A 28-year-old motorcyclist was hospitalized in Elkhart, Ind., in August after he was unable to avoid a refrigerator that was mysteriously lying on a well-lighted street in nearby Nappanee at 2:30 a.m. And a motorist was hospitalized in Madison, Wis., in July when he veered off the road slightly and accidentally rammed a dishwasher that had been left on the sidewalk. And on Interstate 295 near Westville, N.J., in August, a modular house (being transported by a truck) accidentally smacked into an abandoned SUV on the side of the road, knocking it into woods.
GULLIBLE'S TRAVELS
Several psychics are hard at work advising Australian business executives, providing such things as "intuitive diagnostics" of personnel systems and detecting "blockages" of the organizational structure (for hourly fees as high as $290), according to a June report in Sydney's Sunday Telegraph. Psychic Sally de Beche advises clients based on her "holographic images" of the business cycle, and another, Stacey Demarco, a self-described "witch" (and author of the book There's a Witch in the Boardroom), builds business networks that she terms "covens."
CLIENTS UNDER PRESSURE
Roy Singfield's Trample Fetish Club was set to open in late September or early October in Norwich, England, with a specialty of providing dominatrixes to walk on top of submissive clientele in a variety of shoes and boots (but supposedly with no sex involved). Singfield planned a Trample Room, a Crush room and a Smoothing room (where the dominatrix sits on the client's head), with memberships starting at about $225 annually.
HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS
Whatever happened to the concept of keeping a low profile? Sonja Aguirre, 18, was arrested in Greenwood Village, Colo., in March when, while allegedly carrying 265 pounds of marijuana worth an estimated $500,000, she decided to save a few steps and park in a handicap space. And Edgar Galvan, 28, and Jose Clark, 27, were arrested in Orlando, Fla., in July when, though allegedly carrying 550 pounds of marijuana, they nonetheless hauled it in an SUV with an expired license plate. And, according to police in Dayton, Ohio, in August, a man and a teenager, who were intending to rob a marijuana-growing couple of their large inventory, were arrested shortly beforehand when they tried to save a few bucks by shoplifting pantyhose (to wear as disguises in the robbery) from a Rite Aid drug store.
BLUNT TALK TRAUMA
Rochester, N.H., physician Terry Bennett has been scheduled for a December disciplinary hearing by the State Board of Medicine, based on a complaint that he much too bluntly warned an obese female patient to lose weight or face health and love-life problems (comments that allegedly caused her emotional distress). Said Bennett, "I tried to get her attention." Also, a 2001 complaint against Bennett, which had been dismissed, was revived by the board for the December hearing; he had allegedly told a patient in poor health following brain surgery that she might as well buy a gun and end her suffering.
OUTSOURCE THE OUTCRY
A September sidewalk protest of a Henderson, Nev., Wal-Mart by the United Food and Commercial Workers (which seeks to unionize Wal-Mart, whose notoriously low wage structure is blamed by the union for low wages across the supermarket industry) was staffed by temporary workers hired by UFCW to picket in the hot sun for $30 for a five-hour shift. Said one picketer to the Las Vegas Weekly, "It don't make no sense, does it? We're sacrificing for the people who work in there, and they don't even know it."
FORECAST: TINFOIL HAT TIME
In September, veteran weathercaster Scott Stevens of KPVI-TV in Pocatello, Idaho, resigned to pursue his obsession of proving that the massiveness of Hurricane Katrina must have been caused by a Russian-made electromagnetic generator employed by the Japanese Yakuza in retaliation for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The "patterns and odd geometric shapes" in the sky are "unmistakable" evidence, according to his website, that "our weather has been stolen from us." Station manager Bill Fouch said that Stevens was great at forecasting local conditions and that he was sorry to lose him.
STICK 'EM UP
The longest-lasting copulation, according to University of Arizona biologist John Alcock (interviewed for an August Knight Ridder story), is that of the lowly "stick insect" (of the phasmida family), which goes on for several months at a time, even though, he said, it is "not clear this is welcome to the female." The male attaches himself to the female's back, which allows her to continue with her daily routine during the mating while also discouraging competitor males. According to other biologists, some ticks spend up to eight hours on what resembles foreplay, and butterflies, snakes and houseflies can also go on for hours.
MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DOO
At Northern Ireland's Belfast Zoo in September, Phoebe the chimp and two others managed to climb out of their compound, and armed security guards had to come round them up. In an effort to frighten the animals into submission, they fired shots into the air, and according to the reporter for The Guardian newspaper, the chimps not only became docile at the sound of gunfire, but they put their hands up.
