Fun_People Archive
4 Apr
Weirdness [475] - 14Mar97

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Fri,  4 Apr 97 13:57:53 -0800
To: Fun_People
Subject: Weirdness [475] - 14Mar97

Excerpted-from: WEIRDNUZ.475 (News of the Weird, March 14, 1997)
		by Chuck Shepherd

* Medical Breakthroughs:  In February, surgeons removed a cataract from the
eye of the National Zoo's 6-foot-long Komodo dragon "Muffin" in the hope
that she could better see how studly the male "Friendty" was and thus would
mate with him.  And in January, doctors in Johannesburg, South Africa,
performed spinal surgery on a 10-foot-long python, which had been run over
by a car.  (Contrary to what one's eyes tell us, the python has 306 vertebra
and 268 ribs.)  And in Jackson, Mich., in February veterinarian Timothy
England fitted a stray rooster with artificial legs after he had to amputate
his natural ones because of frostbite.

* Gas in the News: Janesville, Wis., police responded to a 911 call in
December over a domestic disturbance begun, said the wife, when the husband
inappropriately passed gas as they were tucking their son into bed.  And in
January in Perth, Australia, John Douglas Young, 47, was convicted of a
child-abuse charge for attempting to hire two boys for $5 each to pass gas
in his face so that, according to the man, he could later masturbate to the
"mental picture" of the encounter.  (Young's unsuccessful defense was in
part to recite a long list of movies, literature, and TV shows in which
gas-passing was a popular theme, e.g., "Benny Hill.")

* In January, the Australian Medical Journal reported a case of lead
poisoning by an electrician who chewed electrical cable to satisfy his
nicotine urge when he was forced to work in no- smoking buildings.  The man
said he chewed almost a yard of cable a day for nearly ten years because it
had a sweet taste, especially near the center.

* Continental Airlines filed a lawsuit in November in Newark, N.J., against
Deborah Loeding, who the airlines said endangered passengers in order to
get revenge on her ex-husband/pilot.  Ms.  Loeding had baked him some bread,
but unknown to him, had laced it with marijuana so that he would fail the
airline's drug test and get fired, which did happen, although he was later
reinstated when Continental learned what happened.

* The New York Times reported in November on the project by the Picatinny
Arsenal in Rockaway Township, N. Y., to create more environmentally friendly
bullets while still maintaining the bullets' killing power.  (Three years
ago, the federal government closed a nearby firing range because spent,
leaded bullets were contaminating the soil so as to endanger people and
animals.)

* In 1995 the Brazilian government's AIDS-awareness campaign made News of
the Weird because several men named Braulio had complained publicly of their
humiliation that the main character in the advertising spots--a talking
penis--was named Braulio.  In January 1997, the campaign re-emerged with
the main character an unnamed, variously-costumed turkey (which is itself
a double entendre).

	Copyright 1997 by Universal Press Syndicate.

© 1997 Peter Langston