xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
Two physicians, in a December note in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, wrote glowingly of the ability of the Super Soaker Max-D 5000 squirt weapon to quickly and safely loosen severely impacted ear wax (knowledge learned from an emergency use when no standard ear-syringing equipment was available). In fact, they wrote, since the Super Soaker holds much more water than the standard equipment, using it would actually shorten patients’ office visits. (However, the Super Soaker was obviously not anticipated for medical use; its awkward design assured that patient and doctor would be drenched by excess spray.)
Researcher Jean-Louis Martin of the Universite Claude Bernard in Lyon, France, found (for a December British Medical Journal article) that consuming cannabis (marijuana) doubled motorists’ likelihood of a fatal auto collision, and alarming news headlines about the report followed. Less prominently noted in the article, and consequently in news reports, was that drivers impaired by alcohol were six times more likely than an unimpaired driver to have a fatal collision, thus suggesting that the generally illegal drug, cannabis, is only one-third as dangerous for drivers as the legal drug, alcohol.
In January, a parrot named Greeny inherited a half-million-dollar property in Boulder County, Colo., through an elaborate trust fund after its owners, Patricia Borosik, 49, and (a man with essentially four first names) Paul James Stewart Scott, 54, committed suicide. If Scott had lived a few more days, he would have had to report to court to be sentenced for offering $13,000 to two underage girls to have sex with him and then to asphyxiate him with a pillow.
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or [email protected] or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.) NEWS OF THE WEIRD