AP — SOUTHWORTH, WA — A man trying to loosen a stubborn lug nut blasted the wheel with a 12-gauge shotgun, injuring himself badly in both legs, Kitsap County sheriff’s deputies said.

The 66-year-old man had been repairing a Lincoln Continental for two weeks at his home northwest of Southworth and east of Port Orchard and had gotten all but one of the lug nuts off the right rear wheel before getting frustrated Saturday afternoon, Deputy Scott Wilson said.

“He’s bound and determined to get that lug nut off,” Wilson said.

From about arm’s length, the man fired the shotgun at the wheel and was “peppered” in both legs with shot and other debris, with some injuries as high on his body as his chin, according to a sheriff’s office report.

“Nobody else was there and he wasn’t intoxicated,” Wilson said.

South Kitsap Fire and Rescue personnel treated the man at the scene before he was taken to Tacoma General Hospital with injuries Wilson described as “severe but not life-threatening.”

jay: i’m sorry, isn’t there a dead kennedy’s song that goes just like this? ah yes, ‘a child and his lawnmower’. i’ll let jello biafra take it from here:

Some clown in Sacramento was dragged into court
He shot his lawnmower
It disobeyed, it wouldn’t start
Might makes right, it’s the American way
They fined him $60 and sent him on his way

You know, some people don’t take no shit
Maybe if they did, they’d have half a brain left

Manson, Wash. (AP) — Charles and Linda Everson were driving back to their hotel when their minivan was struck by a falling object — a 600-pound cow. The Eversons were unhurt but the cow, which had fallen off a cliff, had to be euthanized.

The year-old cow fell about 200 feet from the cliff and landed on the hood of the couple’s minivan, causing heavy damage.

A Chelan County fire chief, Arnold Baker, said the couple missed being killed by a matter of inches in the accident Sunday on a highway near Manson.

The Eversons, visiting the area from their home in Westland, Mich., to celebrate their first wedding anniversary, were checked at Lake Chelan Community Hospital as a precaution.

Everson, 49, said he didn’t see the cow falling and didn’t know what happened until afterward.

He said he kept repeating: “I don’t believe this. I don’t believe this.”

jay: yeah, i guess it sucks about the cow falling on the car thing but at least they don’t have to drive back to michigan now. shit is far.

AP — TACOMA — A man who wore a gorilla suit and thought it would be funny to grab a boy in a Lakewood store has been sentenced to 30 days of home detention.

Isaiah Michael Jackson avoided jail time when he was sentenced for the stunt in August of last year at the B&I store.

The parents, Anthony and April Santiago of Spanaway, chased down the man to rescue their screaming son.

jay: this man’s sentence was enough to scare me out of my go-hiking-while-dressed-like-a-yeti plan. sux.

CHICAGO (AFP) - A pack of hunting dogs shot an Iowa man as he went to retrieve a fallen pheasant, authorities said.

James Harris, 37, was shot in the leg while hunting with some friends on Saturday afternoon.

The group shot a bird which landed on the other side of a fence, the Iowa Department of Natural Resource said in a press release.

“Harris reportedly went to retrieve the bird, placed his gun on the ground and crossed the fence near the muzzle end,” the press release said.

“When he crossed the fence, hunting dogs stepped on the gun, which discharged and struck Harris in the left calf at a distance of roughly three feet.”

Harris was treated at a regional medical center and later transported by helicopter to an Iowa City hospital.

jay: they don’t say whether or not the dogs were arrested. inept french press.

AP - CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - A man was arrested after a government agent allegedly found him in an office building restroom lying next to an inflatable, anatomically correct doll with his pants down. Craig S. McCullough, 47, was charged Wednesday with indecent exposure, a misdemeanor.

[…]

McCullough was arrested, and Cedar Rapids police took him to the Linn County jail. His arraignment was scheduled later Friday, police spokeswoman Cristy Hamblin said.

[…]

McCullough’s criminal record includes a 2004 conviction for burglarizing Just For Me bridal boutique. Shortly after the burglary, police officers found McCullough in a nearby alley, carrying a mannequin wearing a bridal dress.

jay: are you sure it wasn’t andrew mccarthy? i haven’t seen him since the original mannequin. oh wait, yes i have. he was in weekend at bernie’s 2. also, nice headline pun and good choice of jail euphemism by the AP.

AP - DENNIS TOWNSHIP, N.J. - A second-grader’s drawing of a stick figure shooting a gun earned him a one-day school suspension.

Kyle Walker, 7, was suspended last week for violating Dennis Township Primary School’s zero-tolerance policy on guns, the boy’s mother, Shirley McDevitt, told The Press of Atlantic City.

