THIS is TRUE by Randy Cassingham
A weekly column of oddities from around the world
HIDE AND SEEK: Police in Astoria, Ore., stopped to talk to a driver of a car parked in a crosswalk. He had no license, so the chat was prolonged — enough that a passenger, Roberto Valiente-Martinez, 28, “got fidgety,” police said. Very fidgety: after a bit, the man pleaded with Officer William Barnes to help him remove a package of cocaine that he had hidden in his pants, which was apparently leaking and burning his crotch. Valiente-Martinez was arrested and charged with drug dealing and possession. (AP) …The good news: numbness set in. The bad news: it may be permanent.
HIDE AND SEEK II: Irma Acosta-Arya, 39, was in court in Hackensack, N.J., to plead innocent to drug possession charges. A sheriff’s deputy did a routine search of the defendant and found 21 bags of heroin and 22 bags of cocaine under her wig and in her underwear. Her bail on the original charge was immediately revoked by the judge. (AP) …The bad news: there are people so dumb they think they can get away with stuff like this. The worse news: it’s definitely permanent.
HIDE AND SEEK III: Pennsylvania State Trooper Jeffrey Seeley made a “routine traffic stop” of a speeding car. He wasn’t even going to give the driver a ticket. But “when I asked the driver to get out of the car so I could explain the warning to him, he was acting very antsy,” Seeley said, so he asked a passenger to step out also. That’s when Seeley got suspicious. “When I asked him if he had drugs or guns or anything illegal, he fainted. He just rolled right back over the guardrail.” The occupants of the car were all arrested when a search revealed 10 kilos of cocaine in the trunk. (AP) …The bad news: they face 25 years to life. The good news: the car wasn’t confiscated because it was a rental.
HIDE AND SEEK IV: A Mexican national trying to sneak into the U.S. thought a good way to get over the border might be to impersonate an American. He chose his identity poorly. “This guy basically cloned the identity of a wanted fugitive,” a Customs Service spokesman said, calling the ploy “kind of a loser thing to do.” (Reuters) …The good news: he won’t be charged with the fugitive’s crimes. The bad news: forgery and identify theft are more serious charges.
HIDE AND SEEK V: Myner Santiago Martinez, 22, chose the wrong house to burglarize, police say. Investigators allege Martinez broke into a house, but was confronted by the occupant, off-duty Anaheim police officer Luis Gasca. Gasca thought Martinez had a gun, so he shot at the intruder. The suspect ran outside and fell into a cactus plant. After pulling himself out of that, he tried to jump a fence — but slipped and fell on it, impaling his groin on the wrought iron. “It wasn’t a good night” for the burglar, an investigator said. Martinez was arrested at a nearby hospital. (AP) …The bad news: most burglars aren’t convicted. The good news: this guy’s already been nicely punished.
TO SLEEP, PERCHANCE TO DREAM OF TV OPTIONS: Coming soon to a bookstore near you: Shakespeare for Dummies, designed to bring the Bard to the masses. Written by Ray Lischner, a computer science teacher at Oregon State University in Corvallis, and John Doyle, a British theater director, the book will feature such chapters as “Why Does Everyone Talk So Funny?” and summaries of each play. In addition, the book features baseball-like “scorecards” so the uninitiated can follow the action. For instance, in Romeo and Juliet, “first base on a baseball diamond indicates a suitor who woos a lover. Second base is awarded for meeting a lover in private, third base for getting engaged. Getting married is a home run.” (AP) …The baseball dating scorecard sure has changed over the centuries.
ALL ABOARD: An unnamed woman complained to the Thameslink rail company about crowded commuter trains — a problem for her since she is diabetic, has low blood pressure, and is pregnant. Thameslink offered a solution: they told her not to travel at rush hour. The resulting bad publicity caused the railroad company to rethink their advice. “We are sorry that the tone of the letter was a little brusque,” a spokesman said. So what are they planning to do for the woman? They hope to add capacity. “We are also considering increasing the size of the signs requesting other passengers to give up their seats to mobility-impaired passengers,” he added. (Reuters) …It makes one nostalgic for the “good old days” when they’d simply increase the size of the stick the conductor would beat passengers with.
AND THEY’RE NOT EVEN RED-FACED: The Crayola company is renaming its “indian red” crayon after people complained it was demeaning to American Indians. Following “flesh”, which was renamed “peach” since everyone’s “flesh” isn’t the same color, indian red, which was named after a reddish-brown pigment commonly found near India, will now be called “chestnut”. (AP) …After rejecting “PC Red”.
AND NOW, THE NEWS: Does watching the news on TV make you ill? “When the audience feels uneasiness or nervousness while watching news broadcasts,” it may be “due to the high and irregular frequency of the newscasters’ blink rates,” says ophthalmologist Kazuo Tsubota of the Keio University School of Medicine in Tokyo, Japan. He says his studies show the typical newscaster blinks four times as much as an average person, which might convey a sense of nervousness. (Reuters) …Then why do people still get sick when they cover their eyes?
TRUTH IN ADVERTISING: “‘Boom Box’ Explodes, One Dead” — Reuters headline
THIS WEEK’S HONORARY UNSUBSCRIBE goes to Frederick Hart. A sculptor, Hart is best known for his “Three Soldiers”, a bronze statue at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washingon, D.C., which put a human face next to the stark granite “Wall”, and the “Creation Sculptures” at the National Cathedral. Art critics consider “Ex Nihilo” (“Out of Nothing”), a 21- x 15-foot sculpture at the base of the Cathedral, to be his masterwork. Hart died in Baltimore August 13 of lung cancer. He was 56.
Joke of the Week
A big, nasty, sweaty woman, wearing a sleeveless sun dress, walks into a bar. She raises her right arm, revealing a big, hairy armpit as she points to all the people sitting at the bar and asks, “What man out there will buy a lady a drink?” The whole bar goes dead silent, as the patrons try to ignore her. At the end of the bar, a skinny little drunk slams his hand on the bar and says, “Bartender! I want to buy that ballerina a drink!”
The bartender pours the drink and the woman chugs it down. After she’s completed the drink, she turns again to the patrons and points around at all of them, again revealing her hairy armpit, saying, “What man out there will buy a lady a drink?” Once again, the little drunk slaps his hand down on the bar and says, “Bartender! I’d like to buy that ballerina another drink!”
After serving the lady her second drink, the bartender approaches the little drunk and says, “It’s your business if you want to buy the lady a drink, but why do you call her a ballerina?”
The drunk replies, “Sir! In my eyes, any woman who can lift her leg up that high has got to be a ballerina!”