Weird News Thread ....

[Jolie Rouge]

Kobe Accuser Outed In Provocative Photo

Anyone who stands in a grocery store checkout line this week will get to see a photograph of the young woman who is accusing NBA superstar Kobe Bryant of raping her in a Colorado hotel on June 30. The supermarket tabloid The Globe is doing something no other media outlet has dared to do: It is publishing the name of the accuser and splashing across its cover a provocative photo of the 19-year-old blonde. The New York Post reports that the photo shows the Colorado teenager lifting her high school prom dress to expose her garter. The accompanying story calls the woman "bold," quotes friends who describe her as "sexy," and--in case anyone wasn't paying close attention--points out that the prom dress highlights "her bosom."

That ploy--gutsy by some standards, contemptible by others--may sell newspapers, but it's also sparking outrage from rape victims and their advocates. Jamie Zuieback, spokeswoman for the Rape Abuse & Incest National Network, didn't mince words. She told the Post, "Maybe sales were down. I don't know what other purpose it serves." Cynthia Stone, spokeswoman for the Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault, said, "We're thoroughly disgusted. This is just a way for this magazine to try to make money off of someone's horrific tragedy."

Globe co-editor Candace Trunzo explained the paper's actions this way: The girl has made an enormous amount of allegations, and we felt it was time to let the public know exactly who she was."

[the fugative]

Judge throws out felony animal abuse charge and returns dog to owner
The Associated Press



WEST BEND, Wis. - A Washington County judge has thrown out a felony animal abuse charge against the dog's owner and ordered the chocolate Labrador be returned to the man.

Gary Klink, 42, of the Town of Addison initially was charged with intentional cruelty to an animal, a felony, on an accusation of tying Buster to the back of a pickup truck in an attempt to get the animal home.

Had he been convicted of that charge, Klink could have faced 3 1/2 years in prison.

But after listening to testimony Monday from two veterinarians who said Buster was not permanently damaged and inspecting the dog himself, Circuit Judge Andrew Gonring took the rare step of changing the charge to a misdemeanor, which carries a maximum penalty of nine months in the county jail.

Gonring also rebuffed the prosecutor, who wanted Buster to remain at the Washington County Humane Society, where the dog has been kept since the Sept. 18 incident.

Information from: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

[Jolie Rouge]

New York Times September 28, 2003

The Whitest Black Girl on TV
By BAZ DREISINGER

ELIZABETH REGEN isn't a black woman, but she plays one on TV.

Well, almost: she actually plays the role of a white person who plays the role of a black person — on "Whoopi," NBC's new sitcom starring Whoopi Goldberg. Despite blond hair and rosy skin, her character, Rita Nash, wears snug denim minis and hefty gold earrings, talks "sister to sister" with black co-stars, and makes it known that the correct pronunciation is "gangstas, not gangsters."

The casting call sought "a white girl who talks, moves and acts like a sister," recalls Ms. Regen, curling her fingers to set that last word in quotation marks. "That's s-i-s-t-a-h. So I guess I assume that means a black woman." Marching into the audition armed with all the attitude she could muster, she landed the part, and became Whoopi's sidekick, a woman euphemistically described by producers as "extroverted and culturally confused."

During a recent rehearsal at Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, Regen — as Rita — struts onstage and jealously informs her character's African-American boyfriend that he's been "blinded by the booty" of another. "How you gonna try and play me?" she demands, hands on hips. Then she rehearses another zinger, first in Elizabeth Regen's voice: "Get out my man's grill." Then with pursed lips, a head roll, and plenty of Rita-esque indignation: "Get out my man's grill!" Laughter erupts on set.

On a break between scenes, Ms. Regen, 28, who in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt projects a style that might be deemed racially generic,
explains her character's thinking. "I don't want Rita to be mistaken for having been seriously influenced by the African-American culture," she says. "She's influenced by hip-hop culture," which Ms. Regen sees as "made up of music and language and art and ethnicities all mixed together. So anybody of any race can identify with it."

