Weird But True

[MalahatTwo7]

"Best Comeback Line Ever."

Only in Alberta... This was in the Calgary Sun ... the title of the article was "Best Comeback Line Ever."

In summary:

The police arrested Ward Branham, a 22-year-old white male, resident of Lethbridge, Alberta, in a pumpkin patch at 11:38 p.m. on Friday.

Ward will be charged with lewd and lascivious behaviour, public indecency, and public intoxication at the Calgary courthouse on Monday.

The suspect explained that as he was passing a pumpkin patch he decided to stop. "You know, a pumpkin is soft and squishy inside, and there was no one around there for miles. At least I thought there wasn't," he stated in a phone interview.

Ward went on to say that he pulled over to the side of the road, picked out a pumpkin that he felt was appropriate to his purposes, cut a hole in it, and proceeded to satisfy his alleged "need."

"I guess I was just really into it, you know?" he commented with evident embarrassment.

In the process, Ward apparently failed to notice a police car approaching and was unaware of his audience until officer Brin Taylor approached him.

"It was an unusual situation, that's for sure," said officer Taylor. "I walked up to (Ward) and he's....just working away at this pumpkin." Taylor went on to describe what happened when SHE approached Ward. "I just went up and said, "Excuse me sir, but do you realize that you are screwing a pumpkin?"

He froze and was clearly very surprised that I was there,and then looked me straight in the face and said...


"A pumpkin? Damn...is it midnight already?" Only an Albertan would think of an answer like that.

[Pathfinder65]

LMAO. That's great. I can't believe the officer would have actually laid charges after that
Dave

[E40FDNYL35]

November 22, 2005 -- A 60-year-old boozer drank too much, wet his bed, then set fire to his apartment while trying to dry out his mattress, cops say. "He was too drunk to go to the toilet," said a police spokesman in Muelheim, Germany. "The next morning, he put a hairdryer on the bed to dry it and left the apartment." When the old sot returned, his home was in flames.

[MalahatTwo7]

Naked Man Dies In Jump From Downtown Office

By Petula Dvorak Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, November 23, 2005; Page B01

A naked man darted from a sport-utility vehicle into a downtown Washington office building at lunchtime yesterday and then jumped to his death from the eighth floor, officials said.

The man double-parked in the 1000 block of 15th Street NW about noon, bolted from his still-running gray Jeep Cherokee, dashed past a crowd on the street and ran into the lobby of an office building, witnesses said.

Police were still trying to identify the man yesterday and to determine why he jumped. Witnesses also were trying to sort out what happened. The man had no apparent connection to the building, according to people who work there.

"He didn't even have shoes on," said James Crouch, who was working as a temporary security guard at the building. Sitting behind the security desk, Crouch first saw the man from the waist up and thought "maybe he was a rather strange jogger. But then I stood up and saw the rest of him."

The man told Crouch that he was "handicapped," asked him for 50 cents to make a phone call and then spoke incoherently, mumbling something about his father, Crouch said.

Then the man ran to an elevator. Minutes later, he emerged from a stairwell on the eighth floor. The fire alarm had been set off, presumably by the man, and the office doors on that floor were open as people began to file out, witnesses said.

The man pushed his way into one of the offices, where he said "excuse me" several times while charging toward a window, witnesses said. He smashed the glass and jumped through the window, falling onto a parapet between two buildings. Some downtown workers saw him fall.

D.C. firefighters and emergency medical service personnel arrived at the scene, and police quickly cordoned off the block.

Workers in the eighth-floor office said they had not seen the man before and did not believe that he had ties to the offices there. They didn't hear anything he said other than "excuse me," a witness said.

Before it became apparent what was taking place, the city's parking enforcers reacted to the abandoned SUV, which had leather seats, Maryland plates and no sign of clothing inside. They slapped a ticket on the windshield.

Go figure on the parking ticket eh?

[E40FDNYL35]

November 24, 2005 -- You booze, you lose. A night of drinking left a man so disoriented that he hopped into a police car thinking it was a taxi, cops in Santa Cruz, Calif., say. The 20-year-old drunk was taken to jail on suspicion of being under the influence of alcohol and cocaine.

[E40FDNYL35]

No not us but.....

November 25, 2005 -- Take my loincloth — please! Cavemen invented slapstick — predating the Stooges and Groucho by a mere 2 million years. Our ancestors laughed to relieve stress from continuous hunting and gathering, say Binghamton State University biologists David Sloan Wilson and Matthew Gervais. A study of cranial evidence found that Cavemen communicated through slapstick before language evolved.

[E40FDNYL35]

November 26, 2005 -- Baltimore is plagued by a different kind of grand theft. Teams of thieves dressed up as utility crews are stealing 250-pound light poles. About 130 of the 30-foot poles have been pilfered from sites all over the city, officials said. Police suspect the crooks are selling the aluminum poles for scrap metal, at about 30 to 35 cents a pound.

