MORE HEADLINES:
MORE HEADLINES:
WHADDAYA IN FOR?:
According to news reports, Toms River, NJ resident John Murphy was arrested for vandalizing 12 doctors' offices on May 10. One can hardly blame him, though. All the 64-year-old Murphy wanted was someone to perform a biopsy on his prostate gland--for no reason at all. Apparently, Murphy was tired of hearing the same lame excuse, "I'm sorry sir, but there really should be some sort of medical complaint before I shove a biopsy needle through your perineum or up your rectum, [Murphy's preference unstated] into your prostate."
HAS ANYONE NOTIFIED THE ALMIGHTY?:
At exactly 10:29 AM PST on Sept 7th, 2000 (Papal Standard Time), the Vatican announced to the world that it believes the Roman Catholic Church is the best religion. What a shocker. "Ecclesiastical communities that do not recognize the Pope as their spiritual leader are not Churches in the proper sense," crowed the Church in its Declaration Dominus Iesus.
The first religious body to issue an "Oh yeah?" was the Church of England. Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey said in a terse statement, "The Worldwide Anglican Communion does not for one moment accept that its order of ministry and Eucharist are deficient in any way."
(Later, the Archbishop was heard to say, "And if John Paul II wants to do anything about it, he knows where to find me." Okay, so I'm lying about that last comment, as far as I know. But it wouldn't have been totally inappropriate, given the childish "Your church stinks" tone of the dispute. Why is it that so many in the religious community -- leaders and laity alike -- find it impossible to bask in their own religion's perceived superiority without attacking the other guyıs belief? If the Vatican had simply said, "We think we're #1. Rah!" -- and left it at that there would have been no problem. Every denomination believes that about itself.)
But no, the Vatican felt it necessary to demean all non-Catholics by characterizing their Churches as non-Churches. Now we've got dueling dogmas. Why do I, an inveterate non-believer, give a damn about some wacky pronouncement from the Holy See? Here's why: the "Troubles" in Ireland; the endless nightmare in the Middle East; the nuclear sabre-rattling of India vs. Pakistan, the massacres in the Balkans just a few of the blood-lettings waged between right-church/wrong-church types during my lifetime. I get extremely nervous when one religion debases another because I've noticed something particularly disturbing about religious warfare: the bullets always seem to hit agnostics as well.
TURNABOUT IS FAIR PLAY:
ESCAPE FROM SATAN (WINTER/SPRING1997)
(From AP) Sammy Rodriguez, a Pentecostal preacher from Floydada, Texas, was convinced the Devil was coming to get him so he packed his twenty family members into four cars and sped toward Louisiana where, by Rodriguez' reckoning, Satan is not permitted. Along the way, three of the cars broke down or ran out of gas. Rodriguez believed the automotive troubles occurred because the family's clothes had become possessed so they all stripped, jammed themselves into the one working car (five in the trunk, fifteen in the cab) and continued on their path to deliverance. When Vinton, Louisiana police tried to pull them over, Rodriguez sped off into the woods and hit a tree. Rodriguez was arrested. The others spent one night in a shelter then fled into the woods.
ON THE EDGE AWARDS
FIRST PLACE: BOOGALOO BOB (SPRING 1990)
(From AP) Boogaloo Bob is a man on a mission. Showing ingenuity, good rhythm, and his butt (to any woman who falls for his scheme), Bob has brought the age-old art of exposing oneself into the post-rave age. No raincoat-on-the-street-corner for him, Bob boldly knocks on a residential door and if a woman answers, announces that he is a male stripper hired by one of her friends as a present. Once inside, Boogaloo Bob cranks up his boom box, does his swinging-salamander dance, then leaves. Ta da. In recent months Bob has managed to "entertain" several Chicago area women while eluding arrest. In fact, the only reason police know about him is a complaint they received from one of Bob's victims. She began to think something was wrong when she noticed that his underpants didn't quite look male-stripper issue. "They were kinda dingy and the waist band was torn in the back," she told police.
