news & Opinion News of the weird Channeling George Carlin
“Military Intelligence”: The head of U.S. Navy intelligence has for more than two years been prohibited from accessing classified information (as the Pentagon disclosed to The Washington Post in January). Vice Admiral Ted Branch came under investigation in 2013 in a corruption scandal involving a foreign defense contractor and various Navy personnel and might have been suspended from all duties — except that, given the political gridlock in Washington, no consensus candidate has emerged. No charges have been filed against Branch, but before he enters any room at the Pentagon, classified material must be stowed away.
Recurring Themes
• New World Order: (1) Yet another woman gave birth to her own granddaughter in January. Tracey Thompson, 54, offered to be the surrogate mother for her fertility-challenged daughter, Kelley, and delivered a 6-pound, 11-ounce girl at The Medical Center in Plano, Texas. (2) After notable successes in the United States, Latin America claimed in December its first transgender pregnancy after Ecuadorean Fernando Machado announced he was expecting a child with his partner Diane Rodriguez. Fernando used to be “Maria”; Diane used to be “Luis”; and though both undergo hormone therapy, they have retained their birth organs. • Overexcited police departments occasionally feel the need to safeguard towns by zealous enforcement of anti-gambling laws. In November, police in Altamonte Springs, Florida, raided the Escondido Community Clubhouse, formally shutting down the retirement village’s games of bingo, bunko, penny poker and — most controversially — the weekly sessions of the culturally venerated mahjong. Although none of the games is illegal under state law, advertising for-money games is, and the notices in the Heritage Florida Jewish News were such attention-getters that the pots for the games often grew to exceed the $10 legal maximum. (Given mahjong’s sociological significance, news of the bust was even reported in Jerusalem’s Times of Israel.) • Perspective: On the heels of a similar program in Richmond, California, Washington, D.C.’s D.C. Council authorized
FEB 24- MAR 1, 2016
GET
16
#FREESTUFF
latest casualty in public schools’ relentless funding in January to pay stipends to insistence on “zero tolerance” of any devinotorious criminals if they stop committing crimes. Police would identify up to 50 ation from rules. Gateway Middle School in Killeen, Texas, suspended Ruelas residents likely to violently offend again for two days for what others called his in 2016 and offer them periodic cash pay“heroic” assistance in gathering the girl ments plus special training and educain his arms and taking her to the nurse’s tional benefits — as long as they stay out office — while the teacher, following “proof trouble. Officials in Richmond (once overwhelmed by gun deaths) say their pro- cedure,” waited passively for a nurse to gram, commenced almost 10 years ago, has email instructions. (Ruelas had defied the teacher, declaring, produced a 76 percent drop “(F-word) that — we ain’t in gun-related crime. got time to wait for no • Reports of the promiemail from the nurse.”) nence of animal urine in The school district’s various cultures’ health regisuperintendent later cited mens have surfaced periodii am quietly a federal law that he intercally in News of the Weird, amassing preted as justifying the and in December, in Al Qundelegates procedure. fudhah, Saudi Arabia, a shop • Age-Old Prank Fails: selling camel urine (with Will Lombardi, 19, was a long history of alleged charged with arson in medicinal qualities) was Northampton, Massachuclosed by authorities after setts, in January after he they found 70 camel-urine acknowledged that “probbottles actually filled with ably” he was the one who shopkeeper-urine. left a flaming box of excre• About a decade ago, sevment on the front porch eral fast-food restaurants of the family with whose (especially during evening daughter he was feuding. shifts staffed by sometimes The fire was supposed to inadequately trained managers) were plagued by a prank phone-caller, alarm the victim, who would try to stomp it out, thus spreading the feces and soiling posing as law enforcement requesting the stomper’s shoes. In this case, however, investigative help, asking managers to the fire had spread a bit. (Bonus: Lomstrip-search employees for “contraband” bardi’s box selection was a used mailer and to describe the searches in real time with Lombardi’s name and address still to the caller. (A suspect was arrested, and readable.) the calls stopped.) Managerial judgment • Least Competent Criminals: (1) In was also on display at a Morro Bay, CaliforJanuary, a 27-year-old man in North Pole, nia, Burger King in January when a prank Alaska, became the most recent forced to caller somehow convinced BK employees flee a crime scene on foot because he had to begin shattering the store’s windows locked his keys inside the getaway car. He because of a purported “gas leak.” Several windows were smashed in, and an investi- was identified by surveillance video outside the two businesses he burglarized, gation of the call is ongoing. but he was still at large. (2) Also in Janu• Awkward: In January, Israeli television journalist Eitam Lachover became the ary, David Boulet, in Tacoma, Washington, became the most recent to haplessly try to latest to be injured in a high-profile test of steal a police car. As officers chased him on a “protective” vest when he volunteered an earlier charge, Boulet spotted a parked, to be stabbed on camera for a news segment. Vest company officials’ faces turned marked squad car (with lights flashing), but apparently thought, in the night’s quickly sour as the blade penetrated the darkness, that the car was momentarily vest (though the wound was described as unoccupied. He climbed in — and landed “light”). on the lap of a Tacoma police sergeant in • In January, 15-year-old Anthony the front seat. Ruelas, trying to rescue a classmate gasping from an asthma attack, became the
THIS WEEK
Bonnaroo 2016
Radiate positivity! Win two GA tickets to the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, TN June 9 – 12.
• Undignified Deaths: (1) A 47-year-old man in Saint-Marcel, Italy, fell to his death in January as he leaned over a balcony railing to shake crumbs off his tablecloth after breakfast. The tablecloth reportedly slipped from his hands, leading him to (unsuccessfully) reach for it. (2) A 58-yearold driver dressed except for pants was killed in January in Detroit when he was thrown from his car by a crash. A Michigan State Police spokesman reported that the man had been viewing pornography as he drove.
Update
News of the Weird’s long-time supercreative serial litigant Jonathan Lee Riches filed yet another claim in January — against the Tennessee couple identified as winners in the recent $1.6 billion Powerball lottery. John and Lisa Robinson, Riches says, “owe” him half their winnings because he says he sent their daughter (and his pen pal), Tiffany, $20 to buy Powerball tickets. Riches’s lawsuit, written in longhand, claims that he and Tiffany were to be married and move to “a remote island full of milk and honey.” Riches had been serving a federal prison term for parole violation, but his current situation was unreported (except that he now claims an alias, “Jihadi Schitz,” and wrote from a Philadelphia mosque). It is expected that this lawsuit will suffer the same fate as his against, among others, George W. Bush, Britney Spears, Steve Jobs, Nostrodamus, Plato and the various Kardashians.
A News of the Weird Classic (October 2011)
A judge in Nice, France, ruled in September (2011) that Article 215 of the French civil code (defining marriage as a “shared communal life”) in fact requires that husband and wife have sex. A husband identified only as Jean-Louis B. had evidently lost interest years earlier, and his wife was granted a divorce. Apparently emboldened by her victory, she then filed a monetary claim against the husband for the value of his 21-year-long lack of service, and the judge awarded her 10,000 euros (then worth about $13,710 — $653 a year).
AT CONNECTSAVANNAH.COM/FREESTUFF! A-Town Get Down
Win two tickets to the 6th Annual A-Town Get Down Art and Music Festival February 27
Pink Martini
Win Gold Circle Seats to Pink Martini during Savannah Music Festival at Lucas Theatre, March 26