Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy (78 page)

GLASS HOLE

A homeowner in Buchanan, Wisconsin, woke up late one night in 2009 to the sound of breaking glass. He looked outside and saw that there was broken glass in the street. The next day, police investigators visited local auto-glass shops to see if anyone had come in needing a new car window—and found a customer named Andrew J. Burwitz, whose car police traced to the glass. When questioned, Burwitz admitted that he’d decided to do a drive-by shooting at the home of his ex-girlfriend’s family…but he forgot to roll down his car window before firing his gun. Burwitz was arrested. According to police, “Alcohol was a factor.”

ASSAULT AND WOMBAT-TERY

In March 2008, police in Motueka, New Zealand, received a bizarre call: “Help me!” a man was shouting, “I’m being raped by a wombat!” The officers found that strange, because wombats don’t live in New Zealand (they live in Australia). They were about to race to the scene when the man called back and said, “No worries, mates. I’m alright now. He’s gone.” Police went there anyway, and found Arthur Cradock, 48, who told them it was a false alarm: “I’ll retract the rape complaint from the wombat, because he’s pulled out. Apart from speaking Australian now, I’m pretty all right, you know. I didn’t hurt my bum at all!” The cops arrested Cradock for wasting their time. He was sentenced to 75 hours of community service. According to police: “Alcohol was a factor.”

In 2009 a Michigan inmate sued the store he robbed. (He wants $125,000 in damages for injuries he received when an employee shot him.)

THAT’S NO WAY TO GO

A 28-year old man (unnamed in press reports) went to a hospital in 1997, babbling that he wanted to kill himself; his head and chest were covered with bruises. The man told the doctors that he took several nitroglycerin pills and threw himself against a wall in an attempt to make the nitroglycerin explode. He also admitted that, along with the pills, he’d drunk a fifth of vodka. According to police, “Alcohol was definitely a factor.”

YOU CAN DEPEND ON IT

In August 2008, Graham Nickerson, 27, was camping in Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia. At some point in the night, he went to go pee in the woods, took off his pants, and then couldn’t find them again. After searching the forest in a haze to find them, Nickerson broke into the home of a 92-year-old woman (who wasn’t there) and found an adult diaper. He put it on and then passed out. The elderly woman returned home the next morning to find Nickerson still asleep on the floor, and still wearing one of her diapers. She called the authorities and Nickerson was arrested. Say it with us: “Alcohol was a factor.”

A WEE NIP

A few nights before Christmas in 2009, four-year-old Hayden Wright woke up at 1:00 a.m., snuck into the kitchen of his home in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and drank a beer (which can get a preschooler quite drunk). Then Hayden, beer in hand, wandered through the neighborhood, went up to a neighbor’s house, found the door unlocked, went inside, found the Christmas tree, and started opening presents. When police finally found Hayden (empty beer can in hand), he was wearing one of the gifts: a brown dress. The boy was taken to a hospital, where his stomach was pumped. According to his mom, “He wants to get in trouble so he can go to jail because that’s where his daddy is.”

CRAZY DECISIONS FOR $200, ALEX

Do you get upset by people in charge abusing their power? Or when they’re ruled by political correctness? This won’t help
.

B
ackground:
Former British army soldier Paul Clarke, 27, found a sawed-off shotgun in a garbage bag in the garden of his home in the city of Surrey in March 2009.
What he did:
He took the gun to the local police station and turned it in.

Crazymaker:
Clarke was arrested for illegal possession of a firearm. And in November 2009 he was found guilty by a jury—and faced a five-year prison sentence. He was given a 12-month suspended sentence instead, fortunately, but still has the felony conviction on his record.

Background:
Nicole Mamo, 48, the owner of a job-recruitment firm in Borehamwood, England, put an ad for a hospital cleaning person on the British government’s job Web site, Jobcentre Plus, in January 2010. The ad said that applicants must be “reliable and hard-working.”

What she did:
Mamo checked the Web site the next day, and saw that the ad wasn’t there, so she called to find out why.
Crazymaker:
She was told the ad couldn’t be run—because asking for “reliable” people was discriminatory. “I placed the advert on the Web site,” Mamo said, “and when I phoned up to check I was told it hadn’t been displayed because they could have cases against them for discriminating against unreliable people. I started to laugh. I said, ‘That’s crazy!’” After the story made news around the world, embarrassed government officials changed their minds and the ran. “Reliability is important to employers, as it is for Job-centre Plus,” a spokesperson said, “and we welcome ads seeking reliable applicants.”

Background:
In October 2007, Boston, Massachusetts, lawyer Simon Glik, 31, was walking down the street when he saw three police officers trying to extract a plastic bag from the mouth of a teenager.

Woody Allen says he has morbid fears of sunshine, kids, crowds, and anyplace outside Manhattan
.

