For those who care for humor...


>################################################################
>News of the Weird(tm) by Chuck Shepherd
>2000(c), Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.  The name
>News of the Weird is a registered trademark of Chuck Shepherd.
>
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>################################################################
>Originally published 10.01.00
>
>News of the Weird(.660)
>
>LEAD STORIES
>
>The Wishes of the Fetus: On Sept. 6, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected a
>lawsuit by a 7-year-old girl with spina bifida, who had sued her parents'
>doctors because she wanted to have been aborted (since the doctors knew she
>would have birth defects). On the same day, in Attleboro, Mass., Judge
>Kenneth
>Nasif ordered a pregnant woman held in custody until she gives birth
>because
>he feared that she, because of her religion, might decline medical
>attention
>if she experienced complications; Nasif said he could "sense" the unborn
>child
>saying to him, "I want to live. I don't want to die like my brother (a
>previous victim of the woman's religion-based medical neglect) did."
>
>In August, Elsie Holdren, 68, a security officer working on contract at a
>courthouse in Viera, Fla., was transferred by her company to a courthouse
>in
>nearby Melbourne because her superiors thought she was too courteous. "Due
>to
>your caring and giving nature," wrote Holdren's supervisor (with Weiser
>Security Services in Orlando), "you are compromising your position as a
>security officer. (Being caring and giving) is not a job requirement, nor
>is
>it what you are paid to do."
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Lone-Star Justice
>
>The mentally retarded Felipe Rodriguez spent 13 months in jail in Swisher
>County, Texas (near Amarillo), after being accused of a minor theft,
>largely
>because his court-appointed defense attorney forgot about him until a
>Dallas
>Morning News reporter pestered her about the status of the case. (Rodriguez
>was released in August.) And a June New York Times report on veteran
>court-appointed defense lawyer Ronald G. Mock chronicled his career-long,
>mediocre representation of a series of now-executed men, including June
>executee Gary Graham, who was convicted based on one fleeting, nighttime
>eyewitness identification, which Mock neither challenged nor seriously
>investigated.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>The Litigious Society
>
>*      Robert Jones of Adel, Ga., filed a lawsuit in Atlanta in June against the
>maker of Liquid Fire drain cleaner after the stuff oozed out of Jones'
>homemade container all over his legs, causing "extensive, excruciating
>burns
>and destruction of flesh." Actually, Liquid Fire comes in a spill-proof
>container, but Jones was skeptical of its sturdiness and thus poured the
>contents into his own, "safer" container (from which it eventually
>spilled).
>Thus, Jones' legal theory is that Liquid Fire's original package somehow
>created the impression of flimsiness, which therefore forced Jones to pour
>the
>contents into his own container.
>
>Two years ago, Javier Polo, 25, filed a lawsuit in Aviles, Spain,
>demanding that his mother, Maria Delores Ray, 54, be ordered to support him
>financially while he is out of work. Recently, according to a May London
>Observer story, a judge ruled for Polo, ordering Ray to pay him 15 percent
>of
>her salary (about $192 a month) despite the fact that he does not even live
>with her. (The parents are divorced; he lives with his father; but she has
>to
>pay because she earns more than the father.)
>
>In July, Tang Weijiang, 29, filed a lawsuit in Shanghai, China, against
>Canon Inc. because one of the Japanese company's advertising CD-ROMs left
>him
>in mental distress, which he said was deliberate, just one more act in a
>centuries-long campaign of disrespect by Japanese people and companies
>against
>the Chinese. The specific act that caused Tang such anguish was a passage
>on
>the CD-ROM text implying that China, Taiwan and Hong Kong were separate
>countries.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Latest Rights
>
>Parents in Benicia, Calif., were complaining, according to a June San
>Francisco Chronicle report, of the public library's policy of denying them
>access to the names of books their children (regardless of age) have
>checked
>out. California law generally provides for confidentiality of government
>records, but some libraries enforce that more strictly than others. The
>Benicia library makes an exception only if a book is overdue, so that
>parents
>can look for it at home.
>
>Australian masseuse Carol Vanderpoel, 52, believing that all she knew how
>to cure were physical aches and pains, sued her former employer, the Blue
>Mountains Women's Health Centre in Katoomba, which had required her also to
>listen to her clients' psychological problems during massages and to
>counsel
>them, which she said left her severely depressed. In June, a judge in New
>South Wales District Court awarded her about $17,000 in damages. (Among the
>problems that grossed her out were a client's confession of performing
>euthanasia on her husband and another woman's having been assaulted with a
>chain saw).
