News of the Strange, Weird and Off-beat

Making Your Vote Count

Change Oregonians Believe In: The voters of Sodaville (pop. 290) elected Thomas Brady Harrington, 33, mayor in November, notwithstanding his criminal rap sheet showing robbery, eluding a police officer, felon in possession of a gun and other crimes (with his electoral success perhaps due to voters' confusing him with his father, a respected town elder). [Albany (Ore.) Democrat-Herald, 11-19-08]

And the voters of Silverton (pop. 7,400) elected as mayor Stu Rasmussen, 60, an openly transgendered, longtime resident who previously served as mayor while a man but who now sports breasts and dresses exclusively as a woman (especially miniskirts and cleavage-enhancing tops). Actually, Rasmussen still describes himself as a man and lives with his longtime girlfriend, but explained his switch as just his particular "mid-life crisis." [Los Angeles Times, 11-20-08]

Compelling Explanations

"I'm really sorry. ... I thought he was just tired," said Lynne Stewart, who was arrested in West Melbourne, Fla., in October and charged with stealing items from a 56-year-old, unconscious man who in fact had just suffered a fatal heart attack during sex with Stewart. She blamed her larceny on a cocaine binge that impaired her judgment such that (according to a police commander) she had sex with 20 men that weekend. (However, she was not charged with prostitution. Said the commander, "No, she just likes sex.") [WESH-TV (Orlando), 10-15-08]

Lame: A woman being interviewed for jury duty on a murder case in Bronx (N.Y.) Supreme Court in October asked to be excused for the reason that she was once murdered, herself, by her husband (but had somehow been revived by a doctor). (She was dismissed from the jury, but on other grounds.) [New York Post, 10-8-08]

In a recent report of DUI excuses in the Swedish newspaper Nerikes Allehanda, a 56-year-old woman had asserted that, though she had been drinking, her driving was not affected because she had remembered to keep one eye closed so as not to be seeing double. [The Local (Stockholm), 10-30-08]

Ironies

Hummer H2 driver Yvonne Sinclair, 29, was convicted of gross vehicular manslaughter in November in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., from a 2006 crash that killed two people and in which her intoxication was a major factor. Sinclair had bought the Hummer from proceeds of a lawsuit settlement over the 2003 death of her boyfriend, who was killed by a drunk driver. [Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Upland, Calif.), 11-13-08]

Strange Justice: The Saudi Arabia delegation to the United Nations sponsored a conference on religious tolerance in November. (Not only does the kingdom employ a police force "on the prevention of vice and the promotion of virtue," but it is accused of widespread internal discrimination against disfavored Islamic sects.) [International Herald Tribune, 11-11-08]

Janice Warder, a former Texas judge and now the incoming district attorney for Texas' Cooke County, was accused in March by a Dallas judge of having improperly withheld evidence in a 1986 case to secure a murder conviction. (The Dallas judge ordered a new trial.) [Dallas Morning News, 9-26-08]

Patricia Howard filed a lawsuit against her USA Environmental employer in 2006 (just recently unsealed by a judge) for subjecting her to dangerous work during 2003-2005. The workplace was in Iraq and involved detonating surplus munitions to prevent their falling into insurgents' hands, but that was not the "danger" she feared. Rather, the munitions were located in abandoned football-field-sized warehouses that had long been home to pigeons. Foot-high piles of feces had dried and turned to powder, and Howard charged that the company's respiration protection was nearly useless, subjecting workers to Hantavirus and other diseases. [St. Petersburg Times, 9-15-08]

Chutzpah!

