Bad Habits - News of the Weird - January 27 2005
Those hardy Floridians: Rudolph Jessie Hicks Jr., 30, was arrested in Brooksville, Fla., for trespass, but not before he had gotten up from a police dog takedown, five Taser shots, and an entire can of pepper spray (December). And police in Port St. Lucie, Fla., were considering whether to charge Robin Bush, who strangled a 130-pound Rottweiler after it would not let go of her tiny Yorkie (December).
More things to worry about: 1) Police in Denton, Texas, arrested two teenagers in October and charged them with robbing two visitors who were passing through town from Montana; the victims said they were on their way to Baton Rouge, La., because they needed money and had read on the Internet that a medical school would pay $100,000 for testicles. 2) The Dutch retirement home Seniorenpand, in Rotterdam, bills itself as the world's only old-age community for incorrigible heroin addicts and has a long waiting list for its few rooms, according to a December dispatch in The Scotsman. (One satisfied resident bragged that he had some "pretty good stuff" the night before.)
Ironies: A 59-year-old veteran NASCAR driver from Scottsdale, Ariz., was killed in November when he fell off of a Segway scooter (going 5 mph) at a Las Vegas go-cart race and hit his head. And in China's Guangxi Zhuang region in September, five people asphyxiated while conducting a ceremony in a dangerous lead mine (frequently shut down by the government), including a prominent feng shui expert there to advise on improving harmonic energy flow. And in Aliquippa, Pa., in October, a 28-year-old man was electrocuted on his first day at work as an electrician.
Scenes of the surreal: 1) Britain's Office of Communications, which rules on viewers' complaints about TV programs, decided in November that the on-air, manual collecting of hog semen on the "reality" show "The Farm" did not violate standards in that, in the office's opinion, the pig did not feel "degrad[ed]" by the experience.
Unclear on the concept: In November, Jens Orback, Sweden's minister for integration and gender equality, who had been under fire for not being aggressive on the job, denied on the radio program "Ekot" that he was intolerant of sexual minorities. Said Orback: "I had a wonderful aunt who lived in Canada with a horse. I thought it was wonderful. Let people live as they wish." Later, attempting to explain himself, Orback insisted that the aunt's relationship with the horse was platonic.
Super-tolerant people: A St. Paul Pioneer Press reporter, interviewing neighbors of the people who shared a St. Croix Falls, Wis., home that was condemned after being overrun with 450 cats, found that most neighbors had failed to notice the house's putrid smell. Several said that the awful odor from the neighborhood's fish hatchery and the awful odor of the neighborhood's sewage treatment plant probably overrode the awful odor of the house.
Least competent people: A 39-year-old man in Chillicothe, Ohio, was hospitalized in December after an unsuccessful suicide attempt that accidentally blew his own house to pieces and did heavy damage to neighboring homes. The man had turned on the natural gas to kill himself, but then realized that other houses might be in danger, and just as he dashed to the basement to turn off the electricity, the house exploded (probably from an electrical spark) and was leveled. A month before, the man had tried to kill himself with automobile exhaust and a garden hose, but his car ran out of gas before he could die, and he then hooked up a propane tank for the same purpose, but once again, he outlived his fuel supply.
Recurring themes: News of the Weird reported as far back as 1998 on optimistic pet owners preparing to pay large sums for a cloned model of a deceased dog or cat, mentioning a lab at Texas A&M University planning to clone a collie-husky named Missy (who was, of course, according to her owners, "perfect"). The lab's Dr. Mark Westhusin and his team managed to clone its first dog, "cc," in 2001, and has subsequently cloned cattle, goats, pigs and a cat. In December 2004, another outfit, Genetic Savings and Clone (of Sausalito, Calif., and Madison, Wis.), announced that it had delivered a kitten to a woman for $50,000 that is a DNA replica of Nicky, a cat that died last year at age 17.
Readers' choice: Paul Eugene Levengood, owner of the Tasty Flavors Sno Biz dessert shop in the Chattanooga suburb of Red Bank, was charged with two counts of sexual battery in November when two 19-year-old female employees said he had occasion-ally spanked them for workplace errors (for example, once for forgetting to put a banana into a smoothie drink). A defensive Levengood pointed out that the women had each signed a form, "I give Gene permission to bust my behind any way he sees fit." Police found at the store many photographs of women's posteriors, even though a Sno Biz executive called Levengood a "very Christian person."
