Fun_People Archive
8 Dec
Weirdness [406] - 17Nov95

Date: Fri, 8 Dec 95 19:44:40 -0800
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Weirdness [406] - 17Nov95

Excerpted-from: WEIRDNUZ.406 (News of the Weird, November 17, 1995)
by Chuck Shepherd

* The Journal of Spinal Cord Medicine reported in a recent issue that
observation of ten patients whose wounds would not heal via antibiotics
showed a weekly 20% improvement when ordinary maggots were placed on the
wound.  Maggots ate the dead skin tissue and the bacteria around the cut.
And leech farmer Roy Sawyer announced he would open a leech museum in
Charleston, S. C., next year to herald leeches' medical uses, such as to
restore circulation in weak or clotted veins by sucking blood to create a
flow. [New York Post, 7-12-95; People, 7-10-95]
[Oops!  There's nothing weird in that one...  -psl]

* A May New York City sculpture show featured Chinese artist Wenda Gu's large
tray-like device filled with hair from people of many nationalities, glued
together, symbolizing the American melting pot.  Gu's future plans are to
collect enough human hair from around the world to build a 2,000-brick wall
and carpet a McDonald's in Barcelona, Spain.  [Hartford Courant-AP, 5-8-95]

* In New York City in August, French director Veronique Guillaud staged, as
performance art, a "peeping Tom" exhibition near Lincoln Center, with
several hundred art patrons on the street looking through binoculars at a
variety of Guillaud-staged scenes into 40 windows of the Radisson Empire
Hotel. Said one peeper, "You say, 'What will they think of next?' and then
they come up with [this].'" [New York Times, 8-6-95]

* Newsweek reported in June that a group of French artists tried to bring
shame to people's habitual failure to curb their dogs in Paris by decorating
about 200 assorted piles of dog poop on the street.  The artists drew chalk
lines of plates around the droppings, then placed real flatware and glasses
next to the plates and real food, such as spaghetti, on the plates next to
the poop.  [Newsweek, 6-5-95]
[Been there...done that.  As a matter of fact, I must confess to having been
part of a "Post-Neo" art movement in NYC that decorated sidewalk dog turds
with glitter during one snowy (1977) Christmas season...  lovely!  -psl]

Copyright 1995, Universal Press Syndicate.  All rights reserved.
Released for the entertainment of readers.  No commercial use
may be made of the material or of the name News of the Weird.

© 1995 Peter Langston