Collage 217               H u m o u r N e t               15 FEB 96

SHE'S REALLY TAKING IT HARD ...

The following story appeared in a U.K. newspaper:

"The cremated remains of a Sydney helicopter pilot have been stored
in four Foster's Lager cans. His widow said if he hadn't lost
weight he would have been a six pack."

It's stories like these that really make the news worthwhile. (Many
thanks to Paul in the U.K. for that one, and to Jim in L.A. for
the next one.)

And its e-mail that makes mailing lists and news stories like this
one *possible* ...

(By ELIZABETH WEISE AP Cyberspace Writer)
SAN RAFAEL, Calif. (AP) - Neal Berry has a laptop computer, a
cellular phone, a screaming-fast modem and a slew of friends on the
Internet. About the only thing he doesn't have is a place to live
and a job.

For more than a year, Berry lived a mountain-man life in the tangled
trees under the freeways. He went to work each day as a $9-an-hour
shipping clerk and returned each night.

A polite, shy young man ... he made enough to live on but thought
rents in well-to-do Marin County were shockingly high, and he didn't
want to share a household with strangers. "So I figured I'd just go
to Costco and buy a $50 tent and live on my own," he said.

Berry, who got his first taste of the on-line world at age 17 when a
friend took him in for a while, spent his money instead on computer
gear -- $2,000 for a Toshiba laptop and $500 on a modem.

(New *there's* a guy who has his priorities straight! Well, almost;
he should have gotten a PowerBook, instead.)

As soon as his legal problems are cleared up, Berry said, he plans
to head north, to Eugene, Ore.

"I'm going to move, find work, get a place and eventually save money
and buy more hardware and software and books, so I can learn how to
program," he said.

Berry is clear about what he wants to be: "Not a programmer -- a
network specialist. They make more money and they're more in
demand."

Hmmmm ... I wonder if he plans to live and program under one of the
I-5 overpasses out there?

This story was simply too entertaining to pass up. Heck, if I ever
lose my job, you'll be reading about me much the same way -- and
saying, "Hey -- I'm on this guy's mailing list! I didn't know he
was living under Shirley's garage! You know, I *thought* there was
something weird about his home page address: 'http://www.I-95.net/'
..."

Let's hope it doesn't come to that. But, in case it does, you can
rest assured that humor like today's "Weird News Stories" Collage
will continue, virtually uninterrupted. :-)

Many thanks to Chris Kline of Humor-L and Chuck Shpeherd of "News of
the Weird" for this issue's "Weird News Stories" piece.

This stuff just keeps getting better ...

- Vince Sabio
  HumourNet Moderator
  HumourNet@telephonet.com
____________________________________________________________________
          Opener (above) Copyright 1996 by Vincent Sabio
  Permission is hereby granted to forward or post this "Collage";
  please observe the guidelines stated at the end of the message.
____________________________________________________________________

SUBJ: Weird News Stories

WEIRDNUZ.403 (News of the Weird, October 27, 1995)
by Chuck Shepherd

LEAST COMPETENT CRIMINALS

* A man, unidentified in newspaper accounts, was arrested in
Memphis, Tenn., when he tried to enter an office building after
robbing a nearby bank. Unknown to the man, the building housed
Memphis's police department. Police had heard of the robbery on the
radio and watched from an upper floor as the man fled the bank,
ducked into an alley, hid the money, and innocently approached the
front door of their building as a phalanx of officers gathered and
waited for him. The man opened the door, froze, and asked, "This
isn't the police department, is it?" [Memphis Commercial-Appeal,
6-19-95]

* In May, two boys, ages 15 and 16, were arrested outside a Santa
Clarita, Calif., bank and booked on suspicion of attempted robbery.
The boys had stood at the bank's front door at 8:55 a.m. (five
minutes before opening time), put on their ski masks, and tried to
open the door. When they couldn't get it open, they walked back to
their getaway car to decide what to do next, and alert bank
employees called police. [Los Angeles Times, 5-24- 95]

* Oliver McCall, who lost his heavyweight boxing championship in
England on September 2, arrived home in St. Louis three weeks later
with his payoff check for $1.4 million, which he was carrying in his
sock. He was soon robbed by three men, but McCall ran into them on
the street a few minutes later. The men began angrily to chase
McCall (with whose boxing career they were unfamiliar), demanding an
explanation why he was carrying so large a check. The chase drew
the attention of police, who caught the men. [St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, 9-22-95]

* Police in Lexington, N. C., arrested three men in their 20s in
August and charged them with robbing a pedestrian and a clerk at a
gas station. The men were caught after their getaway car swerved
off the road and flipped over--caused by the driver's attempting to
drive fast while simultaneously counting the robbery money.
[Greensboro News & Record, Aug95]

* Jerry Wilson, 19, was arrested in Charleston, W. Va., in August
and charged with burglary after police found him lying, bleeding
badly, on the floor of the apartment he had broken into. They had
been sent by rescue personnel after Wilson called 911 because he had
cut himself so badly breaking through the window. [Jefferson City
Capital News-AP, 8-9-95]

