bed. If the plane had actually landed in traffic a serious injury would have surely resulted. As it turned out, no one was hurt, and neither the truck driver nor Hamer was aware the other was even there until the impact.

News of the Weird(.650) LEAD STORIES * The most creative example of Filipinos' newfound national mania for sending text messages by cell phones, according to a July New York Times report, is that of Muslim guerrillas at war with government troops in the southern islands: Ever since they uncovered documents with army troops' cell phone numbers, they have extended their hostilities by pecking out insults during lulls in combat. * The sudden January death of wealthy former Kansas stockbroker Marshall Gardiner at age 85 created a constitutional-law crisis when Gardiner's only offspring, Joe, 53, learned that his father's recently acquired 40-year-old bride had been born a male. Ms. J'Noel Gardiner had had her Wisconsin birth certificate changed to female, which was honored in Kansas City, Mo., where she lives, but not honored across the state line in Kansas, where she got married. She said she disclosed the matter to her husband before the wedding; Joe said his father was too religious to have accepted such an arrangement. The fate of Marshall's estate is still in the courts. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Importance of Alcohol More Evidence That Drinking Is the Cornerstone of Weird News: A retired police officer was arrested on suspicion of DUI after he pulled into a gas station and attempted to withdraw money from a gas pump, as if it were an ATM (Reno, Nev., May). And a drawbridge operator was fired for drinking on the job after he opened the bridge without warning, forcing a car to leap the gap, James Bond-like (St. Pete Beach, Fla., May). And a 24-year-old man, partying with two friends, leaped from a roof into a Dumpster and landed, seat-first, on a protruding, nail-studded piece of wood (Ottawa, Ontario, May). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Can't Possibly Be True * Officials at the West Valley, N.Y., nuclear storage site, still working an 18-year, $1.5 billion radiation cleanup, began in February testing their latest hoped-for miracle product: zeolite, the primary ingredient in cat litter. Zeolite apparently sucks up strontium 90 just as well as it absorbs odors and moisture in the litter box. * In May, to forestall a California Health Department crackdown, LaserVue Eye Center (with offices in San Francisco and Santa Rosa) sent letters notifying its 2,700 recent surgery patients that it has been reusing its single-use surgical blades after merely rinsing them in water. Investigators found that the company did at least sterilize the blades after every fourth use. Allegedly, LaserVue's Dr. Sanjay Bansal said he continued to use the blades because he wanted only ones that he was sure had worked. * In June, the Nottingham (England) Evening Post profiled archer Paul Hawthorne, who has won various titles despite the fact that he lost one arm in a motorcycle accident 15 years ago. Until recently, Hawthorne competed by holding the bow string with a leather strap in his teeth and pulling his head back, but that practice has cost him one tooth after another, and he believes his competitive archery days are over. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Entrepreneurial Spirit * May dispatches in The Times of London and the Daily Telegraph featured Veronique Jullien's School of Seduction in Paris (with 2,000 graduates since 1995), whose typical assignments are, for men, to pick up strangers, and for women, to attract strangers though taking no initiative. The nine-month curriculum runs about $2,300, but a one-month crash course costs about $1,000. Jullien's most helpful tip: "Everything happens in the first few seconds of contact." * Recycling in Beijing, according to a February New York Times report, is relatively efficient because a crew of about 80,000 rural migrants rummages through the city's garbage daily to pick out anything that could conceivably be resold or sent to recycling plants. "We're performing a valuable service for the city," said one garbage picker, "but everyone looks down on us." Another said he now earns almost 20 times as much as he did as a schoolteacher in a rural province (but still only about $70 a month), and some workers even make enough money to pay hotels for exclusive rights to their garbage. * In May, two boys, ages 15 and 16, were charged in West Bend, Wis., with forming a startup business that took customers' orders and fulfilled them by shoplifting from local stores, mostly Wal-Mart. The boys carried business cards and order forms for their company, Globex, whose mission statement was, "To provide you with the things that you need at the cost you deserve." * In March, a court in Osaka, Japan, squelched the brilliant software creation of Takuya Kiuchi, 33, whose program removes forever the digital blurring that soft-pornographic Web sites use to hide genitals from nonintended viewers. And in June, John Young, operator of a private Web site on national security issues, experimented and found he could download (from The New York Times Web site) the original CIA report on the 1953 Iranian coup before the black censor bars could appear and hide classified parts of the report. Young's clean version of the report went onto his Web site, but the CIA said it has figured out how to prevent recurrences. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Slow Learner In June, the Kentucky Supreme Court suspended lawyer Robert Michael Stevenson for five years for failing to pursue a client's case and then for lying to the client about that. At the time of his suspension, Stevenson was already under a five-year suspension handed down in February. In the eight months before that, Stevenson had been suspended three other times: for 181 days in October, for 90 days in September, and briefly in July. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Recurring Themes * Last year News of the Weird reported that the Navy was to begin using off-the-shelf copies of Microsoft's Fight Simulator software ($50) in its pilot training to reduce the expense of commercial jet simulators. In April 2000, Japan's trade ministry notified Sony Computer Entertainment that it would need government approval to export the PlayStation2 video game because the technology is so sophisticated that it could be helpful on guided missile systems (for example, distinguishing graphic images quickly enough to direct in-flight missiles to targets). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Least Competent Criminals Police in El Cerrito, Calif., arrested David Hill, 18, in April, for carjacking. According to police, the victim he decided on was a man he had met earlier in the day while in the driver's license line at the Department of Motor Vehicles. All the victim had to do was go to the DMV office and select the carjacker's photo from among that day's applications. And Joey Donnel Simmons, 29, was sentenced to 30 years in prison by a Houston judge in March for the armed robbery of taxi drivers. Simmons came to the attention of the police when he and his accomplice walked into a station house to inquire about the reward posted for catching the taxi drivers' robbers. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also, in the Last Month ... A 42-year-old man illustrated his unresolved sewer problems at a city council meeting by dumping a five-gallon bucket of human waste on the meeting table (Delta, Iowa). A 35-year-old pregnant woman, just sentenced to three years in prison for drug trafficking, gave birth in the courtroom and named the girl "Ginaya" ("felony") (Damietta, Egypt). A 56-year-old man was arrested for forcing a man at knifepoint to urinate into his cup (Boulder, Colo.). A Toronto community group announced free distribution of "clean" crack pipes to the city's "most marginalized" crack cocaine users. The Border Patrol announced it had broken up a smuggling scheme in which Mexicans were given bikes and biking gear and sent speeding through border crossings as if they were part of an international race (Laredo, Texas).

