That Signpost Up Ahead...

Hi, again!
     It's Halloween here in the US, and here are a few things
from the weird file.  The really scary part is that all of these
news stories are true!  There sure are some 'Twilight Zone'
people running around out there.  But it makes life interesting,
doesn't it?  Just as long as we don't have to deal with them
personally.  Anyway, have a great week and a fun Halloween...

PS. Thanks go out this week to Helen Yee and Dale Fredrickson. 
And a special welcome to Tadashi Umezawa, whose email address I
just got last Friday. 

PPS.  A couple of weeks back, I announced that Nnamdi Elleh's
book, 'African Architecture: Evolution and Transformation' would
be out soon from McGraw-Hill.  I have a copy now (Thanks again,
Nnamdi!) and it is a beautiful piece of work.  It should be in
bookstores within a week or two.  Congratulations again to
Nnamdi!


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OOOOOOOOH, SCARY STUFF, HUH KIDS?

     Witnesses said that the person who robbed the Seattle-First
National Bank branch in Vancouver, Wash., in July spoke with a
deep, male voice so police were surprised to find a woman,
Kristin Deane Pearsall, age 29, inside a truck matching the one
used for the robber's getaway.  According to police, Pearsall
admitted under questioning that the robbery was done by John, one
of her five personalities.
   [ All five are now in jail awaiting trial... ]


     In Payson, Ariz., in a July pretrial hearing on a slander
lawsuit, Judge Michael Flournoy permitted "testimony" from a man
who had been dead for 500 years, as presented by channeler Trina
Kamp, who contacted him from the witness stand after courtroom
lights were dimmed.  Kamp's Church of the Immortal Consciousness
needed the long-dead Dr. Pahlvon Duran (its spiritual leader) to
"explain" that a local couple's attack against it was wrong. 
Judge Flournoy said later he allowed the seance because he
thought Kamp would drop the lawsuit once Duran's testimony was
heard.
   [ They didn't, of course.  They're awaiting testimony 
       from Abraham Lincoln and some other dead guys... ]


     In October, a jury in Tucson, Ariz., found Robert Joseph
Moody, 36, guilty  of the 1993 murders of two women despite his
claim--made while acting as his own attorney--that space aliens
made him commit the crimes.  "I know it sounds crazy," Moody
said, claiming that the aliens had promised him they would raise
him from the dead in the event he were executed.  Before the
trial, the judge had scratched several UFO experts from Moody's
witness list, as well as Barry Goldwater and ex-presidents Jimmy
Carter and Gerald Ford.
    [ He couldn't have done it - he was away on Alpha 
        Centauri at the time... ]


     Alex Troy Fersner of Johnson City, Tenn., filed a lawsuit in
federal court in September charging that three news anchors (two
male, one female) at WJHL-TV, Channel 11, have been flooding his
mind with secret messages of "perverted lust and distracting TV
illusions" that they "scream" and "breathe loud" at him.  He said
the harassment has caused the loss of facial hair as well as hair
"in the back." 
    [ 'Perverted Lust and Distracting TV Illusions'?  He's 
        been fixating on 'Baywatch' again, right? ]


     A Massachusetts woman using the name 'Dorothy Burdick'
claims that the CIA is using her as a guinea pig in an electronic
brainwashing experiment.  According to Burdick's new book, 'Such
Things Are Known', a laser-telescope located at an Air Force base
near her Cape Cod home is scanning her house and analyzing the
electrical impulses given off by her brain.  "In fact, I'm sure
that the computer can decode my brain impulses just as
telegraphers decode Morse code," she said.  "For example,
dot/dot/dot/dash/dash/dash/dot/dot/dot in Morse code means SOS,
or help.  "Likewise, scientists have learned that dot/dot in my
head means Dorothy.  Now that they know the code, they're
shooting dots into my head and programming my thoughts.  Mrs.
Burdick has adopted her own method of self-defense against the
mind-zapping she claims she's experiencing.  She wears a coat
with tin cans attached to it, and a hat filled with playing
marbles.  
   [ The hat is just so no one can say she's lost her marbles. ]

                        * * *

   A Tokyo company, Juonsha, recently began offering a mail-order
curse kit, featuring a straw doll to represent the hexee, along
with eight accessories, including nails, a curse manual, and a
curse-blocking doll to ward off return curses. The company at
first marketed to boys and girls bullied at school, but
discovered the major market is women who hope to put spells on
neighbors, in-laws and husbands.
   [ Going thru a bad spell in Tokyo? ]

                        * * *

   Sherri Lynn Rossi , of Pittsburgh, was hit in the head more
than 20 times with a blunt object and left covered in blood and
in a coma on the side of a road last June, according to her
doctors. When she came out of the coma, she identified her
attacker as her husband, Richard A. Rossi Jr., pastor of the
local, independent, charismatic First Love Church. Richard Rossi
denied the charge, insisting that the hijacker must have been a
man who looked like him and had a car like his, and that it was
"very possible, oh, yes" that his wife's attacker was Satan in
human form. Four months later, Sherri Lynn Rossi abruptly
withdrew her accusation, and concurred that her attacker might
have been a demon in human form.
   [ Yeah, right... The devil made him do it. ]

                        * * *

   In a review of psychic Diana Gazes' $29-a-ticket spoon-bending
seminar in July, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Gazes
told the 100 attendees that their powers of concentration would
"cause an  alteration in the spin of the atoms" of the spoon. To
achieve that, the  student should grasp the spoon in both hands
with thumbs underneath the smallest part of the handle and "apply
some downward strength." (Not surprisingly, the Chronicle
reported, spoons handled in that manner bend fairly easily.) As
Gazes shouted "Bend! Bend!" the attendees leaped to their feet,
one by one, waving spoons, shouting, "I bent!"
   [ Look...  I typed this just by holding my fingers on 
        the keys! ]
 
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YO, POE! DEPARTMENT


 NEVERMORE

 Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision bleary,
 System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,
 Longing for the warmth of bedsheets,
 Still I sat there, doing spreadsheets:
 Having reached the bottom line,
 I took a floppy from the drawer.
 Typing with a steady hand, I then invoked the SAVE command
 But got instead a reprimand: it read "Abort, Retry, Ignore."

 Was this some occult illusion? Some maniacal intrusion?
 These were choices Solomon himself had never faced before.
 Carefully, I weighed my options.
 These three seemed to be the top ones.
 Clearly, I must now adopt one:
 Choose Abort, Retry, Ignore.

 With my fingers pale and trembling,
 Slowly toward the keyboard bending,
 Longing for a happy ending, hoping all would be restored,
 Praying for some guarantee
 Finally I pressed a key --
 But on the screen what did I see?
 Again: "Abort, Retry, Ignore."

 I tried to catch the chips off-guard --
 I pressed again, but twice as hard.
 Luck was just not in the cards.
 I saw what I had seen before.
 Now I typed in desperation
 Trying random combinations
 Still there came the incantation:
 Choose: Abort, Retry, Ignore.

 There I sat, distraught, exhausted, by my own machine accosted
 Getting up I turned away and paced across the office floor.
 And then I saw an awful sight:
 A bold and blinding flash of light --
 A lightning bolt had cut the night and shook me to my very core.
 I saw the screen collapse and die
 "Oh no -- my database", I cried
 I thought I heard a voice reply,
 "You'll see your data Nevermore."

 To this day I do not know
 The place to which lost data goes
 I bet it goes to heaven where the angels have it stored.
 But as for productivity, well
 I fear that it goes straight to hell
 And that's the tale I have to tell
 Your choice: Abort, Retry, Ignore.

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© 1996 by Bill Becwar. All Rights Reserved.