Weird News Thread ....

[the fugative]

Chuck Shepherd: News of The Weird

Chuck Shepherd

Published January 22, 2004

Happy New Year: Once again, authorities in the Hillbrow district of Johannesburg, South Africa, were unable to stop the traditional midnight celebrations, in which residents of high-rises toss refrigerators, ovens, beds, trash cans and other furniture off their balconies, and police, wearing crash helmets, try to dodge the fusillade. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals pressured officials of Brasstown, N.C., out of the traditional New Year's Eve "possum drop" (lowering a caged opossum at the stroke of midnight, a la Times Square), causing the town to substitute a piece of roadkill. Henry Earl was arrested in Lexington, Ky., on New Year's Eve for being drunk and disorderly -- his 11th such arrest that month and number 804 since 1992.

• Scientists on the cutting edge have recently developed cholesterol-free mice (by Quark Biotech), bisexual butterflies (by Butterfly Park in Singapore), and the "perfect" slice of buttered toast (by Arla Foods, Leeds, England). A team of mathematicians using 200,000 computers found the largest "Mersenne prime" number ever, which is 6.3 million digits long; said a Michigan State grad student who worked on the project, "It's a neat accomplishment, but it really doesn't have any applicability." New York University professor Steven Brams and colleagues developed a nuanced political-economic theory for efficiently dividing a cake among dessert lovers who insist on getting their fair shares.

Cultural diversity

• Over a two-month period in the Miskito community of northern Nicaragua, about 150 people contracted a hysteria whose symptoms included wandering naked in public, becoming severely violent, fighting imaginary enemies, and, later, lapsing into comalike states. Nicaraguan officials regard the illness, "grisi siknis," as culture-bound, with traditional healers more effective at treating it than medical doctors.

• As an example of the stunning heritage of honesty of the Japanese, the Tokyo police Lost and Found Center reported that $23 million in cash found by strangers was turned in in 2002 (and almost $17 million eventually made it back to the rightful owners). Also, reported The New York Times in January, 330,000 umbrellas were turned in (but fewer than 1,000 were claimed).

Latest religious messages

• Televangelist Joyce Meyer has risen from the pack of TV ministers (and from the ordinariness of her pre-preaching life) by her uninhibited pursuit of donations ($95 million in 2003), according to a December St. Louis Post-Dispatch profile. "Make your checks payable to Joyce Meyer Ministries," she shouted, "and million is spelled m-i-l-l-i-o-n." Of once receiving $1 million in stocks from a worshipper, she said, "I didn't have that [gift] for five minutes and I said, 'OK, God, next I'll take $5 million.' " "Fear," she reminds her parishioners, as in their fear of making sacrifices in order to have more money to give her, "is the work of the devil."

• The Los Angeles Kabbalah Centre is enjoying soaring income due to the Jewish mysticism's recent embrace by pop celebrities (e.g., Madonna, Britney Spears), according to a December New York Times report. Kabbalah bottled water (which has supposedly absorbed the energy of the Torah by osmosis from being in the same room with it and which "changes you on a molecular level," said a Centre employee) costs $3.50, and red string bracelets, which supposedly ward off negative spirits (which Jewish traditionalists say is an appalling oversimplification of their purpose) cost $26 to $36.

God, the micromanager

• Ten months before election day, God has handicapped the 2004 presidential race as a "blowout" victory for President Bush, according to Pat Robertson on his Christian Broadcasting Network program "700 Club" (January). Connecticut's besieged governor, John Rowland, who is in deep trouble for having taken favors from contractors and then (as he later admitted) lying about it, said he can't resign because God spoke to him directly and ordered him to hang in and defend himself (December).

• Recurring News of the Weird themes: In Clearwater, Fla., Mary Denise Flowers was arrested for stealing a $20,000 ring from Littman Jewelers, with the key prosecution evidence emerging only several days later when Flowers, whose modus operandi was to swallow the ring at the scene of the crime, finally "passed" it at a local hospital, where it was mined from her feces (December). A house in San Diego was completely demolished when a pilot light ignited the 19 bug bombs the homeowner had set; one canister would have been plenty lethal for the small area, but 19 yielded a bomb 28 times more powerful than necessary (December).