The National Safety Council says more Americans choke on toothpicks than choking on anything else. "Celluwipes" was the original name of Kleenex during the initial marketing effort in 1924. There are 11 points on the Canadian flag. Montgomery Ward's first catalog was only one sheet of paper. It was first printed in 1872. I don't believe thery publish the catalog anymore (are they even still in business?). Almost half of the bones in your body are in your hands and feet. Istanbul, Turkey is actually in two continents - Asia and Europe.

News of the Weird(.651) Originally published 07.30.00 LEAD STORIES Eight farmers in the town of Nemaha, Iowa (population 112), have taught themselves to perform various square-dancing routines (do-si-do's, promenades, etc.) while seated on, precisely maneuvering, their tractors, according to a June San Francisco Chronicle dispatch from the heartland. However, an apparent problem for the farmers is that all are males, while square-dancing is a couples activity. Thus, four of the dancers operate their tractors while in calico skirts, under the apparent belief that cross-dressing is more acceptable than having an overtly same-sex dance partner. In June, the New Meat Theater in San Francisco's Tenderloin district opened a cybercafe (first-come, first-served computers with high-speed Internet connections, plus scanners, printers and digital cameras) in an upstairs room, the first such facility specifically designed for surfing pornography, sort of "a kinky version of Kinko's," according to owner Terrance Alan. In fact, said Alan, the theater's nude male dancers might roam the computer room, "enhancing the Internet" with a "fourth dimension: the ability to touch." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Suspended for Being Effective Artists In April, high school junior Charles Carithers was suspended from the prestigious Latin Academy in Boston after complying with a class assignment to write a horror story. In Carithers' tale, a menacing student cut off the teacher's hand with a chain saw, which the real teacher interpreted as a threat. Said Carithers in defense, "If I wrote a student killed his taxi driver, that doesn't have the same effect." And in January, senior Sarah Boman was suspended from Bluestem High School in Leon, Kan., for the rest of the year after complying with an assignment to create art that emphasizes an idea, rather than an object. She drew a large mural of jumbled words representing, she said, the rantings of an "obsessive, compulsive, paranoid" madman, but that, too, was interpreted by the teacher as a threat to her. (After appeals, both suspensions were lifted.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Awesome! In Clacton, England, in March, a freak gust of wind propelled Chris Grimes, 17, holding his oversized kite, for a half-mile at a height of 25 feet, until he touched down in a mud bog. And in Fairhaven, Mass., in May, a 65-year-old woman was hit by lightning and lifted from the ground into the back of a pickup truck, reaching a height of 12 feet, according to witnesses; she was taken to St. Luke's Hospital in New Bedford but not seriously injured. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Not My Fault In February in East Providence, R.I., the family of the late boater William J. Hussey, 55, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city, arguing that Hussey's fatal heart attack was caused by Assistant Harbor Master Paul J. Williams during a 1998 incident. However, according to police reports, all Williams had done was to yell at Hussey, who was maneuvering his boat without required navigation lights. Hussey's nearly last words were, to Williams, "Mind your own (expletive deleted) business." In February, former Chicago municipal treasurer Miriam Santos was released from a prison work camp near Pekin, Ill., when her federal extortion conviction was overturned on appeal. She met immediately with reporters and announced that she would try to regain her old job at the next opportunity and said, about her crime, "I am probably the first woman to go to jail (merely) for PMS-ing." In March, a representative of a private prisoner-transportation service in North Dakota told the legislature that the reason convicted murderer-child molester Kyle Bell escaped from the company's bus in October was that prison officials failed to inform the company that Bell was an escape risk. The paperwork on his transfer, said the company, showed only that he was serving a life sentence. Mark Merrill, 38, filed a lawsuit in February in Gary, Ind., against Donald Trump, alleging that the reason Merrill turned to bank robbery (in Peotone, Ill., in 1998 and Mokena, Ill., in 1999) was excessive debt, in that the floating Trump Casino in Gary fed his gambling addiction by enticing him to wager, even offering him free trips to Las Vegas. In Tampa, Fla., in March, Ed O'Rourke filed a lawsuit against Tampa Electric Co. (and several taverns) because he absorbed 13,000 volts after he climbed up one of the company's transformers in what he called a "drunken stupor." The voltage knocked O'Rourke from the transformer, burned 60 percent of his body, and left him with a permanently dead right arm. O'Rourke told a Tampa Tribune reporter that he is "unable to control his urge to drink alcoholic beverages." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In Their Own Words Zamora the Torture King (mentioned in News of the Weird in 1999 for his outrageous Jim Rose Circus act of swallowing a length of twine and then removing it on stage via self-surgery on his stomach), to a New York Post reviewer in May on what his parents think about his act: "I told (Mom) a while ago that I was a fire-eater, and it got her upset, so I haven't told her much more. My dad's just happy I'm successful doing something." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Recurring Themes The Classic Middle Name (all new): Charged with murdering a college student he met on the Internet, San Antonio, April: Kenny Wayne Lockwood. Arrested for the murder of two Canadian tourists in Mexico, December: Donald Wayne Rainey. Arrested for the murder of a high school student during a shooting spree inside an apartment building, Corpus Christi, Texas, June: Louis Wayne Watters Jr. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Least Justifiable Homicides A 37-year-old man was charged with beating another to death in a dispute over whom a "Planet of the Apes" video belonged to (Roanoke Rapids, N.C., June). A 41-year-old man was charged with smashing his landlord's skull with a sledgehammer after the landlord had cautioned him to lift the seat when he uses the toilet (Wealdstone, North London, England, March). A 45-year-old motorist was charged with shooting a police officer to death during a traffic stop because he feared additional points on his driver's license (near Frankfurt, Germany, February). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also, in the Last Month ... A dog exploring a discarded pickled pigs' feet jar on June 18 got his head stuck inside and constantly ran in fear from neighbors who tried to help, until a man freed him on June 30 (Mobile, Ala.). The unrelated Republican Steve Nass of Whitewater, Wis., and Democrat Steve Nass of Lake Mills, Wis., 20 miles away, officially filed for election to the state legislature. A 27-year-old man, upset at the judge's setting a high bond for him on a charge that he beat his mother, viciously rammed his head into a courthouse wall and is now paralyzed (Parma, Ohio). A 35-year-old grocery customer was arrested after he beat up a man who was behind him in line but who had tried to jump ahead when an adjacent register opened (Westport, Conn.). Thanks This Week to James McKaskie, Mike & Paula Bauer, Ronda Bumgardner, Jeff Frazer, Steve Abbott, Paul Blumstein, Paul Tucek, and Joel O'Brien, and to the News of the Weird Senior Advisors and Chief Correspondents. ################################################################ News of the Weird(tm) by Chuck Shepherd 2000(c) Chuck Shepherd. Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate All Rights Reserved. The name News of the Weird is a registered trademark of Chuck Shepherd.

