NEWS OF THE WEIRD

No recession for federal workers

A December USA Today analysis revealed that during the first 18 months of the recent recession, beginning December 2007, the number of federal employees with six-figure salaries shot up from 14 percent of the federal workforce to 19 percent. Defense Department civilian executives earning more than $150,000 went from 1,868 to more than 10,000, and the Department of Transportation, which had only one person earning $170,000 in December 2007, now has 1,690. The average federal salary is $71,206, compared with the private sector’s $40,331. 

Compelling explanations

. Being the first licensed male prostitute in Nevada (and thus the U.S.), explained “Markus” in a January interview for Details magazine, is to him “a civil rights thing.” “It’s just the same as when Rosa Parks decided to sit at the front (of the bus) instead of the back.”

. Lame: (1) Ex-convict John Stephens told a Floyd County (Ind.) judge in December that he had a full-time job and intended to turn his life around, but had slipped when he tried to rob the Your Community Bank. “If I hadn’t been watching the news and seeing (other successful) bank robberies,” he said, he wouldn’t have been tempted. He said he was especially impressed by one serial robber, who had made it look easy by vaulting over banks’ counters. (2) In Kansas City, Mo., in December, the mother of Charles Irving tried to protect her 27-year-old son from a charge of being a felon in possession of a gun. She told police (without success) that he had needed the gun to protect her from vampires.

. Rod Jetton, a former speaker of the Missouri House of Representatives and creator of Common Sense Conservative Consulting, LLC, was charged with felony assault in December after visiting a woman in her home in Sikeston, apparently for a sexual encounter. The woman later charged that Jetton punched her in the head and choked her into unconsciousness as his idea of foreplay, but Jetton said the “assault” was consensual, in that she was to utter a pre-arranged “safe word (phrase)” if things got too rough and that he would have immediately stopped. Jetton told police that the woman never spoke the agreed-on phrase “green balloons.” 

Ironies

. In December, Obama administration officials, seeking to fulfill a campaign pledge of a more open federal government, held a multi-agency training session in Washington, D.C., on the Freedom of Information Act. The meeting was closed to the public.

. A central purpose of the California Milk Board is to convince consumers to buy local dairy products to keep the spending in-state to help California’s farmers, but the board acknowledged in November that its promotion campaign’s advertising contract had gone to an agency in New Zealand. Said a board official: “We have a ... responsibility to spend (taxpayers’) hard-earned dollars as efficiently as we can.” 

Fine points of the law

In November, Powhatan County, Va., prosecutors dismissed charges against five corrections officers despite evidence that they were involved in inappropriately fondling a K-9 service dog. During training, officers are expected to “bond” with their dogs, and one of the men was seen “touching the dog’s penis with his hand,” according to a prosecutor. However, Virginia law requires that the state prove “cruelty” to the dog, and the prosecutor, after consulting with veterinarians, concluded that he could not win the case. 

Creme de la weird

Russell Vanderwerf, 44, an agent of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, was arrested in Metairie, La., in December and charged with damaging property while staying at the Residence Inn hotel. According to police, Vanderwerf had removed the bedroom door to his suite and in its place installed a plywood plank that contained a hole at about pelvis level that had been rimmed in duct tape and which the arresting deputy said appeared to be used “in some sort of sexual act.” Another guest told police that numerous young men had been entering and exiting Vanderwerf’s room. 

Redneck crime

. In Morehead, Ky., in December, two men, ages 44 and 18, were charged with theft for allegedly swiping an 18-inchlong bearded dragon lizard from the Eagles Landing Pet Hospital and trying, in two beverage stores, to exchange it for liquor.

. Daniel Gable, 61, was arrested for breaking and entering a neighbor’s apartment in Fargo, N.D., in December. He had triggered the resident’s “burglar alarm,” which consisted of the stack of empty beer cans the resident places just inside his front door every night.

. Lawyer Christopher Carroll was charged with misdemeanor battery in December for forcefully belly-bumping lawyer Jonathan Carbary during a courthouse hallway argument in St. Charles Township, Ill. Carroll said it was an accident: “We’re both obese, middle-aged men.” 

Update

President Obama’s figurine was expected to lead in sales for the second straight year in the traditional “caganer” craft industry in Spain’s Catalonia region. As News of the Weird reported in 2008, the popular statuettes are typically modeled on famous people, each with pants down, squatting to answer a call of nature. They are ubiquitous in Nativity scenes, playfully hidden to encourage children’s Where’s-Waldo-type guessing, and believed to symbolize “equality” through the universality of bodily functions. Another figurine expected to do well this season is the brand-new Queen Elizabeth. 