Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy (70 page)

RECYCLING GONE BAD

In summer 2009, a mass grave that contained hundreds of corpses—and appeared to be recently dug—was discovered on the outskirts of the historic Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois. After an investigation, four cemetery workers were arrested for digging up more than 200 bodies and reselling the plots they were buried in. The cemetery was closed for four months while authorities combed through spotty records and old photographs of headstones—some dating back to the 1800s—to return the departed to their rightful resting places. “It’s going to be a day-by-day, grave-by-grave situation,” said one official. Among those buried at Burr Oak: music legends Willie Dixon and Dinah Washington; former heavyweight boxing champ Ezzard Charles; and Emmett Till, whose 1955 murder helped launch the Civil Rights movement.

Actual therapy animals: Sadie the “bipolar assistance parrot” and Richard the “agoraphobia monkey.”

WATCH YOUR STEP

“Sometimes when families asked for their ashes back, the plastic container was too small,” says a disgruntled former employee of Co-op Funeralcare in Dunfermline, Scotland. So instead of finding a larger container, workers allege that the funeral home’s manager, Bob Aitchison, directed them to mix the extra ashes with sand and spread them on a handicapped-access ramp to prevent people from slipping in wet weather. (Some of the remains, reportedly, had even been tracked into the office.) Other charges against Co-op Funeralcare: After the staff lost the ashes of one deceased person, Aitchison gave the grieving family the unclaimed remains of someone who’d been dead for 50 years. And coffins that had been sold as “new” had actually been used to transport bodies, then cleaned up with felt markers and air fresheners.

ONE FOR THE ROAD

When Tito Vasquez’s body didn’t show up for his funeral in Bogotá, Colombia, friends and relatives went looking for him. Hours later, they finally located the corpse several miles away, in the back of a hearse…which was parked in front of a motel bar. The hearse driver apologized and explained that he had gotten “distracted” after stopping in for a beer on the way to the funeral.

ANOTHER SACRED TRADITION BITES THE DUST

According to the U.K.’s Bereavement Register, the most popular song at English funerals in 2009 was “Goodbye My Lover” by James Blunt. Also making the top 10 were funeral standards such as Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind” and the Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody.” However, the Register also conducted a survey of the top ten “alternative” funeral songs in England. That list included Monty Python’s “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell,” “Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead” from
The Wizard of Oz
, Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust,” and Sid Vicious’s raucous cover of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” (which may in fact lead to even more funerals in the future—see
page 413
).

Although it’s illegal, there is a thriving black market in Italy for a cheese containing live maggots
.

FLIGHT 297

What exactly happened on this airline flight in 2009? It’s one man’s story against the airline’s story—with a lot of other parties confusing it even more
.

T
ERROR ON THE TARMAC
In late November 2009, Tedd Petruna, a NASA employee from Texas, wrote an e-mail to his friend describing something that happened to him on board a Houston-bound plane as it was taxiing to its runway in Atlanta. Petruna wrote that he was sitting in first class on AirTran Flight 297 when “a group of 11 Muslim men in full attire peppered themselves throughout the plane.” They walked around despite being told to sit down, took pictures of fellow passengers, and talked loudly to each other in Arabic. Two of the men in the back of the plane were even watching a pornographic film on a camcorder. From Petruna’s e-mail:

    They are only permitted to do this prior to Jihad. If a Muslim man goes into a strip club, he has to view the woman via mirror with his back to her. (Don’t ask me…I don’t make the rules, but I’ve studied.) The 3rd stewardess informed them that they were not to have electronic devices on at this time. To which one of them said “Shut up, infidel dog!”

TAKE ’EM OUT

Petruna and, as he wrote, “another Texan” got up and started wrestling with two of the men. Petruna yelled, “You WILL sit down or you will get off this plane!” After the Texans got the Arab men back in their seats, “Three TSA [Transportation Security Administration] officers and four cops burst into the plane, and the 11 men were escorted away.” Then the plane returned to the gate, where all of the luggage was removed but the passengers remained on board. A little while later, all 11 men got back on board and quietly took their seats. But the flight crew was visibly shaken—they refused to fly with the men, so they were replaced by another crew. The passengers, led by Petruna, also refused to fly, so the captain cancelled the flight. Petruna concluded: “The terrorists wanted to see how TSA would handle it, how the crew would handle it, and how the passengers would handle it. The threat is real.”

Tom Cruise claims he still does his
Risky Business
underwear dance when he’s home alone. (He says it’s his “dance of freedom.”)

