Fun_People Archive
2 Feb
Weirdness [466] - 10Jan97
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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Sun, 2 Feb 97 02:22:57 -0800
To: Fun_People
Subject: Weirdness [466] - 10Jan97
Excerpted-from: WEIRDNUZ.466 (News of the Weird, January 10, 1997)
by Chuck Shepherd
* Actress Anya Pencheva announced in November a plan to divert her fellow
Bulgarians' attention from grim economic problems: She would have a plaster
cast made of her breasts, to display in the National Theater in Sofia. Said
Pencheva, "It is a pity to focus everything on [budget cuts] when there are
such beautiful breasts around."
* According to a September report in Toronto's Globe and Mail, the
University of Toronto's medical school employs actors and other people for
$12 to $35 per hour to be practice patients for its students. Bob LeRoy,
45, commands the top pay because he is a rectal-exam patient. Said LeRoy,
"I always hope the student with the biggest finger goes first."
* According to an August dispatch by Britain's Guardian News Service, the
family of Chiang Kai-shek (the Chinese ruler who was chased out by the
communists, to Taiwan, in 1949 and who died in 1975) is growing weary of
the "temporary" storage of his skeleton in Taiwan, where it has been kept
in preparation for its triumphant return to the mainland upon the fall of
the communist government. According to practitioners of the art of
feng-shui, the spirits are upset that the skeleton is kept in a box in the
living room of the family estate instead of being buried in China.
* Students rioting in August at South Korea's Yonsei University apparently
found weapons in short supply and used whatever was available. When police
finally quashed the protest, the geology department faculty discovered that
about 10,000 rare rocks, collected over 30 years and considered
irreplaceable, were missing. A few were recovered from the streets, chipped
or broken.
* In October, Miss Canada International, 20-year-old Danielle House, was
removed from further competition after being charged in St. John's,
Newfoundland, with punching out her ex- boyfriend's current girlfriend in
a bar. Ms. House said she had been in counseling recently for "low
self-esteem."
* In September in East Orange, Vt., Christie's auction house sold almost $2
million worth of automobiles (including 33 Stutz Bearcats) that belonged to
eccentrics A. K. Miller, who died at 87 a few years ago, and his wife
Imogene, who died in 1996. The couple left millions more in gold and silver
and other valuables but lived like paupers, sometimes eating dog food or
bread made of flour they had swept off the floor, sometimes shopping at yard
sales, sometimes dressing in rags. As treasurer of his church, Mr. Miller
had once refused to accept a small increase in electricity rates and
converted the entire church to kerosene lamps. The Millers paid property
taxes but no other ones, and the federal and state governments are now
claiming $8.2 million.
Copyright 1997 by Universal Press Syndicate.
© 1997 Peter Langston