The Moral Authority:
Dining-room workers at the U.N. staged a wildcat strike at lunchtime May 2, causing the building’s restaurants to be locked down. Time magazine reported that a “high-ranking U.N. official” ordered them unlocked so that staff members could eat (perhaps to pay for food on the honor system). What ensued, according to Time, was “Baghdad style [looting] chaos,” in which staff members ran wild, stripping the cafeterias and snack bars of food, silverware and liquor, including bar drinks taken by “some well-known diplomats.” None of it was paid for.
Gone tacky:
Detroit City Council member Kay Everett outdid colleagues who use the city’s printing plant for mere personal fliers and business cards; she had the plant publish for her a 12-month calendar of herself, “Hat’s on Me in 2003,” featuring a different, fashionable photograph of herself for each month. And Rhode Island state Rep. Joseph S. Almeida was convicted in February of assaulting a repo man who was lawfully confiscating Almeida’s girlfriend’s car; Almeida’s version was that the repo man voluntarily banged his own head into his truck’s door three times, smashing his own eyeglasses and mangling his own face.
Big Boob:
Prominent Columbia, S.C., surgeon Harry J. Metropol, appearing before a state legislative committee in April to argue that doctors shouldn’t have to pay so much money in malpractice awards and insurance premiums, minimized the harm suffered by a woman (not Metropol’s patient) who lost both breasts because of an error in cancer diagnosis. “She did not lose her life,” Metropol said, sunnily, “and with plastic surgery, she’ll have breast reconstruction better than she did before. It won’t be National Geographic, hanging to her knees. It’ll be nice, firm breasts.”
Chocolate Bribes:
The Cadbury company launched a major promotion campaign throughout Britain to fight childhood obesity by donating sports equipment to schools in exchange for candy bar purchases. For example (according to an April report in The Guardian), the company will donate a volleyball net and poles to a school if it hands in labels from 5,400 Cadbury chocolate bars. (In fact, a 10-year-old child getting a basketball for his school would have to play basketball for 90 hours just to burn off the calories in the candy he’d have to eat to get enough labels for the ball.)
Garage Rock:
Gary Lee Owens, 42, was arrested on drug charges in Stilwell, Kan., in April, even though police weren’t looking for drugs when they knocked on his door. The police had received a tip that two fugitives were hiding at that address, and since Owens knew nothing about that, he matter-of-factly gave them permission to search the house but then added the restriction “everywhere but the garage.” The police naturally decided that the comment was worth a search warrant, and later found the remains of a suspected methamphetamine lab.
Monkey Business:
Plymouth (England) University, with a small Arts Council grant, did not test whether an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters could produce the works of Shakespeare, but did test what six Sulawesi crested macaque monkeys would do on a computer over a four-week period at Paignton Zoo in Devon. The Guardian newspaper reported in May that the monkeys produced about five pages of text between them, mostly consisting of the letter S. Said Professor Geoff Cox, they actually spent a lot of the time sitting on the keyboard.
Also, in the Last Month … :
An international organization of gay men who raise money for charities through drag shows came to the rescue of straight high school girls by providing loaners for those who could not afford gowns for prom night (Houston). Police blamed a traffic accident on truck driver Brian Anderson, who they said lost control on I-75 while making himself a bologna sandwich (Burt Township, Mich.). A motorcyclist was killed on I-95 when he crashed into a cow that had wandered out through a hole in a fence made by trespassers looking to get high from the mushrooms that grow on cow patties (Hobe Sound, Fla.).
2003 CHUCK SHEPHERD
This article appears in May 28 – Jun 3, 2003.
