College Happenings

Things have been slow in my life lately. No exciting stories. I went for a nice long hike in the mountains the other day, enjoyed the fresh air. It was nice.

Due to the fact that I have no stories to tell you, I find some strange news.

This is from Chuck Shepherd’s News of the Wierd

In December, according to police in Jersey City, N.J., Roselean Walker, 36, sat at one screen in a movie cineplex with her boyfriend while her 11-year-old son watched the longer Harry Potter film at another screen, but after her movie ended, she tired of waiting for the son and went home with the boyfriend to New York City. When police called her the next morning to come pick up the boy, she demanded that they drive him home. After officers ordered her immediately to the station, she showed up in a bad mood, threatening a lawsuit for the inconvenience, and wound up being charged with assaulting an officer (in addition to endangering a child’s welfare). [Jersey Journal, 12-9-05]

According to the Nov. 10 Evening News of Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., a father was under investigation by police after War Memorial Hospital reported an assault on the man’s 11-year-old son. Police said it appeared that the two were playing a video game, that the son had beaten his dad by using a secret upgrade that made his character more powerful, and that the dad, in anger, had spanked the kid, put soap in his mouth and slapped him several times in the head. (The father said only that he had punished the boy for lying.) [Evening News, 11-10-05]

Animals Gone Wild: A billy goat reportedly attacked Zimbabwe’s strong-arm President Robert Mugabe during a gas-station stop en route to the mountain resort of Nyanga in December, injuring Mugabe’s scrotum and large bowel. And Fremont, Calif., police officer Paul Rush, who was escorting a teenager home from a traffic stop in January, reported to a hospital emergency room afterward because five chihuahuas had attacked him at the front door of the teen’s home, biting his ankles. [ZimDaily.com, 12-21-05] [San Jose Mercury News, 12-30-05]

In December, the Bush administration’s Department of Justice filed a “friend of the court” brief at the U.S. Supreme Court, supporting Anna Nicole Smith in her battle with the son of her late husband, J. Howard Marshall II, over his estate. Smith and the administration believe that a federal bankruptcy court (which backed Smith) should control the case and not a Texas state court (which had sided with Marshall’s son). [Los Angeles Daily News-AP, 12-26-05]