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Commentary: Joe Bob's Week in Review

By JOE BOB BRIGGS
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Voracious West Nile infected mosquitoes killed five people in Louisiana and infected 70 more in the worst outbreak of the disease since it first turned up in New York in the summer of 2000. The little rascals can't be distinguished from ordinary August swamp mosquitoes because they were trained in Egypt, spent two years developing sleeper cells and attended just enough flight school to get halfway across the country.

Two one-year-old Guatemalan girls, Maria Teresa Quiej Alvarez and Maria de Jesus Quiej Alvarez, were born joined at the head, but were separated in a 22-hour operation performed by a team of 13 doctors at UCLA. Interestingly, the event received massive media coverage without anyone ever using the word "Siamese," indicating that "Joe Bob's Week in Review" failed to get the memo on the old term being declared politically incorrect, and also failed to get the memo on just what term we're expected to use now. At this point we're going with Yul Brynner Twins, in honor of the most famous King of Siam. Did Siamese people really protest?

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More than 1.2 million Americans had plastic surgery last year, making this the most lifted, tucked, augmented and liposuctioned country in the world. In the last 10 years, the number of women having breast enlargement has increased more than 500 percent, with the next most popular alterations being liposuction, tummy tucks, forehead lifts and eyelid surgery. An even more intriguing statistic is that, of the 1.2 million patients, 1.1 million remained ugly.

Brandy and April, the Thomas sisters, robbed a bank in Gloucester Township, Pa., but as they left, their backpack ripped open, leaving a trail of greenbacks. When cops arrested them, they had a paintball gun -- the holdup weapon -- and $2,600 in cash. Another $1,700 was still floating around out there somewhere. Apruuuuuuuuuul, I told you to, like, zip the backpack! Brandeeeeeeeeeee, it was, like, too much money. What EVER.

Federal Judge Gladys Kessler ordered the Bush administration to release the names of people who have been held in jail, incommunicado and incognito, since Sept. 11, but Attorney General John Ashcroft vowed to continue to fight that whole "habeas corpus" thing.

A new gun called "The Butt-Master" is driving police crazy because, as its name implies, it can be concealed in a very private place. Originally a novelty product made by Serbu Firearms, it has now been placed into general production. It looks like a short slender stainless-steel tube, but it fires .22 ammunition and sells for about $300. Jail guards are not too thrilled with it, but the fingerprint identification people are REALLY unhappy.

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Russell E. Weston Jr., a delusional paranoid schizophrenic, is being held at a psychiatric center in the federal prison in Butner, N.C., on murder charges, and will be forced to take antipsychotic medication for 120 days in the hopes it will make him competent to stand trial just long enough to give him the death penalty. Then he can go back to being crazy.

Members of New York's Municipal Credit Union -- mostly public service workers employed by the city -- stole $15 million from ATMs during a computer failure following the World Trade Center collapse. The credit union, which has its headquarters near Ground Zero, lost its computer link to the ATM network and had no way to check accounts to make sure the withdrawals were covered by the member's balances. But officials decided to leave the ATMs operating anyway, under the theory that these 300,000 people needed their money during the crisis. Apparently some needed more money than others. More than 540 members overdrew their account balances by $5,000 or more, with a total of 4,000 stealing enough to come under investigation by the district attorney. So far 101 people have been arrested after refusing to pay up. They say that, if they have to give the money back, the terrorists will have won.

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The San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a voters' referendum on whether to grow marijuana on public property as a way to stop federal drug agents from busting medical marijuana clubs all the time. The idea would be for the city to grow it on vacant lots, with cultivation being handled by a job-training program for the unemployed. To ensure quality control, each lid would be emblazoned with the seal of the city of San Francisco and the face of Jerry Garcia.

Elizabeth Roach of Chicago admitted stealing $241,000 from her employer, Andersen Consulting, but asked for leniency because she's a shopaholic. Her lawyer, Jeffrey Steinback, told Federal Judge Matthew F. Kennelly that she once bought a $7,000 belt buckle at Neiman-Marcus, 70 pairs of shoes at one time, and took a shopping trip to London that cost $30,000 and was so addictive that she missed her plane home. Once she got home with her various hauls, she would feel guilty, hide it all from her husband, never wear the clothing, and then sell it to pawn shops for a fraction of its value. Here's the best part, though: the judge bought it! He said that she was using her shopping addiction to "self-medicate" her depression, so he agreed not to send her to jail. Instead she got five years probation, six months of home confinement on weekends, six weeks in a Salvation Army work-release center, and a fine of $3,000. She celebrated at Marshall Field's, but, as a sign of her newfound self-restraint, only visited eight of the 10 floors.

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German and Danish scientists discovered the first new insect order since 1915, wingless predators called Mantophasmatodea. They were first found in a 45-million-year-old piece of Baltic amber in a museum, but last month an international research team captured living samples in the mountains of western Namibia. The paper-clip-sized insects resemble praying mantises and, according to the Japanese, have aphrodisiac qualities when served in a creamy broth.


(Joe Bob Briggs writes several columns for UPI. Contact him at [email protected] or through his Web site, joebobbriggs.com. Snail mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, Texas 75221.)

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