Dateline: England— A woman who was issued an Anti-Social Behaviour Order banning her from engaging in high-decibel lovemaking with her husband was arrested by police for breaking the order—just two days after it was issued.Caroline Cartwright of Concord, Tyne on Wear, was served the ASBO last Friday after magistrates found her guilty of breaking an initial noise abatement order. But by Sunday, the 47-year-old had already breached the terms of the court order and was arrested by police officers. “I’m not going to stop,” she told London’s Daily Mail . “I’ve been making the same noises since the ASBO was imposed, and this morning, we were making noises for three hours.” The ASBO—imposed after police received 25 complaints from neighbors—bans Cartwright from “making excessive noise” during lovemaking with her husband Steve. During the last court proceeding, magistrates heard that the couple’s neighbor, Margery Ball, had not had a decent night’s sleep in two years—even though she is partially deaf. After receiving complaints, Environmental Health officers placed recording equipment in the flat next door to Cartwright’s house. Another neighbor, Rachel O’Connor, pressed a button on the machine every time she was disturbed by noise from next door. Miss O’Connor told the court that when she first moved into the flat in November 2007, Mrs. Cartwright’s enthusiastic vocal gymnastics started at midnight and lasted until 3 a.m. Environmental Health officer Pamela Spark told the court she had listened to 23 recordings of the Cartwrights having sex. She said, “There was an excessive screaming female voice on the recordings.” Mrs. Cartwright said she would appeal the original four-year ASBO as well as her new conviction for breaching the noise abatement order. Dateline: Pennsylvania— An attempt by two friends to send more than 200,000 text messages to one another in a single month has ended with a possible world record—and a $26,000 phone bill. Nick Andes, 29, and Doug Klinger, 30, had relied on their phone service carrier’s “unlimited text messaging” plan but must have missed some fine print. Andes received the inches-thick phone bill last week. “It came in a box that cost $27.55 to send to me,” Andes said. T-Mobile has, for now, credited Andes’ account and is “investigating” the charges. The two Lancaster-area residents and college pals set out in March to break the single-month texting record of India’s Deepak Sharma, who sent 182,000 messages in 2005. Andes sent more than 140,000 messages in March, and Klinger sent more than 70,000 for a grand total of just over 217,000. Guinness World Records has not yet said if it will confirm the record. Dateline: Minnesota— If at first you don’t succeed … . A state investigative report said a surgeon performed an appendectomy twice on the same patient after belatedly realizing that the diseased organ he removed was actually a random piece of fatty tissue. The Star Tribune reported that the surgeon didn’t realize his mistake until two days after the first operation when a hospital pathologist reported what was removed was “not an appendix.” The patient had been complaining of pain and fever. The by now ruptured appendix was removed, after which the unnamed patient spent 11 days in the hospital recovering from complications from the second trip to the operating room. The state’s Health Department found no evidence the hospital did anything wrong. Complaints against the doctor are handled by a separate state agency. Dateline: Texas— The Dallas Morning News reports that the mother of an elementary schooler has circumvented the school’s dress code by citing Biblical precedent. Dyker Neyland says she fought for her daughter’s right to attend the Thomas Haley Elementary School in Irving wearing an untucked shirt because of her religious beliefs as a Christian. The Irving school board agreed with her last week and overturned decisions by the school’s principal and district administrators, who has told Neyland that her daughter, Javé, must attend school with her shirt tucked in. Neyland said that Javé, a 7-year-old second-grader, has the right to wear her shirttail out because of a Bible verse, 1 Timothy 2:9, which dictates that “women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with propriety and moderation, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing.” All Irving elementary and middle schools require uniforms. According to the district’s website, elementary children are required to wear collared shirts or blouses tucked in with khaki or navy pants or skirts. Shirts are allowed to be white, light or navy blue, hunter green, or an authorized school shirt. “I feel I am being persecuted for being a Christian,” she told the board before the vote. “There will be a day of reckoning, and you will have to answer to God.” The school board voted 6-1 to give Neyland’s daughter a waver.
Compiled by Devin D. O'Leary. E-mail your weird news to devin@alibi.com.
