 |  | by Chuck Sheperd
LEAD STORIES
Since July, the Totenko Chinese restaurant in Tokyo has been offering the all-you-can-eat luncheon buffet (regularly about $16) to the first 30 diners a day at the price of about 30 cents a minute, measured by a time clock that diners punch when entering and exiting. Other restaurants have copied the idea in recession-torn Japan, according to a December Wall Street Journal report, and some have found that including alcoholic beverages on the per-minute menu tends to get people to stay longer.
Tim Cridland, touring as Zamora the Torture King in an entertainment show in which he endures massive pain, told The Riverfront Times (St. Louis) in December that he broke from the similar but better known Jim Rose Circus over "artistic differences." Among Zamora's feats: the traditional skewers through the cheeks and neck; swallowing swords and fire; jumping up and down barefoot on broken bottles; and his occasional "piece de resistance": swallowing a length of twine, then removing it from his stomach through on-stage surgery with scalpel and forceps.
Men in Peril (continued): According to police in Lake City, Fla., in November, Felisha Ann Copeland, 31, on learning of her ex-husband's new girlfriend, dumped a pot of boiling grits in his lap while he was seated, naked, on the toilet of the home they still share. He suffered severe blistering. And in Middletown, Conn., in December, Raquel K. Husman, 41, was charged with assault for allegedly slashing her ex-boyfriend's scrotum with her fingernails when she discovered him with another woman. He needed 24 stitches.
LIFE IMITATES THE MOVIES
In September, red harvester ants in the soil at the Hanford nuclear complex near Richland, Wash., were found to be radioactive, as were flies and gnats swarming around ordinary garbage at Hanford the next month, and Hanford managers feared that additional contamination might be spread by mice, insects, and vegetation such as tumbleweeds. (An Associated Press report on Hanford in October reminded readers of the 1954 movie Them! starring James Arness, in which "huge, marauding ants are spawned by nuclear experiments.")
THE WEIRDO-AMERICAN COMMUNITY
Tyrone V. Henry, 26, was arrested in September in Tucson, Ariz., and charged with possession of child pornography. Police said they were led to Henry's home after six female University of Arizona students complained of a man supposedly conducting a test of facial cream, using a substance that (according to the women) tasted like semen. However, police said they do not have enough evidence to charge Henry on the facial-cream tests.
TRUCK SPILLS
Among the cargo spilled in tractor-trailer accidents in 1998: 25 tons of pudding (West Virginia, September); tons of noodles, which expanded in the rain (Maryland, July); 20 tons of cheese, which caught fire, producing fondue (Wales, October); $45,000 in quarters (Illinois, June); 50,000 $1 bills (Kansas, November); 500,000 honeybees (Washington, October, and another 4 million in Wisconsin in November); 12 tons of garbage (Rhode Island, March); 6,700 gallons of animal fat (Ohio, May, which was cleaned up with liquid detergent); and 20,000 gallons of liquid detergent (elsewhere in Ohio, 10 days later).
Among the really gross highway truck spills of 1998: a load of frozen dough that thawed and rotted before it could be scraped up (Massachusetts, September); 22 tons of mad-cow-tainted blood (England, September); a load of hog intestines and cow heads (Ohio, November), and sewage (Rhode Island, April; Texas, September; and a slow spill in New York in July that coated five miles of roadway just north of Albany).
I DON'T THINK SO
In September, Libya's Moammar Gadhafi broadcast a video that he said caught a 1996 assassination attempt against him by British agents. However, on frame-by-frame inspection, according to an Associated Press report, the grenade on the video appeared merely to be painted onto the tape in a man's hand and then onto other frames as an airborne object headed toward Gadhafi. Not surprisingly, the "grenade" did not explode, and Gadhafi was spared, but he said a British agent was arrested and has confessed.
Ms. Fareena Jabbar, 37, was arrested in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in October and charged with trying to pass a U.S. $1 million bill (a denomination that does not exist). To assist her scheme, Jabbar supplied a "certificate of authenticity" signed by officials of the "International Association of Millionaires."
At an Annapolis, Md., City Council meeting in October, 23 people spoke against a proposed ordinance restricting ownership of pit bulls (to those age 25 and older and with at least $500,000 in liability insurance), including a representative of the United Kennel Club in Michigan, who said the bill "has no place in America" because it is "no less than racial prejudice."
Unclear on the Concept
In 1997, four years after being convicted of raping a 15-year-old girl, inmate Graylon Bell won $200,000 from a jury against the Indiana Department of Correction for being raped by his cellmate at a Plainfield, Ind., youth facility. In December 1998, Bell and the girl's family reached a settlement in her lawsuit to get part of the money. (Only $31,500 remained, after lawyers' fees, of which she will receive $26,500.)
