Week in ReviewA Dream Deferred It was the longest of long shots. In the end, the dream of the Republican presidential nomination slipped away from Robert Haines, as he lost the New Hampshire Republican primary to incumbent George W. Bush, 53,962 votes to 579. His support, centered in Hillsborough County, failed to manifest itself, as he only received 198 votes. But perhaps the largest blow was to be found in Hanover, specifically at the College, where Haines spent much of his time campaigning. Alas, only one Hanoverian found Haines fit enough to warrant a vote for the nomination. Mr. Haines, hopefully we will see you back on campus in 2008.
It may seem like harmless winter fun, but throwing snowballs can be a deadly activity. A magistrate in Dahlenburg, Germany pulled a double-barrel shotgun on a pair of teenage boys after he was hit in the face by a stray from the snowball fight the two had been having outside his window. One of the teenagers was hit in the arm by the shot and was rushed to the hospital, where he was treated and released. Local officials are baffled by the magistrate's violent reaction to the childish prank, and the 55-year-old has so far declined to comment on the situation. He is currently being investigated for attempted manslaughter by a public prosecutor and the local Ministry of Justice is expected to reconsider his status as a judge once the inquiry is finished.
A Czech beggar found an ingenious way of earning a few bucks last week without breaking the "no begging" laws in the small lakeside town of Brno. Dressing up as a green waterfairy, this 47-year-old man managed to convince youngsters playing on the ice to pay him in order to guarantee that the ice would not break. He was duly arrested after being reported to the police by concerned parents. Which means that, once again, he will be clothed and fed for free.
Four Dartmouth footballers (three from the class of '06 and one '05), spending Winter Term at the University of California at Santa Barbara, were recently arrested on charges of home invasion. The group had been at a local house party when native Californian Jason Murphy became embroiled in an argument with two other men which escalated into a physical confrontation. Mr. Murphy was asked to leave. Shortly afterwards, however, he returned to the same house with a larger group of friends, including some Dartmouth muscle. After they let themselves into the home and proceeded to engage in a verbal exchange with the residents, police were quick on the scene. Parkhurst is considering placing another half-dozen fraternities on probation as a result of the incident.
Most people do not go looking for a future spouse at family reunions. However, some people are pushing for the "right" to do just that—marry their cousins. Moreover, say some experts, there's nothing wrong with it. According to anthropologist Martin Ottenheimer, the original study suggesting that cousin marriage could result in inbreeding was based on "very, very, very poor" data. And, added genetics counselor Robin Bennett, "People in the genetics community know those risks [of inbreeding] are not high, and they have known that for years." Cousin couples agree. Noted Christie Smith of Las Vegas (married to her cousin Mark), "My parents had raised me to go to the Bible with any question I had. I prayed and I studied Scripture. To my surprise, God is OK with cousin marriages." Married for five years, the Smiths now work with CUDDLE International (Cousins United to Defeat Discriminating Laws through Education) to spread the message that cousin marriages "aren't nearly as uncommon as people think. They're just kept under wraps." Said Phyllis Kahn, a Minnesota state legislator who seeks to repeal the state's ban on cousin marriage, "If some people stand to benefit, and there's no scientific reason for them not to, it should be allowed." Gee, one can only wonder where this logic's headed.
Jeremy Kingston, a member of a polygamous Mormon sect, was recently sentenced to a year in prison for marrying his 15-year-old cousin LuAnn Kingston. The girl, Kingston's fourth wife, was also his aunt. Kingston, who has "at least" seventeen children with his harem, admitted the charge freely: "I had a relationship, a sexual relationship, with LuAnn for about four years." LuAnn Kingston, who left the marriage in 2000, was pleased with the sentence. "I was glad that they saw through all of his save-face comments," she told the press. Much of the Kingston clan is similarly screwed up. Jeremy's uncle, David Kingston, was released from prison last year after serving time for incest with a 16-year-old niece. Additionally, the Kingstons are the nucleus of the so-called Kingston clan, an extended-family organization with an estimated 1200 members that advocates polygamy.
Howard Dean may have spent more than $1.15 million on campaigning in New Hampshire in the past week, but it seems he came up short on the bill in Iowa. In Des Moines, a local deli received an order for 200 "Brown Bag Specials", totaling $963.01 in all. When Scott Hoffman, the deli owner, went to deliver the order to his customer at the Howard Dean downtown campaign headquarters, he came upon a scene of "utter chaos" and was unable to find anyone to pay him for the sandwiches. He spent twenty minutes trying to collect his money, then finally gave up and went home, hoping that the Dean campaigners would eventually get around to paying their bill. Mr. Hoffman, once a potential supporter of Dean, says he has changed his vote. Now that's something to roar about.
