xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

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

Travis Williams, 25, and his passenger, Brandon Calmese, 27, were arrested in March when sheriff's deputies decided to pull them over after seeing them driving on Interstate 380 near Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at 55 mph with the hood up and both men craning their necks out the window to see where they were going.

A week before that, in Hemet, Calif., a 21-year-old man was hospitalized (with DUI charges pending) after hitting two parked cars, a tree, a fence, and a bus, driving a car with the hood sticking up and deployed airbags flapping in the wind.

Science executive Douglas Carpenter (of the high-tech defense contractor Quantumsphere), on the difficulty of convincing the Pentagon to graduate to weapons made of "nanometals," which pack much more explosive power than current weapons: "Getting the government to change the way they kill people is difficult."

Joseph R. Holland, 23, who escaped in February from prison in Schuylkill County, Pa. (near Allentown), but who was captured the following day, wrote to a judge in March disputing the escape charge against him:
--"The warden never told him he couldn't escape," he said (in his syntax-challenged petition).
--"[I] was never provided with any orientation, a handbook or ever signed any contract."
--"I was never informed to follow any rules, cause I knew no rules!"
---"I wasn't gone over 24 hours, and all my personal belongings were ever here. I had every intention of coming back, who's to say any different?"
--"And besides," he said, "the guards actually opened the gate for him (even though it was really for another inmate coming in, with Holland managing to sneak out at the same time)."
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.) NEWS OF THE WEIRD