Bizarre News ------------- What a Difference a Day Can Make ------------- FORDYCE, Arkansas - One day will get you twenty, or it could for an inmate that decided to flee from jail the same day that a judge ordered his release. Sherman Lee Parks, 50, had served nine months in the Dallas County Jail. According to Dallas County Sheriff Donny Ford, "The judge ruled that since they had been locked up for nine months to let them out." Parks, now wanted for an escape attempt was re-arrested and sent back to the Dallas County Jail the next day. ------------------- Revenge Of The Apes -------------------- PILANA, India - Here is a story that will soon hit the Discovery Channel. More than 2000 monkeys whose habitat had been destroyed invaded the small village of Pilana. Residents had to barricade themselves in their huts and homes to avoid the savage attacks of the simian sect. More than 50 people were treated for monkey wounds and game officials from nearby Bikaner finally had the village under control after two days of terror. ------------- The Road Rage Special of the Week ------------- POWELL, Tennessee - In an effort to combat anti-gun campaign- ers, a used car dealer in Tennessee is offering a "Buy a car and get a free rifle" special on Saturday. Buyers will receive a voucher redeemable for a used, bolt action rifle at GunCraft Sports in nearby West Knoxville, Tennessee. Those redeeming the vouchers in the one-day promotion would have to comply with all government regulations showing they are qualified before they could acquire the weapon. According to Greg Lam- bert, head of Advantage Auto Sales, he and the Knoxville- based rights group have been upset by some anti-gun activi- ties, including a recent gun buy-back conducted by the Knox- ville Police Department -- a move the rights group said was needlessly disarming the citizens of Knoxville and wasting taxpayers' money. --------------- 60 Gallons and Still Pumping --------------- ST PAUL, Minnesota - Harry Loomer, aka "Bloody Harry," earned the rare 60-gallon pin from the American Red Cross while on a visit to St. Paul, where he topped off his 60th gallon of donated blood. Since 1954, Loomer said he has donated blood 480 times in 21 states and about 80 cities, as well as in Can- ada and the Philippines. For reaching the 60-gallon mark last week, the St. Paul branch of the Red Cross had a little party for Loomer at which the staff sang an original tribute written to the tune of "I'm Just Wild About Harry." A large red-and- white cake had 480 lifesavers on it. Loomer, who claims he has not been sick in 50 years, says he is "going for 100 gallons."

The moral of this piece of news - is - don't get bitten by a rattlesnake!!! Monday August 28 5:45 PM ET US running short of rattlesnake anti-venom By Steve Mitchell WASHINGTON (Reuters Health) - A nationwide shortage of rattlesnake antivenin (antidote to snake venom) is looming in the US, after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) closed a production facility belonging to Wyeth-Ayerst, the only manufacturer of the product.The FDA closed the company's Marietta, Pennsylvania plant due to quality control problems late last year. ``Portions of that plant were closed for renovations in December,'' Wyeth spokesperson Doug Petkus told Reuters Health. This is the same plant that produces Wydase, an absorption enhancer of other drugs, which has resulted in a nationwide shortage of that drug as well.In a July 12 letter to several hospitals, including the Hi-Desert Medical Center (HDMC) in Joshua Tree, California, Wyeth notified the centers of an anticipated shortage of the antivenin.The stock of the product, Wyeth said, was being placed in a controlled inventory and orders would be ``filled only to end users on an emergency basis.'' The company added, ``It is likely there w ll be periods when product is unavailable, including this year's period of peak usage.'' ``It's a nationwide problem,'' Deborah O'Connor of the HDMC, told Reuters Health. The HDMC sees many rattlesnake bites each year because it is located in an environment that is ``rattlesnake heaven,'' Herman Galicia, Director of HDMC's pharmacy, said.``What you're going to see is people suffering from the shortage, if it continues,'' O'Connor said, because hospitals' supply of antivenin can be exhausted just treating one patient.Galicia noted that the HDMC had only about 40 vials on hand, which is more than any other center in the area but is only enough to treat ``2 bites or 1 very, very serious one.'' However, Wyeth's Petkus said, ``The controlled inventory seems to be working efficiently and according to plan.'' In addition to the southern part of California, rattlesnake bites are seen frequently in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Utah and the Midwest, O'Connor said. Petkus said he is ``not aware of any'' incidents in which the company had to rush antivenin to a hospital for treatment of a rattlesnake bite. But he noted that the company ``has the ability to get the antivenin anywhere in a matter of hours.''Rose Ann Soloway, associate director of the American Association for Poison Control Centers, said that bite victims need treatment immediately. ``A couple of hours'' may be okay, she said, but ``24 hours is too long.'' The HDMC has not seen any bites since the shortage was announced and no centers ``have called me needing antivenin,'' Galicia commented. He added that the peak season for rattlesnake bites is past and that the HDMC generally does not see any bites after September.Soloway said the biting season ``probably will extend to Fall, but it really depends on the weather.'' If it gets cold, the snakes become less active and consequently there are fewer bites. Normal production of the antivenin should resume in ``the first quarter of 2001,'' Petkus said. The FDA did not return phone calls from Reuters Health on Monday.

