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Show A2 The Emery County Review, Tuesday, April 29, 2008 The News Off The Beaten Path MUG SHOT D E DA Z LIGHTER SIDE Playing by the rules Force eight teenage girls to play basketball pretty much non-stop for a couple of days, and the team photo might turn out a little strange. So it was with the “Emery” Team of the All-Stars League as they faced off against other teams for the tournament in Richfield. The girl’s ended the tournament with a 4-1 record, effectively tying for third place. Pictured in their greatest team poses are Shandee Jewkes, Kim Oldroyd, Jeridi Price, Camie Whittle, Marqui Moss, Whitney Roper, Shailee Stockes and Mandy Davis. James L. Davis When I was a kid the one thing I never understood about organized sports was the need for all of those rules. They just seemed to get in the way of a good (and creative) game, which is one of the reason why I was probably the last person picked in any game of football, basketball or baseball that I ever played. It’s not that I don’t like rules, OK, maybe it is. I just don’t see why you shouldn’t be able to tackle someone in a game of basketball if the need arises (say the opposing team is going to make a basket and you don’t want them to). I don’t understand why in football you can’t tackle the person you don’t want to have the ball before they actually get the ball. Call it a preventive tackle. And I don’t understand why you can’t take a nap in right field if no one hits a ball that direction after four at bats. But apparently most people who play organized sports really like the organized part of the game, so they have come up with pages upon pages of complicated rules that dictate what you can and cannot do in any particular game. There are even some people who are so devoted to the organized part of playing a sport that they don’t even have time to actually playing the game. They have to sit on the sidelines or in the stands and scream the rules to those playing the game. They usually sit one row up and directly behind my right ear, which is one of the reasons why I have a hard time hearing out of that ear. These rule fanatics will yell at the players, they will yell at the coaches, they will yell at the referees, they will yell at the other fans and they will yell at other rule fanatics about their misinterpretation of the basic simplicity of the rules until they are red in the face and all worked up into a lather. Being worked into a lather is one of my mom and dad’s phrases. I don’t really know what it means. I thought the only way to be worked into a lather was with a bar of soap and perhaps the rule fanatics have bars of soap, when they’re screaming behind me I don’t usually look back because I don’t want them screaming in front of me. I have to admit that even being a fan of organized sports I have trouble being, well, organized. I don’t recall ever having yelled at the players, the coaches, the other team, the referees, the fans or the rule fanatics, although I did yell at some snot nosed kid once when he stole my peanut M&Ms. But it didn’t stop him from sticking his tongue out at me and running away, so I’m not sure it did any good. I have been known to stand up during a particularly heated game and urge everyone in a loud and I believe perfectly reasonable voice to “Please remain calm people. Please just calm down, take a deep breath, count to three, and calm down.” For this reason my daughter urges me not to identify myself as her father when I am at a sporting event. I completely understand that rule fanatics loathe people like me and it brings me secret joy, I have to admit. When I was in my 20s a group of my friends would get together on the weekends and on occasion (usually when we were too broke to do anything else) we would play a board game. One of my friends was a rule fanatic, in fact he was so much a rule fanatic that other rule fanatics would actually tell him to calm down, it’s just a game. Before we played any game he would pull out the rule book and in a voice eerily familiar to Ben Stein, he would read every word of the rule book out loud as we listened. The first time he did this I thought he was kidding and so I laughed, which is when I learned that he was not kidding. Not being a person that reads rule books or even particularly believes in rule books, I found it impossible to listen to him for long. So I would make up questions to ask him just to throw him off. “Well yes sure, I understand that rule, but if you land on Park Place and you’re the little dog, can you still buy it, because I didn’t think dogs could buy property?” I would ask in all sincerity. My friend would answer through gritted teeth: “We aren’t playing Monopoly.” “Well, yes I realize that. I just was wondering because I’ve never read the rules and I thought you might know.” My other friends would at this time usually go in the next room for snacks because our rule fanatic friend had a habit of throwing a temper fit when I asked stupid questions, which I reminded him were against the rules, but he apparently didn’t care. In an effort to bring harmony back to our gatherings I once hid all of the rules to all of the board games before we started to play and watched with a sense of amazement as my friend’s face turned multiple shades of red as I backed into the kitchen where the rest of my friends were waiting. “He’s worked himself into a lather,” I said and they all looked at me strangely. “It’s something my mom and dad say. I don’t know what it means, but I think it applies here.” Basketball Overload Chuck Shepherd Lead Story Update: Experimental “natural orifice” surgery might be health care’s next big thing following its U.S. introduction last year at Columbia University (as reported also in “News of the Weird”), where doctors removed a woman’s diseased gall bladder not by an abdominal incision but through her vagina. In March, doctors at UC-San Diego Medical Center removed a woman’s appendix through her vagina, and a man’s through his mouth. (A microscopic camera must be inserted through the abdomen, however, to guide the surgeons.) Pain and healing time are usually less than half that of ordinary surgery, but the risk of internal infection is greater. The next step, doctors say, will be removing kidneys through the anus. Government in Action! -- A Maryland governmental fund created