Feet don’t fail me now: A 31-year-old Philadelphia government employee’s surgery is just a radical example of how obsessed some women are to wear excruciatingly painful, but fashionable, shoes, according to an August Wall Street Journal report. For about $10,000, the woman had one toe shortened and another straightened so that now she can wear today’s ever-pointier, open-toed pumps. Among podiatrists’ other remedies: narrowing of the nails; collagen injections to pad the soles of the feet; and a $225 “foot facial” scrub. But when a Moline, Ill., woman told her more traditional podiatrist that she needed corrective toe surgery, the doctor said, “No, you need different shoes.”
Thinking outside the box: Authorities in Phoenix decided to hold the city’s loudest July 4 fireworks show this year adjacent to the complex that houses a Veterans Administration medical center and the state’s military retirement home, even though some residents of the facilities still suffer battlefield-acquired post-traumatic stress disorders. (However, the facilities reported no adverse incidents.) … Sewage-treatment officials in Pittsburgh, wanting to lure crowds to a June showing of their new facilities, thought the best way to attract people was to offer them a picnic of free hamburgers and hot dogs to accompany the demonstration of state-of-the-art raw sewage disposal. (About 300 people attended.)
Least competent criminals: An inmate tried to escape in August from the parking garage of the jail in St. Charles County, Mo., by dashing through a fire exit door. He seemed unaware that immediately beyond the door was a brick wall, and after the collision, he was taken to a hospital with head injuries. … In Tampa, Fla., in August, one man was arrested and several others sought in a labor-intensive burglary of a Sports Authority store. Police estimate that the crew spent a week digging an elaborate 40-foot-long tunnel underneath the store, and once they finally surfaced inside, they apparently got only about $3,500 in athletic shoes and Tampa Bay Bucs jerseys before an employee called police.
Old lead foot: In July, a Los Angeles Times reporter, citing “scientists and others who study the problem,” wrote that as many as 10,000 auto collisions since 1985 have been caused by “unintended acceleration” (e.g., hitting the gas pedal instead of the brake, accelerating in a mistaken gear). Recent news stories suggest this problem is particularly acute with (and perhaps even largely confined to) senior citizens. In July and August alone, at least nine seniors (aged 71 to 90) caused unintended-acceleration collisions in Florida, Georgia, California, Massachusetts, Illinois and Tennessee, in addition to the July Santa Monica, Calif., farmer’s market incident in which an 86-year-old man killed 10 people because he was unable to move his foot to the brake while traveling nearly three blocks.
Update: Tony Martin (introduced in News of the Weird in 1999) is one of Britain’s most prominent criminals, sentenced to six years in prison for defending his property by shooting one burglar to death and wounding another. He was turned down for early parole in 2002, and also for a trial home visit in July, on the official ground that he continued to pose a threat to burglars. However, he was granted parole by statute in August and now must prepare to defend a civil suit by the surviving, limping burglar, Brendon Fearon, who claims the gunshot permanently disabled him. In August, London’s Sun newspaper surreptitiously videotaped Fearon walking without a limp and effortlessly bicycling and climbing stairs.
And in the last month: A judge in North Platte, Neb., willingly accepted the defense of a 45-year-old inmate on work-release that the reason he had alcohol on his breath was that he had eaten a homemade burrito whose ingredients had been dipped in beer. … The Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board turned down the petition for asylum by a Venezuelan woman, who claimed she needed to stay in Canada because back home, she would be persecuted for being too fat.
This article appears in Sep 10-16, 2003.