START SPREADING THE NEWS

Petruna’s friend who received the e-mail, Gene Hackemack, forwarded it to his friends with this message added to the beginning: “In my opinion, the Muslims are all getting very brave now, since they have one of their own in the White House…Thank God for people like Tedd Petruna.” From there, the story was reprinted on several right-wing news sites. “The Project 9.12,” a Web site run by Fox News commentator Glenn Beck, hailed Petruna as a hero. Right-wing blogger Debbie Schlussel said that Petruna confirmed to her on the phone that the events happened as he said they did. Schlussel wrote: “WAKE. UP. AMERICA. We are under siege.”

THE AIRLINE’S DENIAL

As the story gained more traction in the press, AirTran released a point-by-point rebuttal that basically said that Petruna made the whole thing up. According to the airline:

• The men allegedly watching porn were in the back, so there was no way Petruna could have known what they were doing.

• There were 13 men in the group, not 11. They sat throughout the plane because they were unable to book seats near each other.

• They were not adorned in “full Muslim attire”—they were dressed “like any other passenger.”

• At no time did TSA or law enforcement officials board the plane, and there were no altercations with other passengers or crew. (And the flight was not cancelled, just delayed.)

• A replacement flight crew did take over. AirTran explained that this is a common practice due to delays and scheduling conflicts. (None of the flight crew talked to reporters, nor did any of the 13 men in question, whose names weren’t released in press reports.)

• Tedd Petruna’s connecting flight to Atlanta was late—he arrived 26 minutes
after
flight 297 boarded. “After conducting additional research, we have verified, according to flight manifests, that Theodore Petruna was never actually on board the flight.”

IT’S A CONSPIRACY!

AirTran’s denials only prompted allegations from the right that it was covering up the incident because it didn’t want to offend Muslims. Another passenger, a Texas chaplain named Keith Robinson, accused AirTran of letting the men back on so they wouldn’t sue (the airline had recently settled a lawsuit by a Middle Eastern man who was kicked off a flight for acting suspiciously). But Robinson wasn’t actually on the plane either. He was, however, at the gate when the flight crew deplaned afterward: “You could tell something was going on,” he told a Houston news station. “The feeling that I have from what I observed is there was intentional intimidation. It was almost an ethnic bullying situation. By putting the men back on board, AirTran decided it was better to emotionally traumatize the remaining passengers on Flight 297 for the remainder of the flight.”

Making the story even more complicated, two passengers who were actually on the plane confirmed AirTran’s story. Nancy Deveikis, who was sitting behind one of the Arab men, said the whole thing was a “big miscommunication”—he was just looking at pictures. The flight attendant grew frustrated because he didn’t speak English, so she took his camera away from him. It was then that the man’s friend, who was sitting nearby, offered to speak to TSA as the man’s interpreter to clear the matter up. Another passenger told reporters that Petruna is “living in a fantasy world.”

PETRUNA’S REVISION

Petruna said he never expected his story to be forwarded all over the Internet. He refused to answer reporters’ questions but insisted that he was on that plane. However, he said that he “embellished” many of the facts in his e-mail to impress his friend. He admitted that the men weren’t wearing Muslim attire and they weren’t taking pictures of people. Still, he maintains that AirTran isn’t telling the complete story, either. He declined to say anything else because he’s “in the middle of a lawsuit about this right now.” But according to an AirTran official, the airline hasn’t received a subpoena from Petruna or his lawyers.

The Federal Aviation Administration said it found no evidence of safety violations. After a brief investigation, the TSA ruled it a “customer-service issue.” As far as AirTran is concerned, the matter is closed.

Poll results: One in seven U.K. teenagers wants to find fame on a reality TV show
.

IT’S A RECESSION!

In 2008 the world was jolted by a steep economic downturn. And, as these stories prove, when the money starts slipping away, people tend to go nuts
.

T
HE PENSIONERS GANG
Six German retirees, all in their 70s, collectively lost $3 million after their financial advisor, James Amburn, invested their money in a Florida real estate deal that went bad. Enraged, the six elderly men attacked Amburn outside his home, hit him on the head with a walker, wrapped him in duct tape, put him in the trunk of a car, and drove him to the basement of one their homes. Once there, the pensioners (including two retired doctors) chained Amburn up, beat him, burned him with cigarettes, and demanded that he get their money back…or they’d kill him. Amburn almost escaped on the second day when he was let outside for a cigarette. But as he was running down the street, his kidnappers shouted that he was a burglar. The neighbors kept their distance; Amburn was recaptured and dragged back inside. He agreed to pay them with his own money, so he wrote out a fax for a cash transfer—but on the bottom he scribbled a coded message for help. After four days in captivity, Amburn was rescued by police. After a doctor checked out the kidnappers (they were tired after all the activity), they were hauled off to jail.