~ IV ~

with Draconis Blackthorne

---

Country Gripped By Four Lucky Nines

7:49 AM ET September 9, 1999

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Women rushed to give birth, filmmakers grabbed their clapperboards and new businesses flung open their doors as "four nines" fever gripped Thailand Thursday.
The ninth of the ninth of ninety-nine may spell potential disaster for old computer systems, some of which were initially programmed to shut down when they read "9999."
But in Thailand, where "Khao" -- the Thai word for nine -- literally means "step forward" or "progress," the day is a seriously auspicious time for new projects. Including babies.
Hospitals reported an unusually large number of women rushing in to request Caesarian births.
"I will name my son as Khao (nine)," a mother recovering from the operation told a local television station.
Chalong Pakdivichit was one of 10 Thai filmmakers to start shooting a new film Thursday.
"We performed religious rites at nine minutes past nine today to mark the start of my new film," he told reporters.
In central Bangkok several new businesses hung out signs announcing grand openings, while opposition politician Chalerm Yoobamrung chose the day to announce that his two sons would run as candidates in Thailand's next general election.
For dissidents from Myanmar living in exile in Thailand, the day had a different significance -- it was the one they chose for a popular uprising against military rule in their homeland.
At nine minutes past nine they burned their national flag in front of the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok.
Nine is known to be the lucky number of Myanmar's aging and officially retired military strongman Ne Win, but dissidents have been hoping to turn it against him and his successors.

BANGKOK (Reuters) - The date September 9, which has sparked fears of a 9-9-99 computer bug, will actually be a lucky day for Thailand's people, the country's most sought-after fortune teller told Reuters.
"The number 9 has been the number for Thais for all along. It is a good omen and holy number which would bring good luck to people," soothsayer Attaviroj Sritula said Wednesday.
The date was also an auspicious one for performing of religious rites by worshippers, he said.
"The figure 9 represents the spike on the head of Rahu (the Hindu god of darkness) which throws a flash of light and represents prosperity," he added.
"So people should take the 9-9-99 as the date on which they should make merit and the auspicious time to do so is at 9:09 a.m.(local time)," he said.
He cited Thailand's revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who is also dubbed King Rama 9 in the Chakri dynasty, as an example of a product of the number nine and who has worked hard to bring peace and prosperity to the country.
Some fear that, in a dress rehearsal for the dreaded millennium or Year 2000 (Y2K) bug, certain older computers could read the four nines in their internal clocks as a cut-off code, freeze and perhaps even destroy data.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (APBNews.com) -- A 17-year-old accused of repeatedly stabbing a friend he asked to participate in a satanic ritual pleaded not guilty today to a charge of attempted first-degree murder, authorities said.
Darrel Wayne Harris will be tried as an adult and faces up to life in prison for the attack, which caught the alleged victim, Robert Menendez, 22, and the ritual's other participants by surprise, officials said.
"The victim thought he was involved in one level of activity and became an unwilling participant in another," Broward County Assistant State Attorney Alex Urruella told APBNews.com. Became friends through e-mail
Authorities said the two struck up an acquaintance through e-mail and an interest in satanic Web sites, which they frequently visited at public libraries.
They met in a wooded area along S.W. 20th Street around 4:15 a.m. to perform the ritual along with Harris' unidentified girlfriend and at least one other person, Detective Mike Reed, a police spokesman, said.
Investigators said the two sliced their hands, mixed their blood and drew a pentagram in the dirt while chanting. Harris then allegedly took the bloodshed one step farther and turned the butcher knife on Menendez, striking him as many as nine times in the neck, Urruella said.
During the attack, Menendez later told police, "he was convinced he was going to die," Reed told APBNews.com.

Injured boy abandoned
Although the group left Menendez lying on the ground, he managed to find help. "He banged on a neighbor's door, and the man called 911," Reed said.
Paramedics transported Menendez to Broward General Medical Center, where he was treated for several days and released, authorities said.
"He was very lucky to have survived," Urruella added.

Charges upgraded
Arrested at the downtown public library on May 13, Harris was initially charged with aggravated battery. But Urruella said he upgraded to the more serious offense when the evidence revealed "a clear intent to kill someone."
Harris has been held without bail at the Broward County Jail since his arrest and will likely be represented by a public defender, though one has not yet been assigned to the case, officials said.
Attempts to reach his and Menendez's families in Fort Lauderdale were unsuccessful.
Urruella does not intend to charge the ritual's other participants in the attack. "There's been no evidence presented that anybody else knew this was going to happen," he said.

