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by Chuck Sheperd
LEAD STORIES
Ex-policeman Paul Harrington, 53, was arrested in Detroit in October for killing his wife and son, having reportedly confessed that he was having trouble providing for them and wanted them never to be homeless. In 1975, Harrington killed his first wife and their two kids but was found not guilty by reason of insanity and sentenced to a mental institution, but within two months he was ruled no longer a danger and released.
According to an October Philadelphia Inquirer report, several dozen astrologers are making a living dispensing financial advice, and there is even an investors' newsletter, Investing by the Stars, at $300 a year. Appliance repairman Robert Hitt, of Blue Bell, Pa., tracks celestial alignments at $35 a month for the 200 subscribers at his AstroEcon website and says the market is headed down and will tank on May 5, 2000. Said one mainstream financial adviser, explaining the astrologers' success, many investors just "want somebody to tell them what to do."
Fools for Clients
Latest Adventures of Defendants Who Elected to Be Their Own Lawyers: Joe Pietrangelo, 54, on trial in September for assaulting the mayor of Niagara Falls, Ontario, used a strategy of silence to the charge because the "corrupt" judge refused to let him complain about more important issues concerning his father's will. (He was convicted.) And Lawrence Brown, 30, on trial at press time for murder in Toronto, decided he didn't need a lawyer even though he had told a guard, "You guys are always picking on me because I killed some white bitch." And Norman Laurence, 37, set for trial in Warwick, R.I., in January for murder, previewed his lawyerless defense by telling the judge: "I did kill the woman. But that confession isn't right."
The Entrepreneurial Spirit
In July the San Francisco Chronicle profiled local beggar David "Bushman" Johnson, who solicits spare change after entertaining customers by leaping out from behind handheld shrubbery and trying to scare them. His partner, Gregory Jacobs, sets up the passerby to begin with, holds the collection can, and then admonishes, "Hey, the Bushman got you fair and square! Pay the man!"
University of California at Davis researcher Gang Sun told the American Chemical Society annual meeting in August that he has developed the technology to attach anti-microbial substances to textiles, clearing the way for the manufacture of self-cleaning clothes. He said the first commercial uses would be to reduce the spread of germs in hospital gowns and bedding and for odor control in sports clothing.
Richard and Peter Walkley of Hemel Hempstead, England, started a shopping-tip website this year with about $19,000 they made in the previous year exploiting discrepancies between posted prices and scanned prices at Sainsbury's supermarkets. The store offers price-mismatched items free; the Walkleys examined every item in the store and came away with large quantities of mispriced products (e.g., 19 cases of Rolling Rock beer).
A May Wall Street Journal dispatch from Beijing profiled the first successful franchised restaurant in China, Shen Qing's Baked Pig Face, now up to seven outlets and featuring his government-patented specialty, the 30-herb, 12-hour-cooked whole pig's head. Connoisseurs eat all parts, said Shen, including the cheeks, eyes, snout, lips, and tongue, but especially the brain, the consuming of which "can make you smarter." Among the restaurant's side dishes: roast ox penis.
Science Fair
Among the disclosures from Philadelphia's Monell Chemical Senses Center this year: Volunteers sniffing underarm pads from happy people and fearful people can generally tell which was which, and underarm pads of elderly women make sniffers feel happy while the pads of young men produce depression. The center employs 50 scientists who derive most of their data the old-fashioned way: They sniff armpits and have people exhale in their faces.
In a summer issue of the journal Pediatrics, doctors reported on a 2-year-old boy with pubic hair, acne, and an enlarged penis as a result of accidental, repeated contact with his father's high-testosterone body-building cream. And at the INPEX inventors' fair in Pittsburgh in May, renowned Japanese inventor Yoshiro NakaMats introduced his Love Jet spray-on libido booster to U.S. audiences (though it has been sold in Japan for 10 years); the aerosol applied directly to the genitals supposedly helps the body release inhibition-reducing hormones.
Australian biologist Mark Norman of James Cook University reported in July that small male cuttlefish that ordinarily are too puny to attract females have the ability to change colors and shape so as to resemble females. According to a report in New Scientist magazine, this allows them to swim harmlessly with male-female pairs and then to steal the female as soon as the male is distracted.
Break Into a Jail, Go to Jail
A 30-year-old man was arrested in July at the Bordeaux prison in Montreal after he jumped over the barbed wire to get inside; officials suspect he was rendezvousing with buddies. And in August, several men broke into the Tremembe jail in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and stole about $28,000 from the inmates' savings bank. And in September, a 21-year-old man, released at 12:01 a.m. from Ottawa County (Mich.) Jail, was back in lockup by 12:10 after he climbed back over the fence to give a buddy a cigarette (which carries a penalty of up to 90 more days).
Update
"News of the Weird" reported on the 1997 version of Thailand's annual Vegetarian Festival in the city of Phuket, in which hundreds of men demonstrate their spiritual devotion (to a meld of Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism) by marching through the streets with their bodies painfully impaled with things like rods and tree branches, hoping for good health and prosperity. In the 1999 version in October, larger than ever, devotees criticized the growing commercialization, as some men now skewer themselves merely to advertise their businesses (e.g., a tour boat operator with a swordfish jaw through his cheeks).
Least Competent Criminals
Jesus T. Rodriguez, 34, was arrested in September on drug trafficking charges; he had aroused suspicion when he walked into a Firstar Bank in Strongsville, Ohio, with two grocery bags full of cash totaling $300,000, yet listed himself on a federal form as unemployed. And Drtangyn Sinclair, 33, was arrested in Franklinton, Ohio, in October and charged with robbing a CVS Pharmacy; he had yanked the cash register off the counter and carried it away, unaware that the cash drawer was a separate unit under the counter.
Also, in the Last Month...
The Postal Service abandoned a promotion putting Y2K countdown clocks in post offices because they seemed to remind customers how long they'd been in line (Dallas). A hospital suspended a surgeon after a complaint from a patient that he chatted with a car salesman on a cell phone during the patient's colon operation (Hong Kong). Santa Cruz, Calif., announced an adult-education class in the value and techniques of screaming and yelling. The Florida Department of Corrections traded death-row inmate William Van Poyck to Virginia for a prisoner to be named later. A coroner ruled that the underwired bras worn by two women contributed to their deaths when lightning struck them while they huddled under a tree (London, England).
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