LEAD STORIES On July 4 at Coney Island in New York, Japan's Kazutoyo "The Rabbitt" Arai (who weighs 101 pounds) beat defending champ Steve Keiner (400 pounds) in the annual Nathan's international hot-dog-eating championship. Arai gobbled up 25 in 12 minutes, to Keiner's 16. Slim Japanese eaters have frequently won the contest, which struck Keiner as "one of God's mysteries," but another bulbous former U.S. champ, Ed Krachie (who ate 15 this year), once postulated the "Belt of Fat" theory, that surrounding fat limits stomachs' expansion. Researcher Peter Cochrane of British Telecommunications continues development of his "Soul Catcher" brain-implanted microchip that he believes some day will be capable of recording all of a person's chemical reactions in all senses so as to capture "a lifetime's worth of experience and feeling," according to a June New York Times report. (Already, doctors at a Veterans Administration hospital believe they have trained a patient whose ability to communicate was shut down by a brain-stem trauma; after an implant, he can order a cursor around merely by thinking of where he wants it to go.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Art of Protest In June, a British housewife held an appliance repairer hostage in her home for three hours until the company agreed to replace the faulty washing machine it had sold her and been unable to fix (Somerset, England). In April near Milan, Italy, about 30 voters showed up at the polls wearing only underwear, somehow in protest of excessive airport noise. In May, an unidentified man burst into a congressional hearing in Washington, D.C., armed with jagged-edged soda bottles and threatened to kill himself if someone didn't stop Pepsi from selling sodas to eastern European countries. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Unclear on the Concept In May, the Maricopa County (Ariz.) District Library announced that it had received a 15,000-book donation from a drive sponsored by the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain, a campaign that all together distributed more than 1 million donated books. However, the Maricopa County gift consisted of 1,000 pasta cookbooks, 200 copies of a book on Windows 95 software, and 11,796 copies of the same children's book, "What Would Happen If ..." In April, the New Hampshire legislature voted to correct its law on penalties for sex abuse of children. Adults convicted of aggravated sexual assault on a child in New Hampshire can receive up to 20 years in prison, but until the new bill actually becomes law, molesting one's own child still draws a maximum of only seven years. In May, a judge in Tampa, Fla., sentenced teen-ager Valessa Robinson to 18 years in prison for the confessed-to brutal beating death of her mother at the hands of Valessa and her boyfriend. Four days earlier, two other Florida judges had sentenced statutory-rape defendants (whose victims only reluctantly testified against them) to 71 years and 105 years in prison. (The first was a 25-year-old South Dakota man who clumsily romanced a 13-year-old Largo girl with a diamond ring; the second was a Miami college professor who had smuggled a somewhat-eager Honduran teen-age boy into the United States as a housemate and had occasional sex with him.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Well, Sure! Queens College (New York City) professor Harvey Baker told The New York Times in May that he had a dynamic new method for helping people overcome even intense fears of tarantulas. However, he had fallen far short of the 100 volunteers he needed to demonstrate the method because few people who have extreme tarantula phobia would participate in his study. In February, Patrick Lee Harned, 17, who is jailed in Astoria, Ore., on charges that he killed a 7-year-old girl at the command of the voices in his head, turned to convicted serial killer Keith "Happy Face" Jesperson, serving a life term at the Oregon State Penitentiary, for advice on prison life, girls and, of course, defense strategy. Wrote Harned, "I just want to get my time done and do good and get married and have a kid and have a better life and walk on the beach with my wife, kid, family, and have a better life with help, amen. What can I do?" An April New England Journal of Medicine article reporting the results of automobile whiplash claims in Saskatchewan before and after the province switched to no-fault insurance revealed that whiplash was much more common under the "fault" system. According to a commentator, part of the result might be due to victims gaming the system, but the results might also show that "if you have to prove you are ill, you can't get well." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In Their Own Words Pittsburgh anti-circumcision activist Ron Miller, 58, speaking to a meeting of men to encourage foreskin-restoration in order to enhance penile sensitivity, quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in April: "(The pleasure) you're going to get back is so different, don't expect your brain to understand it." He also admonished men not to delay, as he did: "I'm pissed off about the 40 years of wasted sex I had." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Update A genre given up in this column four years ago as No Longer Weird has been resurrected by advances in science. It has been known for years that production of heat-trapping methane by livestock flatulence was a major contributor to global warming, but the 1997 Kyoto protocol created technology incentives to reduce the problem, such as the development in Scotland recently of special bacteria for animal feed that converts the methane to less-noxious carbon dioxide in cows' digestive systems, and an industrial Beano-type supplement developed by a Canadian firm to ease cows' belches and other emissions. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Least Competent Criminals In June, according to police in Detroit, Dwayne Nolan was to meet his lawyer at a police station so they could fill out the paperwork to get Nolan's car back after it had been impounded in an alleged drug deal. As Nolan awaited the lawyer's arrival, officers noticed that Nolan was in fact the same man currently wanted locally for murder. Said Sgt. Joe O'Leary later: "I've never seen anybody actually walk into a station on another matter, obviously knowing he's wanted on a murder warrant." To make it official, an officer asked the lawyer, matter-of-factly, to identify a photo taken from the warrant, which he did (according to the police), and Nolan was arrested. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also, in the Last Month ... A 23-year-old man died from a friend's punch to the chest, delivered only after the man begged to be hit to relieve his hiccups (Ocean City, Md.). A vicious heat wave in Turkey was credited with saving a life when a suicidal woman on a mountainside swooned before she could leap, and was rescued. An America West pilot (who had flown the day before), riding as a passenger on an America West flight, went out of control, screaming, throwing things, and yelling "Get away from me," until he was restrained by the crew (Phoenix). A county judge (who is an opera fan) enlisted 21 jail inmates to be extras in a local production of Verdi's "Aida," earning community-service credits (Cincinnati).

