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Some NASCAR sponsors get a little behind on the job
By John McPoland, Gazette Staff
DAYTONA BEACH, FL -- Of all the
corporate sponsorship associated with NASCAR, the oddest seems
 to
be Boudreaux's Butt Paste, a cream used to help babies with diaper rash.
Seems the company is looking to smooth the bumps for local NASCAR Rookie
Francesca Torquemada of Prince George's County, MD, who has just
accepted a partial sponsorship from Boudreaux as she saddles up for
another season in the big leagues. Torque said she and her crew were
already planning for next Saturday's showdown at the Stater Brothers
300. It will be held at the California Speedway, just outside of Los
Angeles, Calif.
 This
season Torque began racing as a full-time driver on the NASCAR Busch
Series, a circuit considered to be a stepping stone for drivers who want
to make it to the Nextel Series. She is the only woman scheduled to race
the Busch Series this year, and the ninth female racer on the NASCAR
circuit since 1982.
This will be the first year she will attempt to qualify in all Busch
Series races, of which 34 remain. Previously she drove in five races in
the Busch Series while also completing her GED. This season she will
also be driving a new Global Industrial Contractors Chevrolet.
UFO's SPOTTED IN DC AGAIN:
By Kristen Moore, Fairfax County
Metro Staff
Ever since
the late 1940’s, Roswell, New Mexico, America has had a fascination with
UFO’s, from the curious to the fanatic to the skeptical.
Another rash of UFO sightings, similar to both the ones in July 2004 and
the ones from 2002 (the 50th Anniversary of the National Airport
incident), has turned up in the Washington area.
After the increasing reports of UFO sightings, local officials had begun
to dismiss the sightings. However, late last week a camera stationed in
Arlington National Cemetery caught an image of an unidentified object
flying over the George Washington Parkway. Amateur analysis and
Professional sources are both at a loss for exactly what the object
could be.
Prince William County 911 dispatchers were inundated with phone calls
about a supposed UFO hovering over an abandoned family cemetery behind
Rollins’s General Store in rural Bristow, Virginia, a sliver of a
historical district outside Manassas, VA. County Sheriffs were
dispatched to investigate, and while there were clear signs of
disturbance in the fields surrounding the gravestones, eyewitness
accounts were spotty at best. Most did consistently state some version
of seeing strange lights, up and down the area between Fauquier and
Prince William Counties, Virginia and the DC Beltway, which had poorer
visibility due to the haze from city lights.
Local retired Bristow, VA resident Meredith Rexrode told police that she
saw “a bright white light, like the star of the baby Jesus, but it don’t
stay still, you know? And then I saw that there Red star everyone’s on
about, but it din’t move. It lit up the whole field like the fourth of
July, it did.”
Amateur photographer Keith Arrington, who personally took it upon
himself to analyze the photos looking for signs of forgery, stated that,
“Well, I can guarantee you 100% that this is no alien spaceship. It is
nothing more than a time exposure of an aircraft and its navigation
lights. I would bet that if someone were to investigate they would find
that at night this web cam takes exposures of several seconds. How do I
know? I have taken time exposures on aircraft on purpose while toying
around with my new digital camera, a Nikon Coolpix 4300. This camera is
capable of taking long exposure shots of up to 60 seconds in length in
bulb mode. The camera was handheld during the exposures so the images
are a bit blurry and shaky. In all the images, the steady lights of the
aircraft can be seen to make a long streak while the hazard strobes
create specific dots along the streaks length.
Smithsonian astronomer Percy Quarles said, “In truth.... I don't know
what to make of this.... If this is a hoax, whoever did the hoax is an
expert.... I've put the picture through ‘Find Edges’...in other words,
it will find every edge that exists in that photo...as one can see, this
craft (?) has what appears to be ‘windows’....”
LOCAL VENUES REOPENING AFTER BLACK
NOVEMBER REPAIRS: The following
clubs have announced that they have reopened for business, after making
extensive repairs to bring their buildings back to code following the
disastrous November city-wide blackout: The Foxxx's Den, Web of Night,
Rabble, Capital Hill, Bound and The Black Cat.
