Every once in a while, some loon goes on a wacky crime spree in the area where I grew up, then gets written up in the paper. The articles are usually kind of long and hard to follow, so here are synopses of the latest weird tales.
First, there's the high school teacher/baseball coach who allegedly robbed a convenience store (which happened to be near the high school) and pepper-sprayed the clerk after ordering her to the floor. He fled from cops who happened to be in the area, and in the process one of the police cars crashed into another car. The chase ended when the suspect crashed into a parked truck.
Then we have the parolee who stopped when cops pulled him over, then threw a beer can at a deputy and ran. The deputy and his police dog chased the guy, who ran down an embankment into the river. All three went in the water and were swept away by the current. The deputy got out, the dog and suspect went around a bend, and the dog later followed his handler's scent and caught up. The suspect hasn't been seen since, but a body was found in the water a week later.
The Associated Press officially launches its new younger-audience service Monday. Of course, that's interesting for news hounds. It's especially interesting for me, because I saw the thing months ago, on the very computer of one of the key people working on the project. I still have a copy of the print version. Am I bragging? Of course I am. So shoot me.
It's interesting to see how news events affect one another, in terms of prominence. The replacement of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was all over the news until the terrorist bombs in London. Now, in the midst of the hurricane crisis, Chief Justice William Rehnquist has died.
The stupid part will be the conspiracy theorists who question the timing. Believe it or not, I ran across a couple of Web sites where people speculated that the London bombings were done to take the attention off the search to replace O'Connor. I'm sure those loons are having a field day with the latest turn of events.
Now, not all conspiracy theories are false. I happen to have a folder marked "Conspiracy theory," and I've long since found almost everything in it to be legitimate. In other words, some outlandish things really are true. But there's also a thing called coincidence, and a thing called life. Just because one thing dominates the news, that doesn't mean other big things aren't happening.
I'm not sure why I typed all this. Maybe it's because I just found out about Rehnquist's death and wanted to write something about it. I must say that I admire his work ethic. He obviously found a job he enjoyed -- to the point that he insisted on cotinuing to work even while battling throat cancer at age 80.
Fortune cookie
This was in my fortune cookie at lunch today: "Think of the danger while things are going smoothly."Being the weirdo that I am, I saved the fortune and put it on my desk. What can I say, except that it must reflect on my sense of humor?
Posted by Layla at 3:35 PM, September 30, 2005. Comments (0)