• Recent extreme body piercings (no fatalities!): Joy Wiggins, accidentally shot herself in the heart with a nail gun but was saved by doctors at Christus St. Elizabeth Hospital, Beaumont, Texas, October; Jed Bryant, 21, accidentally shot by co-worker's nail gun, 3 1/2 inches into his skull, Rapid City, S.D., January; Roxanne Kirtley absentmindedly stood up, forcing her head against a protruding nail that went 2 inches into her skull, Dallas, August, and a 34-year-old laborer fell and landed seat-first on a rebar rod that, impaled him through the buttocks, Toronto, Ontario, September.

• While his dad was busy with a phone call three feet away, Timmy Novotny, 7, climbed through the 8-by 10-inch release door of a stuffed animal game machine at the Piggly Wiggly supermarket in Sheboygan, Wis., in January and couldn't get out. He spent an hour among the elephants and rabbits until firefighters dismantled the machine.

• Also, in the past month: New York City Port Authority police officer Russell Bass pleaded guilty to having illegally videotaped an 11-year-old girl in a shower two years ago and blamed it on the stress he was under for helping with the 9/11 rescue at the World Trade Center. North Little Rock, Ark., police arrested two alleged Internet-trolling pedophiles, one of whom had flown in from Arizona and the other all the way from South Korea, to meet teenyboppers, who were, of course, police officers running a sting.

[Advertisement]

[Jolie Rouge]

Hubble Shows New Images of 'Black Eye' Galaxy

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto...=20040205WAS50


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Hubble Space Telescope has snapped a new image of the "Black Eye" galaxy, so named because an ancient cosmic smashup produced a dark ring and a roiling, conflicted interior.

What looks like a black eye in the Hubble picture is actually a dark band of dust that stands out vividly in front of the galaxy's bright nucleus, Hubble scientists said in a statement on Thursday.

The galaxy is officially known as M64, but astronomers have nicknamed it the "Black Eye" or "Evil Eye" galaxy.

In some earlier images, the "Black Eye" appears to be a fairly normal spiral galaxy. And as happens in most galaxies, all the stars in M64 are rotating in the same direction.


But detailed studies in the 1990s found that while all the stars are heading the same way, interstellar gas at the outer reaches of the galaxy is rotating in the opposite direction.


At the point where the stars and gas shear against each other, the gases collide and get smashed together, creating a region of active star formation, the scientists said.


The new image shows an area where hot blue stars have just formed, along with pink clouds of hydrogen gas that glow when exposed to ultraviolet light from the infant stars.


Astronomers believe M64's internal conflict arose when the "Black Eye" absorbed a satellite galaxy that collided with it, perhaps more than a billion years ago.


Most visible traces of this smaller galaxy have been obliterated, but signs of the collision persist in the backward motion of the outer edge of M64.


Long known to amateur astronomers because it can be seen with small telescopes, the "Black Eye" galaxy is about 17 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices (Berenice's Hair).


A light-year is about 6 trillion miles, the distance light travels in a year.


More information and images are available online at http://hubblesite.org/news/2004/04 and http://heritage.stsci.edu/2004/04.



02/05/04 16:56

[Jolie Rouge]

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[Jolie Rouge]

Store Worker Finds Box of Human Skulls



By THOMAS J. SHEERAN

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ns/news/...=20040206NY123

BROOK PARK, Ohio (AP) - Human skulls encased in ceramic have been found among clay pots, baseballs and other items purchased at auction by an Ohio discount store chain.

The trail of the 12 skulls has led to Florida and Peru.

A warehouse employee of the Marc's chain found them while looking through a box purchased at auction Jan. 15 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. A figurine fell and broke, disclosing a skull enshrouded in ceramic.

The box was among items that had been abandoned at a customs inspection point. It was shipped by air last May from Lima, Peru, to someone in Miami, apparently meant as a gift, according to Cherise Miles, a spokeswoman for the customs agency.


The name of the intended recipient was being withheld pending the investigation.


As for the sender, ``We don't know if the person actually knew there were skulls,'' Miles said. That was under investigation, along with other unanswered questions about the origin of the skulls.


None had any sign of violence or injuries, according to assistant Cuyahoga County Coroner Heather Raaf, and some may have been buried at some point.


At the time of the Jan. 30 discovery, the ceramic items were at least one week away from making the shelves at Marc's, a northeast Ohio chain of discount stores where closeouts and low prices are favored over shopper comforts.


Marc's regularly stocks items purchased at auction, including those attended by owner Marc Glassman, said Debbie List, administrative assistant at the chain. ``He attends auctions all the time, everywhere,'' she said.