POLICE
NEWS
 ANOTHER
LOCAL BAND GETS DEALT A DEADLY DEAL FROM THE BIG
APPLE - DC MOURNS THE LOSS OF LOCAL RAP ARTISTS 1200
MURDERED BROTHERS -- New York, New York and Southeast DC:
Local rapper Trixie "DJ
Rickety-B" Robinson has just returned to Washington,
following treatment for injuries sustained in a
freak subway accident in New York City over the
Christmas Holidays. Robinson and the other members
of Rap band "Sultan Homicide and 1200 Murdered
 Brothers"
were on a subway car on the A line in New York,
heading to a music club to celebrate after a
recording session, when their train was involved in
an inexplicable accident of some kind.
Some reports have said
there was a broken rail in the midtown feeder
tunnel, though as has been more frequent of late,
there are also such a great number of bizarre and
fantastic alternate stories that it is becoming hard
to ignore. Eyewitnesses on TV reports in
 Manhattan
swear that the supposed "sea monster" that is said
to be lurking in the Hudson and in the sewers and
tunnels under New York City, attacked the train. The
last two cars were completely torn apart. The band
was in the third car, which was heavily damaged.
Over 100 people were injured, including Robinson,
and over 25 confirmed dead after the wreck.
Band mate
Kareem "Sultan Homicide" Oakley was said to have
died in the crash, but his body was never found and
the coroner's office has not confirmed a death
certificate for
 Oakley.
He remains simply listed as a Missing Person.
Robinson was readmitted
to DC General earlier this week for mental
exhaustion following a relapse in which she became
delusional, ranting incoherently to concerned
friends that Oakley was dead, or alive but he's a
vampire, and that other friends of hers were evil
wizards, including fellow Web musician Sarah
Ravenscraft formerly of VHHV, the band who died in a
bus accident coming from New York City to Washington
just a couple months ago.
Doctors are giving
Robinson the best available care, and attribute her
fanatical outbursts
to PTSS stemming from watching her friends killed.
VIOLENCE AGAINST THE HOMELESS ON THE RISE ONCE MORE - TWO BODIES
FOUND
 BURNED - NORTHEAST: DCPD
forensics investigators are working
to identify two badly burned bodies, found in two separate locations, a
day apart. Both bodies are assumed male, but this is not yet confirmed.
Thus far, investigators have no connection between the two bodies, other
than the unusual means of death and the proximity of time.
GOTHIC NIGHTCLUB SUFFERS ANOTHER OUTBREAK OF VIOLENCE;
AUTHORITIES THREATEN TO CLOSE FAMED MUSIC VENUE FOREVER IF IT CONTINUES
- SOUTHEAST DC -- Notorious
nightspot
 "Web
of Night" in Southeast DC was cited twice this past week for incidents
of violence occurring on club property, thus firmly re-cementing the
Club's reputation not only for violence, but bizarre occurrences of a
more occult nature. Earlier this week, a young Hispanic or Arabic woman
identified as Kat Day was hospitalized after a peculiar and inexplicable
incident in which she caught fire to herself in the club near the front
bar. Eye witnesses do not know the cause of the fire, which gave Day
second degree burns. The Web closed that bar for two days while workmen
repaired superficial smoke and burn damage.
Later this past week, there was an
altercation with a belligerent patron who was beating up a young black
woman by his booth. Bouncers tried to pull the man off her but he hit
back with such force that it took three of them to break it up and by
then the woman was unconscious. She was hospitalized at DC General,
still in a coma at admittance. She was later identified as Jennifer
Robinson, sister of Rap singer Trixie Robinson, also admitted for
observation earlier that week. The man was not apprehended, and some
sources claim he dashed out of the club at impossible speeds, losing
track of him almost instantly.
Club manager and co-owner MC Nomad had no
comment at press time.
