Fun_People Archive
13 Apr
Weird News Highlights

Date: Wed, 13 Apr 94 13:41:08 PDT
To: Fun_People
Subject: Weird News Highlights

[This is a puzzle.  Match up the articles below with the following pithy sayings:

1. What's the rush?
2. Get a life?
3. Just send them to an Iranian wedding or an VFW burial.
4. Guns don't kill people, er, that is, ...
5. Extreme variations on a popular theme...
6. Do ask.  Do tell.  Don't care!
7. And how long is that?
-psl]

Forwarded-by: bostic@vangogh.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
From: WEIRDNUZ.320 (News of the Weird, March 25, 1994)
by Chuck Shepherd

A) In February, the Royal Bank of Scotland announced that it would begin to
issue extra check-cashing ID cards to its transvestite customers who request
them -- so that they might have separate cards depicting themselves dressed
as male and female in order to "avoid embarrassment or difficulties,"
according to a Bank spokesman. [Globe and Mail-Reuter, 2-25-94]

B) In October, in Iran, where celebratory gunfire is traditional at
weddings, a guest named Rasool lost control of his automatic weapon at a
wedding in Lorestan province, accidentally killing 6 people and wounding
14.  In Champion, Ohio, in January, Rev.  Thomas Gillum, presiding at the
burial of a Korean War veteran, was accidentally shot in the face when the
local VFW honor guard fired a four-gun salute.  [Raleigh News & Observer,
10-4-93; Youngstown Vindicator, 1-26-94]

C) Roy Kinne, 28, an unemployed Chicago-area man who happened to be home on
the December afternoon when an 8-year-old boy fell through the ice in a lake
adjacent to Kinne's house, and who rescued him:  "If I would have had a
life, I might not have been [home]." [Chicago Tribune, 12-15-93]

D) Milwaukee, Wis., juvenile court judge Mike Malmstadt, quoted in a Time
magazine story on how hostility by drivers increasingly provokes violent
reactions by others:  "I don't give people the finger from my car, and I
haven't for a while." [Time, 12-20-93]

E) Tennessee state Rep. Frank Buck, commenting in January on a report on
the death penalty that fixed the cost of lethal-injection execution at
$46,000 and of a firing squad at $7,000:  "With figures like these, should
we wonder why people don't trust government?  I believe I can figure out a
way to shoot somebody for less than $7,000." [The Tennessean, 1-20-94]

F) Professional soccer team manager Dan O'Riordan, defending his decision to
levy fines against players for flatulence in the locker room:  "It can get
fairly oppressive when you've got 20 players in a tiny dressing room all
suffering the effects of a Sunday night curry." [Soccer America, 8-9-93]
The Swedish hockey team's coach Curt Lundmark, on why he did not protest
more vigorously a disallowed goal by his team in its Olympic loss to Canada
in February:  "Sweden's influence in international hockey is like a duck
fart in Africa." [Globe and Mail, 2-22-94]

G) The victim of a car theft while visiting Omaha, Neb., in February,
Algona, Iowa, judge Joseph Straub walked into the lobby of a local police
station around 10 p.m.  to file a report rather than wait for officers to
come to the scene.  According to the judge, he pushed the buzzer on the
locked front door several times, and saw officers moving around inside, but
no one answered.  Using the pay phone in the lobby, he called the station
to ask that an officer open the door and take his report.  Ten minutes
passed before an officer opened the door.  He went back inside, and ten more
minutes passed before another officer appeared.  Then he left, and nothing
happened for ten more minutes.  Exasperated, the judge, still in the lobby,
called 911.  A few minutes later, a sergeant came out, then went back in,
and finally, a few minutes after that, an officer drove up to the front of
the building, got out of her squad car, and took Straub's report. [Des
Moines Register, Feb94]

Copyright 1994, Universal Press Syndicate.  All rights reserved.
Released for the personal use of readers.  No commercial use may be
made of the material or of the name News of the Weird.

© 1994 Peter Langston