Finding a ceramic item shaped like a head might not prompt a second glance at Marc's, where you can find men's underwear at the end of the frozen foods, flea collars hanging next to California wines and a chest-high display of unwrapped dog chews. Over in the corner, tropical birds squawk from a room-sized cage.


Police in Brook Park, a working-class Cleveland suburb, released photos of one of the ceramic-encased skulls. It resembled a head with a biker's tightly fitting helmet and wide purple bands down the sides of the face, lips pursed closed.


The skulls include at least one of a child and showed evidence of bindings, according to Raaf. The dried-out look indicated the skulls were aged, possibly for many years.


Investigators wouldn't say whether they were looking into possession of the skulls as a crime.


The coroner asked an anthropologist, Bruce Latimer of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, to inspect the skulls. He was directed by authorities to withhold public comment, museum spokeswoman Gail Takacs said Friday.


The Peruvian embassy in Washington, D.C., didn't respond to a request for comment on the discovery.



02/06/04 17:58

[the fugative]

Chuck Shepherd: News of The Weird
Chuck Shepherd

Published January 29, 2004

National Geographic TV reported in January on "designer breeding" of dogs, with emphasis on the not yet officially recognized species of Labradoodle. Breeding decisions must be carefully made because, experts say, some interspecies pairings create unhealthy offspring. For example, mating a pug with a Pekingese would probably create a dog whose eyes would fairly easily dislodge from their sockets, and a Newfoundland-Saint Bernard match-up would produce a dog particularly vulnerable to hip dysplasia. On the other hand, Yorkipoos and schnoodles appear to be safe, and the Labradoodle is a low-allergy, lightly shedding version of the Labrador retriever.

• People who accidentally shot themselves recently: Anthony McCoy, 20, Edwardsville, Pa. (while he was playing with a gun, said police, it fired, nicking his scrotum, July). Maceo Price, 32, a bodyguard for singer R. Kelly, Marietta, Ga. (accidentally shot himself in the leg while removing his gun at a nightclub, September). Randy Robinson, 19, Toronto (fatally shot himself while pocketing his gun as he fled a taxi robbery, December). Thomas Morris Van Dyke, 40, South Buffalo, Pa. (fatally shot himself in the neck while climbing into his shoddily made hunter's tree stand, December). And police officers in Collinsville, Ill. (December), and Hopatkong Borough, N.J. (November). The Collinsville officer shot his foot during a drug raid, and the New Jersey officer shot his leg during his annual firearms qualifying test.

• Police in Franklin Township, N.J., charged a 20-year-old man with shoplifting two pythons from the Animal Trax pet shop and driving away with them. The man's poor judgment was not the reason police caught him, but when they did later encounter the stolen snakes in the man's house in January, he admitted that one of the snakes had wriggled out of his pocket during the getaway, wrapped itself around his leg, and bit him in the "groin area."

Can't possibly be true

• Junior Allen, 63, feels 2004 will be his year. The North Carolina Parole Commission will decide soon whether to grant his application for release, after 25 straight rejections. Allen's only conviction, in 1970, was for stealing a TV set, which today would carry a probable sentence of probation only. Meanwhile, the same commission released Howard Washington on parole in January after 10 years in prison for murder; he committed his crime one week before the state eliminated parole as a possibility for murders like the one Washington committed.

• In December, New Hampshire's state drug abuse and prevention program was turned down for a $17 million grant on the sole ground, said the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, that its application was typed with smaller margins than permitted. The federal agency did not give the state an opportunity to correct the formatting, even though the victims of the rejection were not the grant-writers but drug-addicted patients.

• Deborah Hayes, who was awarded more than $1.3 million by a jury in Beaumont, Texas, in November for the heart damage she suffered while taking the Fen-Phen weight-loss drug, said in December that that was too much money and that she thought she had demonstrated only about $588,000 in damages.

• Wanda Hudson, 44, said she was inadvertently padlocked into her 30-by 10-foot locker by a careless employee of the Dauphin Island Parkway storage facility near Mobile, Ala., on Nov. 7, 2001, and did not get out until a neighboring unit renter heard her cries 63 days later. Hudson, who said she survived on canned foods and juice, was found weighing 85 pounds and in a clinical state of "advanced starvation." She sued Parkway for $10 million but in September 2003 was awarded $100,000 by a jury.

