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by Chuck Shepherd

April 09, 2009

EYE WITNESS

Canadian filmmaker Rob Spence said recently that he would install a prosthetic eye with a camera and wireless transmitter (of the size now used for colonoscopies) into the socket from which one of his eyes had been removed as the result of a childhood accident. He hopes to control the prosthetic eye in the same way that his muscles control his good eye, to record what his eyes see, and his first project will be a documentary on people’s attitudes about privacy in an “Orwellian society.” “[T]he best way to make a connection [with an interviewee] is through eye contact,” he said. “When you bring in a camera, people change.”

POLITICAL ENDS

Artist Beth Grossman created her wall exhibit, “Seats of Power,” to encourage citizens to greater activism in local affairs around Brisbane, Calif. (just south of San Francisco Bay). The “Seats” are upholstered cushions individually tailored with the buttprints of each of the 10 city council members, who allowed Grossman to photograph them from behind, clothed, through a sheet of Plexiglas pressed against their posteriors to simulate being seated. All 10 co-operated, including Mayor Sepi Richardson, who said she had been considering her “legacy” lately, “but I never thought it would be my butt.”

THE HOMELAND IS SECURE

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration ruled in January that a post-9/11 federal maritime law, which requires comprehensive background credentials for mariners holding U.S. Coast Guard authorization on U.S. waters, applies even to the two “mule skinners” who work, in tourist season, dressed in colonial costumes at the Hugh Moore Historical Park in Easton, Pa. The park’s lone mule-pulled boat is operated in a 2-mile-long canal that is near nothing of strategic significance, said the park director.

PET PEEVE

Police were called to the Aliso (Calif.) Town Center on March 15 after a woman telephoned 911 to report being attacked near the center’s fountain by another woman, who had flung her dog’s feces at her and her infant. The flinger was said to be upset about complaints from passersby about the enema she was giving her dog in public.

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON BOOZE

(1) A 19-year-old University of Colorado student required emergency assistance in March after spending all evening badgering fellow partygoers to hit him in the face. Finally, at 2am, someone complied, resulting in a broken nose and massive bleeding. (2) A National City Bank in downtown Pittsburgh was broken into on March 7, inadvertently, when an intoxicated man accidentally tripped and crashed through the front window (narrowly avoiding decapitation). (3) According to sheriff’s reports, a man reported to Huntsville Hospital in Alabama on Feb. 18 after having passed out drunk with an ex-girlfriend and waking up with a sewing needle in his urethra.

UNDIGNIFIED DEATHS

(1) A motorist survived a crash on Feb. 4 near Los Banos, Calif., though his car fell down a 200-foot cliff. After he climbed back to the highway and sought help, he was accidentally hit and killed by another driver. (2) A 60-year-old man, celebrating his retirement from a transportation company in Ritto, Japan, in December, was killed when three co-workers tossed him playfully into the air and then apparently miscommunicated as to who would catch him. MTW