Ah, cooties. What memories!

Strange local story - from Hicksville, NY.

A mother was kissed on her ear by her young daughter. Somehow, the kiss created a vacuum and ruined the mother's eardrum. She lost her hearing in that ear.

They're calling it "The Kiss of Deaf".

(true story)

I still laugh when I see the name Hicksville.

This story isn't gonna do too much to chang my perception of it either.

Well, the next town down the line is Bethpage.

It only took one train stop to get it right then.

When someone's visiting someone in Hicksville I expect them say they're visiting their daughter and wife, and it's only one person.

Oh, that's Redneck Village. Two stops down the line.

You might be a redneck if your family tree doesn't fork.

I read in our local paper on Saturday that a man had to be rescued from the toilet of an outdoor portable lavatory. For some unknown reason he was completely naked and squeezed down the hole to wade waist deep in an assortment of raw sewage and chemicals. I don't know that he was insane, drunk, high, or a combination of all three, but it took the police an hour to get him out. No explanation was given. Then again, what explanation could there be?

the worst part about it for the guy is that the paper printed his name and where he lives.

MENSA is alive and well around here...

Police: Drunken driver didn't want mother to know

I personally don't take offense by this item, but apparently a lot of my neighbors are up in arms over what they perceive to be a knock on our town.

NYS gave a state-wide history test to 8th graders and one of the questions involved a picture of a 1930's shantytown (a "town" built of crudely made shacks because people couldn't afford decent housing in the Great Depression). The question on the test asked by what other name these shantytowns were known. It gave 4 choices:

1. Tenements
2. Ghettos
3. Levittowns (my home town now)
4. Hoovervilles (the correct answer - named after President Hoover).

Hundreds of people here are screaming bloody murder because of this question. I just don't see what the big deal is, but it's a big local news story.

That's like all the people around here who got offended when Sex and the City made fun of "Suffern", a nearby town, when one of girls goes to "the country" for the weekend with a boyfriend, and the show makes it a backwards, hick town. They also had quite the time making fun of "Suffern", using puns like "suffering in Suffern".

Do people have nothing else to do??

There was a local armed bank robbery this morning. I guess that, in and of itself, isn't newsworthy, but what makes it interesting (for me) was that the guys who robbed the bank threw the money out of the car window after being chased by police. The money scattered along the street and bystanders scrambled to scoop it up. One bystander was interviewed on tv and said he recovered $3,000 but was forced to give it up to the police.

This happened about 9:30 this morning, and I was driving by the place where the cops eventually caught the two robbers. I never saw so many police cars, but was more amazed by the number of tv news vans that were there when I returned about an hour later.

Our local news has been depressing of late. A 9 year old girl accidentally strangled herself to death while playing with a clothes line; 2 young girls drowned - 1 in a pool and 1 in a lake.

I'm reminded of what my dad told me when my son was born: "you can't protect enough what you love."

Well, we got very GOOD news this week. I had mentioned on here that two boys from my daughter's high school were hit by a train and one was killed. The other boy was released from the hospital this week. He's still in a wheelchair, having survived a crushed leg, dislocated hip, broken pelvis, two skull fractures and a multiple fractures along the spine, not to mention the liver and kidney lacerations and two operations, one of which was to remove his spleen.

A picture of him and his mom was on the front page of the local paper, and it was the loveliest story I've ever read, and the most beautiful photo in the world.

Klyd, the mom described what it was like to have the police officer show up at their door. It sent chills down my spine. So, I know what you mean when you quoted your dad.

I got those same chills when I heard the story of how my aunt and uncle heard the news of my cousin's unexpected passing on 12/17/1983. My aunt woke up early that Saturday morning, looked out the front window and saw the priest, the bishop and her sister (a Sister of Mercy) walking up the sidewalk.

My aunt had no doubt it involved her son, Geoffrey, who was playing in a band the previous night, but it was her 22 year old daughter, recently married, who died of an embolism.

By the way, the bishop was later known as Cardinal John O'Connor.

I don't know how any parent could survive the loss of a child. The only thing I could think of is that you somehow find strength to help your other children go through it.