Veteran Massachusetts thief Robert Aldrich applied for compensation because his latest arrest happened to have been illegal, and a state law permits recovery for lost income during wrongful incarceration. However, in November, a Suffolk County judge turned him down as she was unable to find any "income" that Aldrich might have earned during his six wrongful months in jail except from more burglaries or for home-improvement money that Aldrich admitted he earned "off the books" so as to evade taxes. [United Press International, 11-5-08]

"I would like an apology," explained Michael Wax, who was ejected in July from the Borgata Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City because of customers' complaints about his body odor. "There's no question I stink. ... I do have an odor. I've been playing for 17 hours," said the 440-pound man. Nonetheless, Wax filed a complaint with the Casino Control Commission, claiming that he should not have been so rudely treated in front of other patrons. [MSNBC-AP, 7-30-08]

Creme de la Strange

Ms. Hang Mioku, 48, is winding down her 20-year obsession with cosmetic surgery, having been at one time bulked up with enough silicone in her face to earn the nickname "the standing fan" because her head was so large compared to her legs. Hang moved from South Korea to Japan for better access to surgery and said she had convinced herself that each procedure in her odyssey only made her more beautiful than the last. When finally no surgeon would treat her, she began injecting cooking oil. Finally, she was talked into face-reduction surgery (removal of 260 grams of foreign substance from her head and neck) but, according to a November report in London's Daily Telegraph, she remains grotesquely misshapen. [ABC News-Daily Telegraph (London), 11-14-08]

Oops!

One of the items in a November seized-contraband auction by the Denver Police Department was a 1977 Oldsmobile Cutlass that was ultimately bought for $350 by a 19-year-old woman, but which is still evidence in an active murder investigation. Police eventually took back the car, which has bullet holes and a bloody interior and contained blood-stained clothing. Furthermore, a second shooting victim who was in the car survived and was among the bidders at the auction. He dropped out, but did later sell the winning bidder his spare key to the car for $40. [Denver Post, 11-20-08]

Update

The quasi-religious "philosophical" group Summum has been on the 360 Degrees radar since 1988, when leader "Corky" Ra and his small band in Utah began offering to mummify household pets for $7,000, or create statues of them for $18,000 (though the price is considerably higher today), with an eye toward future mummification of humans, as illustrative of its core precept that "the soul moves forward" even though the body is memorialized. In November, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments that a city park in Pleasant Grove, Utah, must allow Summum to place a monument with "The Seven Aphorisms" next to the existing monument of the Ten Commandments. (Summum's Aphorisms shore up the soul-movement belief by recognizing, for example, such properties as psychokinesis and the constant vibration of bodies.) The court is expected to rule later this term. [CNN, 11-11-08]

The Jesus and Virgin Mary World Tour

Recent Public Appearances: Arkansas City, Kan., September (Jesus on the ceiling of the One Stop Body Shoppe weight-loss clinic). Pittsburg, Texas, August (Jesus on the body of a moth). Goshen, Ind., July (Jesus in the facial fur of the family cat). High Ridge, Mo., July (Jesus on a Cheeto). Arlington, Texas, September (Mary on a grape). Pompano Beach, Fla., November (Jesus on a slice of French toast). Gulf Shores, Ala., September (Jesus in the drywall of a home under construction). Arkansas City: [KTLA-TV (Los Angeles), 9-19-08] Pittsburg: [KLTV-TV (Longview, Tex.), 8-27-08] Goshen: [WNDU-TV (South Bend), 7-30-08] High Ridge: [KTVI-TV (St. Louis), 7-28-08] Arlington: [Dallas Morning News, 9-5-08] Pompano Beach: [KUSA-TV- NBC (Denver), 11-11-08] Gulf Shores: [WKRG-TV (Mobile), 9-19-08]

From the News Vault (December 2000)

A New York Times dispatch from India highlighted the growing problem of intra-family frauds in which one member claims a living relative's land or wealth by swearing to the government that the relative is dead. According to the Times, the "deceased" had finally begun to fight back. An advocacy group, the Association of Dead People, helps aggrieved citizens figure out how to prove that they are alive, which can be difficult, given India's slow-moving bureaucracies. The association's founder said that he personally had tried to authenticate his existence by public actions such as running for office, filing lawsuits and getting arrested, but that he nonetheless remained officially dead. [New York Times, 10-24-00]

The Strange, Bizarre and Unknown

Sasquatch Attack?

