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May 14, 2000

YES, IT'S AN EMERGEN ... KA-BOOOOM! While tearing up his yard with a backhoe, a doctor in Boxford, Ma., apparently cut through a gas line,sparking an explosion that blew his palatial 15-room house to pieces. The blast could be heard for miles.
Dr. William Moore called gas company officials from his cell phone as soon as realized what he had done, and told them to turn off the gas line from the street immediately.
While he was making the call, his home blew up. He said, "Forget it. The house is gone."

WAS IT, `THOU SHALT' OR `THOU SHALT NOT?' A Japanese cult, the Ho-no-Hana Sanpogyo, has been bilking gullible citizens out of hundreds of millions of dollars since 1987, predicting their futures by reading their feet. Most predictions were dire, but bad fortune could be averted for a price.
The cult leader, Hogen Fukunaga, who says he is the reincarnation of both Buddha and Christ, claims he and his followers got their powers from voices from heaven.
He has been arrested, but don't expect any insights from his trial testimony. He says he no longer remembers what the voices told him.

HE SEEMED SO ALIVE: Rhoda Leigh Wooten, who was serving on an Athens, Ga., jury, was excused after the first day of the trial because she told the judge that her dear father had passed on to his final reward.
But an investigator found the man alive and well and living in a trailer park.
Rhoda Leigh was sent to the county jail for two days.

NICE FELLOW, BUT KIND OF QUIET: An Englishman and his 77-year-old father-in-law were in Scotland for a big rugby match when the old man suddenly died in his sleep in their hotel room.
For reasons known only to himself, the son-in-law dressed the man in a suit and tie and baseball cap and took him onto a bus to bring him back to England.
He put the cap brim over the dead man's eyes, so people on the bus were unaware of his condition.
But when the son-in-law phoned his wife from the bus with the bad news, she told police in England who intercepted the bus and removed the body. They did not arrest the son-in-law.

HMMM, WHAT'S THIS? ZZZZZT! A stork touched a high voltage power line near Lisbon, plunging millions of people in most of the southern half of Portugal into darkness for several hours. The bird was instantly incinerated.

Mike Pingree writes another Looking Glass column in the Boston Sunday Herald. You can read it by clicking here:
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists.html

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