• Americans continue to be divided over the wisdom of "zero tolerance" laws that require heavy punishment even for slight, technical violations, especially as applied to public school students. In December, for example, the Bossier Parish, La., school board voted to uphold the yearlong expulsion of a 10th-grade girl for "drug" possession, specifically an Advil tablet. And in January, a Rio Rancho, N.M., middle school student was drug-suspended for five days for possession of a Gas-X tablet. (National media attention eventually caused both school districts to lessen the penalties.)

• In December, payoff checks started arriving from Citibank's class-action lawsuit settlement that required it to refund overcharges for credit-card fees, but since the $18 million payout had to be split among 20 million customers and former customers, the checks were for as little as 4 cents, while the lawyers who brought the lawsuit shared $7.2 million. A major Citibank "abuse" corrected by the lawsuit: It was charging interest from 10 a.m. on the payment-due date but agreed to start charging it only as of 1 p.m.

Update

• News of the Weird reported in 2002 that Armin Meiwes, 41, had been arrested for killing and eating a 42-year-old man in Kassel, Germany, but presented videotaped evidence that the murder was consensual (which would still be a crime in Germany but with a lighter sentence). Prosecutors have since learned that the "international cannibal community" may include hundreds of men who communicate on the Internet, including several who visited Meiwes to discuss becoming his dinner but who changed their minds (and were permitted to leave). Among Meiwes' e-mail exchanges (revealed at his trial, which is continuing), a potential victim wrote, of the symbiotic nature of their proposed relationship: "Hey, we seem to have discovered a market niche." Meiwes: "We could solve the problem of overpopulation and famine at a [single] stroke."

• According to police in Spokane, Wash., two young men on a lark decided to stop their car at a Denny's on a cold Jan. 14 morning at 5 o'clock, take off their clothes, and give the customers and staff a thrill by cavorting through the restaurant. But one customer had the last laugh. He left, got into the streakers' idling car (which contained their clothes) and drove off. The car turned up five days later, minus CDs and the clothes. (Remarkably, the streakers, and a third pal, who remained clothed, have not yet been identified by local media.)

• Also, in the past month: German and Swiss engineers, finally connecting their respective parts of the new Upper Rhine Bridge in Laufenberg, Germany, discovered that one half had been built a little less than 22 inches lower than the other, requiring massive reconstruction. A 16-year-old boy, after holding a weeklong series of parties while his father and stepmother were away, and seeing the damage done to the $380,000 house, burned it down to hide the destruction, according to police (Cincinnati). A 28-year-old man was sentenced to 10 months in prison for embezzling money from his company (a law firm), which is under indictment for stealing money from its clients (Brattleboro, Vt.).

[the fugative]

Chuck Shepherd: News of The Weird
Chuck Shepherd

Published February 5, 2004

Derek L. McSmith of Forest City, Ga., has filed 10,618 formal open-records requests to local governments in the last eight months, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution report. Most were, he said, to satisfy his curiosity about how government works, but one day, he asked for 490 magazines and on another day, he checked out 100 books (and soon, according to the librarian, walked outside and dropped them into the return bin). Each request must be logged in and processed, and a Forest City clerk spends almost full-time on McSmith's work. Several officials said that after they locate his documents, he only glances at them (or, if there is a cost involved, declines the documents). A local First Amendment advocate said the situation was merely "one of the downsides of a free and open society."

• Steve Danos, 24, was arrested as allegedly the man who had been sneaking into young women's apartments to watch them sleep and to snuggle with them (and, sometimes, to fold their laundry) (Baton Rouge, La., October). Stephen P. Linnen, 33, an assistant to Republican legislators in the Ohio House, was indicted on 56 counts stemming from an 18-month spree in which a naked man jumps out from hiding and photographs startled women's reactions (Columbus, Ohio, November). Japanese men's fetish for schoolgirls' used underwear is such a problem, concluded a civic panel, that shops that cater to them are proliferating, thus enticing more and more girls to become suppliers (Tokyo, October).

News that sounds like a joke

• In November, police in Brooklyn set a trap and arrested a 44-year-old man and his 22-year-old associate for having kidnapped a teenager earlier in the day and having sought a $20,000 ransom from his mother; the sting was set up after the men, released their victim (who went straight home) but continued to demand the ransom. According to a December Miami Herald story, the condition of museum-goers who grow faint or suffer anxiety attacks while viewing art (or viewing too much in a short time) has a name, Stendhal's syndrome, that, although rare, has been studied for almost 200 years.