Crew members of MonsterQuest have experienced unusual occurrences over the years at a remote cabin near Snelgrove Lake, Canada. In 2006, a member of the audio crew had a rock thrown at his head from the woods. Another rock from an unknown source hit the roof of the cabin, the crew member said (see video). The eerie rock-throwing incident happened again in 2007. About the happening Jeff Meldrum said, "Obviously, there's nothing in the woods, that's recognized anyway, that can lob rocks in that fashion" (see video). The most recent 'Sasquatch Attack' episode of MonsterQuest can be seen at watchmonsterquest.com.

The Alternate History Theme Park Where Dinosaurs Fought in the Civil War
Most speculative fiction surrounding the American Civil War imagines how the world would be different had the Confederacy won its independence. But roadside attraction creator Mark Cline has imagined an entirely different kind of Civil War science fiction. His fiberglass creations tell the tale of a group of Union soldiers who discover a lost valley of dinosaurs in Virginia and plot to use them as weapons against the South.

The attraction, called “Professor Cline’s Dinosaur Kingdom,” imagines a lost chapter from Civil War history. It supposes that in 1863, a group of paleontologists inadvertently stumbled upon a valley of live dinosaurs. The discovery comes to the attention of the Union Army, who, recognizing the destructive power of the giant lizards, decide to capture them and unleash them on the Confederate Army. Naturally, it results in Jurassic Park-inspired carnage:

What you see along the path of Dinosaur Kingdom is a series of tableaus depicting the aftermath of this ill-advised military strategy. As you enter, a lunging, bellowing T-Rex head lets you know that the dinosaurs are mad — and they only get madder. A big snake has eaten one Yankee, and is about to eat another. An Allasaurus [sic] grabs a bluecoat off of his rearing horse while a second soldier futilely tries to lasso the big lizard. Another Yankee crawls up a tree with a stolen egg while the mom dinosaur batters it down. Mark has augmented some of these displays with motors: toothy jaws flap, tails and tongues wag.

It proves a devastating defeat for the North. The Dinosaur Kingdom is located in Natural Bridge, Virginia.

Double-Decker Graves Set For Go-Ahead

Human remains are to be dug up and re-buried deeper in the ground in double-decker graves to tackle a shortage of space for new burials.

New inscriptions will then be added to existing headstones while some old gravestones could even be removed altogether, reports the Daily Telegraph. Up to a dozen local authorities around Britain are set to begin an 18-month trial of the scheme.

A Government report last year found that burial space in England and Wales will be full in 30 years, while some urban boroughs are already out of room.

Tim Morris, the chief executive of the Institute of Cemeteries and Crematorium Management, says that only graves more than 100 years old that are no longer visited will be considered for the scheme.

Mr Morris, who is also a member of the Government's burial advisory board, told The Times: "In the cities this is a serious problem and our cemeteries are just not sustainable. We need these powers across the country or we are going to have serious disposal problems."

Almost a third of the roughly 600,000 people who die each year in Britain are buried.

Highway to Hell Popular at Funerals

AC/DC's Highway to Hell is becoming one of the most requested funeral tunes in Australia. Ding Dong the Witch is Dead from the Wizard of Oz, and Another One Bites the Dust by Queen are also popular, reports the Daily Telegraph.

Funeral managers at Centennial Park, the largest cemetery and crematorium in Adelaide, said only two hymns still rank among its top 10 most popular funeral songs: Amazing Grace and Abide With Me. Highway to Hell, which includes the line: "Going down, party time; My friends are gonna be there too", is just outside the top ten, with Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven.

Leading the funeral chart is crooner Frank Sinatra's classic hit My Way followed by Louis Armstrong's version of Wonderful World.