---------- Cat Nap Not So Purrr-fect for Burglar ---------- Bartlett, New Hampshire - Falling asleep on the job couldn't have come at a worse time for Daniel Wootton, 21, of Bridgton, Maine. Wootton was arrested this weekend on account of felony burglary charges after entering and raiding a home Saturday afternoon. After turning the house upside down, Wootton placed his heap of stolen goods by the door, and then decided to take a nap. "He said he was real tired and so he was just going to take a quick nap," said police Chief Bob Snow. "Unfortunately his internal alarm clock just didn't buzz." A neighbor first sighted the intruder's car in the driveway, and when the police arrived they arrested Wootton after waking him from his slumber. - Customers Looking to Scalp Company for Faulty Follicles -- NEWARK, N.J. - A New Jersey-based hair replacement company, United Micro Systems, Inc., has settled a lawsuit for $300,000 to resolve claims made by its customers who said the "hair replacement systems" they were sold were a sham. The company claimed in various advertisements that its "Dermal Retention System" was "the secret of the rich and famous," while also claiming that the system had a 98.1 percent success rate. The ads also falsely claimed that hair would be added on to the scalp through "an FDA-approved, medical grade interfusion system." Over 200 customers realized something was wrong when their toupees' began falling off, and they soon discovered that the hair was simply glued to their scalp. The treatments cost the customers between $2,000 and $8,000.

+---------------------- Bizarre Laws ----------------------+ IOWA One-armed piano players must perform for free. A man with a moustache may never kiss a woman in public. It is a violation of the law to sell or distribute drugs or narcotics without having first obtained the appropriate Iowa drug tax stamp. In Indianola, the "Ice Cream Man" and his truck are banned. In Fort Madison, the fire department is required to practice fire fighting for fifteen minutes before attending a fire. In Marshalltown, horses are forbidden to eat fire hydrants Within the city limits of Ottumwa, a man may not wink at any woman he does not know.

------ Passengers in Chinese Airport Left in the Dark ------ BEIJING - The Shantou airport runway in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong was left in darkness on August 18 after being ravaged by a band of thieves. The runway was forced to shutdown for 10 hours after the thieves stole 69 landing lights from 14 rows of the runway, according to the Guangzhou Daily. The fiasco took 12 hours and 20 workmen to repair and ran the airport 450,000 yuan ($54,350) to repair.

Sunday September 10 9:11 PM ET Scientists Answer Ticklish Question http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/nm/20000910/sc/britain_tickling_dc_1.html LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists may have unraveled a mystery which has puzzled them and millions of children for years -- why it is impossible to tickle yourself? The Daily Telegraph said on Monday the secret lies in the cerebellum, a region at the back of the brain which predicts the sensory consequences of movements and sends signals to the rest of the brain instructing it to ignore the resulting sensation. Sarah-Jayne Blakemore of the University College of London examined six volunteers using magnetic resonance imaging to scan their brains as their palms were tickled by a machine. The scan was repeated while they tickled their own palms. In the first case the machine succeeded in tickling the volunteer because the cerebellum cannot warn the rest of the brain when the stimulus is external, even if the brain knows it is about to be tickled. The mechanism once protected us against predators by distinguishing between stimuli that were created ourselves and those generated externally. But the system can be fooled. When the robot used by the volunteers to tickle themselves delayed the action by a fraction of a second, the tickling sensation was there. ``So it is possible to tickle yourself, but only by using robots,'' Blakemore said.

Tuesday September 12, 6:41 PM http://uk.news.yahoo.com/000912/80/aj2ef.html UK firm says it will turn old tyres to oil next year LONDON (Reuters) - Motorists currently struggling to find working petrol pumps will from next year be able to turn their old tyres into oil, a British smokeless fuel manufacturer said on Tuesday. Britain is suffering a shortage of fuel as protestors, upset by escalating fuel costs, block supplies. Coalite Smokesless Fuels said its plant will be able to turn up to 80,000 tonnes of old tyres into about 150,000 barrels of oil, similar in quality to North Sea Brent crude which on Tuesday was priced at about $33 (23.49 pounds) a barrel on the International Petroleum Exchange in London. "We are currently in advanced stage of negotiations with tyre collectors," Nick Ross, Coalite Smokeless Fuels' commercial director told Reuters. Some scrap tyres are currently burnt for their energy value or recycled to produce carpet underlay, but a high percentage is used in landfill. Ross said tighter laws such as the EU Landfill Directive which comes into force in 2003 will make these disposal options increasingly difficult.

Just in time for the Olympics: +---------------------- Bizarre Laws ----------------------+ Australia In Victoria, it is illegal to wear hot pink pants after midday Sunday. It is illegal to walk on the right hand side of a footpath. In Victoria, only licensed electricians may change a light bulb. The fine for not abiding by this law is 10 pounds. It is illegal to roam the streets wearing black clothes, felt shoes and black shoe polish on your face as these items are the tools of a cat burglar. Children may not purchase cigarettes, but they may smoke them. In Victoria, you must have a neck to knee swimsuit in order to swim at Brighton Beach. In Tasmania, until the Port Arthur Killings it was legal to own an AK-47 but not legal to be gay.

