Fun_People Archive
25 Oct
Weirdness [452] - 4Oct96

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 96 17:25:33 -0700
To: Fun_People
Subject: Weirdness [452] - 4Oct96

Excerpted-from: WEIRDNUZ.452 (News of the Weird, October 4, 1996)
		by Chuck Shepherd

* Commercial Announcement:  Chuck Shepherd's 5th paperback book, The
Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics, is now at bookstores
everywhere ($6.95).  Ask proudly for a Concrete Enema on your next visit.

* Dole Mania: Just before the Republican convention in August, a man
carrying three suitcases climbed a 400-foot radio tower in Miami, Fla., and
told onlookers he would stay there until he was selected as Bob Dole's
running mate.  His political platform:  more horses and bicycles, less
asphalt and pornography.  And in Dallas, Tex., after becoming enraged at
Dole's nomination on August 14, Ernest Comegys, 70, went to his bedroom,
grabbed a handgun, fired several shots at his cousin and stepdaughter, and
then shot himself to death.

* The government of Zimbabwe announced in June that it was pessimistic that
it could fill the vacant position of hangman after the resignation of Tommy
Griffiths, 72, an Englishman who had held the part-time post since the
1950s.  Though dozens of men are on death row, no local person will take
the job because of a national superstition about taking someone's life
without personal motive.

* A San Francisco Chronicle Labor Day story described several local jobs
that might make its readers appreciate their own.  University of California
at Davis scientist Francine Bradley was interviewed because she trains
workers to perform the manual insemination of turkeys, from drawing the
semen to implanting it.  (Turkeys genetically bred for massive breast-meat
sections cannot comfortably mate on their own. [Same as humans?  -psl])
Recommended Bradley, "You have to develop a relationship with your tom."

* Also in that issue of the San Francisco Chronicle was a report on Martha
Huerta, who pulls an eight-hour shift at ABC Diaper Service in Berkeley,
Calif., where she feeds soiled diapers through an electronic counting
machine and on to the washer.  Her tools are gloves and an electric fan,
although, said her supervisor, "It helps that her sense of smell isn't very
good." [I hope you're asking yourself: "Cause or effect?"  -psl]

* In April, a devoutly Christian abstinence counselor and high school
senior, Danyale Andersen, 18, of Redmond, Ore., gave birth to the baby of
a former, short-term boyfriend.  She said she felt guilty about it but still
believes in abstinence.

* In April, Christopher J. Kerins, a Trenton, N. J., undercover police
officer, was arrested and charged with robbing the Kenwood Savings Bank in
Cincinnati, Ohio, during a break while attending the Middle Atlantic Law
Enforcement convention.  (Kerins, unfamiliar with the city, reportedly
paused after collecting the money from the teller to ask directions out to
Interstate 71, and he was spotted on his way there by a local police
officer.)

* In July, according to a fire department official in Pullman, Wash., the
cause of a fire in a parked truck was the magnification of the sun through
a plastic prism hanging from the truck's ceiling, onto a stack of papers.
The truck's owner said the prism was a gift from his insurance company.

Copyright 1996, Universal Press Syndicate.  All rights reserved.
No commercial use may be made of the material or of the name
News of the Weird.

© 1996 Peter Langston