Rev Robert Shields (1918 – 2007) was a former Minister and high school English teacher who lived in Dayton, Washington. He left a diary of 37.5 million words chronicling every 5 minutes of his life from 1972 until a stroke disabled him in 1997.

Excerpts:

July 25, 1993 
7 am: I cleaned out the tub and scraped my feet with my fingernails to remove layers of dead skin.
7.05 am: Passed a large, firm stool, and a pint of urine. Used five sheets of paper.

August 13, 1995 
8.45 am: I shaved twice with the Gillette Sensor blade [and] shaved my neck behind both ears, and crossways of my cheeks, too.

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He regularly recorded his body temperature and blood pressure; critiqued newspapers; and described all the junk mail he got and the cost of almost everything he bought. He had three dozen ways, none obscene, to describe his urinations, all recorded. He slept in two-hour stretches in order to record his dreams. (…)

To do his diary, Mr. Shields, usually in his underwear, retreated to his back-porch office. He sunk into a tattered secretary’s chair cushioned by a foam doughnut. He was surrounded by six I.B.M. electric typewriters, arranged in a horseshoe. He migrated from machine to machine.

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When Nicholas James Brown prepares to go out for cocktails at the Tribeca Grand or to a clambake in the Hamptons, he sticks on a few boldly patterned Band-Aids by the Brazilian fashion designer Alexandre Herchcovitch.

To Mr. Brown, 24, who works at Esquire magazine in New York, the colorful strips are an important accessory, and he’s careful to coordinate them with his Kris Van Assche sweater or his Balenciaga bag. He generally wears one on his left hand or arm and balances it out with two or three on his right leg.

He doesn’t put them on his face because, he said, “I don’t want people thinking, ‘What happened?’ ” And if anyone does ask what he’s done to himself to need all of those bandages?

“I’ll lie and say, ‘I have a cut,’ ” he said.

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Police investigating a teenager accused of bomb-making and weapons violations found a map of Camp David with a presidential motorcade route in his home, a Montgomery County prosecutor said.

Collin McKenzie-Gude, 18, of Bethesda, also had a document that appears to describe how to kill someone 200 meters away, Montgomery Assistant State’s Attorney Peter A. Feeney said.

The teen had two forms of fake identification - one portraying him as a Central Intelligence Agency employee and another as a federal contractor, Feeney said. (…) They found 50 pounds of chemicals, assault-style weapons and armor-piercing bullets in his home.

{ Washington Post | Continue reading }

A man who authorities said was keeping weapons and military-style gear in his hotel room and car appeared in court Thursday on charges he threatened to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Raymond Hunter Geisel, 22, was arrested by the Secret Service on Saturday in Miami.

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John Warnock Hinckley, Jr. (born May 29, 1955) is a United States citizen who attempted to assassinate U.S. President Ronald Reagan in Washington, D.C. on March 30, 1981, as the culmination of an effort to impress actress Jodie Foster. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and has remained under institutional psychiatric care since then.

After repeated viewings of the 1976 movie Taxi Driver, in which a disturbed protagonist, Travis Bickle, played by Robert DeNiro, plots to assassinate a presidential candidate, Hinckley developed an obsession with actress Jodie Foster, who had played a child prostitute in the film. The Bickle character was in turn based on the diaries of Arthur Bremer, the attempted assassin of George Wallace. When Foster entered Yale University, Hinckley moved to New Haven, Connecticut for a short time to be nearer to her, slipping poems and messages under her door and repeatedly contacting her by telephone.

Failing to develop any meaningful contact with Foster, Hinckley developed such plots as hijacking an airplane and committing suicide in front of her to gain her attention. Eventually he settled on a scheme to win her over by assassinating the president, with the theory that as a historical figure, he would be her equal. To this end, he trailed President Jimmy Carter from state to state, but was arrested in Nashville, Tennessee on a firearms charge. Penniless, he returned home once again, and despite psychiatric treatment for depression, his mental health did not improve. In 1981, he began to target the newly elected president, Ronald Reagan. It was also at this time that he started collecting information on Lee Harvey Oswald, John F. Kennedy’s alleged assassin, whom he saw as a role model.

Just prior to Hinckley’s failed attempt on Reagan’s life, he wrote to Foster:

Over the past seven months I’ve left you dozens of poems, letters and love messages in the faint hope that you could develop an interest in me. Although we talked on the phone a couple of times I never had the nerve to simply approach you and introduce myself. […] the reason I’m going ahead with this attempt now is because I cannot wait any longer to impress you.

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Shortly before 2:30 p.m. EST, as Reagan walked out of the hotel’s T Street NW exit toward his waiting car, Hinckley emerged from the crowd of admirers and fired a Röhm RG-14 .22 cal. blue steel revolver six times in three seconds.

The first bullet hit White House Press Secretary James Brady in the head. The second hit District of Columbia police officer Thomas Delahanty in the back. The third overshot the president and hit the window of a building across the street. The fourth hit Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy in the abdomen. The fifth hit the bullet-proof glass of the window on the open side door of the president’s limousine. The sixth and final bullet ricocheted off the side of the limousine and hit the president under his left arm, grazing a rib and lodging in his lung, near his heart.

Sixteen minutes after the assassination attempt, the ATF found that the gun was purchased at Rocky’s Pawn Shop in Dallas, Texas. It was loaded with six “Devastator”-brand .22LR cartridges, which contained small lead azide explosive charges. The rounds were not manufactured in the U.S.; any bullet which contained actual explosives would have been classified as an illegal explosive device under U.S. federal law at the time Hinckley purchased them. All six bullets failed to explode.

