• Cygnals Zine - Issue #8, Summer 1996


    Some of the odd news reported in Cygnals


    Male-man nipped

    VICTORIA (CP) -- He was male, but he wasn't the mailman.
    An elderly woman put her stamp of disapproval on a man who stuck his penis through her front door mail slot, police said.
    She slammed the slot cover shut, trapping the man, who yelped in pain.
    "She gave it a pretty good push," said Satff Sgt. Frank Whitton. "She finally let go because she had to go phone the police."
    Later, a dog tracked the man to where police believe a car had been parked. Police did not get a description, but this postman will likely only ring once, Whitton said.

    Daniel and Helene Pollan want to know what happened to their 25 years worth of home movies. They took their 8mm films to Kmart to be transferred to videotape and got a rude surprise when the tape came back. Instead of family vacations, the Pollans say their tape had scenes of strangers having sex. The Jacksonville, Florida, couple planned to share the video with family members on their 50th wedding anniversary. Eighty-year-old Daniel Pollan says he got sick to his stomach when he saw the black-and-wh ite porn. The Pollans say to make matters worse, they didn't get back their original home movie reeles from the lab, but three reels of grainy sex films. The couple is suing Kmart and Fuji for five million dollars, claiming emotional distress. So far, no one has come forward to claim the porn films.


    Sitter sues after toddler hits her

    DALLAS (AP) A babysitter is suing a four-year-old and his parents, saying the boy crushed her larynx and left her unable to talk.
    Erica Bailey, 21, says Connor Shaars hit her in the throat while she was talking to the boy's older brother. Her claim for $177,000 in damagse is expected to go to trial later this month.
    One of Bailey's lawyers, Steve Muncey, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that his client lost her voice for four months, enrolled in sign language classes and had to drop out of college.
    She has regained "some kind of voice, but it's not the same," he said.
    Connor's boy's parents, Theo and Mackie Shaars, are flabbergasted.
    "I thought it was too bizarre to be true," said Theo Schaars, a Dallas stock broker.
    Muncey said the boy hit Bailey in anger when she did not join him in a game of checkers he demanded.
    "It's not like the kid just bumped into the girl," Muncey said. "This one ran across the room and bopped her."

    Surgery usually isn't a do-it-yourself project -- except for an Illinois county coroner, Deanna Stumpf. She was sharpening some knives when one slipped and cut off her thumb. Stumpf says she doesn't like going to hospitals. So, after she almost fainted, Stumpf says she stopped the bleeding, cleaned the wound and sewed her thumb back on. It'll be a week or so before she knows if her D-I-Y surgery was successful. But Stumpf has some advice for others in a similar situation -- don't try this at home.

    Jury convicts `Fantasy Man' in rape cases

    Nashville, Tenn. (AP) The "Fantasy Man" faces as long as 30 years in prison after a jury convicted him of tricking women into having sex blindfolded by telling each one he was her boyfriend.
    Businessman Raymond Mitchell, 45, was convicted Thursday of rape by fraud and attempted rape by fraud. He will be sentenced in March. The defence said the women agreed to have sex.
    Prosecutors said Mitchell called hundreds of women oer the years, most of whom hung up on him. Of the 30 women who reported encounters with him to police, eight said they had sex with the caller.
    One woman said she had sex with "Fantasy Man" twice a week for two months in 1992 because she thought he was her boyfriend. She said she discovered he wasn't when her blindfold slipped off.
    Mitchell was convicted in the early morning sexual encounters with two women and of attempting sex with a third woman who realized she was being duped in time to lock the man out of her room.
    Each instance began with a phone call to the sleeping women and a whispered voice. He said he was their boyfriend and sked them to fulfil his fantasy of having sex with a blindfolded woman.
    Defence lawyer Edward Fowlkes said in his closing argument that the women agreed to act out the sexual fantasies Mitchell suggested.
    "How do you spell consent?" Fowlkes asked the jury. "Talk dirty 20 or 30 minutes on the phone, that's how."
    Fowlkes argued the women knew they were engaging in sex play with a stranger, but called police later for some reason.
    Fowlkes said he will appeal the decision, "but that's still down the road."

    Authorities in one Connecticut community see nothing funny in Silly String. Town officials in Southington say they'll decide today whether to ban the multicolored party favors and smoke bombs, too. The trouble with Silly String started at a festival in October when pranksters squirted it on motorcycle officers, band members and cheerleaders. Officials say Silly String is messy and dangerous, because the officers almost crashed their motorcycles. Smoke Bombs were also set off. Violators of the Silly Stri ng ban could be fined 99 dollars. But the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union sees the proposed Silly String law as just plain sily. The CCLU says laws already on the books protect officers from a Silly String attack.

    Prisoner denied inflatable sex doll

    JERUSALEM (Reuter) Israel's supreme court has burst an Israeli prisoner's dream of having an inflatable sex doll in his cell
    In a ruling appearing in the Israeli media Monday, the court accepted the argument of prison authorities that Inmate Amir Hazan, 35, could use the doll to fool guards in an escape attempt or hide drugs in it.
    The prison service also contended other inmates would fight over the doll.
    "I've been in jails since the age of 14. If they let me be with a woman, I would give up on getting a doll," said Hazan, imprisoned this time for 10 years for what newspapers described as acts of violence.

    Chili routs would-be rapist

    COLOMBO (Reuter) A 62-year-old Sri Lankan described as a would-be rapist fled in agony after his intended victim threw a bottle of chili sauce over his naked body.
    The 55-year-old woman caught the man full in the face and body "when he followed her contemplating his next move, still undressed, inflamed by his lust," the state-run Daily News said.
    The man "remained several hours under water in great pain" before he was arrested.

    Joined in john

    TAICHUNG, Taiwan (Reuter) Eight Taiwan couples got married Sunday inside a luxurious $1 million public lavatory that one of the couples designed and built.
    Bride Chiu Chiu-kuei designed the toilets, set in a public park in the central city of Taichung, and her groom, Lee Wong-tsong, built them.
    "Since the bathroom is the creation of me and my husband it is very meaningful to us and therefore we decided to have our ceremony in here," Chiu said.

    Issue #8 Page -- Cygnals Zine Page
    cygnals@interlog.com