* In Des Moines, Iowa, in May, Ruth Bradshaw, 93, awoke to find her
house being burglarized and decided to pretend that she knew the
perpetrator not as a burglar but as a friend of her truck-driving
grandson. She welcomed him "back" into the home, served him
breakfast, and insisted that he lie down and relax a spell, at which
point she called police. Bradshaw attributes her smarts to her
career as a bootlegger and a pastor. [Des Moines Register, 5-6-95]

LATEST RELIGIOUS MESSAGES

* Nathan Frederick Klimosko, 21, was sentenced to two years'
probation in Kelowna, British Columbia, for hitting and choking his
girlfriend into unconsciousness. The fight started in a car when
the two disagreed over his interpretation of a certain passage from
the Bible, and he reached over and smacked her in the face,
blackening her eye. [Barrie Examiner-CP, 5-20-95]

* In March, Michael Beaudin, 36, was sentenced to 18 months in
prison in Montreal for negligently causing the death of his 5-
year-old son Jonathan. Beaudin, a member of the Rose and the Cross
religious sect, had said the son needed to be "purified" and had
given him enemas with over 400 times the recommended dosage of
water. [Montreal Gazette, 3-11-95]

* Stephen J. Miller, 16, was nabbed by the Virgin Mary after he
trespassed at the Sacred Heart School in Groton, Conn., in May.
According to police, Miller tried to scale the roof of the school
building, lost his footing and fell, knocked over a 400-pound statue
of Mary on the way down, and hit the ground just before the statue
fell on his legs, pinning him. He was trapped for two hours before
help, and the authorities, arrived. [Hartford Courant, 5-16-95]

SOCIAL DARWINISM

* In Dubach, La., Mr. David Hanna, 38, fooling around with his
friend Billy Barham, was accidentally killed when Barham missed
while trying to shoot a can off Hanna's head. [USA Today, 8-30- 95]

* In May, some teenagers discovered the body of traveling salesman
DeWitt Finley, 56, in a truck on a back road in the Klamath
Mountains in Oregon. He had starved to death over a nine-week
period in which he was stranded in heavy snow, despite the fact that
the road was clear several hundred yards beyond the truck. Diary
entries indicated that Finley had failed to venture out of his truck
because he was certain God would provide for his rescue. [Daily
News Journal (Murfreesboro, Tenn.)-AP, 6-3-95]

----------[ H U M O U R N E T ]----------

WEIRDNUZ.416 (News of the Weird, January 26, 1996)
by Chuck Shepherd

OH, JUST GIVE IT UP ALREADY ...

* Latest Nicotine Urges: Connecticut inmate Frank W. Banks,
assigned to a no-smoking prison, was convicted in December of
mailing harassing letters to a judge; Banks said he thought threats
via the U. S. mail would cause him to be sent to a federal prison,
where he could smoke. And in November, three stranded Alaska
hunters radioing for help claimed they had been without food for
three days so the rescue would be treated as an emergency;
actually, they had a week's worth of food with them but panicked
because they had run out of cigarettes. [Hartford Courant, 12-8-
95; Anchorage Daily News, 11-24-95]

THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT

* In December, magazine salesman Samuel A. Erby, 20, was charged in
Euless, Tex., with assault after he attacked an 88-year-old woman,
reportedly because she had just declined to buy a subscription from
him. And in June in Fort Collins, Colo., a 22-year-old man working
in his yard suffered a similar fate when he declined to buy a
subscription from a Denver salesman. [Albuquerque Journal,
12-10-95] [Fort Collins Coloradoan, Jun95]

* Among products recently brought to market are sandals, handbags,
and accessories under the A Bomb label, from Tokyo's Mode et Jacomo
(whose public relations director said she thought "A Bomb," in
English, signified "cute");  and the Peace Missile golf club and
companion putter, made from melted-down Soviet Union nuclear
missiles, in San Rafael, Calif.  China's Soft soap (and its
competitor, Seaweed Defat Soap), which according to the "Preventive
Medicine Society," removes body fat in 76% of cases;  and from the
Spencer and Fleetwood firm in Great Britain, slowly available in the
U.S., provocatively-shaped noodles called Pasta Boobs and Penis
Pasta.  [Daily Yomiuri, 9-6- 95] [The Tennessean-AP, 8-15-95]

* In October, a judge in Belfast, Northern Ireland, rejected plans
for a proposed restaurant called School Dinners that would feature
meals served by young women in short skirts wielding whips against
patrons who did not clean their plates. Though opponents called the
restaurant immoral, the judge said merely that the mock spankings
would constitute "entertainment," which is forbidden by the lease.
Said one disappointed supporter, "We have had 25 years [of
oppression]. Now is the time for the fun to come flooding back."
[Columbus Dispatch-AP, 10-26-95]

[Editor's Note: Well, so much for Northern Ireland. Guess I'll be
going to the beach *again* this summer. </vs>]

* Elle magazine reported recently on the services of Eleni Santoro,
a New York City "psychic house cleaner" who rehabilitates
hard-to-unload real estate by neutralizing the evil auras and
"balancing the energy" in the house -- at $300 to $2,500 a job. She
specializes in homes in which there had been a death or in which the
inhabitants fought a lot. [San Francisco Chronicle-Elle, Dec95]

Copyright 1996, Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.
Released for the entertainment of readers. No commercial use
may be made of the material or of the name News of the Weird.

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