For all those cash-strapped students at Dartmouth, this is a story of hope. One Rosie Reid, a student of Bristol University, recently offered her virginity to the highest paying bidder on E-bay, the Internet auction site. Her motive:securing 10,000 pounds to pay off accumulated university debt. The eighteen-year old lesbian's ad received nearly 7,000 hits in its first three days before being removed. Her parents say she is selling her soul, but Rosie disagrees. "I'm not sexually attracted to men, but if sex is natural to so many people, it can't be that bad," she said. No Rosie, it isn't: we support your entrepreneurial mindset and wish you the best of luck. To all interested Dartmouth students, Rosie's ad can now be found at www.likeavirgin.com.
White Settlement, a small town near Fort Worth, Texas, is facing an upcoming vote as to whether liquor sales should be allowed in the confines of the city with a population of 15,000. Those in favor are arguing that there is a needless inconvenience in going out of town to buy liquor and that the city is losing lots of money in forgone tax revenue. Bible thumpers opposed are stating that it is wrong for a city to profit off bad habits. Either way, White Settlement is missing only 80 of the 880 signatures needed to bring a vote.
In the grand American tradition of Are You Hot?, Jerry Springer, and Sex and the City, comes another new low for what qualifies as appropriate entertainment. Oxygen, the women's network that is home to such television masterpieces as Talk Sex with Sue and the softcore porn offering Blush, has announced a new sitcom, to be titled My Best Friend is a Big, Fat Slut. The network's programming readily admits that the title "is really a way of getting noticed—the type of thing that will pop up on a magazine cover." Though the title will undoubtedly receive more attention than the weakly-sketched plot, the show features two best friends, one of whom is a good, straight-laced, conservative girl, and the other is, well, a liberal slut. Think Odd Couple: one is dirty and one is clean. Except this time it's not about housekeeping,
Patrick Meunier of Newport, New Hampshire likes to say that he idealizes the state motto "Live free or die" to the max. In fact, he enjoys walking around his trailer park without the restraints of clothes, a habit which got him in trouble when he started masturbating outside and in full view of four neighbors, including a young girl. Having pride in his physical attributes and always the romantic, he attempted to swoon a potential lover, Exxon employee Rebecca Roman, by leaving Polaroids of his naked, aroused self on her windshield at the service station where she worked. When denied, he took his naturalist rage out on an ex-girlfriend, cutting the phone line to her trailer and removing the gas cap from her vehicle. Police were notified and Meunier was charged with a "prohibited act," to which he pleaded innocent. Explaining the "lifestyle" to state police Corporal E.A. Cantwell with a copy of "Vermont Unveiled" in a 1996 edition of Naturist Life International, Meunier was ordered to stop harassing his neighbors.
When a German chimneysweep was called to an apartment building to investigate a blockage in the chimney system, he expected to find a dead animal or a pile of leaves. Instead, he found an equally rancid smelling "caveman," as he later reported to police, living in an abandoned apartment. The chimney-sweep "saw what [he] thought was a pile of dirty laundry in the corner until [he] realized it was an incredibly filthy man," with an aroma that was described by officer Toralf Reinhardt as "overpowering." The dirty German, named Mario by police officers arriving on the scene, told authorities that he had not showered or shaved for eighteen years, and that he had been in the same clothes since New Year's Day 2004. Police brought the smelly man to jail and when they could stand his stench no longer; they checked him into a local hospital. Mario's serious case of body odor led the police to "call in a team of industrial cleaners to get the odor out of the police car and the cell afterward," according to Reinhardt.
On February 1, one Jessica H. Ward '04 dispatched a mass blitz, salutated "Dear Dartmouth Singletons," recognizing "that the need has arisen at Dartmouth for a student-run dating service." Prospective daters will answer a questionnaire, and then express interest in each other based on their responses to requests for information such as "Year," "Sex," and "Sex I'm Seeking." Individuals indicating mutual interest on the basis of their profiles will be, in the parlance of our times, "hooked up." The success of the dating service is a sure bet, since for most Dartmouth students the statements "Sex I'm Seeking" and "Sex I'm Getting" vary in inverse proportion. |
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