Pantagraph.com
Tax sale includes dead people, too
By Bill Flick | Tuesday, June 16, 2009 – 6:00 pm

It was singer/actress Bette Midler who once asked: “Are people stranger today or is the media just reporting it more?”

There is, of course, no official answer to the question.

But, witnessing the following stories – our June installment of News Is Stranger Than Fiction – it remains a rather good question.

 In Gary, Ind., it was revealed that the bodies left in a funeral home bought three years later at a tax sale would be included in the sale and become the property of the new owners.

 After serving out his four-year prison sentence, a man in Altamonte Springs, Fla., was released after being convicted of covering the roof and yard of his home with toilets, airplane parts and a giant statue of a buttocks that his neighbors found objectionable.

 In Fond du Lac, Wis., police officials remained mystified why a bandit dressed as an ape had been targeting gas stations in search of Styrofoam bananas.

 At a high school in St. Charles, Mo., a 17-year-old who said she spent a lot of time at coffee shops in her spare time let that also be the inspiration for her prom dress, made entirely of coffee filters.

 In Oregon City, Ore., a homeowner who lit a fire in a wood stove but had to leave it after being called into work discovered the only reason he had been called into work was to be fired, at which point he left work to return home and discover it was on fire because of the unattended stove.

 At a junior high in West Haven, Utah, after a 14-year-old of Scottish heritage wore a kilt to school as part of a project on ancestry, the principal apologized after he ordered the student home because the school would not allow cross-dressing.

 In Cleveland, to improve its safety, construction workers moved the 70-million-ton Inner Belt Bridge four inches to the west.

 At a wedding reception in Kenner, La., after signing a contract promising to observe the facility’s dress code, the groom was arrested when his nephew refused to pull up his saggy pants.

 In London, women banded together to stage a protest in front of a Marks & Spencer store, one of the largest clothing retailers in the country, after it began added a $3 extra surcharge on female shoppers who needed extra-large brassieres.

 Sex charges against a man accused of setting up a tryst with an underage girl in Layton, Utah, were dropped when his attorney argued that continuing the case could increase his blood pressure and cause his death, which would violate his right to due process.

 At a park in Flower Mound, Texas, a 10-year-old girl was arrested and charged with misdemeanor assault after she refused to follow the orders of her 13-year-old sister and punched her. “One of them is going to have to go to jail and it’s going to have to be your 10-year-old because she was the aggressor,'” their mother quoted the officer as saying.

 In London, the Speaker of the British House of Commons – one of the most powerful positions in country – resigned due to a backlash of controversy over some of the expense-claims he’d made, including the charges for having the moat of his castle cleaned at government expense.

 Responding to a report of a cougar on the loose in a cement drainpipe in a park, police in Warren, Mich., rushed to the scene and stunned the cougar with a Taser stun gun. When it still didn’t move, that is also when they discovered it was a large toy animal they were trying to stun.

Finally, our own favorite:

 At a court in Manchester, England, a woman convicted of amassing $88,500 through benefits fraud was chastised by the judge after he noticed her socks worn into court bore this message: “Show me the money!”

Contact Bill Flick at flick@pantagraph.com.