Compelling explanations

• Timothy Paul Kootenay, 43, jailed in Aspen, Colo., in November on a California warrant for probation violation, said he would fight extradition on the ground that he is a citizen of the notorious "Republic of Texas" and that, actually, Aspen and Vail are located on a sliver of land that is also part of the Texas nation. Kootenay's separatist colleagues (some of whom have taken up arms) believe that Texas was never legally annexed by the United States and is thus a sovereign nation that should respond only to international law.

• In a deposition as part of his divorce proceedings (and released in November), the president's brother, Neil Bush, admitted that he had had sex with several women while on business trips in Asia, but that he did not seek them out, insisting that they simply came to his door. Asked his ex-wife's lawyer, "Mr. Bush, you have to admit it's a pretty remarkable thing for a man just to go to a hotel room door and open it and have a woman standing there and have sex with her." Responded Bush, "It was very unusual."

• The parents of a teenage girl, who had inhaled nitrous oxide from "whippet" propulsion cartridges just before a car crash that left her with permanent brain damage, filed a lawsuit in Boca Raton, Fla., in December against the store that sold her the canisters. A store manager claimed that, even though his is a video store whose whippets are sold from an "adult" room, he believes that his customers are not inhalant-abusers but just people who want to make their own whipped cream.

The latest human rights

• In September, a government appeals board in Melbourne, Australia, changed its mind and ruled that organizers of a lesbian festival could not, after all, limit attendance to just those lesbians who were born female, because that discriminates against transsexual lesbians. The female-born organizers had said they needed to exclude ex-males in order to affirm their identity and "consolidate our culture."

• Spain's Catalonian High Court ruled in November that the Barcelona construction company Perez Parellada Promotions had improperly fired a worker who admitted smoking marijuana on the job, finding that he only smoked during meal breaks and did not smoke enough to affect his work.

Least competent criminals

• In November, Michael Patrick Mikitka, 35, was arrested and charged as the man who had held up six banks in one week in the Pittsburgh area, including one in which he had written the holdup note on a check issued to him when he opened his account. In the final robbery, at the PNC Bank in Wilkinsburg, he was on his way out the door when the security guard said that the teller needed to see him again, and as he walked back in, the doors locked, and the guard grabbed him. Pending trial, Mikitka was sent to drug rehabilitation, but he left the facility Dec. 22 and was re-arrested the same day when he allegedly robbed the same National City bank that he had robbed twice during his November spree.

• In November, a jury in Montgomery, Ala., ordered Exxon Mobil to pay the state $11.8 billion in punitive damages based on its conclusion that the company, having allegedly inflated its expenses, underpaid the state $63.6 million in natural gas royalties (a penalty of more than 18 times the state's alleged loss). Exxon Mobil said its expenses were legitimate, that it owed the state nothing, and that it would appeal. One juror said afterward that the fact that the Alabama government is in such dire financial straits and needs the money might have influenced his vote (though that was not legally proper).

• Also, in the past month: A woman was summonsed for dangerous driving after she tied the child's seat holding her 20-month-old child to a rear door to keep it from swinging open (Perth, Australia). About 50 inmates at a Portuguese prison refused to eat special Christmas lunches because the bread, usually freshly baked, was not, due to bakeries having closed early the day before (Belas, Portugal). Police said a 29-year-old woman ordered her 11-year-old daughter to help her shoplift clothing, including some items the woman later returned to the girl as Christmas presents (Fort Myers, Fla.).

[the fugative]

Swedish police skeptical of camel call
Associated Press

Published February 2, 2004

STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- It took some convincing before police would respond to reports of a camel on a southern Sweden road in the middle of a snowstorm.

``We were somewhat doubtful at first,'' said police spokesman Sten-Ove Fransson in Skoevde, 162 miles south of Stockholm, of Friday's incident. ``But then more people called, so we were finally convinced that there really was a camel gone astray on the road.''

Before police arrived, friends of the camel's owner came and led it back to a stable, where it has been kept while awaiting a home in a new barn.

Owner Anneli Arvidsson said in a telephone interview that the 22-year-old Siberian camel, Emat, might have wandered off because of the absence of his usual companion, a horse.

``On Friday, the horse had been taken inside the stable and the camel was left alone in the pasture, which probably made him feel lonely,'' she said.





