xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
James C. Schaefer recently self-published an autobiography chronicling what he believes was his textbook case of Wisconsinaphobia (heightened anxiety attacks and debilitating back pains at any mention of the state or anything associated with it). After relocating from Milwaukee to California, he has become unnerved by people speaking with Wisconsin’s nasal accents, mentions of Wisconsin companies (Harley-Davidson) and Wisconsin-made products, Green Bay Packers’ scores, and even public utilities (since he had been a systems analyst for the largest utility in Wisconsin). Schaefer, 64, said he is now “90 percent” cured, after intensive therapy.
China’s Yunnan province rolled out a fleet of 18 “mobile execution vehicles” to travel the countryside so that capital punishment (lethal drugs) could be imposed immediately upon a guilty verdict.
The attorney general of the Australian state of Victoria told reporters in February that the government would soon propose legislation to abolish the common-law practice of varying the death benefits for widows according to how pretty they are. Technically, the doctrine allows a discount on a widow’s compensation if she has strong prospects of remarriage, and judges thus unavoidably take note of her attributes in deciding how much money she needs. (The widow most recently judged a looker lost about US$62,000 until an appeals court intervened.)
Police called on a woman in Kent, Ohio, in February, asking her to make adjustments to a female snowman in her yard whose breasts had been made, according to a complainant, “inappropriate(ly)” large. The woman, Crystal Lynn, at first acceded to the officer’s request and draped the snowman in a tablecloth, but after giving more thought about the mentality of a person who would, in the year 2003, call the police about protrusions of ice, she removed the tablecloth, and the officer dropped the matter.
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or [email protected]
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd
NEWS OF THE WEIRD
