of the
Weird A
n April Wall Street Journal report highlighted several states’ elementary school “anti-bully” policies that have banned roughhousing, name-calling and even “mean looks” and pointed gossip, and encouraged teaching the little kids a language of sensitivity and tolerance. However, one problem some kids fear from such training and language is that, as they move up to middle schools and run into other kids who will be baffled by such sensitivity, the tolerancetrained kids are even more likely to get beaten up. • In mid-March, as war started in Iraq, a resolution was introduced in the Seattle City Council offering support for U.S. troops. However, some council members wanted to use the resolution to express opposition to the war, while others wanted to go beyond troop support to commend the war itself. When the Council finally agreed on a politically bland-enough resolution on April 14, it meant that the members had been fighting over the wording of the resolution for a longer time than it took U.S. troops to enter Iraq and capture Baghdad. Readers’ Choice • A 17-year-old boy lost sight in both eyes in a “potato gun” accident in Denton, Texas, in April. The “gun” (a length of pipe in which a household explosive is ignited, propelling a potato out the other end, although in this case, it was not a potato but a frog) was being experimented with by several teenagers but failed to fire, and the victim, who had been a mere bystander, stepped up to have a look down the pipe to see what might have gone wrong, just as the gun finally fired. The Continuing Crisis • According to an Associated Press report, six candidates for city offices in Charleston, W.Va., misspelled their party affiliations in their official filing forms in January. Among the variations were “Democart,” “Democrate,” “Repbulican” and “Repucican.” In fact, one of the city council incumbents had, four years earlier, also declared himself to be a “Democart.” • 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. And 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
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More Things To Worry About • In December, Saskatchewan’s Court of Queen’s Bench upheld a ruling of the province’s human rights commission that four Bible verses (referred to in a newspaper ad) created illegal hate speech because they subjected gay men to “ridicule.” The ad consisted of citations to verses that are considered by many Christians to condemn homosexuality, and a silhouette of two men holding hands, inside the symbol for prohibited behavior (a red circle with a red line through it). • Jeannie M. Patrinos, 32, was sentenced in February to five years’ probation for sexual assault. A judge in Lancaster, Wis., found that Patrinos, who was estranged from her husband, broke into his home, climbed into bed with him, and was “having sex” with him, against his will. The husband’s girlfriend was asleep in the same bed, until the man’s protests woke her up.
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Chutzpah! • In February, Wesley Fitzpatrick applied to a Kansas City, Kan., judge for, and was granted, a temporary restraining order against a female whom he said was stalking him (making him “scared, depressed and in fear for my freedom”). However, the order was rescinded when Fitzpatrick showed up to ask that it be made permanent, in that the “stalker” was actually his parole officer carrying out her lawful supervision. In fact, Fitzpatrick was immediately arrested for not having met with her. (Temporary restraining orders are usually granted by judges without investigation.) Animal Heads in the News • Palmer, Mass., construction contractor Anthony Morales, tired of fighting customer Gail Kapulka over payment of his bill, planted the freshly severed head of a deer on the front seat of her car on Christmas night, according to police. And a frozen sheep’s head was left inside a car owned by a Democratic political official in Lake Station, Ind., in January. And in March, at a rock concert in Oslo, Norway, the part of the act in which the lead singer of the death metal band Mayhem carves up a dead sheep went wrong, and the sheep’s head was knocked into the audience, where it struck a fan in the head, requiring hospitalization. (Fan or not, he pressed charges.) — Chuck Shepherd © United Press Syndicate
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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). Chan Kwok-keung, 34, was sentenced to four months in jail for stealing a court interpreter’s purse; he was in the courtroom at the time on theft charges (but had just been cleared) (Hong Kong, March).
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