"Some of the more unusual songs we hear actually work very well within the service because they represent the person's character," Centennial Park chief executive Bryan Elliott said.

Among other less conventional choices were Always Look on the Bright Side of Life by Monty Python, Hit the Road Jack, and I'll Sleep When I'm Dead.

Horse Found On 12th Floor

Police called to investigate a strange smell in a block of flats found a horse jammed into a ventilation shaft 12 storeys up. Residents in the tower block in Prokuplje, southern Serbia, called police and when officers arrived they said the smell was so bad they ordered the building to be evacuated because of fears the overpowering fumes could be lethal.

A police spokesman said: "The smell was absolutely noxious. We had no idea what it was at first and did not want to take any risks.

"We even had to call in a special unit which deals with dangerous chemicals. Eventually though our officers tracked down the stink to the air vents and finally found the putrefying remains which were identified as a horse.

"How on earth someone managed to get a horse's body 12 storeys up and why someone would put it there though we have no idea."

Knit Your Own Hitler

A designer has created controversy with a set of knitting patterns for woolly models of the world's most evil dictators. Rachael Matthews's new book has designs for a dozen dictators, with a photo of Hitler doing the Nazi salute on the cover. She calls the Hitler doll Knitler, reports The Sun. Other tyrants featured are former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, Uganda's Idi Amin and Cambodian dictator Pol Pot.

Ms Matthews is the brains behind Cast Off, a London knitting circle that has grown famous over the past few years. The group have knitted together on the Circle Line, at folk clubs in the East End, and were once ejected from the Savoy for their knitting exploits.

Knitting kits to make items including shoelaces, a cigarette, lipstick, a grenade are available from her website www.castoff.info.

Walter

Friday Offbeat News

The Political Life Elsewhere

Developing Democracies: Candidates for local office in Brazil can either register under their own names or make them up, and in the October election this year, three candidates chose "Barack Obama" (none won), and others registered under "Bill Clinton," "Jorge Bushi" and "Chico Bin Laden," but more than 200 offered themselves under the name of the country's popular president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. [Daily Telegraph (London), 10-1-08]

And in July, when the government of India tried to push its historic nuclear pact with the United States through the parliament, it found six more votes among elected members who were serving prison sentences, and ordered them released so they could vote for the bill. (Nearly one-fourth of the 540-member parliament have criminal charges pending against them.) [Agence France-Press, 7-22-08]

News That Sounds Like a Joke

Britain's Bristol City Council warned residents in government housing in September to always leave their sheds unlocked. Otherwise, thieves would have to break the doors down to get inside, and taxpayers would be stuck with the repair bills. [Daily Telegraph (London), 9-30-08]

Atlanta Pentecostal preacher Thomas Meeks told the Journal-Constitution in October that he was "in talks" to create a "Survivor"-type TV reality show in which the twice-divorced evangelist navigates a field of single women and selects a winner. "Holy Hook Up: Who Will Be the Next Mrs. Weeks?" will, he said, be a "very tasteful, five-star presentation." [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 10-7-08]

Great Art!

Chilean-Danish artist Marco Evaristti is working with condemned Texas inmate Gene Hathorn, 47 (convicted killer of three in 1985), on an anti-capital-punishment exhibit to be staged after Hathorn's execution. The murderer's body would be frozen, then made into flakes that museum visitors could feed to goldfish. Evaristti is most noted for his 2000 exhibit in which he placed live goldfish in several electric blenders and invited museum-goers to turn them on. [Newsweek, 9-27-08]

An unfortunate burst of wind disrupted an outside art installation at the Paul Klee center in Bern, Switzerland, in August, ripping an inflatable exhibit from its moorings and carrying it away. The exhibit, by American Paul McCarthy, was a sculpture entitled "Complex Shit," and the inflatable item was supposed to be a dog dropping the size of a house. Explained the Klee center's Web site (challengingly), the show features "interweaving, diverse, not to say conflictive emphases and a broad spectrum of items to form a dynamic exchange of parallel and self-eclipsing spatial and temporal zones." (Or, wrote London's Daily Telegraph in broken French, it is "what happens when la merde hits le ventilateur.") [Daily Telegraph (London), 8-12-08]

