1997_01 The Daily Collegian January 1997

              THE DAILY
COLLEGIAN
4      Wednesday, January 29,1997
News
News Editor: Matthew Hart
Telephone: (209) 278-5735
OF THE
The barometer of weird
1996
President Clinton was re-elected, they say,
because unlike four years ago, people are op¬
timistic now. However, those of us who read
the newspapers closely know better. Civili¬
zation is in decline, as is clearly evident from
these very disturbing, though underreported
stories highlighting a bizarre 1996.
Sounds like a pretty severe
Calcium and Iron
deficiency
• In Lamar. Mo., a pre-trial hearing took
place in February on Joyce Lehr's lawsuit
against the county for injuries suffered in a
1993 fall in the icy. unplowcd parking lot of
the local high school. The Carthage Press
reported that Lehr claimed injuries to nearly
every single part of her body. According to
her petition: "All the bones, organs, muscles,
tendons, tissues, nerves, veins, arteries, liga¬
ments. ... discs, cartilages, and the joints of
her body were fractured, broken, ruptured,
puitctured. compressed, dislocated, sepa¬
rated, bruised, contused, narrowed, abrased.
lacerated, burned, cut. torn, wrenched, swol¬
len, strained, sprained, inflamed and in¬
fected."
The most hapless criminals
of the year
• In January in Fremont. Calif. a carjacker
described as 5-foot-8, about 170 pounds,
yanked Cecilia Laus. 54. out of her car and
drove off. leaving the woman shaken and also
bewildered, since the car in question was a
1976 AMC Pacer.
• Willie King. 37. was arrested moments
after he had allegedly mugged a 94-year-old
woman in a housecoat just outside her front
door in New York's Greenwich Village in
July. The woman is the mother of Vincent
"Chin" Gigante, the reputed godfather of the
Genovcse crime family. (At press time, amaz¬
ingly. King is still alive.)
Hie one-man family tree
• Houston police arrested a 46-year-old
man in February and charged him with mo¬
lesting his 12-year-old granddaughter. Police
officers and social workers suspect that the
man is not only the father of the girl s mother
but of the girl, too, and. noting that the grand¬
daughter is five months pregnant, also sus¬
pect he is the father of what would be his
great-granddaughter. (The suspect denied all
accusations.)
Voters want to leave
politics to the real
prostitutes
• Several sexual service-providers ran for
public office in 1996. but none were elected.
Ex-prostitute Jessi Winchester. 53, lost her
race for Congress from Nevada's 2nd Dis¬
trict. Mistress Madison. 32. a San Diego
dominatrix who operates thcSlaye Cave and
runs a phone-sex service, ran unsuccessfully
for Congress under the banner of Ross Perot's
Reform Party. And Margo St. James finished
barely out of the running in the balloting for
the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
What did you expect with
a wind-chill of minus 20?
• Acting on the complaint of a 59-year-
old female motorist in Bloomington. Minn..
in January, police stopped a driver whom she
said had pulled alongside her and flashed her
by pressing a nude photograph of himself
against a window.
The year of the ridiculous
scheme
• The village council of Bruntingthorpe.
England, began consideration in February of
one member's elaborate plan to reduce-the
amount of dog poop in the town of 200 people
(30 dogs): The village would DNA-test the
dogs and keep the results, on file for the pur¬
pose of matching the DNA to that in any
unscooped dog poop lying around the village,
so as to punish the appropriate owners.
• In March, an 18-year-old dockworker at
Roadway Express in Dallas was arrested at a
local Western Union and charged with forg¬
ery after improperly trying to cash a check
made out to his employer. The man produced
a photo ID that gave his name as Mr. "Road¬
way V Express." After questioning him. the
Western Union manager said. "OK. Mr. Ex¬
press. I'll be right back (with the money)"
and then called the police.
• In April the Iowa Supreme Court turned
down inmate Kirk Livingood's attempt to sue
Phillip Negrete based on the State's domes¬
tic abuse law. Negrete is Livingood's
cellmate, and. according to Livingood. beats
and torments him.
.•.In July, Jason Harte pleaded guilty to
smashing gfa? s doors ir> a New York City
building with a slingshot. He is a principal in
the Adams Glass Co. of Yonkers. NY, and
is suspected by police of breaking hundreds
of other windows in order to elicit business
• The Floyd County (Ky.) coroner
compained in February that ambulance driv¬
ers were taking dead people to the hospital
just so they could bill the county for the rides.
One man was rushed to the hospital even
though his suicide shotgun blast was so pow¬
erful that it blew both eyeballs out of their
sockets. Another had been dead so long that
rigor mortis had commenced, leaving the
body bent at the waist so that it would not fit
on a stretcher, but the driver said he thought
he felt a pulse.
Autobiography of the least
interesting man in America
• According to a Seattle Times feature in
March. Robert Shields. 77, of Dayton. Wash.,
is the author of perhaps the longest personal
diary in history — nearly 38 million words
on paper stored in 81 cardboard boxes —
covering his last 24 years in five minute seg¬
ments. Example: July 25.1993, 7 am.: "I
cleaned out the tub and scraped my feet with
my fingernails to remove layers of dead
, skin." 7:05 a.m.: "Passed a large, firm stool,
and a pint of urine. Used five sheets of pa¬
per."
Bottom of the gene pool
• Western Kentucky University student
Joe Schmidt, asked by the school newspaper*
whether Magic Johnson's return to pro bas¬
ketball in February would put other players
at risk: "it would be an honor to get HIV from
playing Magic Johnson on an NBA court.
He's one of the greats."
