Fun_People Archive
10 Oct
Weirdness [543] - 3Jul98

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 98 01:30:16 -0700
To: Fun_People
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Subject: Weirdness [543] - 3Jul98

X-Lib-of-Cong-ISSN: 1098-7649
Excerpted-from: WEIRDNUZ.543 (News of the Weird, July 3, 1998)
		by Chuck Shepherd

* Michael Anthony Horne filed a lawsuit against the City of San Antonio,
Tex., in May for a wrongful arrest last year that cost him the ashes of his
grandmother.  He had pulled off the road to nap, which looked suspicious to
a passing patrolman, who searched Horne's car and found the ashes, which he
submitted to a field test, which turned up positive for methamphetamines.
Horne was in jail for 30 days until he made bail, and the case has cost him
his job, his car, his apartment, and his military reserve status.  Two
subsequent tests of the ashes were negative for drugs, but the tests
consumed almost all of the ashes.

* In May, the Food and Drug Administration voted 5-4 to continue approval
of the human skin replacement patches made by Organogenesis Inc. of Canton,
Mass.   The company's technique is to cultivate and harvest the
fastest-growing source of raw material:  circumcision residue.  One snipped
foreskin can eventually produce 200,000 three-inch disks of fake skin.  The
Economist magazine called this use of foreskin "the most profitable . . .
since David presented Saul with a sackload" to gain the throne of Israel.

* Cradle of Democracy:  In May, actor and proud philanderer Jose Estrada
was elected president in one of the Philippines's quietest elections ever,
in that only 45 people were killed in campaign- related incidents.  Former
first lady Imelda Marcos dropped out of the race in April, but got back in,
she said, to prevent the suicides of several of her supporters.  Among the
presidential losers was Mario Lagazpi, who stayed in character as God,
claiming he had taken a leave of absence from Heaven to help the country.

* In March, British Columbia legislator Paul Reitsma was caught lying by a
handwriting expert, who said, contrary to Reitsma's denials, that Reitsma
was the author of a letter to the editor of the Parksville Morning Sun
praising Reitsma's performance.  The next day, Reitsma admitted he wrote it
but that he was only dictating for another person.  When confronted by
charges that he had written nine similar letters, he said, "To the best of
my knowledge," he hadn't written any others.  The next day, he admitted to
writing all nine amidst charges that he had written several dozen more.

* In April, Darren Kennedy, 30, pleaded no contest in Denver to several
misdemeanors for streaking across Coors Field during a Colorado Rockies
baseball game.  Kennedy told the judge he thought it would be a good way to
meet women.

* In December, Rev. Joyce Mines of St. Stephen's Pentecostal church in York,
Va., distributed leaflets in a townhouse community, intending to save souls
and increase her church's membership but instead drew criticism.  She said
the fliers were aimed at girls and young women but asked readers, "Did your
grandma have ways like a whore?"  "Did your mother have ways like a whore?"
"Do you have ways like a whore?"  "Are you now raising a whore?" Mines said
no offense was intended.

* Earlier this year, Wichita Falls, Tex., Baptist minister Robert Jeffress
wrote a $54 check to the city library to purchase all the copies of the book
Heather Has Two Mommies and another children's book on living with
homosexual parents, with the goal of retiring them from circulation.
However, subsequent publicity caused so many library patrons to request the
book that, according to the library's standard guidelines, it will have to
order several new copies to satisfy demand.

* Police in Saratoga Springs, N. Y., arrested Tracey L. Wilcox, 18, in May
and charged him with possession of a counterfeit $50 bill.  According to
police, the cashier tried to talk Wilcox out of trying to pass it, but
Wilcox insisted he take it, despite the fact that the bill bore a picture
of Andrew Jackson (the $20-bill man) instead of Ulysses S. Grant.

* In ... Tahlequah, Okla., in June, a 32-year-old man apparently lost his
balance and fell to his death from a 64-foot water tower on which he had
just finished painting the graffiti "No Fear."

	Copyright 1998 by Universal Press Syndicate.

© 1998 Peter Langston