50
SEE THE CANAL FROM A WHOLE NEW POINT OF VIEW!
M E T R O
Tour the Augusta Canal aboard the NEW Petersburg Boat
S P I R I T
50-minute guided tours depart from Enterprise Mill dock Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays 11am-1:30pm
N O V
Adults $6, Senior and Military $5 Youth and Child $4 Purchase tickets inside Augusta Canal Interpretive Center, west center entrance to Enterprise Mill, 1450 Greene Street, Augusta, GA 706-823-7089
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GREAT GOLF & MORE
Low Weekly & Weekend Rates (call call for tee times) Gift Certificates Beautiful Clubhouse Equipped for Banquets & Parties Private Golf Lessons
2023 HIGHLAND AVENUE, AUGUSTA GA 30904 • 706-731-9344
Rick's PAINT & BODY
Quality Repair Is Your Choice ... “Request Rick's”
868-9224 Bobby Jones across from Wal-Mart
Owner Rusty Campbell
Serving Augusta since 1977
News of the
Weird I
n October, West Point, Ky., hosted 12,000 visitors for the weekend Knob Creek Gun Range Machine Gun Shoot, billed as the nation’s largest, with a separate competition for flame-throwers. Especially coveted is “The Line,” where 60 people (waiting list is 10 years long to be admitted) get to fire their machine guns into a field of cars and boats, and during which a shooter might run through $10,000 in ammunition. Among the champions: Samantha Sawyer, 16, the top women’s submachine gunner for the last four years. One man interviewed by the Louisville Courier-Journal said he met his wife at a previous shoot, knowing that “if she could accept flame-throwing as a hobby, she could accept anything.” Said another: “This is one of those times when you know this (the U.S.) is the greatest place on Earth.” Alternate Reality • A senior Vatican spokesman, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, told a BBC Radio audience in October that condoms are useless in preventing the spread of HIV (because the virus seeps through the porous latex) and therefore should not be used, even in AIDS-wracked Africa, where as much as 20 percent of the population is reportedly infected. The World Health Organization denounced Trujillo’s claim but said it had heard similar Catholic Church messages in Asia and Latin America. • In October, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration’s inspector general released questions from the final exam for airport screeners, designed to measure the crucial, intensive training that the screeners had just completed. One question: “How do threats get on board an aircraft?” The supposedly challenging answers: “a. In carry-on bags; b. In checked-in bags; c. In another person’s bag; d. All of the above.” If that is too difficult, the inspector general also complained that 22 of the exam’s 25 questions were repeats from previous exams and that some test-takers were briefed in advance. More Things to Worry About In September, customs officials in Amsterdam stopped a Nigerian man trying to enter the Netherlands with a suitcase containing 1,500 to 2,000 baboon noses (which some people use in traditional healing, but which were in an advanced state of putridness). And in Jupiter, Fla., in October, yet another part-time professional clown pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography; David Deyo, 43, a Presbyterian Sunday school teacher, appeared often in the community as “Noodles the Clown.” Fetishes on Parade Police officer James Marriner, 43, appeared at a hearing in Brisbane, Australia, in September on 15 counts related to sexual harassment of members of the Bible-based community he lived in near Ipswich, Queensland. Among the accusations: Marriner had requested nude photos, confidential sexual histories and pubichair samples from well-meaning community members who had conscientiously agreed to help the local police crack a “pedophile ring”
(which apparently existed only in Marriner’s mind). Reportedly, being a police officer in such a sheltered community was a high-status job that gave him unusual powers of persuasion. Least Competent Criminals For a September story in the Daily Nebraskan, University of Nebraska junior Dustin Rewinkel proudly and patiently explained to a reporter the secrets of his success in stealing street signs in the city of Lincoln (bragging that with basic tools, he could grab a sign in minutes and in fact had “more than a dozen” already). Not surprisingly, Lincoln police read the article, got a search warrant for Rewinkel’s apartment, recovered 13 signs and charged him on suspicion of possessing stolen property. Recurring Themes In Easton, Pa., in July, Robert M. Peters, Sr., 47, became the latest man to be acquitted of indecent exposure by persuading a jury that his penis is too small to have been seen by the complaining witness. A woman testified that she had seen “three inches” of erect penis beyond the bottom of his shorts while he was working in her home, but via photographs and a brief trouser-dropping in the courtroom, Peters convinced the jury that he is very modestly endowed and that she must have seen something else, such as a fold of fat on his 312-pound body. Thinning the Herd A 22-year-old student from Saint-Denis, on the French island of Reunion, trying to get a better position for taking photographs of the Piton de la Fournaise volcano, got too close and fell in, to his death (August). And a 47-year-old man in Camp Verde, Ariz., who was apparently reaching up a utility pole to illegally hook up power to his business after having had it cut off for nonpayment, was electrocuted (July). Great Art! Two hunters on a remote mountain in northern Sweden in October came across an installation of 70 pairs of shoes filled with butter, according to an Associated Press report. Artist Yu Xiuzhen was attributed as the probable creator, in that he had staged a similar display in the Tibetan mountains surrounding Lhasa, China, in 1996. (A non-art-appreciating official in Sweden was more concerned about getting the shoes down before the butter rots.) Bodily Plumbing in the News • In April, according to Uganda’s prison service, 15 inmates escaped near Kampala after allegedly having weakened the jail’s walls and cell bars by months of urinating on them. Also in April, The New York Times reported that a pest-control professional in Stockton, Calif., had developed a new termite-detection method that relies on locating concentrations of methane gas that are expelled because of termites’ high-fiber (i.e., wood) diet. And in October, a tipsy undersecretary in the Philippine government apologized after inadvertently urinating in the rear of President Arroyo’s plane during flight, in an area he mistook for a restroom. Also, in the Last Month White man Theuns Prinsloo, 22, won the Mr. Africa pageant, causing an organizer to gush, “He epitomizes a young African in Africa today” (Johannesburg, South Africa). A 39-year-old man was arrested for bank robbery 10 days after making a successful escape on an oversized tricycle (Woodbury, N.J.). And a 24-year-old gun-toting man was arrested after smashing his tricycle into a car, being knocked to the ground and then stealing the car (Salem, Ore.). — Chuck Shepherd © United Press Syndicate