Government in Action

Things Government Does When It's Not Bailing Out the Economy: The municipal transit company in Austin, Texas, unveiled a rider-education campaign in August, giving step-by-step instructions in how to stand up on buses without falling over. When the bus is accelerating, "lean forward and put your weight on your front foot." (The introductory frame on the poster features a harried rider exclaiming, "Help! I'll never figure it out!") [American-Statesman, 8-18-08]

A British government-funded poster campaign, also introduced in August, aims to encourage those waiting for municipal buses to do Pilates-type movements to improve physical fitness. Among the suggestions: standing on one leg, pointing the toes forward, clenching the buttocks. [Daily Mail (London), 8-17-08]

Most workers who have retired in the last few years from New York's Long Island Rail Road have also qualified for disability payments (though most did not claim such disabilities while working), according to a September New York Times investigation of state records. Lax union work rules, plus the astonishingly cooperative "Railroad Retirement Board" (which virtually never rejects a disability application), have resulted in nearly every worker drawing about as much money in retirement as he made on the job. In October, the Times also discovered that many of the same retirees were apparently so confident that their "disability" status would be approved that they also purchased private disability insurance to make retirement even more lucrative. [New York Times, 9-21-08, 10-8-08]

Police Blotter

Excellent: Police in Dortmund, Germany, arrested six Romanian men in June and charged them with stealing from trucks on the open highway. Allegedly, the thieves would drive their own truck carefully up behind a tractor-trailer at highway speed, and a man on the hood would reach out and open the back of the rig with a bolt cutter. He would climb in and loot the rig of computers and cell phones by passing them out to a partner sitting on the hood of the trailing truck. [Spiegel, 7-1-08]

Almost Excellent: Motorist Michael Mills Jr., 38, who was making a getaway from police in Chesapeake, Va. (who wanted him on identity-theft charges), broke through a drawbridge warning arm and tried to jump ("Dukes of Hazzard"-style) onto the span that was being lowered (but which wouldn't be completely down for another several minutes). He missed, and the car plunged into the Elizabeth River, where it sank (but Mills was rescued and arrested). [Virginian-Pilot, 9-20-08]

Recurring Themes

Least Competent Criminals: A 30-year-old man appears to be the most recent person (according to the account of police in Woodland, Calif., in August) to attempt to throw burning fireworks at a target while traveling in a car, but having the toss fail to clear the window and thus explode inside the car. He was hospitalized. [Sacramento Bee, 8-28-08]

In another familiar scene, two 18-year-old men spotted police approaching their trailer-park home in Salina, Kan., in August, panicked, and tossed illegal drugs out a window. However, police spotted the flying drugs, even though cops had originally intended only to serve warrants on two of their neighbors. The men were arrested. [Salina Journal, 8-25-08]

The estimated one million Japanese (almost all males) who suffer from the major anti-social funk called "Hikikomori" and confine themselves inside (typically, a bedroom in their parents' home) for months at a time without live human interaction has been mentioned in 360 Degrees earlier this year. In July, the Japanese software company Avex produced a video to help those men, simply featuring a series of young women staring into the lens, occasionally saying "Good morning," so that Hikikomori sufferers can practice feeling the gazes of strangers. [France24.com, 7-30-08]

Men Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours

Police in Fort Myers, Fla., said Jonathon Guabello, 29, who was angry that his girlfriend had denied him sex when they came home from a bar in October, left the room, shot himself twice in the arm, fell, and hit his head on a kitchen appliance, knocking himself out. [Florida Today-AP, 10-2-08]

