New World Order
In December, Canada’s supportive organization The Transgender Project released a biographical video of the former Paul Wolscht, 46 and the father of seven children with his ex-wife, Marie, describing her new life as not only a female but a 6-year-old female, Stephoknee Wolscht. She told the Daily Xtra (gay and lesbian news site) that not acting 46 (even while doing “adult” things like working a job and driving a car) enables her to escape “depression and suicidal thoughts.” Among Wolscht’s favorite activities are (coloring-book) coloring, creating a play-like “kingdom” and wearing “really pretty clothes.” Stephoknee now lives with the couple who adopted her.
Unclear on the Concept
Thee, Not Me: American “millennials” (those aged 18 to 29) continue a "long-standing tradition," The Washington Post wrote in December, describing a Harvard Institute of Politics poll on their views on war. Following the recent Paris terrorist attacks, about 60% of U.S. millennials said additional American troops would be needed to fight the Islamic State, but 85% answered, in the next question, that no, they themselves were “probably won’t join” or “won’t join” the military.
Exceptional Floridians
(1) Police in St. Petersburg, Fla., reported the December arrest of a 12-year-old boy whose rap sheet listed “more than 20” arrests since age 9. He, on a bicycle, had told an 89-year-old driver at a gas station that the man's tire was low, and when the man got out to check, the boy hopped in the car and took off. (2) A driver accidentally plowed through two small businesses in Pensacola, Fla., in December, creating such destruction that the manager of one said it looked like a bomb had hit (forcing both—a tax service and a casket company—to relocate). The driver told police he was attempting to “travel through time.”
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Least Competent Criminals
Oops! (1) Jasper Harrison, 47, working inside the storage unit in Edgewater, Fla., where he grows his marijuana, heard a helicopter overhead on Dec. 9, panicked and called 911 to turn himself in to pre-empt what he presumed was a SWAT raid. Actually, the helicopter belonged to a local news station headed elsewhere, but police later arrested Harrison based on the 911 call. (2) Lloyd Franklin, 34, suspected in a North Carolina double murder, fatally shot himself in a Bensalem, Penn., motel room in November when police knocked on the door. However, cops actually had come to arrest another man in the room on a parole violation.
The Continuing Crisis
Elaine Williams, 47, was arrested in December in North Forsyth, Ga., and charged with trying to buy a baby for her daughter, 14, via an ad on Craigslist. Williams said her daughter said she “wanted a baby and would get one with or without her help.” (Bonus: Williams lives near Jot Em Down Road.)
Update
Road to Nowhere: The “Bridge to Nowhere" played an outsize role in politics a decade ago as an example of uncontrolled government spending (before Congress killed it). (Ketchikan, Alaska, planned a sleek international airport on nearby, uninhabited Gravina Island, but needed a sleek $450 million bridge to get there.) These days, reported Alaska Dispatch News in November, the original 3.2-mile, $28 million access road on Gravina Island, built to access the bridge, now just ends in a “scrub forest.” One optimistic state official said the road gets “more use all the time”—boaters come for “hunting … berry picking, things like that. It’s actually a nice road.”
A News of the Weird Classic (June 2011)
A prison guard is “the greatest entry-level job in California,” according to an April (2011) Wall Street Journal report highlighting its benefits over those of a typical job resulting from a Harvard University education. Starting pay is comparable; loans are not necessary (since the guard “academy” actually pays the student); and vacation time is more generous (seven weeks, five paid). One downside: The prison system is more selective: While Harvard accepts 6.2% of applicants, the guard service takes fewer than 1% of its 120,000 applicants).
© 2015 CHUCK SHEPHERD
