WTF Is It Now?!?

In Other News -

Among the 39 charges leveled by the Tennessee Health Department against former state medical examiner Dr. Charles Harlan in December were that he deliberately mutilated bodies during autopsies so that "no one (could) second-guess me"; vastly overused "sudden infant death syndrome" as the cause of death for babies; and let animals "roam freely in his facility and consume the organs of deceased persons." [The Tennessean, 1-12-02]

Ronald Castle Sr., 54, was arrested in Syracuse, N.Y., in January, suspected as the man who has been masturbating into colleagues' coffee cups at the county Department of Social Services. [Syracuse Post-Standard, 1-24-02]

Three Alaskans were charged recently with ill-thought-out thefts: Todd Shobe, 38, was arrested in Anchorage in January when his SUV got stuck in the mud at a construction site after being weighed down with all the tools he was trying to drive away with. And Roger D. Yost, 40, and William Isberg, 40, were arrested in Fairbanks in February when they tried to get a 500-pound safe out the door of a Moose Lodge hall, seemingly forgetting that they had arrived at the Lodge only on bicycles. [Anchorage Daily News, 1-17-02] [Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, 2-5-02]

- - News of the Weird

The National Endowment for the Arts rejected a $42,000 grant proposal from the Maine College of Art in Portland for an exhibit by performance artist William Pope.L, titled ``Pope.L: eRacism.'' In an earlier performance, the artist walked around New York City with a 14-foot white cardboard penis, calling it a commentary on ``the supremacy of white phalluses.'' Two years prior, the artist won a grant for an exhibition in which, the New York Times reports, ``he spent several days eating and regurgitating copies of The Wall Street Journal.''

- - The Flummery Digest