What he did:
Glik thought the officers were using excessive force, so he pulled out his cell phone and started recording the incident with the phone’s camera. One of the officers asked Glik if the camera recorded sound as well as video. Glik said it did.
Crazymaker:
Glik was arrested. The charge? Illegal electronic surveillance. Turns out that Massachusetts, like many other states, is a “two-party consent” state, meaning that all parties to a conversation have to agree to have the conversation recorded. Such laws are meant to protect individuals from having their phone conversations recorded without their permission—not to stop people from openly recording something happening on a public street. But there’s more: Glik was also charged with disturbing the peace (for recording the incident) and aiding the near escape of a prisoner. Police dropped the “aiding the escape of a prisoner” charge, and a Boston judge dismissed the other two charges. “Photography,” the judge said, “is a form of expression which is entitled to First Amendment protection, just as the written or spoken word is.”

Background:
Lieutenant Jeffrey Boyle had been a member of the Chicago Fire Department for more than 20 years.
What he did:
In 2006 he pleaded guilty…to arson. He had set eight fires in and around the city over the course of several years. No one was injured in any of the blazes, but two did cause significant damage to a school. Boyle claimed his behavior was related to a problem with alcohol. He served two years of a six-year sentence. When Boyle turned 50 years old in 2008, he applied for his pension from the fire department. Understandably, officials with the fire department’s retirement board said, “No way.”

Crazymaker:
Boyle sued, saying that he was off duty when he set the fires and therefore deserved the pension—and in November 2009 a Chicago judge overturned the board. Convicted arsonist Jeffrey Boyle now gets $50,000 per year from the Chicago Fire Department and will continue to do so for the rest of his life.

March 5th is Multiple Personalities Day. So is March 5th
.

MORE BIG NEWS

With the obesity epidemic expanding, expect generous helpings of stories like these. (For Part I, turn to
page 235
.)

T
RIMMING THE FAT
After the 2009 holiday season, more than 5,000 people were kicked off the dating Web site
BeautifulPeople.com
because they’d put on extra pounds. The site began in 2002 as a more selective alternative to dating sites that “allow just anyone to join.” Only 20% of applicants to BeautifulPeople make the grade and, according to the site’s founder, Robert Hintze, “vigilant members” demanded action after some users posted photos of themselves during the holidays in which it was clear that they had “let themselves go.” An e-mail was sent to rejected members, inviting them to reapply when they were “back to looking their best” and even recommended boot camps where they could shape up. Hintze was unapologetic: “Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which
BeautifulPeople.com
was founded.”

EXTRA BAGGAGE

In 2009 United Airlines became the latest U.S. carrier to announce that heavier patrons would have to purchase an extra seat if they were too wide for one seat and couldn’t be relocated next to an empty one. United officials explained that they received hundreds of complaints per year from passengers who’d “had to share their seat with an oversized guest,” so United joined American, Continental, Delta, and Southwest in making “customers of size” pay extra. The policy riled many critics, who complained that airline seats are already too small. Surveys, however, found that a vast majority of people were in favor of the rules, including 80% of 18,000 people polled by MSNBC.

PUT OUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS

In 2009 in Britain—where one quarter of adults are obese—the National Health Service implemented a trial program called “Pound for Pound,” in which participants can earn up to £425 ($680) for losing 50 pounds. The company in charge of running the study, Weight Wins, upped the stakes to a maximum of £1,000 for a loss of 150 pounds, “to be achieved and maintained over two years.” Participants in the program lost an average of 14.4 pounds after six months, which, according to officials, compared favorably to other weight-loss programs. That finding was backed up by a study in the December 2008 issue of the
Journal of the American Medical Association
that found that people who had financial incentives were five times more likely to be successful at dieting than those who did not.

70% of airline passengers polled say they’d rather have onboard wi-fi access than a meal
.

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SCALE

In January 2008, the Mississippi state legislature introduced House Bill 282, which would prevent restaurants from serving “any person who is obese based on criteria prescribed by the state health department.” The bill’s co-sponsor, Republican State Rep. John Read, acknowledged that, at 230 pounds, he might be among the more than 30% of Mississippians affected by the ban. “I’m trying to shed a little light on the number-one health problem in Mississippi,” he explained. Restaurant owners and advocacy groups opposed the bill. According to the Obesity Action Coalition, “Studies have demonstrated that discrimination, ridicule and stigma against the obese do not lower obesity rates. Instead, the opposite is true. Those who are the victims of stigma or discrimination are more likely to engage in unhealthy eating behaviors.” J. Justin Wilson, a research analyst representing the restaurant industry, put it more bluntly, “What’s next? Will waitresses soon be expected to make sure we eat all our veggies?” Democratic State Rep. Steve Holland, chairman of the House Public Health and Human Services Committee, pronounced the punitive measure “dead on arrival at my desk.” True to his word, the bill died in committee that summer.

***

“It’s not my fault I’m fat. Cakes are nice, and they have them in supermarkets.”

—Ricky Gervais