Scraps

"So we’re pro-panties— it’s on the record."

—Gretna, Louisiana, City Councilman Vincent Cox, commenting on the council’s decision to repeal an earlier act banning the throwing of women’s underwear from Carnival floats. Coming in response to Mardi Gras parade organizers’ complaints that "panties have been a legitimate throw for Mardi Gras for years," the repeal did not affect the ban on throwing "condoms or other inflatable paraphernalia," AP, April 16, 2000.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is defending the state of Alabama against a black student who was denied a state scholarship to a historically black college. The state wants to use the scholarships to encourage more white students to attend the school, even if their academic performance is inferior.

—Reason, December 1999.

"Wi ave a pawtnaship wid everi rezedent of HUD-assisted owzing developments: HUD prowtekss di rights ahf di tenants, ahn tenants gauwd dem own right tru rispansible be’aviah."

—HUD Secretary "Andrew M. Cuomo fella," as quoted in a brochure that was distributed by the department to tenants in subsidized housing. In addition to Spanish, French, Korean, and Portuguese, the brochure was also translated into a "Creole" dialect supposedly intended for Haitian speakers of their French-derived patois. HUD officials have variously described this translation as the fault of a contractor, the Government Printing Office, and some as yet unknown prankster, AP, January 16, 2000.

"We said some kids will never even notice it, but there’s always going to be the one or two who are going to get everything started."

—A school administrator from Cobb County, Georgia, explaining why county school officials had taken to ripping reproductions of the 1851 painting "Washington Crossing the Delaware" from fifth grade history books. According to one principal, "A watch fob resting on the general’s thigh looked suspiciously like George Washington’s private part," Reason, December 1999.

"As far as I know, there are no computer chips in the hoses."

—An unnamed fire chief, responding to ABC News anchorman Peter Jennings’s question during television coverage of new year’s celebrations if the hoses used by the fire department were Y2K compliant, AP, January 7, 2000.

"Satan told me to check it out some more."

—Born-again Christian David Strein, 44, offering up the reason for his continued viewing of internet porn at the office while he was employed by the New Mexico state government, Reason, December 1999.

The lawyer for a former Fort Lauderdale, Fla., phone-sex worker told reporters in December that he had won a workers’ compensation settlement for his client based on her claim of carpal tunnel syndrome due to masturbating on the job as much as seven times a day. Steven Slootsky said his client accepted the settlement to avoid the embarrassment of testifying, even though the money is not enough to reimburse her for the surgery she required on both hands.

—AP, December 21, 1999.

"I quickly realized that for 25 cents I was getting 100 free miles."

—Competent consumer David Phillips of Davis, CA, who last year saw a promotion by the Healthy Choice prepared food company: mail in 10 proofs of purchase and get 1000 frequent flier miles. Getting 1000 miles for ten $2 dinners wasn’t bad, he figured, but getting them for ten 25-cent pudding cups was better, so he bought $3,140 worth of diet pudding cups, earning 1.25 million miles, or about $25,000 worth of flights. He also donated the pudding to food banks for a tax deduction, Sacramento Bee, February 7, 2000.

"For God’s sake, I’m an adult movie actress. I’m not a professor of economics. Would the world give me a break here?"

—Porn actress Marylin Star, who fled to Canada last week after federal prosecutors charged her with insider trading. She allegedly made $88,000 on illegal stock tips obtained during the throes of passion, Nerve Magazine, January 15, 2000.

"It’s not a vibrator, not supposed to be a vibrator, and not meant to be a vibrator. It’s a back massager. Although that’s interesting, too."

—A spokesman for Bride’s magazine, clarifying in the New York Observer the small, battery-powered gift the company gave to its staffers over the holidays, Nerve Magazine, January 15, 2000.

Norman Hardy Jr., 22, pleaded innocent in court in Brattleboro, Vt., to charges of cocaine possession. Then he filled out a form requesting a public defender to represent him. Occupation? "Selling drugs," he wrote on the form. The judge granted the request for a public defender.

—AP, February 2, 2000.

"I think the blow dryer."

—Actress Mary Tyler Moore, one of 350 "American Innovators" invited to the White House by President Clinton to celebrate the new year, proclaiming what she felt to be the invention of the century. Reuters, January 5, 1999.

"Vote for Pancho, Vote for Chucho"

—Words found spray-painted on a Mexico City sports club. While political graffiti is commonplace in Mexico, it is not so when the culprits are the leading presidential candidate and the governing party’s hope in the capital’s mayoral race. A city court fined Fransisco Labastida "Pancho" Ochoa and Jesus Silva "Chucho" Herzog, two top candidates for the ruling Institutional Party, 400 pesos after press photos surfaced showing Labastida and Silva, spray-paint in hand, writing their nicknames on a wall of the Renovacion sports club, AP, January 15, 1999.

"The sheer pettiness of campus politics and the trivial nature of the sums of money involved suggest that what everyone needs is a good dose of [P]erspective."

—The Harvard Salient on the John Burton impeachment circus, February 10, 2000.