Fun_People Archive
26 Jul
Weirdness [439] - 5Jul96

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 96 23:15:48 -0700
To: Fun_People
Subject: Weirdness [439] - 5Jul96

Excerpted-from: WEIRDNUZ.439 (News of the Weird, July 5, 1996)
		by Chuck Shepherd

* Among the grossest problems created by the District of Columbia's
financial crisis is the condition of the city's morgue.  The Washington Post
reported in May that 74 bodies were stockpiled because the crematorium (the
only affordable disposal method) is broken and that the city is backlogged
with more than 200 autopsies and 400 toxicology analyses.  Furthermore,
reported the Post, in the autopsy rooms, the air conditioning is broken,
cockroaches run free on autopsy tables, the floor is sticky with blood and
other bodily fluids because drains are clogged, and corpses are exposed in
torn bodybags.  (And, of course, there's the stench.) [Washington Post,
5-25-96]

* In May, the California Commission on Judicial Performance recommended that
Los Angeles County judge Norman Gordon be censured for various inappropriate
remarks to court employees, including calling an Hispanic court clerk "the
little Mexican" and "peon," a Japanese-American stenographer "little
Buddhahead," a female judge "sow," and a female stenographer who was known
to be attempting to start a family with her husband as the "little
copulator." [Los Angeles Times, 5-17-96]

* The Wall Street Journal reported in March that New York City photographer
(and former Electrolux vacuum cleaner salesman) Eugene Calamari Jr. is a
part-time performance artist who lies on the floor and lets people vacuum
him with an upright cleaner, after which he asks the vacuumers to write down
their feelings.  Calamari says, "A lot of people use each other and step on
each other's rights," and says his theme is "I won't let anyone do this to
me." [Wall Street Journal, 3-27-96]

* Featured at the Donn Roll Contemporary museum in Sarasota, Fla., in May
and June was Charon Luebbers's Menstrual Hut, a 6-feet by 6-feet by 5-feet
isolation booth to symbolize the loneliness that society has forced upon
menstruating women.  Accompanying it were 28 paintings created by Luebbers's
pressing her face into whatever discharge was present in each of the 28 days
of her cycle one month, to show the contrast.  [Sarasota Herald-Tribune,
5-3-96]

Copyright 1996, Universal Press Syndicate.  All rights reserved.
No commercial use may be made of the material or of the name
News of the Weird.

© 1996 Peter Langston