Spantacular: Summit 2006

[Buster Highmen]

According to more than 50 alleged witnesses in 30 pending lawsuits, former Seattle-area gynecologist Charles Momah, 48, not only sexually abused patients but also permitted his twin brother, Dennis (a doctor but not a gynecologist), to stand in for him during some patient appointments, during which he, too, sexually abused the women. Examples of suspicion-provoking behavior, according to witness statements: Sometimes their doctor was talkative, sometimes confused and nearly silent; sometimes he spoke English clearly, sometimes broken; sometimes he walked with a limp, sometimes not; sometimes there were scars on his face, sometimes not. The Momahs deny everything, but Charles was convicted in November of sexually abusing four of the patients. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 11-17-05; King County Journal, 2-12-05]

In America, we have lightbulbs in our refrigerators. In November, to calm down a growing number of apparently horrified Australians, the Food Authority of the state of New South Wales issued a statement assuring people that meat in their refrigerators that appears to glow in the dark is actually harmless. Said the authority's director, the light-emitting bacteria responsible for the glow "is not known to cause food poisoning" and, actually, is naturally present in most meats and fish. [WFTV-TV (Orlando)-AP, 11-16-05]

Jim Porcellato endured about 30 seconds of excruciating pain in October in Sooke, British Columbia, when he attempted to shut off a Bobcat construction vehicle but accidentally stepped on the floor lever that raises and lowers the vehicle's bucket, at the same time that he was, unfortunately, straddling the bucket. Porcellato, with one foot and his body's weight on the lever, had no leverage to stop the bucket, which as it moved, trapped his head and other leg. A co-worker rescued him, but the result was "many" lost teeth and the need for "hundreds" of stitches in his face, according to the Sooke News Mirror. [Sooke News Mirror, 11-2-05]

In Fargo, N.D., in September, Justin W. Fraase enthusiastically called the police to tell them that he had a videotape that would prove that the woman who had a judicial stay-away order against him actually wanted him back. The tape was of the two having sex, and when authorities viewed it, they realized that, for one thing, the sex itself violated the judicial order and, second, the woman appeared not to be enjoying herself at all. (Indeed, she later said that Fraase had coerced her, and he was charged with three felony counts relating to the assault and the violation of the stay-away order.) [The Forum (Fargo), 9-16-05]

From the newspaper The State (Columbia, S.C., 11-14-05), regarding fugitive Rodney Dane Higginbotham, wanted for criminal domestic violence: "Alleged Crime: Police said Higginbotham argued with his wife because she had not cooked anything. When she began cooking, he started making spaghetti while eating crackers and squeeze cheese. They argued, and he squeezed cheese on the kitchen floor. She squeezed the cheese on his truck, and he squeezed the cheese in her hair before fleeing in his truck. The wife said she washed her hair before the officer arrived to take her complaint." [The State, 11-14-05]

In November, NASCAR announced it had contracted with the romance publisher Harlequin Enterprises to arrange for steamy women's novels with car-racing themes, beginning with Pamela Britton's forthcoming book "In the Groove." And according to an October Los Angeles Times report, the trade association Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America contracted to pay two writers a "six-figure" fee to write a novel about a national panic resulting from a fear that drug lobbyists had actually been trying to spread in Congress, specifically, that terrorists might poison lower-priced drug imports from Canada. (The Times reported that the association recently killed the project and blamed the whole idea on an unsupervised lower-level executive.) [Harlequin press release, 11-2-05] [Los Angeles Times, 10-27-05]


The body of a 36-year-old woman was found stuck halfway through a rear window in a house in St. Louis in October, the result (according to police) of an unsuccessful burglary attempt; she had asphyxiated, and in the course of her struggle to break free, her pants had somehow come off. And a 42-year-old woman in Frederica, Del., hanged herself from a tree on the Tuesday before Halloween, and though she was spotted at a distance soon afterward, neighbors did not call police for 10 hours, figuring at first that the body was just a Halloween decoration. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 10-19-05] [Wilmington News Journal, 10-27-05]

[Buster Highmen]

Pigs had been observed rubbing themselves with used pantyhose from the SeaGals while writing articles for Women's Home Journal. Meat frosted cupcakes with tiny model spitfires shooting drops of liquid lsd had marched on Washington, demanding equal lefts.

[seatosky]

A man who decided to wear a Pluto dog mask to rob a Gordon's Mini Market in Cranberry, Pa. (near Pittsburgh), was unsuccessful, forced to flee empty-handed when the clerk could not bring himself to stop laughing at the disguise.

[shirk]

Spantacular or Spamtacular