Call it what you will — nouveau blackface, hip-hop-face, or simply an "act black" routine — the white-as-black character that Ms. Regen has perfected is fast becoming an American comedic staple. In four recent films — "Malibu's Most Wanted," starring Jamie Kennedy; "Bringing Down the House," with Steve Martin; Chris Rock's "Head of State"; and the jailhouse rap sequence in "Austin Powers in Goldmember" — ultra-white people earn laughs by using phrases like "fo' shizzle," boogieing down to gangsta rap and wearing extra-large basketball jerseys. For a sketch on his new MTV show "Doggy Fizzle Televizzle," Snoop Dogg deprogrammed a "wigger" —
that now-acceptable term for a white boy armed with hip-hop slang and low-riding pants — and returned him to his white self (a Lacoste-wearing racquetball player). One of several satirical Web sites devoted to "wiggers" offers a run-down of their uniform, which includes "T-shirt, bearing logo of clothing company that doesn't want the wigger wearing its clothes" and tattoos that "will be hard to explain to the grandkids (`grandpa — what's `thug life'?)." Last month's MTV Video Music Awards show bubbled over with Rita Nash moments: Adam Sandler and Snoop Dogg out-shizzled each other.
Meanwhile Chris Rock teased Justin Timberlake for getting "real white all of a sudden" when told he was broke; when the news turned out to be a prank, Mr. Rock continued, "then Justin gets all black again and says: `Aw, yeah. You got me, dawg. Yeah, dawg. Salaam aleikum, dawg.' "

So what's so funny here? Why does Rita Nash — and the white-boy-dropping-slang routine — have America, to cite Eugene Levy in "Bringing Down the House," straight trippin', boo? It depends on who's asking the question, and when.

In the 1920's, adventurous white Manhattanites got a thrill by visiting Harlem nightclubs. In his famous 1957 essay, "The White Negro," Norman Mailer codified the phenomenon in hyperbolic language.. The 1976 comedy "Silver Streak" featured Gene Wilder disguised with black shoe polish, a Rastafarian-style knit hat and an arsenal of stilted slang; it played for laughs, but it was funny because it was so unlikely. His Jewish Afro notwithstanding, Mr. Wilder seemed about as far from African-American culture, or even from African-American caricature, as could possibly be.

Since that time, however, the immense cross-racial popularity of hip-hop has turned the hilarious improbability of white people who experiment with blackness into a perfectly familiar, everyday fact of American life; today, Eminem is one of the biggest rap stars alive, making it hard to tell where one culture ends and another's appropriation of it begins.

Whoopi Goldberg, who created the character of Rita, explains that racial elision of that variety is increasingly the norm in American youth culture. "Eminem is a viable, strong, male character who is white and black," she says. "There's no right or wrong of it, no judgment of it, but it is what's happening in our culture."

So Rita and the rest of the "wiggers" populating recent comedy are funny not because they're unlikely, but precisely because they are so very likely. They're walking, rapping embodiments of a new racial frontier that shaped American culture and especially American music — the frontier that optimists call racial hybridity and pessimists call cultural theft.

Some, of course, still call it an abomination. One of the earliest mainstream uses of the term "wigger" came in 1993, when two white hip-hop fans in Indiana faced school suspension and even death threats because their style was deemed too "black." (They lived to tell their tale on "Oprah.")

That residual discomfort is the other half of the joke. Without the lingering sense that racial categories ought not be quite as fluid as
dress styles, the character of the "wigger" would become a punch line with no punch, the uncontroversial equivalent of the shy librarian, the burly cop, the crooked politician. Part of the fun of "Da Ali G Show," on HBO, is the chance to watch white bureaucrats and politicians respond politely to outrageous provocations by the jive-slinging b-boy host. You get the strong impression that they just don't want to be seen criticizing a black person; the fact that the character is actually played by a white comic only makes their discomfort that much funnier.

These comedies may not use identical formulas — some mock the white wanna-bes, others poke fun at hip-hop posturing itself, while thers, like Ali G, play a joke on us for buying into the whole routine — but all share the attitude that the racial amalgam is a fact of contemporary life. If you can't beat it, parody it.

Rita Nash — like Regen herself — is a product of New York City. "Growing up here, riding the trains every day and being exposed to so many different cultures, you acquire a gift to adapt," explains Ms. Regen, who earned both a bachelor's and a master's of fine arts from New York University. "My friends growing up were Japanese, Puerto Rican, African-American. I was in all these different households, eating all these different foods, hearing all these different languages. You internalize that — and I think that's what makes this character." She adds: "This is not disrespectful. It's who Rita is; it's not an affectation." Rita, in other words, is a new breed: authentically inauthentic.