WRITER ON THE EDGE
FUN WITH NATURE (FALL 1992)
(Reuters) Nine-year-old Alex Henry sat on his bedroom floor surrounded by his friends: a scorpion, two tarantulas, an iguana and the 12-foot Burmese python Alex had just tossed a rabbit. As the last bit of cottontail quivered out of sight, the lad got up to return the snake and the other creatures to their cages. The snake was still hungry. Alex screamed. The neighbors dialed 911. When paramedics arrived they found Alex lying on the floor, wrapped groin-to-ankle in python with the boy's entire right foot inside the snake's mouth.
(The paramedics also reported seeing a scorpion performing a kind of stinging jig around the boy's left carotid. What's more, the four-and-a-half foot iguana Alex called "Dennis" had dug its claws deeply into the ill-fated child's chest and was flogging his face with its tail in a blurry triple time. Frightened by the rescuers, the animals quickly fled out the window into the neighborhood. All that was left was Alex' partially eaten body in a bed of blood, glass and chicken wire. During the autopsy the local coroner discovered an odd pattern of red marks around the boy's left carotid. "NO MORE CAGES" it spelled. Whoa! Hold on a second. Why do I write shit like that? I'll tell you why. 'Cause I don't think anybody's reading my goddamn column, that's why. My editor says people enjoy "Headlines You May Have Missed" but how the hell am I supposed to know? Do I get a card or letter, a verbal atta boy now and then from the great beyond? Hell no! Wait! Maybe I am getting mail but those rat-bastards in the front office hide it from me 'cause they think I'll ask for more money once I discover how wildly popular my column really is.)
Anyhow, the truth is this: Alex was found with his foot in the python, but the paramedics freed him. Apart from a few puncture wounds and the nightmares he'll be having for the next 70 years, Alex is fine.
OVER THE EDGE
BRAINFREEZE! (SPRING 1989)
(L.A. Times) From the "Tune In, Turn On and Drop Dead" file. Dr. Timothy Leary, the slightly less loony half of the "Liddy and Leary" comedy team, has made arrangements with the California-based Alcor Life Extension Foundation to have his head removed and placed in liquid nitrogen immediately after his death. According to plan, the famed LSD guru's head would be thawed sometime in the future and a new body cloned from the head's DNA. Leary's partner, noted philosopher / burglar G. Gordon Leary, has volunteered to help with the head removal process but has publicly denounced Leary as a "pussy" for insisting that he be dead before any work begins.
WHERE IS THE EDGE?
DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME (FALL 1992)
This has been a roller-coaster year for both sides of the gun-control issue. First, the Maryland legislature banned "Saturday night specials" in a landmark piece of law that inspired spontaneous orgasm in the anti-gun folk and grande mall seizures in the "from my cold, dead fingers" brigade. Then in a cruel twist, two separate incidents occurred that might set the gun-control movement back twenty years. In an act of supreme hypocrisy, syndicated columnist and gun-control champion Carl T. Rowan shot and wounded an intruder who was taking an unauthorized dip in the swimming pool of Rowan's Washington D.C. home. The handgun used by Rowan was unregistered. Of course, the NRA and its allies (gun manufacturers, pro-wrestling fans, male sufferers of penis envy, et al.) were beside themselves with glee.
A nineteen year-old Canadian man dealt the second blow with an act that can only be described as incredible. In an article recently published in Physicians' Weekly, Vancouver psychiatrist Leslie Solyom tells the intriguing tale of "George," an obsessive-compulsive under Solyom's care. George, a pathetic young man, spent most of his adolescence enslaved by an obsessive fear of germs. He would wash his hands and shower literally hundreds of times every day. His phobia forced him to drop out of high school and made employment impossible. One day George complained to his mother that his life was so wretched that he would rather die. George's loving mother suggested that he shoot himself. "Parents of obsessive-compulsives often have cruel streaks," notes Dr. Solyom. {I'm not making this stuff up, folks}
Taking mom's advice, George went down to the basement, put the barrel of a .22 rifle in his mouth, squeezed the trigger, and BLAMMO he was cured. During its journey through George's gray matter, the bullet managed to damage the part of his brain that was causing his mental illness. All other functions remained unharmed. George, after a short period of convalescence, was able to complete high school and is now in his second year of college.