Fun_People Archive
5 Dec
Weird [353] - 11Nov94

Date: Mon,  5 Dec 94 22:09:18 PST
To: Fun_People
Subject: Weird [353] - 11Nov94

From: WEIRDNUZ.353 (News of the Weird, November 11, 1994)
by Chuck Shepherd

* Atlanta, Ga., police Det. Chris Brown, commenting in July on the
haplessness of a bank robber who walks with the aid of a cane and who gave
himself up with no resistance immediately after the chemical dye pack in
his money bag exploded outside the bank:  "I don't think he had a plan."
[Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 7- 15-94]

* Mike McElroy, making an appeal to the West Lake Hills, Tex., City Council
in August of the benefits of his being allowed to keep his pet donkey,
Pearl, at his home despite regulations against it:  "[This] is a great
opportunity for our kids and other kids who come to see us to be able to
recognize and identify manure, which will help them in the future.  Children
need, at an early age, to be able to identify manure." [Austin
American-Statesman, Aug94]

* Adoption agency official Mary Graves, in a Doylestown, Pa., case in which
a girl had been taken from her father after the mother passed away,
testified in August that she favored keeping the girl with the adopted
family.  With her father, Graves said, "She would have none of the benefits
but all of the disadvantages of a mother who is dead." [Greensboro News
Record, Aug94]

* A New York City Transit Authority spokesman, describing in August how his
agency would handle female toplessness in subways after a state court ruled
that women had the same public nudity rights as men:  "If [the topless
females] were violating any other rules, like sitting on a subway bench
topless smoking a cigarette, then we would take action." [Globe & Mail- AP,
9-1-94]

* James A. Kowalski, following his conviction on child sexual molestation
charges in Price Frederick, Md., in July:  "I can't help myself.  If I could
stop, I would.  It's no fun being the slimy underbelly of human sexuality."
[Washington Post, 7-7-94]

* In a July article, the Daily Oklahoman newspaper quoted state Sen.  John
Monks as once arguing, while defending the "sport" of cockfighting, "The
first thing the communists do when they take over a country is to outlaw
cockfighting." [The Daily Oklahoman, 7-4-94]

* One issue on the ballot in San Francisco this year is an initiative on
whether a subway station should be constructed inside the San Francisco
International Airport, or just outside the Airport boundary.  In April, a
local judge rejected a complaint about the poor taste of one ad placed by
the "inside" advocates-- an ad arguing, "Taking [the train] almost into the
Airport is like not coming." [San Francisco Examiner, 4-15-94]

* Columnist Emil Guillermo, writing in Filipinas magazine last fall, urging
Philippine-Americans to come out of the closet regarding their appetite for
dog meat:  "Whether you have eaten it or not, deep down you know you'd eat
it.  Yet that restrictive idea of 'when in America, do as Americans do'
prevents us from outright declaring 'Mmmm, I prefer my German shepherd baked
and my cocker spaniel sauteed.'" [San Francisco Chronicle, 10-1-93]

* Christine McKatherine, 43, who staged a 24-hour civil-rights protest
inside her car on a Chicago street in August after the car was immobilized
with a Denver boot for having 115 unpaid parking tickets:  "I'm tired of
people getting harassed in Chicago." [Chicago Sun- Times, 8-25-94]

* U. S. Sen. Bob Packwood, describing his experience with girls as a
teenager:  "I'd ask girls out and they'd turn me down, and so finally it
got to the point where you didn't want to be rejected.  And so you just
didn't ask." [Atlanta Journal-Constitution-Newsweek, Aug94]

* According to the sheriff in Martin, Ohio, two or more burglars
unsuccessfully attempted to break into the safe at W&W Custom Applicators,
Inc., at 4 o'clock one morning in October.  They rolled the 4-foot-high,
concrete-lined safe outside and used a front-end loader to smash it against
the side of a building to open it.  The safe crashed through the wall but
did not open.  Then they smashed it against the side of a utility trailer,
with the same result.  Then they placed it on nearby railroad tracks so that
a Conrail train could plow into it, but the train pushed it along the
tracks, far out of the sight of the burglars.  The burglars then fled,
nearly empty-handed.  (They had remembered to loot the petty cash box at
W&W.) [Washington Times- Toledo Blade, 10-21-94]


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