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Latest Rages
>
>The following people apparently get really set off by the following things:
>Mark Adam Yazzie, 26 (got into an argument with his brother-in-law about
>the
>merits of rap music vs. rock and ran him over with a truck; Santa Rosa,
>Calif., June). Jane Graham, 77 (pointed a butcher knife at a neighbor man's
>groin and threatened to "cut it off" because he was playing his stereo too
>loud; Winnipeg, Manitoba, July). Gerard Corbo, 56 (at his son's wedding,
>started a fistfight when a guest referred to the groom by the wrong first
>name; Westlake, Ohio, June).
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>In Their Own Words
>
>Grandmother Karren Kinsel, head of the office that regulates content on
>vanity
>license plates in Illinois ("WORKSUX" rejected; "BI DAD E" OK), explaining
>to
>a Chicago Tribune reporter in July what qualifies her to rule on whether
>certain applications are in poor taste: "You take some people, they just
>don't
>have a dirty mind. Some of my staff doesn't. But I do, kind of."
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Updates
>
>When News of the Weird first mentioned Summum (in 1988), the Salt Lake City
>religious organization had just introduced its mummification alternative to
>burials and cremations, charging $7,000 to preserve a body and an
>additional
>$18,000 to create a bronze statue, according to founder Corky Ra. As of
>June
>2000, according to an Associated Press story, Summum is still looking to
>make
>its first human mummy (it has done several pets), although 137 people have
>made deposits toward the current prices of $12,000 to preserve and $36,000
>(and up) for statues (plus transportation costs and mausoleum space). Corky
>Ra's preservation process includes soaking the body in secret fluids,
>applying
>lanolin, polyurethane rubber and fiberglass bandages.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Least Competent Criminals
>
>A 17-year-old boy was arrested in Loomis, Calif., in July after he was
>unsuccessful in what might have been an attempt to emulate the notorious
>"Rooftop Robber," who had burglarized more than 40 businesses in California
>and other states by entering through roofs (and who was captured in May).
>Unlike the original, the 17-year-old crashed through a false ceiling in his
>first job, broke a sink standing on it trying to climb out, then made it to
>a
>false ceiling and crawled to an adjacent store, but fell through that
>ceiling,
>too, injuring his ankle, and then finally, on his way out, tripped the
>burglar
>alarm and had police waiting for him.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Also, in the Last Month ...
>
>An IRS advisory opinion declared that the parents of a still-kidnapped
>child
>must stop taking the dependent's exemption while the child is missing.
>Scientists in India discovered a new chili, whose burn worsens with water
>and
>which is 50 percent hotter than the previous world's-hottest chili. A
>deceased's family sued Forest Lawn cemetery over a bad embalming, though
>the
>family admitted that park employees did work diligently to swat flies off
>of
>the open casket during the memorial service (Los Angeles). A robber
>pistol-whipped a pizza deliverer, causing the gun to discharge and fire a
>fatal shot at the robber's 17-year-old partner (Nashville).
>
>       Thanks This Time to Jason Rule, Graham Thomas, Paul Blumstein, Ralph
>Anderson, Nick Carter, Gary Anderson, and Frank Williams, and to the News
>of the Weird Senior Advisors Gaal Shepherd Crowl, Paul Di Filippo, Geoffrey
>Egan, sam Gaines, Ivan Katz, Steve Lauria, Barbara McDonald, Matt Mirapaul,
>and Jim Sweeney, and to the News of the Weird Chief Correspondents Paul
>Bogrow, Bob Brown, Michael Colpitts, Lance Ellisor, Harry Farkas, Fritz
>Gritzner, Ginger Katz, Wolf Kirchmeir, Myra J. Linden, Bob McCabe, Victor
>McDonald, Kerry O'Conner, Jerry Pohlen, Yvonne Pover, Larry Ellis Reed, the
>great Chip Rogers, Tom Slone, H. Thompson, Bruce Townley, Barbara Tyger,
>and Elyse Verse, and to Outstanding Weird News Reporters Gary Abbott, Jamie
>Anderson, Bob Bayer, Jenny Beatty, Herb Jue, Scott Langill, Tim Maloney,
>Allen Pasternak, Lee Sechrest, Maurine Taylor, Marty Turnauer, Willard
>Wheeler, Mark Weiss, and Jerry Whittle.
>

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