Fun_People Archive
9 Nov
Weirdness [504] - 3Oct97

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Sun,  9 Nov 97 23:04:09 -0800
To: Fun_People
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Subject: Weirdness [504] - 3Oct97

Excerpted-from: WEIRDNUZ.504 (News of the Weird, October 3, 1997)
	by Chuck Shepherd

* In September, a judge in Santa Monica, Calif., ruled that test-tube baby
Jaycee Louise Buzzanca, 2, has no legal parents.  She is the result of donor
sperm fertilizing a donor egg in the womb of a surrogate mother.  The judge
said John and Luanne Buzzanca are "parents" only by surrogacy contract, and
since they divorced before Jaycee's birth, those rights were lost (though
John was happy with the decision because it saves him $386 a month in child
support).

* Protestant minister Hans Visser announced in August that he had lined up
doctors, social workers, and drug dealers to begin a social program of
supplying heroin at discount to hopeless addicts in Rotterdam, Netherlands,
to help keep them away from crime and life-threatening cheap drugs.  Said
Visser, "I expect I will [soon] be having a chat with justice officials."

* The New York Times reported in August that more than a third of all
bottled water sold in the U.S. is merely filtered tap water and that several
cities soon will put their municipal water on store shelves.  "What comes
out of the tap is truly excellent water," said the public works director of
Houston, Tex.  Wrote the Times, "Thus, the marketing plans dare consumers
to pay as much as $1 or more for a quart of water in a bottle that could be
drawn from their own taps and placed in a refrigerator for less than 1/10
of a cent." (The Times reporter, tasting Houston's water, wrote, apparently
without irony:  "Bold, full-bodied, provocative.")

* In August, Bausch & Lomb Inc. agreed to pay $1.7 million to settle a
multi-state investigation in which attorneys general accused it of fraud.
According to the states, the company sold the very same disposable contact
lenses under three different model names, purporting to have different
characteristics, for prices varying from $2.50 to $23 a pair.  Said a New
York investigator, "The lenses are the exact same physically--the only
difference was their instructions for use."

* Quorum International Ltd. announced plans in July for a $1.6 billion Holy
Land theme park in Mesquite, Nev., along Interstate 15 about 75 miles from
Las Vegas, including a 33-story statue of Jesus and large models of Noah's
Ark and the parting of the Red Sea.

* The Lundarelli family in Udine, Italy, said in July that it would not bow
to pressure and would thus leave its Fuehrer wine on the market (joining
its Guevara, Lenin, and Marx brands).  Fuehrer's label has a photo of Adolf
Hitler and comes in two varieties, Zieg Heil and Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein
Fuehrer ("One People, One Empire, One Ruler").  And in June the Liquor
Control Board of Ontario cleared local shelves of a smuggled Chinese wine
that purportedly enhances libido.  Three-Penis Wine (deer, dolphin, and dog)
has such foul ingredients that authorities wouldn't even dump it in sewers.

* In Topeka, Kan., in August, a radical-patriot "common-law jury," permitted
by state officials to convene in a room in the Capitol, impeached U.S.
District Judge J. Thomas Marten of Wichita.  Among his "crimes":  By jailing
a couple for nonpayment of taxes, he was guilty of kidnapping; he enforced
land-regulation laws when everyone knows that land-owning is a God-given
right; he defended IRS, which the jury believed is an "off-shore entity"
and a racketeering conspiracy; he issued court documents that did not
contain a "seal"; he issued some orders as "Thomas Marten," without the
"J."; he did not have a flag in his courtroom; and he allowed a clerk to
make people sign documents in the middle of the signature line rather than
flush left.

* Ever since last year's court decision in Ontario permitting women to go
shirtless (as long as not for sexual or commercial purposes), critics have
been waiting for social turmoil.  In one of the few reported incidents,
former best friends Heather Genereaux, 24, and Jennifer Fitzgibbon, 23,
brawled in Kingston in June when Fitzgibbon decided to sunbathe topless in
her back yard, in view of Genereaux's 10-year-old son.   Genereaux suffered
a black eye; Fitzgibbon lost her bikini bottom.

	Copyright 1997 by Universal Press Syndicate.

© 1997 Peter Langston