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Sunday, March 12, 2000
IF YOU ARE looking for a unique gift for someone you love - or maybe hate - a California dentist may have it. For $39.95, Roger Freeman will sell you a silk necktie or scarf featuring designs inspired by more than a dozen deadly bacteria. There are the colorful patterns of influenza, malaria, cholera and the plague, as well the abstract designs of HIV, chlamydia and gonorrhea. The designs are drawn from photographs of the bacteria as seen under an electron microscope. Every product turned out by Dr. Freeman's Encino-based company, Infectious Awareables, comes with a tag containing information about the disease it portrays. He donates up to 30 percent of his profits for education and research. The company also makes cotton boxer shorts that sell for less than half the price of the ties and scarves, but Dr. Freeman said they are currently out of stock. Inventory control problems certainly do plague entrepreneurs.
MUSTACHIOED beer drinkers take note: You're wasting barrels of money. New scientific research commissioned by the Guinness brewery showed that an estimated 92,370 mustachioed Guinness drinkers lose up to 162,719 pints of the brew each year - worth some $675,900. "A genuine mustache has been proven to contribute to a significant Guinness wastage, as a result of inter-fiber retention at every sip," the company said in a statement. A hairy dilemma for beer drinkers, indeed.
THE PSYCHICS must have seen Jeffrey Ochs coming. The 49-year-old Hackensack, N.J., man was arrested last month on charges he is refusing to pay $70,000 in phone charges rung up in repeated calls to the Psychic Hotline. His attorney, Richard Geller, said his client's troubles began when he called the hot line because he had emotional problems. The psychics kept him talking for 30 minutes, at $6 a minute, then told him to call back again and they would help him. He did, hundreds of times, between Nov. 15 and Jan. 7, never asking how much the calls being made to the South Pacific island of Vanuatu would cost. Now Mr. Ochs has filed a complaint, charging Bell Atlantic with deceptive business practices. He contends Bell Atlantic is acting as a collection agent for the Psychic Hotline and Sprint, his long-distance carrier, to procure the full amount of the bill. In other words, he's claiming that he knows for whom Bell Atlantic was tolling.
CATHOLICS in a Wisconsin diocese are getting a break on the Lenten regulation of abstaining from meat on Fridays so they can enjoy corned beef and cabbage this Friday on St. Patrick's Day. Bishop William Bullock, who granted the dispensation for the Madison Roman Catholic Diocese, suggested that Catholics who make use of the dispensation compensate by performing another form of penance, such as acts of charity, prayer or alms giving. We'd add abstaining from green beer as well.