xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
In Center Township, Pa., in January, Mark Ferrara called for paramedics when his daughter, 7, couldn’t resist trying to lick a frozen metal pole at her school bus stop, and got stuck.
According to a BBC News report about a colder-than-normal January in Russia, a young man in the southern city of Stavropol, answering a call of nature behind a bus stop shelter, turned abruptly so that his exposed organ inadvertently stuck to the metal siding; a bystander hustled up a kettle of warm water to unstick him.
The Rent Stabilization Board of Berkeley, Calif., which regulates residential rates and fights landlord abuses but which is increasingly frustrated by the sky-high cost of local housing, adopted a tactic in February that could not be successful in many places besides Berkeley: It sponsored a “poetry slam” that invited local citizens to rant against the problems of tenants. The winner of the $100 first prize attacked the “platonic master/slave relationship” and recalled how his last landlord so traumatized him that he “chose to be homeless for nine months just to escape the memory.”
Hopeless Recidivists: Eduardo Rivera, 43, in court awaiting a hearing on a charge of receiving stolen property, was rearrested after he carved his name into a courtroom bench (Reading, Pa., February).
David Joe White Jr., 32, having just pleaded guilty to 42 burglary charges, was rearrested after swiping his lawyer’s portable tape recorder from the defense table (Attalla, Ala., February).
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