Community ClicksCrisis continues
When Donald Williams was publicly sworn in as a judge in Ulster County, N.Y., on Jan. 2, offices were closed, and no one could find a Bible.
Since holy books are not legally required, Williams took the oath with his hand on a dictionary.
>>> Merriam Webster’s 10th edition dictionary is so influential that the Menifee Union School District in Southern California removed all copies from its elementary schools’ shelves in January in response to a parent’s complaint that the book contains a reference to “oral sex.”
Bright ideas
An official in Shijiazhuang, China, told Agence France-Presse in December that the city’s new “women only” parking lot was designed to meet females’ “strong sense of color and different sense of distance.”
That is, the spaces are 3 feet wider than regular spaces and painted pink and purple.
Also, attendants have been “trained” to “guide” women into parking spaces.
>>> Lenoir County, N.C., sheriff’s deputies raided a suspected marijuana farm in January and learned that the grow operation was all underground.
The 60 live plants were being cultivated inside an abandoned school bus, which had been completely buried, using several backhoes, accessible by a tunnel and with a garage built on top of it.
Swift justice
It is not unheard of for someone to commit a crime and then immediately surrender, usually for safety or for the comfort of a warm jail cell (such as Timmy Porter, 41, did in Anchorage, Alaska, in October immediately after robbing the First National Bank Alaska).
However, Gerard Cellette Jr., 44, tried to be even more helpful.
Knowing that he would soon be arrested (and probably convicted) for running a $53 million Ponzi scheme in the Minneapolis area, he walked into a county judge’s chambers in December and offered to begin serving time.
The judge explained that Cellette would have to wait until charges were filed and a plea recorded.
The fragrance of love
First, farmer Dick Kleis of Zwingle in eastern Iowa, composing a birthday note to his wife, arranged more than 60 tons of manure in a pasture to spell out “Happy Birthday, Love You” in shorthand.
Then, for Valentine’s Day, farmer Bruce Andersland created a half-mile-wide, arrow-pierced heart from plowed manure at his farm near the town of Albert Lea, Minn. “Now I’ve got my valentine!” shouted wife Beth, when she first viewed the aerial image.
Oops!
Helmut Kichmeier, 27, a hypnotist “trainee” who appears as Hannibal Helmurto in Britain’s Circus of Horrors, accidentally hypnotized himself in January as he was practicing in front of a mirror.
Being in such a trance helps him swallow swords on stage.
His wife called Kichmeier’s mentor, Dr. Ray Roberts, who, as a “voice of authority,” was able to snap Kichmeier out of it over the phone.