WEST YORKSHIRE - As Elaine Sheridan was preparing to feed her three dogs from a tin of Winalot dog food she received a big surprise. A live toad jumped out of the tin and across her kitchen floor. One would think the two-inch amphibian would have croaked, literally, after being trapped in a tin from France for three months. But according to Dr. Roger Meek, he believes the toad could have survived by shutting down its metabolism. The Sheridans are keeping the lucky toad as a pet and have named it Buddy after the toads from the Budweiser commercials.

Friday, 22 September, 2000, 17:28 GMT 18:28 UK Parliamentary toilet paper torment http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_937000/937981.stm There is more paper in the chamber than in the pan Parliamentarians in South Africa have been caught short by a lack of paper - not for legislative work, but for business of a more personal kind. MPs and staff throughout the complex of buildings are reporting a drastic shortage of toilet paper. Those with urgent calls of a non-legislative nature have had to make do with paper towels, or provide their own substitute. Concerned toilet-goers reported that the supply began drying up several weeks ago. Various other sanitary products such as rubbish bags and cleaning products are also in short supply. Instructions The shortages appear particularly acute in the Old Assembly Wing, which houses most of the press corps. This is not what was meant by a paperless society The situation became so severe that a spoof memo appeared in the toilets purporting to be from the parliament's administration advising users how to get the maximum benefit from the minimum number of sheets. But although the disappearance of a commodity such as toilet paper is distressing, it is just the latest in a series of items to go missing from parliament. Thefts One MP left his office to go to the toilet and, while history does not relate whether or not there was any paper there, when he returned to his office a couple of minutes later his lap-top computer had disappeared. Thefts have been endemic and range from copper off the roof through pictures off the walls to a salami slicer from the kitchens. Someone even walked out with a historic diamond ring bequeathed to the parliament at the turn of the century. The exact cause of the shortage of toilet paper has yet to be flushed out. Relief It could be due to theft or a fault in the supply chain but a journalist in the parliament told BBC News Online that, once they tried to get to the bottom of the situation, things started improving. He said once the problem had been publicised, staff were spotted rushing along the corridors carrying large bags of toilet rolls. But although supplies are flowing again they are not unlimited. Staff have been instructed to put only one roll in each cubicle.

Monday September 25, 3:00 PM Having a snail of a time! http://uk.news.yahoo.com/000925/15/akk6h.html World's first ever online snail race, organised by Blue Square, is a trailblazing new entry onto the gambling scene. The first ever snail race in the world to be broadcast on the Web took place Monday, at http://www.bluesquare.com. UK betting service Blue Square organised the race, which involved six snails racing up 427mm poles away from water. Snails were randomly chosen and colour-coded, and every snail given odds of 4-1. Races are to take place every day at 12:30pm from Monday through to Saturday, and you can tune in for live streaming coverage. In today's race, the "black" snail roared to the finishing line like a true pro, while the less orthodox "red" snail left its own pole and began climbing up the blue one.

noisy shrimps Snapping shrimps are the noisiest creatures in the shallow ocean, capable of drowning out submarine sonar by the "snap, crackle and pop" of bubbles generated by their claws. That is the verdict of researchers who have been studying how the tiny marine organisms make such a din. Go to to read the rest of the article, see pix and HEAR noisy shrimps!!! http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_935000/935855.stm

Oh, Maggie...never use the restrooms in Westminster. They are all stamped with Property of the Borough of Westminster. I thought they wanted it back! I still have a few sheets I brought home! +--------------- Bizarre National Holidays ----------------+ OCTOBER IS... October is... National Sarcastics Month October is... National Apple Jack Month October is... National Pickled Pepper Month October 3 is... Virus Appreciation Day October 6 is... Come and Take It Day October 9 is... Moldy Cheese Day October 12 is... Moment Of Frustration Scream Day October 14 is... Be Bald and Free Day October 16 is... Dictionary Day October 17 is... Gaudy Day October 21 is... Babbling Day October 25 is... Punk For A Day Day October 28 is... Plush Animal Lover's Day October 29 is... Hermit Day October 30 is... National Candy Corn Day October 31 is... Halloween [A truly bizarre holiday.]

...the tissue is all stamped with that information too... That is what I thought I should send back. You won't tell on me, will you?! Promise to bring it back...!

NEW ZEALAND - Tired of listening to your rowdy neighbors party all night? Geoff Marsland in New Zealand has developed the perfect weapon to annoy the pesky partiers. It is an hour long CD featuring 64 uninterrupted minutes of the high-pitched whirring of a lawnmower. Marsland said that you have to some- times remind people that there are others living nearby. Over 4000 copies of the CD have been sold since its release. And according to Marsland, this is only the beginning. "I'm going to do one on farm sounds as well," he concluded.

Ha ha Marcia ...the shortage is in South Africa ...I'm very tempted to be crude about our politicians and their need for TP but, being the lady I am, I won't!!!!

I thought surely it was Washington DC which had the lock on the world's supply of such delicate tissue... They keep making more and more occasions to use it, as well. Lock them all in a room and throw away the key!!! Without the tissue!

