Fun_People Archive
21 Apr
WhiteBoard News Excerpts 4/21/95

Date: Fri, 21 Apr 95 19:08:43 PDT
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: WhiteBoard News Excerpts 4/21/95

Forwarded-by: <joeha@microsoft.com>
From: WhiteBoard News for April 21, 1995

Ventura, California:

A man furious over a failed land deal took it out on the property owner by
having 90,000 magazines sent to her address.

"I got every known magazine on the face of the Earth," lawyer Theresa
McConville said after Reynaldo Fong was sentenced Tuesday.  Fong got a year
in jail for forging her name on subscription forms.

"He could have won the Nobel prize if he would have put as much energy into
his job as he did with me," said McConville, of Camarillo, who got the
unsolicited magazines over the past 13 years.

Fong, 45, of Santa Paula, is an anesthesiologist from the Philippines who
had been in the United State illegally since his visa expired in 1980.

According to a probation report, Fong said he had a vendetta against
McConville because she rejected his bid for land she was selling.
===========

Perkern, Pakistan:

Black plumes of smoke rose from the sweltering desert Tuesday as officials
burned 40 tons of hashish, some of it carefully packed in McDonald's
hamburger wrappers.

The drugs were seized from a caravan of 150 smugglers and 200 camels,
spotted by army helicopters Friday in the remote desert of southern
Pakistan.

The smugglers fired on the helicopters with automatic rifles and
rocket-propelled grenades, hitting one of the aircraft with bullets before
escaping in the winding mountain passes.

The authorities captured the hashish and about 50 camels.  It was one of
the biggest drug hauls ever in Pakistan.

On Tuesday, officials from Pakistan, the United States, Britain and the
United Nations watched as the hashish was set on fire at the same site where
it was seized.
==========

Ancona, Italy:

An Italian woman ended nine months of complete isolation in an underground
laboratory Thursday and said she thought she had been there for just three
months.

Cristina Lanzoni, 29, entered the chamber, known as Underlab, in the
Frasassi caves in central Italy on July 26 of last year for a scientific
experiment to monitor the physical and psychological effects of total
isolation.

Her lonesome 269 days ended when project controllers sent her a message on
a computer link telling her the date and the time.

A statement said Lanzoni thought the date was October 31, 1994, and replied
on the computer, "Oh my God!"

"I feel like Underlab has kept me in its womb, and it's like being born for
the second time," Lanzoni was quoted as saying.  She returns to the surface
Friday.

[That sounds altogether too familiar... -psl]
==========

St. Michaels, Maryland:

Step in to Flamingo Flats, and you can buy a bottle of Bat's Brew or sample
some Scorned Woman.  Or go for the burn right there: Pick from the bowl of
slightly stale tortilla chips on a counter and scoop a mouthful of Sting
and Linger.

The shop is guided by this credo: "Life is too short to eat boring food."

For about five years, Flamingo Flats in tiny St.  Michaels, on the
Chesapeake Bay, has been searing tastebuds with sauces like Hell in a Jar
and its best seller, Religious Experience, which comes in Original, Hot and
Wrath.

For the daring, store manager Izzi Sevco recommends Dave's Insanity Sauce,
whose pepper extract makes it "one of the hottest sauces in the universe."
Loyal customer Dave Feith, who owns an inn on nearby Tilghman Island, uses
Flamingo Flat sauces in the inn's dishes, but passes on Dave's Insanity
Sauce.  Once, Feith says, he dabbed the fiery stuff on the rim of an
unsuspecting friend's beer, and "he turned red and started sweating
profusely."

But why would anyone volunteer for this kind of torture?  "It's a safe
thrill," explains Paul Bosland, a breeder of chilies and professor of
horticulture and agronomics at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.
Those craving "a blow-your-head-off" rush are a small fringe group, he adds.
Nationwide, a hot pepper trend has spawned more than 50 stores like Flamingo
Flats, according to the Chile Pepper Magazine, a trade publication.

And the Flats feeds other aspects of chiliheads' obsession.  Rows of bottles
and jars mingle with pepper jewelry and other pungent novelties, plus recipe
books like "Hot Licks."  There's even an occasional newsletter for customers
called -- what else? -- Heat.

Bob Deppe, the shop's somewhat elusive owner, has collected nearly 2,000
concoctions in his international search for sauces and spices -- a hankering
he acquired on military duty in Vietnam.  But getting details directly is
difficult: he has no phone or fixed schedule.  Sevco says he stays busy,
"researching hot sauce, that sort of thing."

The store rings up about $100,000 in sales annually, says Sevco, from the
curious and "people who like good food and adventurous smells."  Professor
Bosland seems to understand.  Discovering the perfect pepper sauce is "like
finding a really good bottle of wine," he says.
==========

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			joeha@microsoft.com (Joseph Harper)

© 1995 Peter Langston