xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.

Oliver Clifton Hudson and Gregory Banks refused to attend their federal drug-conspiracy trial in Baltimore in November because they deny that the government has jurisdiction over their “flesh and blood.” Hudson, for example, said the indictment against him was void because it listed his name in all capital letters, when the correct designation is “Oliver Clifton: Hudson.”

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation:
–(75) People who are so enticed by the money they can make selling scrap-metal copper that they break into electrical substations to steal wire, at night, and touch the wrong thing, as the man did in Bellmead, Texas, two days before Christmas. (He “never even knew what hit him,” said a utility employee.)

— (76) And animals in mating season (especially deer) that crash into homes and storefronts in their crazed search for sex, as did deer that appeared in January in an Evansville, Ind., video store and an Arkansas City, Kan., elementary school. Even a Broken Clock Is Right Twice a Day A Saratoga Springs, N.Y., telemarketer perhaps saved the life of an 85-year-old man in Ridott, Ill., in December when she happened to dial his number. The man had fallen the night before and spent the night outside freezing. Suffering from hypothermia, he had struggled to crawl back inside, and, although still unable to make an outgoing call, he managed to pick up the ringing phone and ask for help.
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or [email protected] or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.) NEWS OF THE WEIRD