"
MIDDLEBURY, Vt. -- Rainey Johnson, sporting a yellow shirt, yellow socks and yellow paint smeared on his face, darted across the freshman quad.
Other students, in capes, ran after him clutching brooms between their legs and grasping in vain for a tennis ball stuffed in a sock hanging out of his yellow shorts."
[more inside]
posted by rtha
on Sep 22, 2008 -
43 comments
Revenge of the Third World Virgins! If you were worth $600 million by age 40, how would you spend the rest of your life? For Larry Hillblom, the "H" in
DHL, the plan wassimple: move to the
tax haven of Saipan, fly restored WWII seaplanes,
restore colonial-era resorts in Vietnam, and -- of course -- bed as many teenaged virgins as possible. When the apparently unmarried and childless Hillblom died in 1995, after the seaplane he was piloting crashed into the South Pacific, his will left nearly his entire fortune to establish a
foundation for medical research at UCLA (in gratitude for their treatment of him after an earlier plane crash). But
claims on his estate were almost immediately made by several of Larry's virgins, who claimed to have borne children by him. Thus began a bitter court battle for Larry's millions, which resulted in four
previously penniless children winning $90 million each after
DNA testing proved his paternity. The money may be a
mixed blessing for his
kids, but considering that Larry almost certainly knew that he could have disinherited them with a
few words, he probably wanted it that way.
posted by banishedimmortal
on Jul 5, 2006 -
33 comments
Sworn virgins. "A sworn virgin is called such because she swears—takes a vow under the law of the
Kanun—to become a man. From the day she takes this vow (which is sometimes at a very early age), she becomes a man: she dresses like one, acts like one, walks like one, works like one, talks like one, and her family and community treat her as one. She is referred to as he. He will never marry and will remain celibate all of his life." If you find this stuff intriguing, by all means read Alice Munro's great short story "The Albanian Virgin" (from
Open Secrets, 1994); you might also want to check out
A Dictionary of Albanian Religion, Mythology, and Folk Culture, where there's much more cultural weirdness, and Edith Durham's classic
High Albania (online
here), from which I first learned of these mannish gals. Oh, and there's a
movie!
posted by languagehat
on Jan 30, 2004 -
15 comments