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (APBNews.com) -- A fugitive who allegedly helped strangle a 13-year-old girl in a 1998 satanic ritual has been found hiding out in Alabama, police said.
Dennis Ronald Scott, who is among three people accused of killing Shevawn Geoghegan in a deserted mental institution in February last year, was found after a television report inspired a flood of tips to Santa Monica police.
"The tips came in after the show [America's Most Wanted] last weekend," said Lt. Gary Gallinot of the Santa Monica Police Department. "They told us that he was in Birmingham, Ala., and we contacted police there."
Birmingham police found the 24-year-old Tuesday, hanging out near a fountain in a section of town known as Five Points South, a popular spot with youth who are into alternative culture. Police said Scott had been hard to capture because he lived under numerous aliases, including the name of a dead friend, Jimmy Ronald Turner.

Victim strangled with belt
Scott is being held on a murder warrant issued in California. Gallinot said that he had waived extradition but that the details of the transfer to the West Coast are still being worked out.
The body of 13-year-old Geoghegan was found Feb. 26 wrapped in a blanket in the basement of a vacant mental hospital that police said was frequented by teens who were into their own brand of satanic worship. She had been strangled with a belt.
Geoghegan was a friend of the three suspects and voluntarily went to the hospital on the night of her slaying. Detectives found dead animals and satanic symbols near the scene of the crime, police said.
The other two suspects in the killing have already been caught by police and brought to trial. Glen Mason, 23, was convicted last week of murder, and Elizabeth Ann Mangham, 17, pleaded no contest to manslaughter charges just this week.

NEILLSVILLE, Wis. (Reuters) - A Catholic priest has confessed to stealing church items including candelabra and an antique incense burner, then returning them after apparently becoming stricken with guilt, police said Friday.
Rev. Glen Gardner, 38, and an accomplice, church organist Kurt Schione, 41, were charged with burglary and theft and were set to make a court appearance in Clark County Circuit Court next week.
Police said Gardner gained access to three churches earlier this month and, aided by Schione, filled a van with items that included a $9,000 monstrance used to display Eucharistic bread, a ciborium used to hold communion wafers, two candelabra, altar candlesticks, a missal stand, an antique incense burner and antique linens.
The pair later became overwhelmed with guilt and left many of the items in boxes outside a Milwaukee church's garage, Clark County Sheriff's Capt. Mark Cattanach said.
Cattanach said Gardner had confessed to police.
``It's a very strange case. It's pretty much of a shock,'' Cattanach said.

ROME (Reuters) - Nearly a quarter of Italians believe in magic, fortune-telling, astrology and spiritualism, spending a total one billion lire ($547,000) per year on them, according to a poll released Friday.
The survey by retailers' body Confesercenti and polling institute SWG found 22 percent, or more than 10 million people, believed in mystical practices in a country boasting 70,000 magicians, astrologers, clairvoyants and faith healers.
Confesercenti said respondents turned to the supernatural to solve problems of love, health and work but that not all were happy at the results, with 2.5 percent or 1.2 million people declaring themselves victims of fraud.
``While there is an understandable need for a touch of magic in life ... action is needed to stamp out abuses, illegal behavior and fraud widely linked to these practices,'' Confesercenti said.

JOLIET, Ill. (Reuters) - A 66-year-old Franciscan nun has confessed to scrawling racist graffiti on the bathroom walls of the hospital where she was a chaplain, police said Thursday.
Sister Dorothy Toman confessed when confronted about the graffiti written with a black marker found on two separate days late last month in five bathrooms at Provena Saint Joseph Medical Center.
``She said she did it to see how the hospital would react,'' Joliet Police Sgt. Terry Mazur said.
``She admitted to writing the words 'white supremacy','' Mazur said, adding he was not equipped to offer a comment on Toman's mental state.
Security cameras showed Toman was among those who entered a women's bathroom late last month where graffiti was found, and she admitted her actions when questioned by a detective.
Toman, who had worked at the hospital for about a year and was one of 10 chaplains offering solace to patients, was charged with two counts of criminal defacement of property and released on $100 bond.
Hospital spokesman Clint Giese said Toman was not a suspect in the distribution of pamphlets and flyers espousing racial hatred that were found on the desks of some black employees earlier this year.

