News of the

Weird

Over the years, I've been reading the papers or watching television while having a quick breakfast  or just a cup of coffee before going to work. Now, with the internet, the morning news comes to me at night, so just a glance at the " News of the Weird", and the funnies with a little humor, but true, satisfy the li'l incentive I needed to start the morning. I want to share this with you. Relax and Smile.

Andy "The Mailman"

Police in Winston-Salem, N.C., arrested Sidney Rueben Smith, 48, in November after he applied for a checking account at a BB&T bank branch, claiming to be Jerry Cain and possessing Cain’s ID. A bank officer called the police. The real Jerry Cain had passed away three weeks earlier after a long illness, a fact known to all at the bank since his widow, Melinda Cain, is a teller there.

As in every election, several candidates who died during the campaign remained on the ballot, including a Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block, whom eventual winner Lee Baca down to the wire even though he died four days before the election. –In Yakima, Wash., race for county coroner, incumbent Leonard Birkinbine was re-elected, although he died two days before; he was running unopposed because his only challenger, John Reynolds, had died on Sept. 14, the day before the primary (which he won)

In August, three men were sentenced in Oregon City, Ore., for robbing a Taco Bell, including night manager Paul Armstrong, who was in on the job. In fact, Armstrong thought it was a good idea for partner Jeremy Veenker to shoot him so the job would look more authentic, but Veenker missed Armstrong’s arm and shot him in the chest, almost killing him.

Karl Ray Johnson, 23, was charged with disorderly conduct at Mervyn’s Department store on Sereno Drive in Vallejo, in June. He fell through a ceiling from a crawl-space ledge on which he was perched, just above four dressing rooms in which women were trying on swimsuits.

When authorities raided a cockfighting operation near Gadsden, Ala., in July, they found not only a restaurant and a 250-seat theater for patrons, but two air-conditioned trailers in which the roosters hung out before their matches, one of which featured piped-in country music.

In Thunder Bay, Ontario, in August, a 48-year-old woman was hospitalized after she tumbled from a third-story window while leaning out, shaking the dust off a rug. In September, the curator of the Baroda, India, museum discovered that an attendant had accidentally vacuumed up parts of a 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy.

In a Boston Globe interview in August, Roman Catholic nuns from the sisters of St Joseph order in Boston described their obsession with the Red Sox, admitting that they frequently call in to sports talk radio and get rowdy at the games. One nun said the sisters especially dogging former Red Sox players like Jose Conseco: " It’s not un-Christian to boo."

In May, the president of Create Corp., a Japanese "alibi" telephone service, said he had started acquiring as clients people who were so ashamed of having been laid off from work that they pay the answering service to create an illusory job and title for them so that callers will think that they are still working. (Most of the firm’s previous clients were prostitutes who needed to convince their friends and parents that they work for a fictitious but respectable company.

Morton, Ill., June: Two days after he thought he had died from the hatchet his wife had slammed into the back of his neck, Thomas Deas, 53, told reporters, " I still love her. I’d have her back in a minute." And St. Louis, April: Andrea Caldwell Murray begged a judge not to jail Bobby Murray for shooting her in the head last year, sending her into a coma and killing her fetus; said Andrea, " I don’t want to lose my Bobby." ( Between the shooting and the sentencing, Andrea had married Bobby and is now pregnant with their child.

When Pigs fly: In Corbeil, Canada, in August, Lucette St. Louis, 66, suffered a broken leg and other injuries when a 180 pound pig, owned by her son, came flying through the air and hit her broadside. It had been knocked airborne by a passing car.

Charles Askew, 63, in prison most of his life and in the Sparta, S.C.; jail in August for bank robbery, escaped. However, he was killed several hours later when he lost control of a stolen car and was ejected in a one-car collision. According to a U.S. marshal, Askew probably had not driven a car in 45 years and was unfamiliar wit h the controls, including, apparently, the concept of a seat belt.

