Category: Strange News

Yeah, and who taught him?

Daniel McCoy, of Grants, was arrested Friday after a Bernalillo County Sheriff’s deputy spotted him near Dennis Chavez and 118th SW speeding and crossing over the center yellow lines into oncoming traffic, according to a criminal complaint.

The deputy stopped McCoy, and observed a little girl sitting on McCoy’s lap. The complaint said when the deputy asked McCoy what the girl might be doing on his lap while he was driving, McCoy replied, “I’m trying to teach my daughter how to drive.”

McCoy was charged with child abuse. 

ABQNews Lights and Sirens

The mind boggles

“A dropped watermelon may have led to the deadly shooting of a 6-year-old boy by his grandfather Sunday afternoon.”

ajc.com

“Two longtime friends today were accused of murdering a suspected drug dealer, dismembering the body, and then cooking the remains at a Walpole concrete business.”

The Boston Globe

Those cheerleader moms

Via Sideline Chatter:

Two bits, four bits, six bits, a court date.

A grand jury in Wintersville, W.Va., has indicted Linda Tate, 47, on charges she used her computer to send nude pictures of her daughter’s cheerleading rival at Indian Creek High School, Wheeling’s WTRF-TV reported.

How’d she get the photos?

Another item from Sideline Chatter:

Question: Why do so many kids play soccer?

Answer: So they don’t have to watch it.

Suicide by the mathematically-challenged

“Each participant pulled the trigger on two occasions; the victim discharged the fatal bullet on his third attempt. […] Four of the victims had pulled the trigger at least 3 times before their fatality.”

Via kottke from a study on Russian Roulette incidents in Kentucky.

The Kentucky schools need to teach a little bit more about mathematical chance. If you pull the trigger enough times that one bullet will, in fact, come out.

Of course, it may not be the math, but rather the meth.

Turn it off!

Sitting in Atlanta airport and CNN is going on and on and on about Scott Peterson. Who cares?

Oops! I guess this is some other Peterson alleged wife killer. Still.

Life’s a bitch and then you die

Today’s example — A Life of Troubles Followed Estelle Bennett’s Burst of Fame. An excerpt:

For a few years in the mid-1960s Estelle Bennett lived a girl-group fairy tale, posing for magazine covers with her fellow Ronettes and dating the likes of George Harrison and Mick Jagger. Along with her sister and their cousin Nedra Talley, she helped redefine rock ’n’ roll femininity.

The Ronettes delivered their songs’ promises of eternal puppy love in the guise of tough vamps from the streets of New York. Their heavy mascara, slit skirts and piles of teased hair suggested both sex and danger, an association revived most recently by Amy Winehouse.

But Ms. Bennett’s death last week at 67 revealed a post-fame life of illness and squalor that was little known even to many of the Ronettes’ biggest fans.

Three items from the NewMexiKen Archives

These three posts were published here four years ago today. I re-post them because my headlines are so good. 🙂

Judge Hardy wouldn’t approve either

From USATODAY.com —

A year after Janet Jackson’s breast brought a crackdown on indecency, Fox has rejected an ad for the Super Bowl offering a rare view of another celeb: Mickey Rooney’s backside.

In the spot for Airborne, a natural cold remedy, the 84-year-old star of such 1940s staples as National Velvet and the Andy Hardy films is in a sauna when someone behind him coughs. He overreacts, jumps up, screams and heads for the door. In his rush, his towel drops, baring his buns for about two seconds.

Paper or Plastic?

From the Des Moines Register —

A 65-year-old Wal-Mart greeter has been fired for greeting customers with a computer-generated photograph of himself wearing nothing but a Wal-Mart sack.

Dean Wooten was fired in September from his job as a greeter at the Muscatine Wal-Mart store where he had worked for seven years, state records show. He was accused of greeting customers with a picture of himself in which he appeared to be naked except for the carefully placed sack.

Wooten allegedly told customers that Wal-Mart was cutting back on expenses and that the sack represented the new employee uniform.

Well, they might want to rename the school

From The Indianapolis Star —

IPS police and Marion County child protection workers are investigating an incident involving two first-graders who officials said were caught trying to have sex Wednesday at an Eastside school.

District officials worried that the incident may have signaled that at least one of the 6-year-olds had been abused before. A child psychologist acknowledged that possibility but said the behavior simply could have been an attempt to copy something seen on a video or cable TV.

“One of them may be a victim,” said Indianapolis Public Schools Superintendent Duncan Pat Pritchett. “We’re waiting for the conclusion of the two investigations. At that age, that’s learned behavior.”

The names of the two children have not been made public. But the girl and boy, who were released to their parents, received five-day suspensions and could be booted from classes at School 69 for the rest of the year.

“It’s extremely troubling because of their young ages. I have never in my life experienced anything like this,” said School 69 Principal Gary W. Davis, a 22-year educator.

Fairness

An excerpt from Gail Collins:

But first, the scientific news: Folks at the University of Vienna conducted a test in which dogs were asked to shake hands over and over and over again. If you have any experience with dogs, you will not be surprised to hear that they were absolutely delighted. And they didn’t care about being paid! The opportunity to perform the same trick endlessly with a stranger in a white coat was reward enough.

Then the researchers brought in new dogs that were given a piece of bread as a reward for every handshake. The uncompensated dogs watched, lost their innate love of mindless repetition and grew sullen.