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Along with soap and vitamins, those friendly Amway salesmen have been pushing something else for years -- false rumors that rival Procter & Gamble Co. is in league with the devil -- attorneys charged in opening arguments of a lawsuit Monday.
Procter & Gamble lawyers said Amway Corp. had tried to take away sales by fomenting the mistaken belief, prevalent in some religious circles, that Procter & Gamble's venerable trademark incorporated satanic symbols such as the number ``666'' and devil's horns.
``They (Amway) know full well the malignant, cancerous effect of associating someone with a satanic cult,'' Procter & Gamble attorney Mike Gallagher said. ``It incorporates everything that is bad and nothing that's good.'' The lawsuit is the culmination of years of bitterness between Procter & Gamble and Amway, which has filed a counter-suit charging that Procter & Gamble is conducting a smear campaign.
Procter & Gamble attorneys said Amway might have encouraged the rumors since they first surfaced in the 1970s. The lawsuit asks for $595 million in lost sales from 1995 to 1997, plus an unspecified amount for damage to the company's reputation.
An attorney for direct marketer Amway denied the charges and said Procter & Gamble had sued because it was concerned about Amway's strong sales growth in Asia.
The trademark, which dates back to the 1850s, shows a bearded ``man in the moon'' looking over 13 stars, one for each of the original 13 American colonies.
Procter & Gamble says the trademark ``remains an important company identification'' but removed it in 1985 from the company's more than 300 products. These include such well-known brands as Tide laundry detergent, Crest toothpaste, Ivory soap, Pampers disposable diapers and Folgers coffee.
In an audio tape played in court Monday, an Amway distributor said in an April 1995 voice mail to other distributors that Procter & Gamble's president had admitted on the Phil Donahue television show that a percentage of the company's profits went to the ``Church of Satan.''
But Amway attorney Charles Babcock, who successfully defended talk show hostess Oprah Winfrey against a 1998 lawsuit brought by Texas livestock producers who said she had defamed beef, said Amway did not approve of the distributor's message and had quickly ordered him to send out a retraction.
``We've bent over backwards to help Procter & Gamble stop this rumor,'' he said.
Babcock said the Satanism rumors emanated not from Amway but from religious groups unhappy about Procter & Gamble's sponsorship of controversial television programs. He charged that the company had handled the problem badly from the beginning.
He showed a videotape of comedian David Letterman joking about the rumors on his television show to make the point that the firm's botched public relations efforts had spread the Satanism rumors far and wide.
``They're not mad at us. They're mad at themselves, and they're trying to blame us,'' Babcock said.
The real reason for the lawsuit, Babcock argued, was Procter & Gamble's concern that Amway was growing rapidly in Asia because of its direct-sales strategy.
The company sells its 450 products through 3 million independent distributors worldwide, not through stores, and is known as much for its aggressive recruiting of new distributors as it is for its products.

Apr 20 XXXIV
This "Trechcoat Mafia" coverage is getting very old very fast. People should get over it already! DO people honestly think that becasue I choose to wear a trenchcoat that I Am somehow related to these people?
I can see it now --- some organization created called "Trench Coat Mafia Anonymous"..... "My name is ______, & I wear a trenchcoat."
It seems these characters in Colorado became the product of their environment. Not Individuals, but manufactured as much as those they purported to despise. They were not pro-active, but re-active. I Myself put no stock in others' opinions of Me, anyway. They should get a life of their own, instead of attempting to butt in on mine.
Sure, I happen to own a couple of guns, so what? Does that mean that I will go on a killing spree?
What will that accomplish? In the end, these two became what others made them out to be ----- did they REALLY want to "fit in" that bad? And "fit in" with what? Those petty, visceral, & air-headed jockstraps? Please.
Ultimately, it's only clothing. Prejudice based upon one's attire has got to be the shallowest form of discrimination I have ever come across. Stratification has once again taken precedence. I cannot feel sorry for those suicidal morons, nor for the insensitive lot they exterminated. The only question I have to ask is, "30? 40 dead? Is that all?"
Now that this new phobia & paranoia is in the air, I say, make the most of it. Have fun.