In Anderson Township, Ohio, in July, another frustrated lover, angry that his girlfriend kept falling asleep one night during sex, retaliated, according to police, by attempting to set fire to her van. (The 46-year-old man who couldn't sustain his lover's interest is Gregory Smallwood.) [Cincinnati Enquirer, 7-10-08]

Dignified Death

From the self-composed obituary in the Casper (Wyo.) Star Tribune of James William "Jim" Adams, who died September 9th: "Jim, who had tired of reading obituaries noting other's [sic] courageous battles with this or that disease, wanted it known that he had lost his battle ... primarily as a result of ... not following doctor's orders. ... He was sadly deprived of his final wish, which was to be run over by a beer truck on the way to the liquor store to buy booze for a date." [Casper Star Tribune, 9-23-08]

Walter

Hot Stories for the Week with Links

• Debunked 9/11 Conspiracy Claims From NIST
  The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) report has responded directly to many conspiracy claims, specifically linked to WTC 7. --Popular Mechanics
• How Much Can You Learn From a Home DNA Test?
  One reporter has her DNA analyzed and finds that genetic testing isn't an exact science. --Discover
• Sixth 'Taste' Discovered - Calcium
  The capability to taste calcium has now been discovered in mice. --Live Science
• Two more face transplant triumphs
  One operation was on a Chinese man whose face was slashed by a bear. --New Scientist
• Man Makes Record Catch With Barbie Fishing Rod
  Toy hooked a state-record channel catfish, at 21 pounds. --Fox News
• Supernatural science: Why we want to believe
  Monsters are everywhere these days, and belief in them is as strong as ever. --LiveScience
• Poltergeists and Our Plastic Reality
  Brad Steiger delves into case histories of psychical researcher Harry Price. --Haunted America Tours
• Elephants master basic mathematics
  A cunning Asian elephant won a simple counting game. --New Scientist
• Mystery surrounds humming noise
  In the U.K, a hum has led to 50 people contacting Sudbury Town Council. --BBC News
• Scientists Make a Fat-Burning Fat
  Brown fat is full of mitochondria, the body's energy-producing cellular machines. --Wired
• Ex-Salem cop channels spirit world
  Chuck Bergman helps police and desperate families find missing loved ones. --Boston Herald
• Scientists Say We Can See Sound
  New research suggests the human visual system processes sound and helps us see. --LiveScience
• Five Mysterious Skulls
  Dare they be called, human? --Cult Case
• Who I Think the Visitors Are
  The 'visitors' may be time travelers, from a parallel universe, the dead —or all 3, writes Anne Strieber. --Unknown Country
• Meet Yoda the cat with FOUR ears
  The household pet was born with an extra set of ears. --Daily Mail
• Shroud of Turin stirs new controversy
  A Colorado couple researching the shroud dispute radiocarbon dating. --LA Times
• Inventors are sure cars can fly
  Most flying cars never get off the page, let alone the ground. --USA Today
• Astronomers Find a 'Minor Planet' near Neptune
  The small, comet-like object is likely made of rock and ice. --Universe Today
• Premature baby 'comes back to life'
  Miscarried fetus, which had been declared dead five hours earlier, was found to be breathing.
  --Jerusalem Post
• Israeli Turtle Gets Skateboard to Replace Legs
  Arava the disabled turtle is using her new set of wheels to get around. --AP
• Star Trek warp drive is a possibility
  Two physicists have devised a new scheme to travel faster than the speed of light. --Telegraph
• Bird flu hopes from 1918 victims
  Victims of the 1918 flu virus that killed 50m still have protection. --BBC News
• 3D galaxy map to probe dark energy's history
  The Sloan Digital Sky Survey has made detailed 3D maps of relatively nearby galaxies. --New Scientist
• Bigfoot press conf. & the art of selling a website
  What was most revealing about the Bigfoot press conference was not what was said, writes Chris Matyszczyk. --CNET News
• 10 Best Science Fiction Planets
  Sometimes an author will create a world whose presence has a weight and ring of truth. --Discover
• USAF still silent on Stephenville
  Billy Cox has been pressing the U.S. Air Force for a response to MUFON's report on the Stephenville UFO. --Sarasota Herald-Tribune
• How Big Brother watches your every move
  The average Briton is being recorded 3,000 times a week. --Telegraph
• Sightings of 'Wolf-Like' Creatures in Stafford, UK
  A tribe of subterranean creatures who surface to hunt for food could be behind the 'werewolf' sightings. --Phantoms and Monsters
• Minding Mental Minefields
  A new report from the National Research Council argues that the military should harness the power of neuroscience research. --Science Progress
• Earth's Plate Tectonics May Eventually Stop
  The Pacific is the biggest ocean on Earth, but it's getting smaller every day. --LiveScience