to assist “innocent” victims of violent crime has paid out nearly $1.8 million since 2003 to injured (or deceased) “drug dealers, violent offenders and other criminals,” according to an investigation by the Baltimore Sun published in March. Burial expenses were awarded for a carjacker, a victim of an inter-gang killing and a sex offender who was fatally beaten in prison. The Maryland courts have ruled that as long as the applicant was not engaged in a crime at the time he was injured, he must be considered for an award. -- The Associated Press reported in March that “dozens” of locked-up sexual predators are receiving federal aid to take mail-order college courses through Pell grants, even though prison inmates normally are ineligible. Sex offenders who have completed their sentences, but are held for “treatment,” are not technically “prisoners,” and many have spent their stipends on “living expenses” such as DVD players, in that they have no “room and board” The Duplex NEWS OF THE WEIRD expenses. Great Art! -- Graduate art student Matthew Keeney’s latest piece of performance art, in February, called “The Waiting Project,” had him standing on streets in Syracuse, N.Y., waiting for someone to ask him what “The Waiting Project” is. In previous pieces, Keeney had held a “Super Bowl party for one” on a park bench, had earnestly watched ice sculptures melt, and had walked from the Capitol steps in Washington, D.C., to the Lincoln Memorial but stopping each time he heard a car horn and then starting again when he heard another. -- Last year, Montreal, Quebec, artist Michel de Broin created, as art, the hollowedout shell of an old Buick powered only by a four-seater bicycle (with hand brakes, or, failing them, Fred Flintstonetype brakes). Nonetheless, when a group took the car out for a spin last October, an overzealous officer ticketed them for “driving” an unsafe “car,” but in April, after a daylong court hearing, the charges were dropped. -- No Man’s Land: “The Bride of Palestine” (a 26-yearold drag queen) is the bestknown of a group of sexually uncertain Israeli Arabs who gather in underground venues in Tel Aviv and “struggle to define themselves,” according to a March dispatch from McClatchy Newspapers. Though they are proud Palestinians at odds with the “occupying” Jewish society, some feel even more rejection by their own conservative communities and seem grateful that the “oppressors” permit the spaces that one woman called her “only refuge.” Police Blotter Latest Police Chases: (1) In Ocala, Fla., in March, Bret Wass, 28, scrambling from police investigating a sexual battery, commandeered a tow truck and drove away, even though the truck had a car hooked onto it; during the chase, he hit the patrol car and was captured on foot nearby. (2) Police in Osaka, Japan, mobilized in January to apprehend fugitive Hirofumi Fukuda, 27, who was wanted for assaulting an officer (which tends to get the attention of fellow officers). By the end of the two-hour episode, a helicopter and 460 patrol cars, involving 2,240 law-enforcement officers, were on the case. What Goes Around, Comes Around Thirty years ago, before Wal-Mart became an international giant, a small video company made a “handshake” deal to shoot promotional footage of the firm’s executives and was given free rein within the company. It made 15,000 tapes, including many, inevitably, showing Wal-Mart leaders in awkward situations. In 2006, an incoming WalMart executive decided to end the relationship, devastating Flagler Productions’ bottom line, and to compensate, the company began offering to research its library for historians and, more notably, litigants suing Wal-Mart on product safety, employment and union-busting issues. According to an April Wall Street Journal report, a treasure trove of embarrassing moments is available. People Different From Us Even though 20 states outlaw keeping monkeys as pets, the Humane Society of the U.S. estimates that there are 15,000 privately owned primates, with at least 200 Floridians licensed for pet capuchins, according to an April Orlando Sentinel report. Since experts warn that the animals are biters and scratchers and are very aggressive when agitated, the Sentinel asked what accounts for their popularity. Said the editor of Monkey Matters Magazine, it’s their humanlike features and owners’ desires to dress them up. “Believe me,” said the editor, “if people could get their cats (into) outfits, a lot of those cats would be wearing outfits.” Least Competent Criminals In three incidents in March and April, robbers were arrested in the act after police were tipped off in advance. The source of the tip each time was a store employee who had been brazenly notified by the perp to expect a robbery soon. Daniel Glen, 40, was arrested in Windsor, Ontario, having called ahead to make sure there was enough money in the convenience store’s cash register. An 18-year-old man was arrested in Chicago, having given his phone number to a Mufflers For Less employee and instructing him to call when the manager, with access to the safe, arrived at work. And two men were arrested near Traverse City, Mich., having described to a gas station employee two hours earlier exactly how they would soon rob him. Recurring Themes Earnest residents continue to accidentally destroy their homes: (1) A house in Galveston, Texas, had the roof blown off on Jan. 21 when the resident set out six bug foggers but neglected to turn off the gas stove’s pilot light; (2) A Jacksonville, Fla., woman who smelled something unusual in her home on Nov. 15 decided to light the fireplace to clear the air, and a gas leak created a fire that destroyed the home; (3) An apartment building in Sioux Falls, S.D., was wiped out on Feb. 21 when a resident tried to thaw frozen pipes with a blow torch. News That Sounds Like a Joke (1) Bernard Fincher Jr., 25, was arrested in Buffalo, N.Y., in March for possession of cocaine when police found a stash of the drug that Fincher had allegedly tried to hide in a doughnut box. (2) Cody Young, 13, complained in January that when he parked his expensive BMX bicycle inside the front door of a Goodwill Industries store in Salem, Ore., so he could browse, an employee mistakenly sold the bike to a customer for $6.99. Copyright 2008 Chuck Shepherd. Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate. By Glenn McCoy |