Front Page

The 'Zine

Sunsphere City

Bonus Track

Market Square

Search
Contact us!
About the site

Advertisement
News of the Weird

Noteworthy absurdities from around the world

by Chuck Sheperd

LEAD STORIES

In November in Tokyo, a passenger was killed in a car accident that occurred when the driver, Ms. Tomomi Okawa, 25, rammed a concrete pole; according to police, she lost control when she missed the brake pedal because of her trendy but clunky platform shoes. And in September, schoolteacher Misayo Shimizu, 25, died several hours after fracturing her skull on a sidewalk after toppling over in her 5-inch-heel platform shoes.

Mr. Patrick Corp, 24, pled guilty to possession of child pornography in Grand Rapids, Mich., in November and will be recommended for a federal prison sentence. He had photographed his 17-year-old girlfriend with her permission. Although she is beyond the age of consent to have sex in Michigan, she is too young to be photographed while doing so. In Canada, photographer Gary Geisel, 56, is fighting the same battle; Canada's age of consent for sex is 14, but Manitoba and other provinces set the photograph age at 18.

1999 Election Roundup

In mayoral voting, pro wrestlers Jerry "The King" Lawler finished third in Memphis, Tenn. (11 percent of the vote), and Outlaw Josey Wales IV finished third in Houston (10 percent). David W. Irons Jr. won a county council seat in Seattle, beating his sister Di, who had the support of their parents. Eugene Reppenhagen beat his ex-wife Carol for a seat on the Gloversville, N.Y., town council. Levi Levy, 67, lost all five seats he ran for this year in Fairfax County, Va.

Cultural Diversity

The German Supreme Court ruled in August that the lifetime guarantee offered by U.S. clothing retailer Lands' End is illegal in that country because it is "economically unfeasible" and therefore is unfair competition, despite its validity in the United States, England, and Japan. Previously, the Zippo lighter and Tupperware companies had had to eliminate their lifetime guarantees in order to do business in Germany.

Latest Rumors: The Cambodian government had to calm widespread fears in June that evil spirits surrounding the royal family had demanded the souls of long-haired women, thus setting off a surge of hair sacrifices around the royal palace aimed to pacify the demons. And in August, several women were injured leaping from speeding cars in Zimbabwe because they believed a rumor that some drivers were forcing women to breastfeed large frogs in order to attain prosperity.

In July, the Bangladesh Acid Survivors Foundation sponsored a tearful return to Dhaka by six young women who had received plastic surgery abroad to recover from sulfuric aced attacks by men because the women's families had paid them insufficient dowries. The United Nations said there were 130 such attacks in 1997 and 200 in 1998.

In June, a federal judge struck down the no-public-dancing ordinance in the town of Pound in the mountains of southwest Virginia. (Previously, a dance permit could be issued only to someone who was "proper" and "of good moral character.") Said one city council member, explaining the old ordinance, "There's bound to be trouble when you mix drinking, country music, and dancing."

The Los Angeles Times and New York Times reported in the summer on the renewed trend in rural South Africa of virginity testing, in which boys and girls as young as 1 year are examined in an effort to identify child abuse and venereal diseases and to discourage premarital sex. Girls' hymens are checked, but the questionable tests for boys include pressing a soft spot on the knee (virgins' knees are hard) or examining genital-area skin (virgins' is firm and tough) or urinating over a 3-foot-high barrier (nonvirgins' urine sprays). In some villages, the dowry of a nonvirgin bride is reduced from 11 cows to 10.

Hypocrisies

Teresa Heinz, wife of U.S. Sen. John Kerry and generous donor to environmental organizations, installed what Idaho's leading green groups called an illegal well on her vacation retreat near Ketchum because, according to one critic, she needed much water to maintain her five acres of Kentucky bluegrass. According to an October Boston Herald report, Heinz said she was forced to dig the well because state conservation officials denied her request to buy rights from the Big Wood River in an expensive 1998 hearing.

Latest Practice/Preach Disconnects: Psychologist Michael Brooks, author of the book Instant Rapport, was arrested in July for illegally commandeering a first-class seat on a Continental airliner and not budging. And Earl L. "Butch" Kimmerling, who fought to prevent his foster daughter, age 9, from being adopted by a gay couple, was arrested in Anderson, Ind., in May and charged with molesting the girl. And federal authorities filed a lawsuit in Lake Worth, Fla., in July against the wheelchair sales store Action Mobility for failure to have any parking spaces for the disabled.

Surprise!

Two months after the Columbine High School massacre, a mock hostage practice, complete with much gunfire, at Alvin (Texas) High School sent 193 kids and their teachers scrambling under desks, terrified, until the word finally reached them that it was a training exercise and that only blanks were being fired. The only two school officials informed in advance thought the exercise would be more subdued and thus failed to tell anyone about it.

Update

Wayne Dumond made "News of the Weird" in 1988 when he won $110,000 in an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit against an Arkansas sheriff; vigilantes had castrated Dumond as an alleged rapist, and the sheriff had displayed Dumond's genitals in a jar on his desk as a souvenir, which a jury said was unnecessary. Three governors (including Bill Clinton, who was a friend of the rape victim's mother) rejected DNA findings favorable to Dumond and gave in to the many protesters demanding that he stay in jail. Dumond, now 50, was released on parole in October 1999.

Undignified Deaths

In October, a 36-year-old woman was killed instantly walking along Wabash Avenue in downtown Chicago when hit by a pane of glass that had fallen from the 29th floor of a skyscraper owned by an insurance company. The next day, in the village of Tracadie Cross, Prince Edward Island, Canada, a driver lost control of a hearse and killed a 68-year-old pallbearer as he emerged from a funeral at a church.

Also in the Last Month...

A Las Vegas TV producer and photographer were fired for creating "on the scene" footage of October's California earthquake by rocking their video truck. A 29-year-old man who had just failed a driving test for the fourth time drove his car into a testing office, just missing the five examiners inside (Bergen, Norway). Frances and Harold Mountain squatted on a courtroom floor to divide up nearly 100 Beanie Babies, the last items of property to be settled before their divorce became final (Las Vegas). A judge ruled that a husband was so unhygienic (ignoring a toilet that had overflowed into the dining room) that it would be grounds for divorce (Buenos Aires). At a chess tournament on Spain's Menorca island, the country's governing sports organization ordered urine-sample drug tests.