Walter

Strange News

Lead Story: Crocodile trapped in surf off SC barrier island

Isle of Palms, S.C. - Officials at the Isle of Palms ordered everyone out of the water because of a dangerous animal. But it wasn't a shark this time. Instead, wildlife officials ended up trapping a 6-foot long American crocodile in the surf Thursday.

Steve Bennett of the Department of Natural Resources told The Post and Courier of Charleston that the crocodile likely escaped or was released by someone who illegally brought it from its normal habitat in southern Florida.

But Bennett says it is possible the crocodile could have swum up the coast. Officials say they shut down the beach and ordered hundreds out of the water as a precaution until the crocodile was trapped.

No injuries were reported. Officials planned to send the creature to an alligator park, or to a wildlife preserve in south Florida.

Man, 84, finally gets to attend high school prom

Chester, PA - He arrived in style: a black limo, a sharp tuxedo, a beautiful date and with an adoring crowd waiting for him. Kenneth Smith, 84, attended the Chester High School prom on Thursday night — fashionably late. Decades late.

Smith was drafted into military service 1943, before he could finish high school. He returned home after World War II but never got his high school diploma.

A friend arranged for him to receive an honorary diploma from Chester High School, just outside Philadelphia, and finally go to the prom.

He did — at the Springfield Country Club.

Smith said this prom wasn't just for him. He said it was also for all the other soldiers who couldn't make it to their own.

Police nab man claiming to be Christ, George Bush

Birmingham, AL - A Jefferson County Jail inmate has quite a tale to tell about how he got there. The nude man claimed to be Jesus Christ and George Bush when sheriff's deputies shot him with a stun gun after he ignored their commands.

A motorist spotted the 30-year-old standing nude in the middle of Alabama 79 early Friday morning and called police.

The man struggled with police and was shot with a Taser four times before they subdued him and put him in handcuffs and leg irons.

He told the deputies he was Jesus Christ and George Bush and could break the handcuffs.

Police say he appeared to be intoxicated. The man was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

Stolen Jesus statue returned to Detroit church

Detroit, MI - A Detroit woman has found Jesus ... in an alley.

The pastor of a church in the city says its stolen 8-foot Jesus statue was recovered from bushes in an alley about two blocks away.

Patricia Bowers says she notified the church late Wednesday that she had seen the statue the previous day after she had gotten off a bus.

Bowers says she didn't realize the green-hued, plaster statue had been stolen until seeing news reports Tuesday night.

The Rev. Barry Randolph says the only damage to the statue is a broken hand. The cross it was attached to suffered major damage.

A church member noticed the statue missing Monday. Randolph says thieves may have thought the statue contained copper, which often is stolen and sold as scrap metal.

From bad to verse: Vandals get classroom penance

Middlebury, VT - Call it poetic justice: More than two dozen young people who broke into Robert Frost's former home for a beer party and trashed the place are being required to take classes in his poetry as part of their punishment.

Using "The Road Not Taken" and another poem as jumping-off points, Frost biographer Jay Parini hopes to show the vandals the error of their ways — and the redemptive power of poetry.