From upstate New York; Binghamtom

A 22 year old college student had been beaten up by three guys in a bar fight. The main attacker was a basketball player from Serbia who allegedly beat the crap out of the student who suffered massive head injuries and is still in a coma.

What makes this REALLY annoying is that the basketball player was arrested and his $100,000 bond was posted by the Serbian embassy who then issued him an emergency passport which he used to flee the U.S. (when he was arrested he was required to give up his passport and was warned not to leave the county until the case was decided).

Makes your blood boil.

A former popular radio personality from central PA, Bruce Bond, was arrested in NYC for his alleged role in a phony check scheme. Apparently, he has been issuing checks to people, who are applying for a work at home program. The people receive the initial check, and are instructed to send 90% of the check to an overseas account, which gets the money before the applicants' banks learn that the original check was a phony. Yhe overseas contact would then send Bond his cut.

Bond won a Marconi award for outstanding radio personality in a mid market in the 1990s. He had the afternoon drive home hours and was a bit of a controversial shock jock.

Another live one from Prescott AZ, home to the World's Stupidest Criminals:

With commodities prices soaring, a local warehouse for aluminum tubing was robbed twice in the past month. But the cops caught the thieves on their third attempt. Seems they loaded lengths of aluminum tubing in their pickup truc, but it wouldn't start. So the bozos started pushing it down the highway...

There's a new state law allowing pull tabs and punch boards in bars now. This will hurt the "smoke shops" aka the illegal gambling dens/pool halls I used to hang out in when I was a teenager. They already started cracking down on the video slot machines and now competing with bars with these...

OTHER NEW INDIANA LAWS TAKING EFFECT TUESDAY

JAIL BOOKING FEES | Lake and Porter counties must abolish the $25 jail processing fees they have been charging inmates -- guilty or not -- for more than five years. The fees raise more than $100,000 per county per year. Porter County Sheriff David Lain said the county now must come up with a new way to fund addition treatment for inmates. "You ask any inmate that has gone through that class, 'Was it worth $25?' And they don't hesitate," Lain said.

COOLING OFF PERIOD | Domestic violence suspects now must spend at least eight hours in jail before being released on bail. "We wanted to prevent accused offenders from being set free to commit another act of violence," said state Rep. Linda Lawson, D-Hammond.

WILL SMITH'S LAW | Elected officials now lose office -- no resignation required -- immediately upon being convicted of or pleading guilty to a felony. Inspired by former Lake County Councilman Will Smith Jr., who remained in office for three months last year after being convicted of tax evasion.

REFERENDA REQUIRED | Most municipal and school construction projects exceeding $10 million now must win voter approval.

Oh, yeah, those 8 hours away from their abuser will really make the abused partner feel all safe and comfy. It might make them even forget! And those 8 hours will surely do TONS to prevent an abuser from even THINKING of committing another act of violence.

Better than an hour or 2, I suppose...

I agree, LN. While there is no guarantee that this will prevent a future episode of domestic violence, it is SOMETHING.

It can also give people time to pack up their stuff and leave.


Here's some Chicago news....10% tax is out of hand.

On Tuesday, shoppers in Cook County will notice a bigger bite at the register. That's when the 1 percentage-point increase in Cook County's sales tax goes into effect. Chicago shoppers will pay a 10.25 percent tax on some items—higher than in any other major American city

A few weeks ago I reported here that a woman living near me was infected with bird mites (and admitted to a hospital because of them). Yesterday, two blocks away from where she lived, a 5 foot boa constrictor was found in somebody's backyard.

I tell ya, it's becoming a jungle out here.

What is going on out there, SC?? And I thought that I had the jungle habitat market cornered.

Where can I get one of them?

The garter snakes in my backyard just aren't keeping the moles away.

Here's a crazy story from Brooklyn:

A 49 year old woman went for psychiatric help at Brooklyn's Kings County Hospital. She was sitting on a waiting room chair in the Psychiatric Emergency Room and a security camera clearly shows that she fell off her chair and slumped to the floor. What makes this disgusting is she remained there, unchecked by anyone for a full hour before it was discovered she had died. The security camera clearly shows guards and even an attending physician saw her lying there, but did nothing (like checking to see if she was OK).

How could this happen??