ENTERTAINMENT
NEWS:
GOSSIP
COLUMN
Time Heals Some Wounds... a good rebound snog  heals
others -- Seems that partner-swapping
is back in vogue in Doom City, as one
of our intrepid sources working the story on violence against the
homeless and in public parks, caught two of our column regulars drowning
in each other's sorrows behind a park bench a few nights ago. Gabby
Wildwood's throwaway, former bodyguard Raine Drouven, was checking the
tonsils of one of Aesik Baird's harem, former Cap Hill bartender Jane
Smith, by the light of the silvery moon, it seems. While not nearly as
interesting a show as the live porn in the park fest DC has experienced
of late, it did raise a brow or two, though not from their Ex's.
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San Francisco Population Joins Spontaneous Rave |
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA — An unprecedented rave
took place simultaneously at
nearly every location in the city last night, drawing
almost every resident into its wild revels. The
so-called “Avatar Trance” was sponsored by two groups,
the Waydown Viktae and the Bay Area Bacchantes. Police
and FBI attempts to shut down the city-wide dance party
failed completely, and authorities were baffled by
malfunctioning equipment and the “conversion” of
officers and agents to the ecstatic vibe. |
Diamonds Are Forever: Company Makes Gems From Loved Ones' Ashes
By JIM SUHR, AP Business Writer
ST. LOUIS, MO - Proving that
diamonds indeed are forever, a widower got a gem of a keepsake made
from his late wife's ashes this month: a 0.35-carat, round yellow
diamond.
The synthetic stone, ordered by a man in
his 40s shortly after his wife's death from heart disease in May, is
the handiwork of LifeGems.
"It was beautiful, really pretty," funeral director Paul Baue said
of the stone ordered by the widower, who requested privacy and
declined to be interviewed for this story. "It's a great way to pay
tribute to someone's life."
That LifeGem was the first sold in the St. Louis area, according to
the suburban Chicago-based company. Three-year-old LifeGems
estimates it has crafted nearly 1,000 of the diamonds — what it
calls "the most unique memorial product ever invented" — for about
500 families.
To LifeGem, the synthetic diamonds offer a choice in a funeral
industry that for years, by nature, offered limited choices for
consumers — bury a body in a graveyard or have the body cremated,
with the ashes stored in an urn or scattered in the wind.
LifeGem needs 8 ounces of human ashes to make a diamond the company
prizes for its "closeness and mobility," leaving the rest of the
cremains to the family. Depending on size, LifeGem prices vary from
about $2,500 for a quarter carat to about $14,000 for a full carat,
VandenBiesen said.
"These remains are very precious and special to people, but they
don't just have an aesthetic form and look," VandenBiesen said.
"People actually really enjoy these, and that's really different
from what you'd expect in the funeral profession."
As part of the LifeGems process that takes a few months, carbon
extracted from cremains are subjected to the extremes of heat and
pressure. The resulting diamond then is cut and faceted like a
normal diamond.
Not to be outdone, Georgia-based Eternal Reefs Inc. has catered to
people who in life honored the environment, mixing their cremains
into concrete and placing them in the water off any of several
states, creating new marine habitats for fish and other sea life.
Other businesses will send cremains into space or place them in
fireworks for folks who want to go out with a bang.
On the Net:
LifeGem:
Astronomers Ready for Comet Smashing Mission
Tariq Malik, Staff Writer SPACE.com
On Friday, NASA's Deep Impact
spacecraft successfully performed the mission's first trajectory
correction maneuver, a planned firing of the spacecraft's rocket
motors to aim it more precisely at Comet Tempel 1 for its
encounter this July.
The Deep Impact mission will send two spacecraft on brief
spaceflight to Comet Tempel 1, where an "Impactor" payload will
slam into the object while its mothership, "Flyby," looks on.
The entire mission should last only a few months, but
researchers are hopeful they will finally be able to break
through the outer surface of a comet.
"Only the internal material of a comet is unchanged from the
beginning of the solar system," said Deep Impact principal
investigator Michael A'Hearn, of the University of Maryland,
during a press briefing today at NASA headquarters in Washington
D.C. "But there are no data on the interior, and that's what
we're hoping to solve with Deep Impact."
On July 4, Tempel I will crash into the impactor at a relative
speed of 23,000 miles per hour, destroying it, while the flyby
records the event and relays data from the impactor back to
Earth.