Hell toupee: Holsteins wore hairpieces, State Fair alleges
Associated Press

Published February 5, 2004

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Three livestock exhibitors at last year's Ohio State Fair have been disqualified for allegedly outfitting their Holstein cows with hairpieces.

State Fair inspectors said the three glued or painted hair from another part of the animal or from another animal to create straighter backs on the cows and enhance their appearance in the show ring.

Kreg Krebs and his brother Kenneth of Fredericksburg, and Scott Long of Clayton, Mich., could be required to forfeit all winnings, said Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Melanie Wilt. The winnings had been withheld by fair officials.

Wilt said state inspectors at the fair discovered the fake hair when the cows were leaving the show ring on Aug. 10.

The men have 30 days to request a hearing in which they could present their cases to an independent hearing officer.

[the fugative]

Ohio man allegedly steals prisoner's identity to marry

The Associated Press, AP Online
Published February 6, 2004

WARREN, Ohio (AP) - It's no surprise that Dallas James King can't remember anything about his wedding day - he was in prison at the time.
King, an inmate at Belmont Correctional Institution, says a man assumed his identity to apply for a license and apparently marry the mother of his child.

Probate Judge Thomas A. Swift voided the marriage Thursday. He ruled that the married couple had made a false statement about the groom's identity on their sworn marriage license application. He referred the matter to the prosecutor.

King, 23, who has been in prison since 2001 on a three-year robbery sentence out of Cleveland, said Tefawn Myers sent him a marriage certificate "stating she and I had gotten married on April 22, 2002."

"I don't want to be married to this woman," King wrote to the judge in December.

King said he was concerned about any crimes committed in his name by the man who apparently used his identity. He told the judge that Myers was living in Warren in April 2002 when the marriage license was issued.

Myers could not be reached for comment Friday because there was no phone listing for her in Warren.

[the fugative]

Fishing the big prize
A reluctant angler from Buffalo, Minn. outfishes 4,000 others to win the Golden Rainbow Ice Fishing Contest on Forest Lake.
BY CHRIS NISKANEN
Outdoors Editor

FOREST LAKE, Minn.

Mike Moen hadn't planned to go ice fishing Saturday.

But his brother Brian talked the ironworker from Buffalo, Minn., to try his luck at the Golden Rainbow Ice Fishing Contest, where first place was a boat, motor and trailer package.

"I said, 'I might as well. I ain't got nothing else going on,' '' Mike said.

So Mike and Brian joined 4,000 ice anglers on Forest Lake, tromping through deep snow when the opening siren sounded at noon. About midway into the three-hour contest, Mike felt a tug on his Swedish pimple and minnow, and he reeled up a 4.73-pound northern pike.

He'll be tooling around in a new Lund this summer.

"My line broke, and I had to reel him up hand over hand,'' Mike said later while standing next to his boat package valued at $15,000. "I ain't won anything but maybe $200 on pull tabs.''

Luck. It's the trademark of ice-fishing contests such as the Golden Rainbow. Organizations drilled nearly 10,000 holes within the official fishing area, which measured 1½ miles in circumference. No one could start fishing early, and anglers could bring only equipment that fit on sleds or in 5-gallon buckets.

Still, the weigh station was jammed during the first hour of the contest, with anglers weighing mostly small perch. A handful of walleyes between 1 and 2 pounds were weighed, along with several northern pike. Organizers tried to return most fish alive to the water.

Ron Rubenzer of Cameron, Wis., caught a perch weighing just 0.12 pounds. He didn't expect to win much, but his fish was big enough for 100th place and a $10,000 check.

A bit flabbergasted while television cameras rolled, Rubenzer wasn't sure what he would do with the money.

"I guess I should give half of it to my wife, I suppose,'' he said.

The Golden Rainbow, sponsored by the Hopkins Jaycees, raises money for community projects in Hopkins and Forest Lake. In its 22nd year, the Golden Rainbow used to be Minnesota's largest ice-fishing contest until an event in Brainerd took the title. (About 8,000 to 10,000 people fish that event, held in January.)

Participation in the Golden Rainbow sagged this year because the past two events were canceled because of insufficient ice.

"It will come back,'' predicted Jason Green, one of the organizers. "Some of our sponsors have backed out because we had to cancel the last two years. So it's good we're back this year."

Participants pay $35 for a ticket. Winners are subject to polygraph tests after two Wisconsin men were suspected of cheating several years ago. When large fish were caught, organizers drove to the spot and interviewed nearby witnesses to verify the angler caught the fish.