Several steps beyond New York’s international Fringe Festival is " Fringe week" at the annual Edinburg (Scotland) Festival. This year’s, in August, featured John Kamakaze (who hangs for 15 minutes by 10 meat hooks in his back), Pityu (a 30-inch-tall Hungarian motorcyclist who stands on his head while eating worms and drinking blood), and Amazing Wasp Boy ( who swallows electrified neon light strips that illuminate his body)

The New York Times reported in June that NASA has recently successfully field-tested an oil spill-catcher that could have cleaned up the disastrous 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in about a week. A Huntsville, Ala., hair dresser named Phillip McCrory came up with the idea to put discarded hair into mesh pillows, and a NASA researcher determined that 1.4 million pounds of hair would have soaked up the Valdez 11 million gallons in about a week. By contrast, Exxon Corp. spent $ 2 billion over several years and caught only about 12 percent of the oil.

Things YOU Can Do Legally: Peep in the daytime. After an April incident in a University of Missouri dormitory, Columbia police acknowledged that the city’s ordinance against peeping in windows applies only at night. Take Hidden –Camera Photos at the Beach: Police detained, but had to release, a man in Huntington Beach in May who had a video camera inside a hollowed-out boom box so that he could surreptitiously tape sunbathing women.

Eat your Roadkill: In March, the West Virginia legislature decided it was not that unsanitary to eat fresh roadkill and thus repealed its law.

After a surprise 2-foot snowfall in Moscow, Russia, in April, Mayor Yuri Luzhkov fired the meteorologists, saying he would get weather forecasts by other means. In May, Mayor Kitizak (known by one name) of the Northern Thailand town of Sena try to end a sixth-month drought by installing two dozen 10-foot long inflated phalluses, which by local folklore would bring rain; however, citizens rebelled when the installation was followed instead by fires.

According to a Purdue University study released in May, Christians who are the most avid in their religious beliefs are more likely than other people to be overweight, with Southern Baptists at the top of the list. " I fit the mold, " said Rev. Jerry Falwell, speaking to a Newhouse News Service reporter. However, he said, " I don’t think God gives a flip either way."

Justin Clark, 19, was arrested and charged with burglary in Sioux Falls, S.D., in April, after a homeowner surprised him. According to Police, Clark fled, then led the police on a high-speed chase before crashing his car into a tree. As Clark ran through a nearby neighbor hood, in which several residents were out in their yards, he kept up a steady chatter, informing them the reason he was running was that the police were after him and asking whether any of them could help him. Several people tackled Clark and held him for the police.

Joseph Cantey, 22. Was arrested in Lindenwold, NJ, in May on several charges. According to police, he had made a clean escaped after burglarizing a home on May 5 and stealing a cell phone but had returned to the home on May 10 to confront the victim to get him to reactivate the cell phone service. The victim called his company but was unsuccessful, and Cantey fled, and in the ensuing chase, Cantey dropped 15 bags of crack cocaine and eventually led the police to his brother and two others, who were charged with possession of even more drugs.

A restaurant owner in Eastern France has dropped Viagra sauce from his menu after a visit from government inspectors. " Viagra is not approve in France, so this appears to have been a case of dispensing drugs without a license," said an official of the Finance Ministry’s Department of Consumer protection. Jean-Louis Galland of the Hotel de la Renovation les Bains had been serving " beef peccata in Viagra sauce infused with fig vinegar and herbs" at his hotel’s restaurant.

"I want to make my customers happy, particularly grandpas and their wives," Galland told the daily Le Parisien. Galland had been using one-fifth of a 50-mg pill per serving in the dish, which was provided only to consenting adults diners, until his stock was seized by two inspectors from the consumer protection department. The inspectors have turned the case over to state prosecutors in Annecy, officials said.

Viagra, the smash-hit anti-impotence drug made by U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfzer, is expected to go on sale in France by October.

Submitted by Claro Cortes

 Those who like lobsters are convinced it enjoys superiority over all other Native American food. In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, jailhouse prisoners were fed lobster everyday, until they threatened to riot, yet Napoleon celebrated victories with it and Queen Victoria placed it high on the palace menu. A lot of old-timers in Maine still refuse lobster because it was all they eat during the Depression-it did not become popular until after World War 11.