NASA will not confirm queries as to whether it will use the
mission to also study The Red Star, a mysterious new body that
appeared what is thought to be several months ago, though some
claim it has been spotted with high-powered observatory
equipment over a couple years prior.
More information on Deep Impact is available at
http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov
Ghost Ship Legend Grows Off R.I. Coast
By ELIZABETH ZUCKERMAN, Associated Press Writer
CRANSTON, R.I. - Rhode Island
legend tells of a spectral ship that haunts the waters off Block Island,
bursting into flame and sinking into the ocean. Depending on who's
spinning the tale, the islanders involved in the human drama turned out
to be heroes — or monsters.
 The
tales hold that the ship is the ghost of one that wrecked on the
island's northern point shortly after Christmas 1738. Different versions
say the vessel's appearance augurs bad weather and appears on the
Saturday between Christmas and New Year's.
And while there's good evidence that a British ship, the Princess
Augusta, carrying a load of passengers from territory that would become
Germany, ran aground on the island on Dec. 27, 1738, there's accord on
little else about the incident.
According to folklorist Michael Bell, of Cranston, within the century
after the incident, two versions became popular.
The on-island version told of the residents' generosity rescuing and
nursing back to health the ill and starving passengers, who had been
abused and exploited.
The other version was immortalized by the 19th-century poet and
abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier, whose poem "The Palatine" appeared
in The Atlantic Monthly in 1867. In it, Block Islanders recall the wreck
— and some islanders' roles in causing it by igniting false signal
lights to draw the ship aground.
Livermore instead presented an account by a scholar of his day.
According to it, the ship came ashore on Sandy Point, and once the tide
rose, was able to be floated again, and towed into Breach Cove by the
islanders. Many fell ill, died and were buried on the island's southwest
side.
Today, a marker, installed in 20th century, stands at the site. It reads
simply, "Palatine Graves — 1738."
It's the only major physical evidence of the disaster. Charlotte Taylor
of the Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission said
no wreckage has ever been found that could be positively linked to the
ship. Martha Ball, the former first warden of Block Island and a
life-long resident, said there's some evidence the ship was repaired and
continued on to Philadelphia, its original destination.
While Livermore dismissed the story of the islanders' barbarity, he was
less willing to write off accounts of the so-called Palatine Light.
He noted that an unexplained light was often sighted off Sandy Point by
people both on Block Island and on the mainland, and included in his
book an 1811 account from a doctor — whom he called a man of standing —
who had witnessed a light that resembled a ship ablaze.
More than a century after that account, talk about the Palatine Light
remained.
BOSTONIAN HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS DISRUPT SCHOOL WITH
 STRANGE FITS -- Boston, Massachusetts
During
11th Grade History class, eight children began screaming at once,
and then all went into seizures. They all began speaking in fluent
Latin, reciting a portion of the biblical verse John 11:44... "And
he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes:
and his face was bound about with a napkin." All of the children
were from the Milliner Family.
INTERNATIONAL
NEWS
EARTHQUAKE IN ITALY; PRICELESS TREASURES DAMAGED -
Venice, Italy
 A
small earthquake rocked the city of Venice and the surrounding area
on November 30th.
The fresco on the floor of the Ca' d'Oro, a Venetian Palace built in
the 15th Century, cracked. Artisans have been working night and day
to repair it, and it's been closed off to tourists since then.
The crypts under the Basilica San Marco were broken into that day,
also, and several tombs pillaged. Authorities are mystified.
MENTAL PATIENT SUICIDE FRENZY SHOCKS ENGLAND -
West Midland Prison, England:
 The
psychiatric ward of the prison was overcome with a rash of suicides.
With 15 inmates successfully killing themselves, the suicide rate
has risen to 45 percent in that prison, up 10 percent from the last
year's statistic. All of the rooms of the deceased had words some
written in blood. Smudges made most illegible, but authorities think
that one of them was the word "Rache", followed by three vertical
lines. Security has been increased, and all inmates are on suicide
prevention watch now.
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