[E40FDNYL35]

November 27, 2005 -- New Yorkers might have a reputation for being callous, but we've got nothing on Gary, Ind. A gas-station clerk there told a woman who was held up at knife point to "use your cellphone" to call for help. Incredibly, the station has a policy whereby clerks do not make emergency calls, due to fear of retaliation from criminals.

[fireman4949]

November 27, 2005 -- New Yorkers might have a reputation for being callous, but we've got nothing on Gary, Ind. A gas-station clerk there told a woman who was held up at knife point to "use your cellphone" to call for help. Incredibly, the station has a policy whereby clerks do not make emergency calls, due to fear of retaliation from criminals.

If that were my family member they denied, they would have a whole new fear to deal with...Retaliation of victims!

...Who opened the truckload of woopass?!




Kevin

[E40FDNYL35]

November 28, 2005 -- A California man attached his private parts to a truck and pulled it several yards. Martial-arts grandmaster Tu Jin-Sheng of Freemont said he employed Qi Gong, the ancient Chinese art of movement and breathing, to increase his energy for the pull. The stunt was filmed for a British TV show called "Penis Envy," to be aired next year.

Gee, sounds like a ratings grabber.

[Diane E]

Updated: 7:42 a.m. ET Nov. 25, 2005
PORTLAND, Ore. - Agents had to use a 20-foot truck to cart away the evidence from a suspect’s house — mountains of Lego bricks.

William Swanberg, 40, of Reno, Nev., is accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of the colorful plastic building blocks.

Swanberg was indicted by a grand jury in Hillsboro, a Portland suburb, which charged him with stealing Lego sets from Target stores.

Target estimates Swanberg stole up to $200,000 worth of the brick sets pilfered from their stores in Oregon, Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California. The Legos were resold on the Internet, officials said.

Attempts to reach Swanberg at a county jail, where he was being held on $250,000 bail, were unsuccessful. It was not known if he had retained an attorney.

Bar codes switched
Swanberg is accused of switching the bar codes on Lego boxes, replacing an expensive one with a cheaper label, said Detective Troy Dolyniuk, a member of the Washington County fraud and identity theft enforcement team.

Target officials contacted police after noticing the same pattern at their stores in the five western states. A Target security guard stopped Swanberg at a Portland-area store Nov. 17, after he bought 10 boxes of the Star Wars Millennium Falcon set.

In his parked car, detectives found 56 of the Star Wars sets, valued at $99 each, as well as 27 other Lego sets. In a laptop found inside Swanberg’s car, investigators also found the addresses of numerous Target stores in the Portland area, their locations carefully plotted on a mapping software.

Records of the Lego collector’s Web site, Bricklink.Com, show that Swanberg has sold nearly $600,000 worth of Legos since 2002, said Dolyniuk.

Lego’s Danish founder Ole Kirk Christiansen named the famous bricks in 1934 by fusing two Danish words, “leg” and “godt” meaning “play well.”

Children across the world spend 5 billion hours every year playing with Lego bricks, available in 90 different colors, according to the company’s Web site.

© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[Diane E]

The early bird catches fire, burns the house

Workers frying pre-Thanksgiving turkey torch home they’d just built

AP
Updated: 2:54 p.m. ET Nov. 23, 2005

EUGENE, Ore. - A construction worker’s tradition of cooking a turkey for an early Thanksgiving celebration went awry when a deep fryer caught fire, burning the house he and his co-workers had just finished building.

Cement worker Henry Schmerber bought a propane fryer Tuesday and set it up inside the vacant house’s garage. Workers took turns watching the kettle.

But the fryer’s thermometer was broken, and oil inside the kettle overheated, spilling onto the burner and igniting, workers said. Flames spread through the garage and up the front of the house to the second floor.

The men used a fire extinguisher to no avail.

Eugene District Fire Chief Paul Dammen estimated the loss at $75,000. The home, which had not been sold, was insured.

Undaunted, Schmerber and his co-workers bought a second turkey and cooked it in the backyard of a house across the street.

“We’re gonna burn another house down,” Schmerber joked.

© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[RspctFrmCalgary]

November 28, 2005 -- A California man attached his private parts to a truck and pulled it several yards. Martial-arts grandmaster Tu Jin-Sheng of Freemont said he employed Qi Gong, the ancient Chinese art of movement and breathing, to increase his energy for the pull. The stunt was filmed for a British TV show called "Penis Envy," to be aired next year.

Gee, sounds like a ratings grabber.

Maybe not ratings, but a grabber of SOMETHING, that's for sure

[MalahatTwo7]

Brazilian prisons crown Miss Penitentiary 2005 in contest entered by 40

Paulo Winterstein, Canadian Press Published: Friday, November 25, 2005

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) - South America's latest beauty queen won't be campaigning abroad for world peace any time soon. Unless, of course, it helps get her out of prison.

Angelica Mazua, a statuesque Angolan facing international drug smuggling charges, on Thursday was voted Miss Penitentiary 2005 after a six-hour contest pitting 40 female inmates from 10 prisons around Brazil's largest city, Sao Paulo.

"People told me, 'You're tall. You should enter the contest,' so that's why I entered," said Mazua, who has been jailed for four months and faces about five years behind bars if convicted. "I've always been interested in fashion."