On "Whoopi," Rita's boyfriend is Courtney Rae, an African-American who uses words like "ebullient" and "joie de vivre" and watches "The O'Reilly Factor." On the pilot episode he says he fell for Rita "because she's introduced me to hip-hop, rap, and a whole world I've never known." In case anyone's missing the point, Ms. Goldberg quips, "So she's teaching you to be black." Acting black and acting white are portrayed as just that — acting. If Rita can be "black," then her black boyfriend can be "white."

BLACKS who make audiences laugh by "featuring" whiteness are not quite the flip side of the "wigger" act, of course. In real life, white people who are deemed to act too black might face some ribbing — or, like Ali G, might offend some viewers — but the punishments for black people who flout racial categories have, historically, been far more serious. And in a famous skit from "Saturday Night Live," Eddie Murphy went undercover and learned that white people enjoy generous bank loans, good service and the
presumption of innocence. He was kidding, sort of.

But back on the "Whoopi" set, no one's conducting any pious seminar on racial consciousness. Instead, people are thinking about how to make Americans take race a little less seriously. As the director, Terry Hughes, coaches Ms. Regen on a line, the words "boo" and "booty" emerge from his very white, very British mouth, and cast and crew are doubled over in laughter. Mr. Hughes throws up his hands in mock frustration. "Hey," he says, laughing along. "I'm blacker than you know!"


Baz Dreisinger, a freelance writer, teaches American studies at Queens College.

[the fugative]

News of The Weird


Published October 30, 2003 WEIR30

The Federal Communications Commission ruled in October that the "F word," used as an adjective with the "ing" ending by U2 singer Bono during the live telecast of the Golden Globe awards ceremony in January, is not obscene language because Bono was not using it sexually but rather to enhance the word "brilliant." And two weeks later, Texas' Third Court of Appeals ruled that making the well-known middle-finger gesture is not illegal because it is not so provocative these days as to incite immediate violence.

• Brandon Kivi, 15, was suspended from Caney Creek High (Conroe, Texas) in October after he possibly saved the life of his girlfriend (a fellow classmate) by lending her his asthma inhaler after she had misplaced hers; that was delivery of a dangerous drug. And Raylee Montgomery, 13, was suspended from school in Duncanville, Texas, in September when her shirttail became untucked, a violation of the dress code (raising the number of dress-code suspensions in her 3,500-student school to more than 700 in just five weeks).

Questionable judgments

• In April, community activists and other volunteers established a "safe injection site" in Vancouver, British Columbia, so that addicts can bring their heroin, crystal meth or cocaine, and prepare and inject it with clean equipment and in an environment free of hassling by police, who have been reluctant to close the site. Often, there is a volunteer registered nurse on duty to provide advice on injection technique.

• Marion, Ohio, inmate Willie Chapman got permission to delay his scheduled parole by one day until Aug. 12 so he could attend a prison meeting of the religious/personal-responsibility organization Promise Keepers. Chapman's inspirational decision made the newspapers, alerting his manslaughter victim's family, who complained to the Ohio Parole Board that Chapman should not be free at all. Consequently, the board reconsidered Chapman's parole and delayed it 991 days, until May 1, 2006.

Police blotter

• In Knoxville, Tenn., in September, Thomas Martin McGouey, 51, apparently set on committing suicide, left a note and painted a bull's-eye on his body before arranging a standoff in which he pointed a gun at police officers so they would kill him in self-defense. McGouey's scheme failed because Knox County sheriff's deputies, who fired 28 shots at him, missed with 27 and only grazed his shoulder with the other.

• NYPD officers Paul Damore and Farrell Conroy were briefly suspended without pay in July for their conduct in the 45th Precinct station house in the Bronx, when they got into a fistfight over which one would get to be the driver of their patrol car.

Unclear on the concept

• In widely publicized criticism in August, the Arab League (22 nations, all of which are governed by monarchies, clerics or military dictatorships) charged that the new U.S.-installed Iraqi Governing Council was illegitimate because it was not freely elected but consisted only of appointed representatives from various interest groups. The league's secretary general announced that Iraq's former seat in the Arab League would therefore remain vacant until the country has an elected government (which would then make it the league's only elected government).