Mike Nelson had plenty of witnesses when he hauled a 2.83-pound walleye out of his ice hole. To a cheering crowd of fellow anglers, he gripped the walleye with a mittened hand and ran to the weigh-in tent because dead fish are disqualified.

"I've never been so nervous pulling up a fish,'' Nelson said. "I missed a couple earlier, but this one came in and stared at my bait a few times. He took it down for a second, and that's all I needed."

Nelson's fish was in second place for about a half-hour until it was knocked to fourth. That's how he finished and claimed a $500 fish locator.

Irene Barry didn't catch a winning fish, but she basked in the warmth of a sunny day and ate pizza with her husband, Steven, and daughter Lindsey. Lindsey's boyfriend, Marcus Etoll, helped out by giving fishing advice and baiting Irene's hook.

Wearing a leopard-print scarf, leather jacket and several large diamond rings, Irene didn't fit the stereotypical ice angler.

"What they really need out here is some wine coolers,'' she said, chuckling. "Or maybe some champagne. I should have brought my own."

But you didn't need to leave your bucket if you had a yen for hot pizza and beer. Vendors pulled both on kiddie sleds around the event, yelling, "Hot pizza!" and "Beer!"

Celeste Brosenne of Minneapolis and Ben Morales of St. Paul volunteered to sell beer for the Vietnam Veterans of America, Chapter 320. About an hour into the event, they had sold 10 cases.

"It's $2 a can, but we encourage our better deal, three for $5,'' Morales said. "But business is pretty slow."

Fishing wasn't. Organizers said 806 fish were weighed, more than usual. Mike Moen, who said he loves to fish during the summer, happened to make the right decision to fish on a warm day in February.

"I tell you, he's a man that needs a boat more than anything,'' said Brian, slapping his brother on the shoulder.

WINNERS OF THE GOLDEN RAINBOW ICE FISHING CONTEST

1. Mike Moen, Buffalo, Minn., 4.73-pound northern pike. New boat, motor, trailer.

2. Kevin Grandy, Blaine, 3.37-pound northern pike. All-terrain vehicle with trailer.

3. David Nelson, Minneapolis, 2.98-pound northern pike. Fish house with trailer.

100th place winner: Ron Rubenzer, Cameron, Wis., 0.12-pound perch. $10,000 in cash.

[Jolie Rouge]

Surprise! Top 3 Most Hated Inventions

We hate them. But we need them. They drive us nuts. But we can't live without them. We are talking about the top three most hated inventions that we absolutely have to have, which are:

1. Cell phones

2. Alarm clocks

3. Television



That's the word from the annual Massachusetts Institute of Technology survey, known as the Lemelson-MIT Invention Index. Fully 30 percent of the 1,023 adults and 500 teenagers polled in this annual survey cited cell phones as the most hated, must-have invention, which placed it in the top spot. Alarm clocks followed closely at 25 percent, with television at 23 percent. (What? You don't like reality shows?)

Other hated, but must-have inventions:

Shaving razors
Microwave ovens
Coffee pots
Computers
Vacuum cleaners

So what is this love-hate relationship we have with our cell phones?

"The interconnectedness you get from the cell phone is a very positive thing, and I think that's one of the most important things, the bringing together of people. The downside of that is that you sometimes want to be alone," said Lemelson Center Director Merton C. Flemings. The Lemelson-MIT Program is a non-profit organization that celebrates inventors and inventions.


What inventions make our lives easier?

Teens overwhelmingly said e-mail and voicemail, while more than half of the adults cited credit cards and debit cards. We do agree on one thing. Almost all of us--95 percent--say inventions have improved the quality of our lives.

[Jolie Rouge]

Ark. Escapee Tries to Buy Bolt Cutters

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto...11.htm&sc=1120

MAGNOLIA, Ark. (AP) - James Cotton looked just like any other Wal-Mart customer buying a bolt cutter at 4:30 in the morning - until the cashier noticed that Cotton was wearing handcuffs.

According to police, the clerk took Cotton's money, gave him the bolt cutter, then called officers. Cotton was caught minutes later Saturday, after he had gone into the bathroom and cut off the handcuffs.

Cotton had been arrested the night before by the Haynesville, La., police on charges of battery and possession of a narcotic, but he kicked out a window in a police car and fled, authorities said.


02/09/04 14:02