This could get messy *grin*

Least Competent Criminals A 17-year-old boy was arrested in Loomis, Calif., in July after he was unsuccessful in what might have been an attempt to emulate the notorious "Rooftop Robber," who had burglarized more than 40 businesses in California and other states by entering through roofs (and who was captured in May). Unlike the original, the 17-year-old crashed through a false ceiling in his first job, broke a sink standing on it trying to climb out, then made it to a false ceiling and crawled to an adjacent store, but fell through that ceiling, too, injuring his ankle, and then finally, on his way out, tripped the burglar alarm and had police waiting for him. Latest Rages The following people apparently get really set off by the following things: Mark Adam Yazzie, 26 (got into an argument with his brother-in-law about the merits of rap music vs. rock and ran him over with a truck; Santa Rosa, Calif., June). Jane Graham, 77 (pointed a butcher knife at a neighbor man's groin and threatened to "cut it off" because he was playing his stereo too loud; Winnipeg, Manitoba, July). Gerard Corbo, 56 (at his son's wedding, started a fistfight when a guest referred to the groom by the wrong first name; Westlake, Ohio, June).

TFTD-L@TAMU.EDU Thought For The Day * According to Arkansas law, Section 4761, Pope's Digest: "No person shall be permitted under any pretext whatever, to come nearer than fifty feet of any door or window of any polling room, from the opening of the polls until the completion of the count and the certification of the returns." *************** tftd wonders if this could be a root cause for 'low voter turnout'.

+---------------- Bizarre Insurance Claims ----------------+ Coming home I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don't have. The other car collided with mine without giving warning of its intentions. I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way. I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother- in-law and headed over the embankment. In my attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole. I was on my way to the doctor with rear end trouble when my universal joint gave way causing me to have an accident. An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my car and vanished.

----------------- Hog Wild in First Class ------------------ 30,000 FT. ABOVE SEATTLE - Someone at USAirways is getting sacked over this one. Two women flying from Philadelphia to Seattle managed to get their 200 pound hog through Philadelphia International Airport and onto the first-class section of their flight. How did they manage this? By flashing a doctor's note to convince the ground crew that their 200 pound hog was a service animal [kind of like a seeing-eye pig]. "You can't believe how that dang pig squealed," commented one passenger. As the plane approached Seattle the pig charged through the aisles and attempted to break into the cockpit, according to a USAirways report. The FAA is focusing on whether the pig was a flight safety hazard.

----------- Another Mathematical Genius at Large ----------- LOUISIANA - There is one bandit in Louisiana who had better give up armed robbery until he learns how to count. The man walked into a Circle-K, put a $20 bill on the counter and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash drawer, the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and fled, leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the drawer was $15. ---------- Drug Smugglers Use Hanes Their Own Way ---------- MIAMI - Flight attendants sported "extra padding" in their underwear as part of a drug smuggling operation from Colombia to the United States. A total of 17 people, eight of whom have been arrested in the United States, were named in a seven-count indictment for smuggling heroin and cocaine in their underwear. Florida U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis stated that the drug ring was bringing about 33 to 44 pounds of heroin a month into the country, from the Venezuelan capital of Caracas to Miami International Airport. From Miami, the heroin was taken up to New York. Those arrested so far are Venezuelan, Colombian and U.S. citizens, and have been charged with drug offenses such as bringing drugs into the United States and conspiracy to distribute them.

+---------------------- Bizarre Laws ----------------------+ FLORIDA Men may not be seen publicly in any kind of strapless gown. In Pensacola, a women can be fined (only after death), for being electrocuted in a bath-tub because of using self- beautification utensils. Having sexual relations with a porcupine is illegal. You may not fart in a public place after 6 P.M. on Thursdays. In Daytona Beach, the molestation of trash cans is banned. It is considered an offense to shower naked. In Sarasota, if you hit a pedestrian you are fined $78.00. You may not kiss your wife's breasts. In Sarasota, you may not catch crabs.

Man Finds His Stolen Car on in the Internet TOKYO (Reuters) - A 26-year-old Japanese man, playing detective online, discovered his own stolen Porsche for sale on the Internet at a used car lot's Web site, Japanese media reported. The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said the man trawled through Tokyo used car dealers' Web sites after his 1997 Porsche Boxter was stolen from his home in a wealthy area of Tokyo in September. After wading through inventories of about 100,000 vehicles, he narrowed his search down to about 20 1997 Boxters. Of those, one had about the same mileage as his, the newspaper said. It said police suspect organized crime may have been behind the theft.

wow!

Love-Crazed Father of 42 to Marry Again BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese farmer Ghassan Abdel-Al loves women so much that his three exhausted wives have decided to marry him off to a fourth, a Beirut daily reported Friday. Al-Kifah al-Arabi said Abdel-Al, who lives in a remote area in south Lebanon, will take another wife in a few weeks to keep up with his insatiable sexual appetite. The 47-year-old Muslim farmer has sired a total of 42 children, known in their village as "The Militia." Islam allows men to take up to four wives. Abdel-Al got married for the first time in his 20s. A few years and a dozen children later, his wife felt he was getting bored with her so she set him up with a second woman. The second wife then bore Abdel-Al at least a dozen more babies, and then told him to marry a third woman. The farmer told the newspaper that he was looking forward to his fourth wife. "Allah ordered us to love each other and I love women. I can't live without love, or at least without women, that is the way Allah created me," he said.

