Washington, D.C., resident Nicole Pugh, arriving at her polling station in November with the sole intention of casting a vote for mayor, noticed a line on the ballot asking her choice for Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner, even though no candidates were listed.
On a lark and with no knowledge of the office, she wrote in her own name, and that evening was informed that she had been elected, 1-0, to an office that had been vacant, through apathy, for the previous 14 years.
Though other Advisory Neighborhood Commission positions are contested and the candidates quite active, none is paid, and they work mostly via meetings.
However, having the title can garner press attention.
You’d think
that would put
a chill on their
relationship
When James Maynard arrived at the murder trial of his former long-time lover Fiona Adams, 24, at Britain’s Nottingham Crown Court, it was supposedly in support of Adams, who was contending that she did not recklessly start a fire that blazed out of control and took the lives of two of the couple’s three children.
However, Maynard, in full view of a mob of reporters, was wearing a grotesque clown mask resembling the face of the character Pennywise in the Stephen King novel “It,” and he declined numerous opportunities to comment on why he was wearing it.
After a three-week trial, Adams was acquitted.
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa Fla. 33679 or go to www.newsoftheweird.com.)