News That Sounds Like a Joke

In April, as the police officer approached the motorist relieving himself on the side of the road in South Kitsap, Wash., the man explained that he had consumed "a bunch" of beers but was not driving drunk. According to the officer, the man said he was slurring his words because "his dentist advised him his mouth was too big for his tongue." [Kitsap Sun, 4-27-08]

Comedian Aries Spears pleaded guilty in April to assaulting a woman in the audience during his act at a New York City club. Said prosecutor Elizabeth Pederson, ridiculing Spears' initial explanation: "You can't high-five a woman's breast." [United Press International, 4-21-08]

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Not My Fault

Accused triple-murderer Jeffrey Gilham earned a hung-jury verdict in April in Sydney, Australia, by relentlessly denying that he had stabbed to death his mother and father. They and Gilham's brother all died by the same knife, at about the same time, stabbed from 13 to 16 times each in the heart, by a murderer kneeling over the victims. Nevertheless, Gilham said he killed only his brother and not the parents. [Sydney Morning Herald, 3-19-08]

Jessica Vasquez, 19, was arrested in Indianapolis in April for a road-rage assault, but swore she was only exercising self-defense. Her victim, an 81-year-old woman whom Vasquez said was driving too slow, had been punched in the face, yanked from her car and thrown to the ground, suffering leg fractures in 14 places. [Indianapolis Star, 5-1-08]

Faced with its Alzheimer's residents' tendency to wander away, the Benrath Senior Centre in Dusseldorf, Germany, came up with a novel approach: a fake bus stop (an exact replica of a real one) out front. Straying residents might be attracted to the familiar colors and design of the kiosk (because long-term memory is typically still robust) and wait there for a bus instead of trying to "go home" on foot. But short-term, the resident is typically unaware of how long he has been waiting and will remain until a Centre employee sees him and can guide him back into the home (which often is easy because the resident has by then forgotten why he is sitting there, according to a June dispatch from Berlin in London's Daily Telegraph). [Daily Telegraph (London), 6-3-08]

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Car dealer Walter Moore of Max Motors in Butler, Mo. (an hour south of Kansas City),

announced in May a free premium to every car purchaser: either $250 worth of gasoline or

a gift certificate for a handgun. He told KMBC-TV that 80 percent of customers choose the

gun. [KMBC-TV (Kansas City), 5-20-08]

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