© 2004 CHUCK SHEPHERD
More things to worry about: 1) Police in Denton, Texas, arrested two teenagers in October and charged them with robbing two visitors who were passing through town from Montana; the victims said they were on their way to Baton Rouge, La., because they needed money and had read on the Internet that a medical school would pay $100,000 for testicles. 2) The Dutch retirement home Seniorenpand, in Rotterdam, bills itself as the world's only old-age community for incorrigible heroin addicts and has a long waiting list for its few rooms, according to a December dispatch in The Scotsman. (One satisfied resident bragged that he had some "pretty good stuff" the night before.)
Ironies: A 59-year-old veteran NASCAR driver from Scottsdale, Ariz., was killed in November when he fell off of a Segway scooter (going 5 mph) at a Las Vegas go-cart race and hit his head. And in China's Guangxi Zhuang region in September, five people asphyxiated while conducting a ceremony in a dangerous lead mine (frequently shut down by the government), including a prominent feng shui expert there to advise on improving harmonic energy flow. And in Aliquippa, Pa., in October, a 28-year-old man was electrocuted on his first day at work as an electrician.
Scenes of the surreal: 1) Britain's Office of Communications, which rules on viewers' complaints about TV programs, decided in November that the on-air, manual collecting of hog semen on the "reality" show "The Farm" did not violate standards in that, in the office's opinion, the pig did not feel "degrad[ed]" by the experience.
Unclear on the concept: In November, Jens Orback, Sweden's minister for integration and gender equality, who had been under fire for not being aggressive on the job, denied on the radio program "Ekot" that he was intolerant of sexual minorities. Said Orback: "I had a wonderful aunt who lived in Canada with a horse. I thought it was wonderful. Let people live as they wish." Later, attempting to explain himself, Orback insisted that the aunt's relationship with the horse was platonic.
Super-tolerant people: A St. Paul Pioneer Press reporter, interviewing neighbors of the people who shared a St. Croix Falls, Wis., home that was condemned after being overrun with 450 cats, found that most neighbors had failed to notice the house's putrid smell. Several said that the awful odor from the neighborhood's fish hatchery and the awful odor of the neighborhood's sewage treatment plant probably overrode the awful odor of the house.
Least competent people: A 39-year-old man in Chillicothe, Ohio, was hospitalized in December after an unsuccessful suicide attempt that accidentally blew his own house to pieces and did heavy damage to neighboring homes. The man had turned on the natural gas to kill himself, but then realized that other houses might be in danger, and just as he dashed to the basement to turn off the electricity, the house exploded (probably from an electrical spark) and was leveled. A month before, the man had tried to kill himself with automobile exhaust and a garden hose, but his car ran out of gas before he could die, and he then hooked up a propane tank for the same purpose, but once again, he outlived his fuel supply.
Recurring themes: News of the Weird reported as far back as 1998 on optimistic pet owners preparing to pay large sums for a cloned model of a deceased dog or cat, mentioning a lab at Texas A&M University planning to clone a collie-husky named Missy (who was, of course, according to her owners, "perfect"). The lab's Dr. Mark Westhusin and his team managed to clone its first dog, "cc," in 2001, and has subsequently cloned cattle, goats, pigs and a cat. In December 2004, another outfit, Genetic Savings and Clone (of Sausalito, Calif., and Madison, Wis.), announced that it had delivered a kitten to a woman for $50,000 that is a DNA replica of Nicky, a cat that died last year at age 17.
Readers' choice: Paul Eugene Levengood, owner of the Tasty Flavors Sno Biz dessert shop in the Chattanooga suburb of Red Bank, was charged with two counts of sexual battery in November when two 19-year-old female employees said he had occasion-ally spanked them for workplace errors (for example, once for forgetting to put a banana into a smoothie drink). A defensive Levengood pointed out that the women had each signed a form, "I give Gene permission to bust my behind any way he sees fit." Police found at the store many photographs of women's posteriors, even though a Sno Biz executive called Levengood a "very Christian person."
© 2004 CHUCK SHEPHERD