Life imitates a Rodney
Dangerfield joke
• In January. Steven Hicks. 38, and Diana
Hicks, 35, were sentenced to six months in
jail in Cape May. NJ., for child abandonment.
While their unruly son was hospitalized, the
couple had surreptitiously packed up and
moved to Inglewood, Calif.
India — the world's No. 1
country
• Almost 600 delegates from 17 countries
attended the first World Conference on Auto-
Urine (i.e. your own) Therapy held in Goa,
India in February. Adherents of the 5.000-
year-old therapy claim that urine's hormones,
enzymes, vitamins and minerals are so rich
that urine can cure ilnesses such as tubercu¬
losis and cancer. '
Oohh, yeaaah, now I see
your point
• Featured at the Donn Roll Contempo¬
rary Museum in Sarasota, Fla., in May and
June was Charon Lucbbers" Menstrual Hut.
a 6-by-6-by-5-foot .isolation booth to sym¬
bolize the lonliness that society has forced
upon menstruating women. Accompanying
it were 28 canvasses created by Luebbers'
pressing her face into whatever discharge was
present in each of the 28 days of her one-
month cycle, to show the contrast.
For those who love golf but
feel it's too laborous -
• Two Fremont. Calif., men obtained a
patent early in the year for a golf club that
will fire a ball up to 250 yards by an explo¬
sive charge in the club head (The club is
not expected to be approved for tournament
play.) And in ApriT, a Houston man obtained
a patent for a cup that goes inside a golf hole
and periscopes up after the ball goes in so
that the golfer does not have,to bend down to
retrieve it.
Introducing the Day-
Runner(TM) felon-on-the-
go limited edition
• Criminal suspects in 1996 seemed to be
better organized than previous years' perps.
judging from the numerous "to-do" lists that
pol ice are discovering. For example, two es¬
capees from Rutland, Vt., were captured in
May with a list to guide them in an imminent
robbery.
• A fifteen-year-old boy was indicted for
murder in Dallas in May, and evidence
against him was a list that included the re¬
minder to kill the victim. In September,
former Navy Ensign Dana R. Collins, 35, was
convicted of the murder of a colleague after
police found a list that included 'Take him
out.1' "Cut him up/take head/fingers and
toes." "Put him in two bags," and "Drive
body to Pennsylvania. Keep head and fingers
and toes — scatter on way back."
• Charinassa Fairley was charged in July
with killing her husband in Baton Rouge. La.,
after police found a step-Jby-step checklist:
"Make-a prank call to him; offer food and
love; make him take a bath with you. Put on
gloves" and "Make love like never before for
the last time. Lay down after he falls asleep.
Pop him." >
The least easily explicable
news story of the year
• In April. Nevada County (Calif.) judi¬
cial candidate Robert Litchfield, attempting
to rectify his low standing amoung local law¬
yers, offered to kneel and wash the feet of
any lawyer in the county as a gesture of his
desire to serve them. Said Litchfield. "What
I (offered) was an act of faith, and I don't
think that's something a news reporter can
understand." At the scheduled washing.
Litchfield showed up with a basin and a
towel, but no lawyer came forth.
At last, a job opening for
an english grad student
• In May, Stanford University won the
right, over the University of California at Ber¬
keley, to house the literary legacy of the late
Pulitzer- and Oscar-winning writer William
Saroyan. apparently because it also agreed
to take custody of Saroyan's non-literary
property, which included hundreds of boxes
of rocks, matchbook covers, old newspapers
(numbering in the thousands), labels peeled
off cans, and a plastic bag filled with about
10.000 rubber bands.
The least justifiable
homicide of the year
• In July in Dadcville. Ala. Mr. Gabel Tay
lor, 38. who had prevailed in an informal
Bible-quoting contest, was shot to death bv
the loser.
The latest in pervert    ,
technology: The shoe-cam
• Police in Toronto. Ontario, arrested a 62
year-old retired schoolteacher in September
for allegedly videotaping under the skirts ot
about 30 women via a pinpoint-sized lens
protruding from the toe of his shoe, connected
by wires to a camera hjdden in his waist
pouch %
Coincidence,^ the year
• In May. Quebec legislator Andre
Bourerice denounced voter fraud during a
committee meeting, citing one particular ex¬
ample of bogus names registered to vote in
Old Montreal. "I know there are famous
people in my (district)." said Boulerice. '* but
I doubt 'Omar Sharif would be voting
(here)." especially since, according to the
voter records, he shares an apartment with
"Martina Navratilova,"" The next day, neigh¬
bors of the couple reported, Sharif, son ol
the actor, is indeed married to a stockbroker
named Martina Navratilova.
No paranoid should be
without one
• The London insurance brokerage
Goodfcllow, Rebbeca. Ingrams, Pearson an¬
nounced in August it would begin to offer
policies to cover people worried about alien
abduction. A premium of about $155 a year
would pay $ 160.000 to an abductee (provided
that the abductor was not from Earth) and
double that if the insured is impregnated dur¬
ing the abduction. Since alien powers are
unknown, men can purchase the impregna¬
tion rider, also. Said Goodfcllow director
Simon Burgess, "I personally would not buy
(thisj policy."
Emily Post would be proud
• Postal- worker Douglas C. Yee. 50. was
indicted in February in San Mateo, Calif, for
pulling off bulk-mail scams totaling
$800,000. Found in Yee's garbage were notes
he had written to God expressing gratitude
for His continued help in evading police.
Read one. "Lord.vI am having a difficult time
myself seeing you as a God who hides crime,
yet your Word says that it's your privilege
[or glory] to do just that."
'(ScwJyowVV^ Newt to CTMk Stephen! PO Boi8X*>
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