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A woman who claimed a voodoo curse had led to her bank accounts being hijacked was yesterday found guilty of a £1m benefit fraud.

During the trial Remi Fakorede, 46, produced three fingers, claimed they belonged to her daughter, and suggested the digits were proof that she had been forced to act in a fraudulent manner.

Fakorede submitted 39 claims for tax credits over five years, largely for bogus children. She claimed her identity and bank accounts had been infiltrated by others, including a relative called Auntie Marian, who she said had voodoo powers.

She told jurors that a daughter, now three, had suffered from kidney failure and her fingers had dropped off. She claimed the “voodoo man” said the same thing would happen to her if she told authorities about the plot.

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Twins, Gerald and John Hubbs, 59, have a front yard with 30 bronze figures, mainly whimsical Sea themes, plus a few children, geese and horses.

The display moved from a neighborhood controversy to a police matter when the owners of the home, Gerald and John Hubbs, celebrated the Fourth of July by firing ceremonial bronze cannons in their backyard. The twins also activated a spiky metal dragon that spit flames. (…)

It is not the first time police have been dispatched to the Hubbs home. Six years ago, their lawn and driveway were dug up by police after their 82-year-old mother, Ethel, went missing. A former girlfriend of one twin had told investigators that she believed they had buried the body and continued to cash her Social Security checks.

A body was never found and the men were never charged. Police say they believe that the woman, who had emphysema, died naturally, but that her death was not reported and her body was never recovered.

During the search of the premises and a warehouse owned by one of the twins’ former wife, police uncovered illegal weapons, including an AK-47, booby traps, expensive jewelry, coins and allegedly forged documents. The Hubbses, chiropractors and former registered nurses, were tried on more than 100 charges.

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{ William Torres is escorted by Allentown Police from the police station to the jail. | The Morning Call }

{ Genuine photographs - description is inaccurate | via AdScam }

The government is to allow organs to be taken from people before they are officially brain dead in an effort to tackle the shortage of transplant donors.

Guidelines being published in September will allow transplant surgeons to begin removing organs five minutes after a donor’s heart has stopped.

The move has raised concerns about the drive to harvest more organs from dying patients to meet a government target to increase transplant rates by 50% in the next five years.

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Sometimes even ‘God’ has to knock on court doors, seeking the reins of the world. A 30-year-old call centre employee approached the Bombay High Court claiming to be Lord Vishnu’s reincarnation.

“I am the supreme lord and the god of all religions. I am Jesus Christ, Lord Ram, Lord Krishna and even Gautam Buddha. Earlier, I was born as Alexander the great,” Dharmendra Mishra told the court.

This supreme god had one prayer to make to the high court — ask President APJ Abdul Kalam to officially declare him as god and hand him the affairs of the nation. “Give me the power to rule the country, the world and the United Nations,” he told the division bench of acting Chief Justice J.N. Patel and Justice S.C. Dharmadhikari.

“My wife Sarita is the reincarnation of Goddess Lakshmi and my son is Rajiv Gandhi reborn,” he said. He added that his father, a retired employee of Fiat, is the god of gods Lord Shiva. “My father has also been born on this earth as the Mughal emperor and as President of America Truman who had bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” he said.

Asked why he took so many years to declare himself ‘god,’ he told HT: “I was aware of it since my childhood. But I thought it was a psychological disorder. However, lately I have had supernatural experiences which have confirmed my belief that I am god.”

But being a mortal God is not easy, said Mishra. “I have to face rebuke and sarcasm from my colleagues at work. But there are people who ask for help and seek advice from me,” he said.

{ Hindustan Times , September 2007 }

A 43-year-old German decided to settle his imminent divorce by chainsawing a family home in two and making off with his half in a forklift truck.

In March 2007, the trained mason measured the single-storey summer house — which was some 8 meters (26 feet) long and 6 meters wide — before chainsawing through the wooden roof and walls.

“The man said he was just taking his due,” said a police spokesman.

After finishing the job, the man picked up his half with the forklift truck and drove to his brother’s house where he has since been staying.

{ Reuters }

Like millions of sweethearts across the globe, Wall Winther has found true love. Her husband (…) is the Berlin Wall.

Wall Winther (whose original name was Eija-Riita Eklaf) is an Objectum-Sexual, or OS for short. Most OSes harbour their passions in private, terrified of rejection by society. But they can still form meaningful relationships, even if their partners might be considered unconventional. “It’s an orientation, like hetero or homosexuality,” explains Kiowa, a US-based OS who moderates an internet forum for like-minded souls. “We’re emotionally and physically attracted to objects. Replacing the term ‘hetero’ with ‘object’ would accurately describe OS.” (…)

Wall Winther, who enjoys relationships with many scale models of the Berlin Wall and whose previous lovers include a large model of a guillotine, says: “Yes, I can love the real Berlin Wall and the models. It’s not cheating because it’s the same construction. And when I married him, we decided being faithful isn’t important because he’s in Berlin and I’m over here in Sweden.” (…)

Some OSers have attempted to provide guides to having sex with specific objects. A manual devoted to car-loving exists online, suggesting methods such as leather interior humping and gearstick penetration. Wall Winther makes the important distinction that, for OS people, physical union isn’t to be confused with masturbation. “If you masturbate, you see your partner as an object, something only to pleasure you,” she says. “When I have sex with the Berlin Wall, or a model of him, I want to please him too. That’s the big difference.”

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{ A giant M installed to greet Mussolini’s arrival in a small Piemonte village, Italy, 1938 | photo: Farabola/LEEMAGE | 7 years later the bodies of Mussolini and his mistress were hung upside down on meat hooks in Milan }