Big-Tent Mentality
The Project Theater Board at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., decided in January to cancel its upcoming annual presentation of the feminist classic Vagina Monologues. The all-women’s college recently declared it would admit males who lived and “identified” as female (regardless of genitalia), and the basis for cancellation of Vagina Monologues was that the unmodifiable script is not “inclusive” of those females—that it covers only experiences of females who actually have vaginas.
The New Normal
The website/smartphone app Airbnb, launched in 2008, connects travelers seeking lodging with individuals offering private facilities at certain prices. About a year ago, entrepreneur Travis Laurendine launched a similar smartphone app, Airpnp, to connect people walking around select cities and needing access to a toilet, listing residents who make their utilities available, with description and price. Laurendine told the New York Post in January that New York City is a promising market (though his two best cities are New Orleans and Antwerp, Belgium). The prices vary from free to $20, and the facilities range from a sweet-smelling room stocked with reading material to a barely maintained toilet (with no lavatory), but, said one supplier, sometimes people “really need to go, and this will have to do.”
Government in Action
A.K. Verma was an “assistant executive engineer” working for India’s central public works department in 1990 with 10 years on the job when he went on leave—and had still not returned by the end of 2014, when the government finally fired him. He had submitted numerous requests for extensions during the ensuing 24 years, but all were denied, though no agency or court managed to force him back to work. (India’s bureaucracy is generally acknowledged to be among the most dysfunctional in Asia.)
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Ironies
■ After a heavy snowstorm in Frankfort, Ky. (the state capital), in November, with many absences reported, the state labor policy agency (called the Labor Cabinet) was among the agencies needing snow removal at its headquarters more promptly than overworked cleanup crews could provide. A call was circulated for volunteers to go outside and shovel snow, but that job was apparently too laborious for the labor agency; there was only one taker.
■ The Tampa Bay Times (formerly St. Petersburg Times), reeling financially as many newspapers are, pledged several properties it owns (including its Downtown headquarters) to borrow $30 million last year from a distressed-property lender and now announces an intention to pay back that loan by selling the properties. As reported by the local SaintPetersblog website, the sore-thumb loan was almost exactly the amount the Times paid in 2002 for “naming rights” to the Tampa concert-and-hockey venue, the Ice Palace (which became the St. Petersburg Times Forum and is now Amalie Arena). Thus, SaintPetersblog wrote, “do the math,” concluding that the Tampa Bay Times was pressured to sell its own headquarters building in order to pay for the 12-year privilege of being able to name someone else’s building.
Least Competent Criminals
Not Well-Thought-Out: Shane Lindsey, 32, allegedly robbed the Citizens Bank in New Kensington, Penn., on Jan. 14 and ran off down the street, but was arrested about 15 minutes later a few blocks away, having stopped off at Eazer’s Restaurant and Deli to order chicken and biscuits.
Recurring Themes
Rose Ann Bolasny, 60, of Great Neck, New York, last year created a trust fund for her 3-year-old Maltese (dog), Bella Mia, that will allow spending $100,000 a year on fashions and spa treatments so that Bolasny can pamper "the daughter I never had." Bella Mia reportedly has 1,000 outfits in her custom-made walk-in closet, including ball gowns along with diamond and pearl jewelry, and she sleeps on her own double bed. Previous News of the Weird reports of ridiculously rich dogs involved inheritances, but Bolasny still lives with her husband and has two adult sons (who are said to be fine with their mother's intention to will Bella Mia a house in Florida if she outlives Bolasny and her 82-year-old husband). (By the way, the average annual income for a human being in Bangladesh is the equivalent of about $380.)
© 2014 CHUCK SHEPHERD
