Fun_People Archive
11 Apr
Weirdness [476] - 21Mar97

Content-Type: text/plain
Mime-Version: 1.0 (NeXT Mail 3.3 v118.2)
From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 97 18:39:49 -0700
To: Fun_People
Subject: Weirdness [476] - 21Mar97

Excerpted-from: WEIRDNUZ.476 (News of the Weird, March 21, 1997)
		by Chuck Shepherd

* Unclear on the Concept:  The Multnomah County, Ore., school system was
scheduled to begin in March test-marketing the idea of paying parents of
chronic truants to help their kids get to school ($3 if they stay the whole
day, $1 for a half day).  And in February, the University of Maryland's
Student Honor Council, crusading against academic dishonesty, offered
local-merchant discount cards to students who pledged in writing not to
cheat.  (Said a critic, "By the time you get to bribing, you're already
pretty far gone.")

* Former Gotti crime-family hitman Sammy "The Bull" Gravano cooperated on
author Peter Maas's Gravano biography, "Underboss," to be published in
April.  Despite the fact that Gravano's testimony helped send Gotti to
prison for life without parole, and 36 others to the slammer, and despite
the fact that he admits to making 19 hits for the Gotti family, Gravano
reportedly quit the Witness Protection Program and said he'll take his
chances on the street.  Though he had plastic surgery after he went
underground, he agreed to show off his new face in the book, perhaps, said
Maas, because the recently divorced Gravano would like to hear from any
interested ladies.

* In November, retired police department custodian Jay Pfaff, 73, was fired
from his job as school crossing guard because, said a police spokesman, "a
number of parents" complained that they were uncomfortable because he was
too nice to their children.

* In Lincoln, Neb., in February, two men attempted to shoplift shoes from
an Athlete's Foot store, but a clerk and the manager ran them down outside.
Clerk Dave Olson is captain of the University of Nebraska men's track team,
and manager Robb Finegan is an Olympics-class marathoner.  And two weeks
earlier, near Warsaw, Poland, highway robbers forced off the road a car in
which the coaches of the Belarussian and Russian biathlon (skiing and
shooting) teams were riding.  Following right behind, however, was the
teams' bus, and as all of the athletes grabbed rifles, the robbers quickly
scurried away.

* On September 29 in rural northeast Vermont, the car in which Michael
O'Keefe, 44, was riding was hit by a 700-lb. moose.  O'Keefe was taken for
treatment of cuts and returned to the road a few hours later in his own
truck, which was then hit by another moose.
[Eh?  "...was hit by a 700-lb. moose."?  Those damn moose!  It's bad enough  
that they dance the Macarena with our women, but now they're running into  
people on the road!  Probably been drinking, too!   -psl]

* Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed in February in Selbyville, Del.,
as he won a bet with friends who said he would not put a revolver loaded
with four bullets into his mouth and pull the trigger.  And in February,
according to police in Windsor, Ont., Daniel Kolta, 27, and Randy Taylor,
33, died in a head-on collision, thus earning a tie in the game of chicken
they were playing with their snowmobiles.

	===========================================
	Copyright 1997 by Universal Press Syndicate.
	===========================================

© 1997 Peter Langston