Other women imprisoned on charges of everything from armed robbery to drug trafficking took part in the contest that prison officials began last year as a way of trying to boost inmates' self-confidence.

"It helps their self-esteem," said Irani Torres, director of a prison in the city of Rio Claro. "It helps them feel human. It shows that they're capable people, that independent of the crime, they are a part of society."

The title also brings a prize equivalent to about $185 Cdn and a much-needed break from dreary routine.

The sweltering heat inside the Capital Female Penitentiary was only made worse by the dozens of hair dryers working overtime. But anxious contestants did not seem to mind.

Contestant Caroline Goncalves said before the vote that she hoped a victory could launch her modelling career. But she also said she'd be satisfied if she could shave some time off her prison sentence.

"This will put me a little closer to getting out of here," the 25-year-old convict said as stylists tugged at her long blond hair and put the finishing touches on her pencilled-in eyebrows.

"Afterward, we're going to be able to talk to people from (fashion) magazines," said a clearly nervous Goncalves, who is serving five years and four months for assault with a deadly weapon.

Last year's winner, Fernanda Maria de Jesus, gained early release months after her victory, but prison officials insist the shortened sentence had nothing to do with her winning the title.

The contest is more than just a beauty pageant. Judges include celebrities, soccer players and journalists, and there are prizes in three other categories including writing, public speaking and congeniality.

But one of the contestants in the writing competition, Viviane Souza, 23, complained that the beauty pageant winner gets all the attention, including appearances on television shows.

"Last year they just showed the beauty contest winner. Why not show the ones who wrote, the ones who used their minds?" asked Souza, who hopes to become a journalist when she finishes her 21-month sentence for drug dealing.

Even so, many were glad for the chance to let their hair down - or to fix it up.

"I'm not bothered by the attention the beauty contest (winner) receives," said Maria Aparecida de Almeida, 39. "She is raising the banner for all of us. She's a prisoner and she managed to make it. She helps all of us."

Peru and Colombia also hold beauty contests in prisons. Sao Paulo's is one of the largest, drawing from its female population of almost 4,000 inmates.

© The Canadian Press 2005

[E40FDNYL35]

November 29, 2005 -- A South Dakota man has been charged with indecent exposure after he was allegedly found partially undressed on the floor with a half-naked female mannequin. "There was inappropriate activity between him and the mannequin. That's the only way I know how to put it," Sioux Falls police officer Loren McManus said of suspect Michael James Plentyhorse, 18.

We imagine attempts to interview the "victim" were unsuccessful.

[RspctFrmCalgary]

November 29, 2005 -- A South Dakota man has been charged with indecent exposure after he was allegedly found partially undressed on the floor with a half-naked female mannequin. "There was inappropriate activity between him and the mannequin. That's the only way I know how to put it," Sioux Falls police officer Loren McManus said of suspect Michael James Plentyhorse, 18.

We imagine attempts to interview the "victim" were unsuccessful.

Wow, there's some sick people out there! Pumpkins, mannequins .... that guy a few years ago with his weinie in a vise in the sofa ... what's next?

[E40FDNYL35]

...... his weinie in a vise in the sofa ...

Oh boy....

[MalahatTwo7]

suspect Michael James Plentyhorse

With a handle like that?

[E40FDNYL35]

November 30, 2005 -- Thinking of giving a stocking of coal to your misbehaving kids? Here's a more unique gift idea — lock 'em up in their own prison cell. Randolph County in Missouri is auctioning off its old jailhouse on eBay with bids starting at $32,500. Pols got the idea from neighboring Howard County, which sold its jail to a lawyer who plans to make it a country getaway. "After Howard County sold their jail, we were kind of jealous," said County Commissioner Jim Myles. "We wished we had been first."

[RspctFrmCalgary]

Chair Impales, Kills Woman
Skip directly to the full story.
By STEPHEN THOMPSON spthompson@tampatrib.com

Published: Nov 30, 2005

DUNEDIN - A 63-year-old woman died Tuesday night when she was impaled by a rocker on a rocking chair in her living room, Pinellas Sheriff's authorities say.

Patricia Bronn-Faber had first bumped her leg against an open dishwasher door in her kitchen at 632 Edgewater Drive, No. 538, Detective Tom Klein said.

She started bleeding, Klein said, so her husband, Carl, in his 80s, came to her aid.

He helped her to the living room entrance, and told her to wait as he prepared a place for her to sit to elevate her leg, sheriff's spokesman Mac McMullen said.

Bronn-Faber then started into the room on her own, and lost her balance, McMullen said.

The heavy set woman fell onto the back of the rocking chair, prompting it to tip forward. The rockers on the chair's legs swung upright and Bronn-Faber's body fell full force onto the left rocker, which speared 2 1/2 inches into her chest, Klein said.

She was transported to Mease Dunedin Hospital following the 8:40 p.m. accident, where she was pronounced dead, McMullen said.


Reporter Stephen Thompson can be reached at (727) 823-3303