"I guess I was thinking that if these teens had a better understanding of who Robert Frost was and his contribution to our society, that they would be more respectful of other people's property in the future and would also learn something from the experience," said prosecutor John Quinn.

The vandalism occurred at the Homer Noble Farm in Ripton, where Frost spent more than 20 summers before his death in 1963. Now owned by Middlebury College, the unheated farmhouse on a dead-end road is used occasionally by the college and is open in the warmer months.

On Dec. 28, a 17-year-old former Middlebury College employee decided to hold a party and gave a friend $100 to buy beer. Word spread. Up to 50 people descended on the farm, the revelry turning destructive after a chair broke and someone threw it into the fireplace.

When it was over, windows, antique furniture and china had been broken, fire extinguishers discharged, and carpeting soiled with vomit and urine. Empty beer cans and drug paraphernalia were left behind. The damage was put at $10,600.

Twenty-eight people — all but two of them teenagers — were charged, mostly with trespassing.

About 25 ultimately entered pleas — or were accepted into a program that allows them to wipe their records clean — provided they underwent the Frost instruction. Some will also have to pay for some of the damage, and most were ordered to perform community service in addition to the classroom sessions. The man who bought the beer is the only one who went to jail; he got three days behind bars.

Parini, 60, a Middlebury College professor who has stayed at the house before, was eager to oblige when Quinn asked him to teach the classes. He donated his time for the two sessions.

On Wednesday, 11 turned out for the first, with Parini giving line-by-line interpretations of "The Road Not Taken" and "Out, Out-," seizing on parts with particular relevance to draw parallels to their case.

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood," he thundered, reciting the opening line of the first poem, which he called symbolic of the need to make choices in life.

"This is where Frost is relevant. This is the irony of this whole thing. You come to a path in the woods where you can say, `Shall I go to this party and get drunk out of my mind?'" he said. "Everything in life is choices."

Even the setting had parallels, he said: "Believe me, if you're a teenager, you're always in the damned woods. Literally, you're in the woods — probably too much you're in the woods. And metaphorically you're in the woods, in your life. Look at you here, in court diversion! If that isn't `in the woods,' what the hell is `in the woods'? You're in the woods!"

Dressed casually, one with his skateboard propped up against his desk, the young people listened to Parini and answered questions when he pressed. Then a court official asked them to describe how their arrests and the publicity affected them.

"I was worried about my family," said one boy, whose name was withheld because the so-called diversion program in which took part is confidential. "I'll be carrying on the family name and all that. And with this kind of thing tied to me, it doesn't look very good."

Another said: "After this, I'm thinking about staying out of trouble, because this is my last chance."

"My parents' business in town was affected," said a girl.

When the session ended, the vandals were offered snacks — apple cider, muffins, sliced fruit — but none partook. They went straight for the door, several declining comment as they walked out of the building. The next session is Tuesday.

"It's a lesson learned, that's for sure," said one of them, 22-year-old Ryan Kenyon, whose grandmother worked as hairdresser in the 1960s and knew Frost. "It did bring some insight. People do many things that they don't realize the consequences of. It shined a light, at least to me."

Woman accused of setting gas price protest fires

Danville, CA - A Danville woman faces arson charges after she allegedly set fires at two gas stations and a coffee house, saying she was protesting high gas prices. The woman, 64, remained Thursday in a Contra Costa jail on $810,000 bail on suspicion of premeditated arson and burglary.

Police say the woman used a fireplace log and a lighter to set fires in the restrooms of an Arco station, a Chevron station and a Starbucks on Wednesday. No structural damage was reported at the locations.

Police later found the woman at a nearby fast food restaurant with eight fireplace logs with her. She told officers that she was behind the fires and said she woke up that morning wanting to do something about high gas prices.

Police say they don't know why she targeted the Starbucks. Charges have not yet been filed, and it's not clear if the woman has a lawyer in the case.

Walter