* The Golden Tower Project, an installation by Seattle artists at this year's Burning Man festival, consisted of 400 jars of urine from other artists, stacked and electroluminescently lighted ("gorgeous," "faintly blue and gold," "warm, kind of like biological stained glass," according to Seattle's The Stranger weekly). (In 1993, News of the Weird reported that New York City artist Todd Alden had asked 400 art collectors worldwide to send him samples of their feces so he could offer them for sale in personalized tins. Said Alden, "Scatology is emerging as an increasingly significant part of artistic inquiry in the 1990s.") * News of the Weird has reported on scientists who borrow the jellyfish's "green protein" for medically productive genetic modifications, but Chicago artist Eduardo Kac created controversy in September by proposing to create embryos with the jellyfish's green-light-producing gene just to make visually appealing organisms, such as a glowing rabbit. (Kac's major work so far is "Genesis," a sentence from the Old Testament, translated into Morse Code, transposed onto DNA, inserted into fluorescent bacteria, and lit up when anyone accesses the piece on Kac's Web site.) * In a summer contract with the city of Montreal, artist Devora Neumark performed "The Art of Conversation," which consisted of her standing at the entrance to a subway station from noon to 4 p.m. every Tuesday and "conducting spontaneous interchange with interested parties on a variety of topics." Frontiers of Science * A U.S. Forest Service researcher announced in August that her team had discovered the largest living thing ever found, a 24-centuries-old fungus, covering 2,200 acres in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon; DNA testing confirmed that the underground, stringlike structure was all the same organism. And three weeks later near Lake Okeechobee, a University of Florida biologist discovered what he called an "evolutionary relic," a previously unknown, carnivorous, flowering plant that grows entirely underground but by photosynthesis. * An August British Broadcasting Corp. documentary, "Brain Story," featured a man whose cranial lobes were surgically severed in order to treat epilepsy and who now is able to do what he calls the "party trick" of drawing different designs, with each hand, at the same time. * Japan's Mizuno Corp. has developed a synthetic material for men's underpants that would keep the covered area one Celsius degree cooler than cotton underwear and therefore helpful, for example, to skiers (and, say doctors, to those desiring increased sperm production), according to an August New Scientist report. However, Canadian polyester-mesh underwear manufacturer Stanfield's Ltd. disputed Mizuno's claim of superiority; said a spokesman, "We just haven't got up the guts to measure the temperature of someone's crotch yet." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Winning Isn't Everything; It's the Only Thing" Thomas Lavery, 56, was indicted in Akron, Ohio, in August on nine counts of roughing up two of his high-achieving, home-schooled daughters when they performed worse in their endeavors than he expected. According to the indictment, when one daughter came in second in the National Spelling Bee, botching "cappelletti," Lavery threatened to kill her and had to be physically restrained. The girl told the Akron Beacon Journal that Lavery would punch them in the head for their failures and that screaming and profanity were common. Lavery complained to the Associated Press that he was "easier on (his kids) than my father was (on me)." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Update News of the Weird reported in 1999 on the lawsuit by 5,400 descendants of the 18th-century Welsh pirate Robert Edwards, claiming ownership of 77 acres of lower Manhattan (including the World Trade Center and the New York Stock Exchange). In August 2000, four descendants claimed to have found a copy of a 1778 lease for the land, which had been given to Edwards shortly before by a grateful King George, stating that Edwards' heirs would get the land back in 1877. The value of the land now is conservatively estimated at $750 billion, or $140 million per descendant. Courts in South Wales, New York City and Pittsburgh have opened proceedings. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Least Competent Criminals Customs Agent Adventures: Cocaine "mule" Jose Antonio Campos-Cloute was arrested at the Melbourne, Australia, airport, in September after a momentary lapse; as he was filling out the Customs form, he absentmindedly checked the "yes" box on whether he was carrying illicit substances, and that led to a search. And Briton Alison McKinnon was sentenced in August to five years in prison in Turkey for attempting to smuggle six pounds of heroin out, strapped to her chest; she was ready to board a plane home from Istanbul but was designated for searching only because one of her body-piercings set off a metal detector.

+---------------------- Bizarre Laws ----------------------+ ALABAMA In Jasper, it is illegal for a husband to beat his wife with a stick larger in diameter than his thumb. It is illegal to wear a fake moustache that causes laughter in church. Putting salt on a railroad track may be punishable by death. Boogers may not be flicked into the wind. You may not have an ice cream cone in your back pocket at any time. It is illegal to maim oneself to escape duty. It is illegal for a driver to be blindfolded while operating a vehicle.

Dear Marcia, How can you be so certain that "Mary Had A Little Lamb" was written by Sara Josepha Hale when the authorship is mired in dispute after dispute? Some have feverishly maintained that one Mary Hall, a classmate of Mary Sawyer of Sterling, Mass. who owned the lamb, wrote it. Other are equally certain that John Roulston wrote it. It is true that Mrs. Hale published in a youngsters magazine that she actually edited. Well, it was Mark Twain, who wrote, "It is the difference of opinion that makes the horse races."

Thanks for posting this, Jody. As I pointed out elsewhere, I get my trivial by an email service and placing it under my name should also include the source of my information or misinformation. Thanks for setting the record straight! +------------------ Bizarre Criminal Acts ------------------+ In order not to be identified by his clothing, a North Caro- lina bank robber stripped to his underwear and shoved a large wad of cash inside them. He was later "debriefed" when someone reported a man with strangely bulging underwear running down the street. A man with dreams of being a pizza delivery boy was arrested after going knocking on the doors of an apartment complex wearing nothing but a baseball hat. The man was caught while trying to jump over a fence and was booked in thirty minutes or less. Louis Abright had the bright idea of robbing a branch of a local bank in Lafayette, Louisiana with his head covered in whipped cream. By the time he demanded the money from the teller, his mask had melted and the police arrived lickity spilt. An immigration officer stopped a truck filled with illegal aliens and asked if anyone spoke English. When they all said no, he told them he was going to shoot them all, starting with the ones with brown shoes. As he drew his pistol, three men stepped forward and took the role of translator for the group.

Phil Bronstein, of SF Chronicle, is in the hospital after having been bitten (mauled sounds more like it) on the foot by a Kimodo Dragon at I forget which Zoo (LA I think). He was on a special just for him for father's day back stage tour of the zoo, esp. to see the Kimodo Dragon. Apparently he was wearing white sneakers and was told that they might appear to resemble the white mice fed to the Kimodo Dragon. So instead he was barefoot when he was attacked by said KD. Sounds like he's lost much of a big toe and is danger of umpteen different kinds of extemely nasty bacteria which can cause sepsis. Apparently there are left over particles of food in the KD's mouth which fester in nasty ways. This happened about a week ago. Here's the story: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/06/10/MN156967.DTL Should I have put this in the Jurassic Park topic? Isn't this the weirdest story?