Oddball News

There's No Place Like Home
Found in the news: June 26, 1998
Heart Patient Walks Home --- In His Sleep

LONDON (Reuters) - A British heart patient climbed out of his hospital bed and walked five miles home -- in his sleep.

Wearing slippers and pajamas, 48-year-old Michael Turner, who was recovering from a heart attack in Leeds General Infirmary in northern England, wandered through the rainy night for three hours.

"Hello love. I've been jogging," he told his startled wife Sandra when she opened the door.

British newspapers reported that Turner unhooked himself from heart monitors, turned off alarms that would have alerted medical staff, took a lift down three floors and slipped out into the street.

"I just can't remember a single thing about it," Turner said. "How I got home I'll never be sure."

Doctors expect him to make a full recovery, despite his adventure.

There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like home.

No snacking between meals
Found in the news: June 26, 1998
Newsreader keeps his cool and swallows fly

LONDON (Reuters) - British television newsreader Jonathan Hill didn't want to make a scene when a fly flew into his mouth during a live broadcast -- so he swallowed it, newspapers reported Friday.

Hill, 28, said his instinct was to spit out the fly but he felt that would disgust viewers.

"I choked on my words but just couldn't spit it out on camera," said Hill, who was reading the news on a Welsh television channel.

"It's a tea time show and viewers could have been made ill right across the country. I had to be professional with so many people watching. "There was only one choice. I had to grin and bear it."

Hill said that as a dedicated vegetarian it was the first meat he had eaten in years.

"I definitely haven't got the taste for it back now," he said.

Spew, yuck!

Mommeee!!!
Found in the news: April 3, 1998
Man sues after car, mother towed
      CHICAGO - Bruce Wexler says he still can't believe how his sports car was towed from a grocery parking lot with his elderly mother sitting in the front seat. Now he's suing for $3 million. Neither the tow-truck driver nor the employees of the auto pound noticed Ruth Wexler in the car. But after paying $105 to retrieve his car, Wexler trudged through the pound and found the 85-year-old woman still sitting in the Corvette. ''She was scared. She figured she was better off staying in the car and not going out in the cold and snow,'' Wexler said. The lawsuit claims the elderly woman - who has been undergoing chemotherapy for leukemia - suffered physical and emotional stress in the incident. ''I have a see-through top. There was no way you could miss her,'' said Wexler, 54, an insurance broker.

I know what you're thinking. Don't do it! I doubt your mom would appreciate it.. Even for a cool three million. On the other hand... Hey! Mom!!

Guard your body parts, this guy's nuts!
Found in the news: April 4, 1998
Body-snatching for art
      LONDON (Reuters) - An aristocrat British sculptor and a laboratory technician were convicted Friday of stealing body parts in the name of art.

      It was the first conviction in Britain for the theft of human remains.

      Anthony-Noel Kelly, a 42-year-old nephew to the Duke of Norfolk who used up to 40 body parts to make molds for his avant-garde sculpture, received a nine-month prison sentence with a stipulation that he must serve at least half of it.

      Niel Lindsay, 25, who was working as a laboratory assistant at the Royal College of Surgeons when he smuggled out the pieces for a fee of $666, was given a six-month suspended sentence.

      The pieces -- including an old man's torso and the trunk of a woman, her womb exposed -- helped Kelly create life-life sculptures that were exhibited on the walls of a London gallery last year.

      The sculptures made no big splash in the art world but were so realistic that an anatomical expert contacted the police, suspecting the artist had unauthorized access to human remains.

      Both men insisted in court they did no wrong and treated the parts with respect, burying the pieces once the work was finished.

      But jurors at Southwark Crown Court in London heard how preserved pieces of limbs, torso and heads were carried in dustbin bags on the underground "Tube" from Lindsay's workplace to Kelly's West London studio.

      The body parts were then stored in tea chests before being used to create gilt-covered sculptures.

      Kelly, a former butcher and sometime friend of heir to the throne Prince Charles, told the court he had "an alphabet of bodies" from which to create his pieces, after which he buried the parts at his family estate.

      He denied any "morbid fascination with death," saying he found beauty in anatomy and only wanted to "demystify" death.

I've always heard that artists can be a little flakey, but this is ridiculous! If I want to donate my "parts", I'll indicate it on my driver's license and be super specific about what's they can be used for. Medical research, yes. Sculpture mold, NO!

Spew, Yuck!
Found in the news: March 26, 1998
A case where the crap really did hit the fan
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (Reuters) - A Sri Lankan charged with theft threw a plastic bag filled with human feces at policemen but it hit a fan and showered the entire court, court officials said Wednesday.

They said Subhasinghe Premasiri, who had been charged with stealing gas cookers and cylinders, took the bag out of his pocket and threw it at policemen when he was asked to step into the witness box Tuesday.

"The bag struck a fan, got entangled and the entire court was showered with excreta," said an official at the court in Modera town, just south of the capital Colombo.

The accused was remanded by the chief magistrate for insulting the dignity of the court, which had to be cleaned before proceedings could continue, the official said.

I'm speechless. Except to repeat my original statement... Spew, Yuck!

Now here's something really thought provoking...
Found in the news on 03/23/98

Maine grocer at rest, rest of town up in arms
      "LUBEC, Maine (Reuters) - A grocer from northern Maine is resting quietly on the steps of the store he used to run, and the neighbors are up in arms about it. That is because Frederick McClure has been dead for two weeks.
      McClure was supposed to be buried March 9 beside his wife of 53 years. But a thunderstorm filled his grave site with water and then his wife's vault slid into the place where he was supposed to spend eternity.
      So until the ground dries and new graves can be dug, the 84-year-old McClure lies in a wooden coffin resting inside a metal vault outside the general store he loved and operated.
      "My father was extremely happy in the store,'' his daughter Anne Marie said Monday by way of explanation.
      In the meantime, she said she has had a number of angry phone calls. The residents complain their children are frightened by the sight. But an investigator from Maine's board of funeral service practitioners said there was nothing illegal or unsanitary about the keeping McClure just where he was, under a faded Pepsi sign, until a more permanent home can be found.
      His daughter said she was in no rush to get him in the ground. She said that when she placed McClure in front of the store, the clouds dispersed and the sun came out. " It was warm and sunny for a while,'' she said. ``And it was just like my father saying, 'You know, I'm here for a while and I want to stay here for a while." "
^REUTERS@

Hmmmm. What a novel idea. Just prop my earthly remains alongside the highway. After all, I spend so many unproductive hours on it. While you're at it, skip the coffin, I want EVERYBODY TO SEE ME.