• Thailand's leading massage-parlor/prostitution entrepreneur, Chuwit Kamolvisit, reacted with outrage when he was charged this summer in connection with two criminal cases because, he said, he has paid police the equivalent of $2.5 million in bribes to get immunity. Chuwit called a series of news conferences in July, at which he released information on whom he had been bribing and who some of his customers were, and in September, he announced he would form a new political party to put an end to Thailand's culture of official corruption.

• In August, the city of Edmonton, Alberta, ordered the owners of Keep It Simple, a nonalcoholic "bar" catering to recovering alcoholics by creating the ambience of a tavern without the temptations, to enforce the city's no-smoking law for businesses. However, smoking is a popular crutch for recovering alcoholics, and the owners sought an exemption from the law in order to retain their customers, but the city said the only legal exemption on the books is for establishments that serve alcoholic beverages. (In September, Keep It Simple applied for a liquor license but said it would still not serve alcohol.)

Recent alarming headlines

• (1) "Flying Bowling Ball Breaks Bone in Woman's Leg" (a July Greensboro, Ga., Herald-Journal story about a driver running over a bowling ball, pinching it out from under a tire with great force and hitting a woman walking to her mailbox); (2) "Bible Study Group Captures Murder Suspect" (a September Arizona Republic story about six men dropping their Bibles to rush to their host's garage to stop a fugitive trying to steal a car); (3) "Flies Are Like Us: Scientists" (a July News Limited story on discoveries by the Neurosciences Institute of San Diego that fruit flies show human-like anticipation of alarm, among various learning, memory and perception traits).

• Kids who commandeered family vehicles and drove off: Taccara King's 2-year-old son (crashed a pickup truck into the B Line Transport office, Vero Beach, Fla., July). Rex Davis, 2 (crashed a car into a room at a Red Roof Inn, Tampa, Fla., September). A 5-year-old girl and her 4-year-old brother (crashed car into a McDonald's, Edmonton, Alberta, September). A 6-year-old boy (drove his baby sitter's car 30 miles, looking for his mother, hitting only three cars along the way, Luling, Texas, July). A 7-year-old boy, assisted by a 3-year-old girl holding down the gas pedal (crashed into a tree, Hannibal, N.Y., July).

[Jolie Rouge]

Did Jesus Really Have a Wife and Child?

It's a theological minefield that can deeply offend, as well as intrigue. But, hey, it's sweeps month so ABC News is boldly featuring a one-hour special on Monday night that explores whether Jesus Christ was married to Mary Magdalene and together they had a baby, reports The Associated Press. The Bible portrays Mary Magdalene as a prostitute. Titled "Jesus, Mary and DaVinci," the ABC News special is based on the novel, "The DaVinci Code" by Dan Brown, which itself is loosely based on historical facts. The book portrays Mary Magdalene as the wife of Jesus and asserts that she fled Jerusalem with his child after he was crucified. The book goes on to theorize that this story was passed on for centuries by a secret society that included the painter Leonardo DaVinci, who supposedly inserted clues about it in his art--hence, the book's title. The book has sparked a heated controversy, even though it is fiction.

So ABC News is getting into the fray by examining the various theories and points of view of several theologians, some of whom discount the story entirely and others of whom admit it is possible. Vargas disclosed to AP that ABC found no proof that Jesus had a wife, but couldn't completely discount it, either. AP reporter David Bauder, who previewed the ABC special, wrote, "The show unravels like a mystery perpetuated by secondhand gossip."

Still, Vargas says she learned a lot doing the show, especially concerning the power struggles and political intrigue that have always been part of the Roman Catholic church. "For me, it's made religion more real and, ironically, much more interesting, which is what we're hoping to do for our viewers," she said. The Catholic League has criticized the show, saying it is not sufficiently balanced.

[Jolie Rouge]

What Simon Cowell Thinks of Britney

Tart-tongued Simon Cowell still has the ability to surprise us. Here's the background: Britney Spears, whom some might say is all body and no voice, recently slammed the host of the popular "American Idol" TV show by saying this to Britain's ITV television on Monday night, "I would take his advice and whatever he said and tell him to shove it."

