Subject: News of the Weird [486] - 30May97 by Chuck Shepherd LEAD STORIES * Ms. Courtney Mann, the head of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of White People, who is a tax preparer and single mother, was rebuffed in an attempt to join a Ku Klux Klan-sponsored march in Pittsburgh in April, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Though she has been in the NAAWP for at least four years, the Pennsylvania KKK Grand Dragon turned her down because Mann is black. "She wanted me to send transportation [for the rally]," said the Grand Dragon. "She wanted to stay at my house [during rally weekend]. She's all confused, man. I don't think she knows she's a black." And we have Kent Crispin. When's the trading deadline? * April's annual religious fertility celebration in Nagoya, Japan, designed to improve the rice harvest, featured as usual a 12-foot- long, bright pink, plastic penis, carried through the street, followed by displays of smaller organs and a giant banner of a blood- vesseled penis, testicles, and pubic hair. Souvenir candy of the same shape was sold during the event, and at the end of a parade, the giant organ was placed on the fertility shrine. Don't they do the same thing in North Dakota? * In mid-April, five weeks before the national elections, the governing party in Indonesia announced, via "scientific calculation," according to one leader, that President Suharto had won re-election with 70.02 percent of the vote. There's a standard joke in Mexico about thieves breaking into a government office and stealing the results of next year's election. COURT DOCKET * In February, Maryland circuit court judge Thomas Bollinger Sr. agreed to wipe the record clean of Charles Weiner's spousal battery charge after he completes probation--for the sole purpose of helping Weiner join the Chestnut Ridge Country Club, which had until then rejected him because of his criminal record. (In 1993, Bollinger gave a rapist probation for an attack against a drunken woman, remarking that finding an unconscious woman on a bed was "the dream of a lot of males, quite honestly.") Four days later, Bollinger reversed his decision and removed himself from all domestic violence and sexual offense cases. Hey! Everyone _knows_ that "snoring" implies consent! * In Santa Cruz, Calif., in February, Mr. Danis Rivera, 25, rejected a plea bargain that would have sent him to prison for one year for having sex with underage girls. However, at his trial he was in such a foul mood that he constantly spit at court personnel and finally had to be outfitted with a Hannibal Lecter-type bonnet over his face. He was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison. And in a Providence, R. I., courtroom in April, Latin King gangster George "Animal" Perry, on trial for murder and racketeering and frustrated at the length of the prosecutor's closing argument, which denied him a much-needed restroom break, rose from his chair, unzipped his fly, and took one, anyway. It seems reasonable that if one petitions the court for relief, and is denied, then the only recourse is to relieve oneself. SCHEMES * St. Charles Catholic Church (Picayune, Miss.) and nearby St. Margaret Mary Church (Slidell, La.) posted security ushers at the doors in February to make sure that parishioners were not pocketing communion wafers. Devil-worshiping ceremonies often use wafers for symbolic desecration, and when six people were seen leaving St. Charles in December with their wafers, the churches' leaders began to fear a local Satanic conspiracy. Nonsense. They were probably just trading them for drugs and child pornography. * In April in Houston, Tex., Robert Perry Russell, Jr., 44, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for sexual assault and diapering of a 14-year-old boy, but police say the number of victims may have been as many as 10. According to police, Russell liked to take boys out in a boat, tell them a tale about a headless killer seeking to rescue a toddler from the dangerous lake and who kills all other people, and suggest that putting on the diapers he happens to have with him would be a good way, should the killer appear, of convincing him of his toddler status. And, as compensation for their pain and suffering, the victims accepted the deed to Russel's prime real estate in Florida and a bridge in the New York area. DANGEROUS ACTIVITIES * Dishwashing: In March, a busboy at a Key West, Fla., Marriott resort allegedly shot and killed a supervisor who had apparently made some constructive criticism of the busboy's loading of the dishwasher. And in May, police in Helena, Ark., detained a 15- year-old boy they suspect shot his older sister to death after a dispute over which one would wash the dishes. I'll wash, you die. ============================== ADMINISTRATIVE NOTICES [Except for the last paragraph, giving a new, alternative address for Chuck Shepherd's CompuServe mailbox, these notices unchanged since December 27, 1996] NEWS OF THE WEIRD, founded in 1988, is a nationally syndicated newspaper column distributed by Universal Press Syndicate. 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Also by Chuck Shepherd and available at only the larger bookstores in America: News of the Weird (Plume Books, 1989, $9), More News of the Weird (Plume, 1990, $9), Beyond News of the Weird (Plume, 1991, $9), and America's Least Competent Criminals (HarperPerennial, 1993, $9). (The 1989, 1990, and 1991 books were co-authored with John J. Kohut and Roland Sweet.) HARDCOPIES: The weekly newspaper columns, as well as Chuck Shepherd's weird-news 'zine View from the Ledge (now in its 16th year) are available in hardcopy, but unlike with cyberspace, they're not free. Send a buck for sample copies to P. O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg FL 33738. AUTHENTICITY: All news stories mentioned in News of the Weird are from news stories appearing in daily newspapers in the U. S. and Canada (or occasionally, reputable daily newspapers in other countries or other reputable magazines and journals). 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