At a September meeting of the Republican Party in Lawrence, Kan., a conservative faction beat back a challenge from moderates and retained control of the party. At the start of the meeting, when attendees realized there was no U.S. flag to which they could offer the traditional pledge of allegiance, the chairman solved the dilemma by unfurling a roll of 32-cent flag stamps at the front of the room.
NAMES IN THE NEWS
*Sentenced to two life terms for murder in Forsyth, Wyo., in November: Mr. Vernon Kills On Top (whose brother, Mr. Lester Kills On Top, received the same sentence in August). Seriously wounded by police in Denver in September after allegedly stabbing an officer with a knife: Mr. Keith F. Firstintrouble.
*In September in Chicago, Lauryn K. Valentine, 21, was granted a legal name change by Cook County Judge Michael B. Getty. Valentine is now known as Carol Moseley-Braun, which is also the name of the Illinois U. S. senator who was defeated for re-election in November. Valentine said she wanted the new name as a tribute to Moseley-Braun, who once successfully encouraged Valentine to remain in school when she was considering dropping out. In December, the new Moseley-Braun filed official papers to run for city alderman, which provoked legal challenges from one opponent and the ex- senator. More to the story: Judge Getty temporarily changed his own name to a more Irish-sounding one to win election as a judge in 1988.
Well-Put
Tampa, Fla., nursing home resident John Yerger, 93, after realizing he had been duped into paying a $5,000 fee to collect his alleged $1 million winnings in a Canadian lottery and then cooperating with authorities in an attempt (unsuccessful) to sting the culprits: "It may have cost me $5,000, but this is the most excitement I've had in a long time."
Greensboro, N.C., city council member Keith Holliday, explaining in January why the city was forced to hire a public relations firm to deal with its current water-shortage crisis: "I'll bet you I've been asked 100 times ... why we just didn't make our lakes bigger."
GREAT ART!
A November Times of London report identified at least 50 fine artists in Iraq whose principal work is painting huge portraits (one is 30 feet high) of Saddam Hussein, which are in heavy demand by merchants and community leaders who display them by the hundreds around Baghdad to demonstrate their support for the nation's president. A leading painter, Muhammad Ali Karim, says that the work is not monotonous but challenging, in that there are so many facets of Saddam that can be captured, and that he and others work quickly because they are so inspired by such a great leader. A similar market exists for the nation's sculptors and ceramic artists, for huge statues and busts of Saddam.
CEILING-CRAWLING IN ALBUQUERQUE
On Dec. 1, a 35-year-old man, who had been dining in an Albuquerque restaurant, climbed into the ceiling in a restroom, crawled around a bit, and fell through, into the kitchen. The police were not able to determine a motive. Six days later, another man robbed a Bank of Albuquerque branch on its first day of business by dropping down from ceiling panels, where he had been hiding for an undetermined period of time. Only a small amount of money was on hand, however, and witnesses said the man shook his head in frustration as he left.
SMOKING KILLS
A 78-year-old woman in Winnipeg, Manitoba, froze to death on her apartment's balcony in December when she stepped out for a cigarette and accidentally locked the door behind her, exposing her overnight to below-freezing temperatures and winds around 40 mph. And a Livermore, Calif., high school junior was killed in December in a fight with a man who became annoyed with him after the student gave him one cigarette but refused to give him a second.
NO LONGER WEIRD
Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (29) The customer dismissed at a bar or restaurant or store who decides to express his anger by driving his car right through the front door, as done by Joe Stephens, 48, at a Lima, Ohio, tavern in December. And (30) the careless error made by home heating oil delivery drivers who see a formerly used fuel spout on a house next door to the one they are supposed to deliver to and thus mistakenly pump a couple hundred gallons of oil into the basement, such as happened to Steve and Christy Barrie of Tacoma, Wash., in December.
Least Competent Criminals
Julian Cabrera, 18, and a 14-year-old companion were arrested in October in San Diego and charged with shoplifting items from an AM/PM Mini Mart. A clerk who said he witnessed the shoplifting chased them out of the store and returned to call 911. While the clerk was on the phone, the suspects returned to the store to ask another clerk for a bag to put their stuff in. Their return trip to the store delayed them enough that police spotted them as they were leaving.
Recurring Theme
The Classic Middle Name (continued): Challenging in September the competence of his lawyer in his conviction for murdering a preacher near Lebanon, Ind.: Gerald Wayne Bivins. Informing jurors at his sentencing hearing (after being convicted of murder in Torrance, Calif., in December) that he regretted not killing all of them, too: David Wayne Arisman. Executed in McAlester, Okla., in December for the murder of his wife: John Wayne Duvall. Captured after a brief jailbreak in Nashville, Tenn., in December: accused murderer Michael Wayne Perry. Named the prime suspect in the disappearance of a 14- year-old girl in Roseburg, Ore., in December: Dale Wayne Hill. Dead of a self-inflicted gunshot after critically wounding his ex-girlfriend in Brooklyn, N.Y., in July: Robert Wayne Jiles.
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