A dig like that just begs for a response. But instead of hissing at Britney, Simon told TV's "Extra" on Thursday night: "I've got to be honest with you, the fact that she said that, I sort of like her more. It makes her more interesting. Britney is now a woman, not a girl. I like that." Whoa, baby! Simon likes Britney.


Ooh la la! You won't believe this waxwork of Britney unveiled at Madame Tussauds in London. She's wrapped around a pole, and her bosom actually heaves to the beat of one of her songs.

http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news...fs=&floc=wn-nn


In other bizarre Britney news, Us magazine is reporting that Brit may have a new man. Emphasis on the "may." It's John Cusack! Word has it that when Britney was in New York City promoting her new CD "In the Zone," she spent some time with Mr. Cusack. No one will say if they are actually, officially, let's-call-the-parents dating, but a source dished to Us, "There is something there."

See a gorgeous gallery of Britney's sexiest pix.

[Jolie Rouge]

Students Expelled for Making Sex Video

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto.../094043620.htm

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Three high school students were expelled for making a sexually explicit video that was distributed around their private school.

The video was made last spring by a sophomore girl and two junior boys, who were not identified by officials with Milken Community High School. Two of the three students involved thought the video was recorded only for a small group of friends, said school head Rennie Wrubel.

``They thought they were just doing it for fun,'' Wrubel said. ``And then it showed up in school.''

The video was discovered by parents and the school when a boy who watched it told his parents last month. Wrubel said all known copies have since been destroyed.


The school in the Santa Monica Mountains in northwestern Los Angeles, affiliated with the Stephen S. Wise Temple, planned to invite counselors and experts to campus to talk with students about sex and relationships.



11/01/03 09:40

[Jolie Rouge]

Internet Littered With Dead Web Sites


NEW YORK (AP) - Despite the Internet's ability to deliver information quickly and frequently, the World Wide Web is littered with deadwood - sites abandoned and woefully out of date.

After Ajay Powell quit smoking and decided to run the Honolulu Marathon in 2001, she created a Web site to track her progress, updating it weekly with photographs and tallies of her training miles.

Powell updated it again the following year when she entered a seven-day, 585-mile bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles. But the site has nothing on her results in that ride or any other endurance events Powell has since tackled.

Her site remains frozen in time.


Like many others who enthusiastically start Web sites and Web journals known as blogs, Powell lost interest. The Internet's novelty wore off.


``It was 100 percent the first two or three months of my training for the marathon, then I started to get resentful at having to put these pictures up,'' said Powell, who lives in Stockton, Calif. ``It got increasingly tedious to keep up. I just let that thing go to pot.''


One study of 3,634 blogs found that two-thirds had not been updated for at least two months and a quarter not since Day One.


``Some would say, `I'm going to be too busy but I'll get back to it,' but never did,'' said Jeffrey Henning, chief technology officer with Perseus Development Corp., the research company that did the study. ``Most just kind of stopped.''


Other sites die because an event came and went - political campaigns end, the new millennium arrived without computer-generated catastrophe.


The Year 2000 site for Massachusetts still urges citizens to stock up on supplies and withdraw money in case cash machines and credit cards fail. Igor Sidorkin's personal collection of Y2K software fixes gets 30 or so visitors daily - mostly to download patches they should have installed four years ago.


Cliff Kurtzman kept his Year2000.com site up for two years past the turnover, with a note acknowledging that the information could be old. But even abandoned sites deserve a burial at some point.


``There was so much on it that was out of date, and links that didn't work and everything,'' he said. ``It looked bad to have things up there with so many things not working or making sense anymore.''


Kurtzman, who uses the site now to promote a newsletter on business and innovation, knows the troubles abandoned sites like his can pose. He'll find a site he likes, only to learn later the information is old.


``Having extra junk out there just makes the process of searching for good stuff even harder,'' Kurtzman said.


But just as libraries wouldn't think of dumping musty, out-of-print books, Web designers shouldn't rush to remove yesteryear's castoffs, said Steve Jones, a communications professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.


``I do hear pretty frequently not so much that there's deadwood, but that sites go away without a trace,'' Jones said.