I read this in a magazine, copied it, while waiting for my Doctor’s appointment. –ANDY

A friend of mine, a co-worker, called late morning reporting an accident. He’s a mailman and the report was at first thought to be a joke. Mailmen joke around all the time. The foreman answered the phone and my friend reported that while delivering the mail, he accidentally hit a boat. Laughter follows, but my friend was serious, so the foreman went to the place of accident about 3 miles away. After further investigation, the accident happened this way: My friend was delivering on a residential area where the mailboxes are outside the street, cluster boxes we call it, and delivery is by driving through with the engine running but on park. A rather large dog started chasing the vehicle and went to the right where the driver, the mailman was, and tried to bite his right foot. One of his customers was preparing for a vacation and parked his boat right next to the cluster boxes. My friend, without realizing drove straight and hit the boat to avoid being bitten by the ferocious dog. For years, whenever we have safety talk somebody (ME) always remember to mention this. My friend bid out of his route this year. He is still my friend.

True story. --ANDY

Last March, Adonis Gomez, 2 years old, of New York City, playing on the sofa in a third floor apartment, bounced out the window. Like a miracle, he landed safely in the lap of Barbara Jones, 31, who were sitting in a wheelchair on the sidewalk.

Nine year old Kristin Loendal, of Aalesund, Norway, riding her bike down a steep hill and failing to stop at an intersection at the bottom, swerved into the path of an oncoming car and was knocked into the air. The driver of the car stopped to help the girl but couldn’t find here. Several hours later, he found out that she landed in the bed of a truck going in the opposite direction and sustains only bumps and bruises.

Raoul Felder New York divorce and palimony lawyer, praises the nation’s economy to a Washington Post reporter last May: " I can tell you how the economy is doing by how many mistresses come into my office looking for justice. I don’t need no Greenspan."

In March, a 20- year old man was charged with attempted murder in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. For stabbing a 29 year-old man, a friend, in the head. The victim walked out of his apartment, fully conscious and speaking despite the fact that the butcher knife was still embedded in his skull. He survived.

In May at Beaver Brook Golf Course in Haydenville, Mass., Todd Obuchowski was credited with a hole-in-one on a par-3 hole afterhis tee shot went over the green and onto the highway, hit the passing Toyota driven by Nancy Bachand, ricocheted back to the green, and rolled into the cup. At least eight golfers witnessed the shot.

On the witness stand in March in Albuquerque, N.M., car salesman Sean Gene Druktenis, 28 denied the charge that he had fondled the daughter of the woman he was dating. However, during cross-examination, prosecutor Robert Rambo challenged Mr. Druktenis truthfulness by asking, " As a top car salesman, did you ever lie to a customer?" That question drew what a reporter termed " a long pause," followed by ambiguous, " I would have to say no to that." (Four days later, a mistrial was declared on an unrelated matter.)

San Diego businessman Denis Braun told the Union-Tribune newspaper in June of his proposition to finance a new downtown baseball stadium for the PADRES by selling space inside the outfield wall for about 70,000 urns with ashes of baseball fans, at about $2,500 a slot. According to him, the boring alternative would be to "deep-sex (the ashes) in a pine box in the back 40 of some anonymous cemetery."

In February, the Kloser brewery in Nuezelle, Germany, announced it would soon begin selling dark beer concentrate for foam baths and eczema treatment. The new product differs from beer only in that the yeast is left in, creating its skin-soothing quality. Owner Helmut Fritsche said, " You can bathe in it or drink it. " Whoever wants to, can do both."

In May, when New York City sixth-grade teacher Aishah Ahmad, 44, declined to switch the classroom TV set from educational programming to " The Jerry Springer Show", four girls aged 11 and 12 pounced on her and beat her up, sending her to the hospital. However, a month before that, Stratford (Conn.) High student Joseph Calore filed a lawsuit against the school because it kept the Springer Show on in the classroom during an exam. According to Calore, a fight on the show provoked another student to punch Calore and break his jaw.

Life after retirement is just like work. In June, three retired police chiefs from Syracuse, New York, did something that surprised a lot of people. They started a business to supplement their pensions. They opened a DOUGHNUT shop, in Lakeland, New York. Said one, " We took our POLICE experience and put it toward what we know best."

HINDI KAPANIPANIWALA ANO? HANGGANG SA ISANG LINGGO. !!!