Many sites cost money to maintain. Unless they use a free service like Geocities or have a friend willing to lend space, developers of Web sites must pay fees for Web hosting and domain names.


Few are like Alan Porter and Anand Ranganathan, willing to pay $14 a year to keep the domain name Votexchange2000.com, which in 2000 let users in one state trade their vote for president to someone in another state. The site runs off a computer under Ranganathan's desk at work.


Porter said they are keeping it around as a historical artifact, though that can't last forever as technology changes. Parts of the site, for instance, won't work with newer browsers.


But neglect is a more common reason that sites linger past their prime.


The mayor of Seaside, Ore., Don Larson, remains a candidate on his campaign Web site, though he won last year's election. The site's designers hadn't gotten around to updating it, though after being contacted by The Associated Press, ``please vote'' was quietly removed.


Management of the Computer Coalition for Responsible Exports changed hands early this year and updating the Web site remains on the new organizers' ``to do'' list. In the meantime, you can view press releases through March 7, 2002.


A fan site for the TV show ``Melrose Place'' also remains static. Though the site promises ``new additions'' beyond the final episode, its home page proudly announces, ``News Last Updated 05/24/99'' - the date of the finale.


And a site recording Debbie Busler's six-continent, 26-country tour last year has yet to leave the Americas. Though she returned home 13 months ago, she remains at country No. 4 online.


Her brother and webmaster, Marty, ran into time-consuming technical troubles and vows to finish the job - one day.


``She had a lot of tips that were pretty good for people traveling around the world, even specific hotels, what to do, what she would have skipped,'' he said. ``I would love to finish it.''


But he added, ``I've also got a full-time job and a part-time job and I like to sleep.''



11/02/03 13:04

[the fugative]

Zoo visitor injured when she tries to feed bear
Associated Press

Published November 3, 2003

WANTAGE, N.J. -- A woman's visit to a New Jersey zoo ended with a trip to the hospital.

Gail Stern was throwing apples to two 1,300-pound Alaskan Kodiak bears at the Space Farms Zoo and Museum on Sunday when one of the apples bounced off the cage.

The 54-year-old woman scaled a 4-foot chainlink fence, which is designed to keep visitors away from the cage, and retrieved the apple. She then tried to put it in the cage. But one of the bears, known as Buddy, swiped at the apple -- leaving Stern with severe cuts in her right hand.

She was taken to Morristown Memorial Hospital, where she was treated and later released. State police investigated, but no charges have been filed.

[the fugative]

Australian woman attacks crocodile, saves nephew
Associated Press

Published November 3, 2003

DARWIN, AUSTRALIA -- There's nothing like a good punch in the nose to discourage a hungry crocodile. An Australian man can vouch for that.

The 19-year-old said he was loading wild geese into his small tin boat at a creek in the Outback on Saturday when a ten-foot crocodile lunged at his leg and pulled him in.

That's when his 53-year-old aunt came running to the rescue.

She told the Northern Territory News she hit the crocodile with her fist on its snout, and yelled ``Help! In the name of Jesus!''

The crocodile let her nephew go. He's recovering following surgery for some deep cuts on his leg.

[the fugative]

Monkey roundup is a wet job for zookeepers
Associated Press

Published November 3, 2003

OMAHA, Neb. -- It was the zoo equivalent of a cattle drive: Monkeys rounded up to be taken inside for the winter.

Only it wasn't a dry and dusty job Saturday for workers at Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo because the 17 monkeys live on islands in an outdoor lagoon.

Human and primate alike got wet.

Several monkeys climbed an artificial tree that covers much of the main island. As three workers climbed the tree, the monkeys went even higher and moved onto the tips of the branches.

``It's a good environment for them, except on capture day,'' said veterinarian Doug Armstrong. ``There are a lot of places for them to hide.''

Zoo workers gently prodded one monkey to lower branches, but the creature quickly grabbed a rope to reach another island. Two zookeepers jumped into the lagoon and picked up the monkey from behind, just as another zookeeper in a rowboat closed in.

The monkey was placed in a pet carrier and quickly became quiet.

Monkeys may seem uncooperative on moving day, Armstrong said, but they do accept their capture.

``Almost all of them have been through this before,'' he said.