Kyle gave the picture to another child on the school bus, and that child’s parents complained about it to school officials, McDevitt said. Her son told her the drawing was of a water gun, she said.

A photocopy of the picture provided by McDevitt showed two stick figures with one pointing a crude-looking gun at the other, the newspaper said. What appeared to be the word “me” was written above the shooter, with another name scribbled above the other figure.

School officials declined to comment Friday. A message left at the superintendent’s office Saturday was not returned.

jay: things like this help my if-we-have-kids-they-will-be-home-schooled argument. thanks, new jersey!

AP - SCRANTON, Pa. - Talk about a potty mouth. A Scranton woman who allegedly shouted profanities at her overflowing toilet within earshot of a neighbor was cited for disorderly conduct, authorities said.

Dawn Herb could face up to 90 days in jail and a fine of up to $300.

“It doesn’t make any sense. I was in my house. It’s not like I was outside or drunk,” Herb told The Times-Tribune of Scranton. “The toilet was overflowing and leaking down into the kitchen and I was yelling (for my daughter) to get the mop.”

Herb doesn’t recall exactly what she said, but she admitted letting more than a few choice words fly near an open bathroom window Thursday night.

Her next-door neighbor, a city police officer who was off-duty at the time, asked her to keep it down, police said. When she continued, the officer called police.

Mary Catherine Roper, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in Philadelphia, took issue with the citation.

“You can’t prosecute somebody for swearing at a cop or a toilet,” she said.

jay: cop or a toilet! good one, aclu. also, i’d like to draw your attention to the worst first line ever. potty mouth? *groan* bad one, ap.

Jill Tucker, SF Chronicle Staff Writer

SFGate.com — Hayward — Authorities say they may have trouble identifying a body found on Interstate 880 before dawn Thursday because it was repeatedly struck by passing cars for about an hour during the morning commute.

The first call to the California Highway Patrol that something was amiss came before 6 a.m. The caller reported a dead dog. Officers arrived at southbound I-880 in Hayward nearly an hour later and made the gruesome discovery.

On the ground was a human ear. The CHP immediately called for the freeway to be closed. It was 6:50 a.m., less than a half hour before sunrise.

The remains of the man were strewn across five lanes and 1,000 feet of highway, CHP Officer Mike Davis said. It appeared the body was first hit at about A Street.

There was so little recognizable from the body that identifying him is likely to require someone coming forward to report a missing friend or relative, investigating officers said.

“It looked like something that comes out of a horror movie,” Davis said.

It took authorities hours to process the scene, and the highway was reopened by 10 a.m.

Davis said the man was wearing jeans, white tennis shoes and a shirt, which was difficult to identify in the condition officers found it. They found no identification and no vehicle nearby that could have belonged to him.

The victim appeared to be between ages 30 and 50 with a crew cut. His ethnicity was unknown.

His clothes did not appear to be that of a homeless man or a vagrant, Davis said. He also carried money in his pocket.

Davis said, based on preliminary evidence, it appeared the man was alive before he was hit.

Since the incident, the CHP has received about 80 phone calls from witnesses or drivers reporting hair or blood on their cars, Davis said.

jay: eesh. 80?

dan: they say someone is hit by a car at a rate of 80 times per hour on that stretch of 880…

AP - PITTSBURGH - Change for a million? That’s what a man was seeking Saturday when he handed a $1 million bill to a cashier at a Pittsburgh supermarket. But when the Giant Eagle employee refused and a manager confiscated the bogus bill, the man flew into a rage, police said.

The man slammed an electronic funds-transfer machine into the counter and reached for a scanner gun, police said.

Police arrested the man, who was not carrying identification and has refused to give his name to authorities. He is being held in the Allegheny County Jail.

Since 1969, the $100 bill is the largest note in circulation.

Police believe the $1 million note seized at the supermarket may have originated at a Dallas-based ministry. Last year, the ministry distributed thousands of religious pamphlets with a picture of President Grover Cleveland on a $1 million bill.

jay: there are too many angles on this story, so i’ll stick with a single question: grover cleveland? really? also, i like that there was rage.

AP - LAKELAND, Fla. - A man who allegedly threatened to make the deadly Virginia Tech shootings look like a “birthday party” at his high school reunion was arrested and deputies found hundreds of homemade explosives at his house, officials said Thursday.

Timothy Joseph Vaughn, 39, mentioned the Virginia Tech shootings in an e-mail to the coordinator of the reunion for Lakeland High School’s class of 1987, Polk County sheriff’s spokeswoman Carrie Rodgers said.

After getting electronically generated e-mailed reunion reminders from Classmates.com, Vaughn sent four e-mails to the coordinator, Rodgers said.

In the first three e-mails, Vaughn asked to be left alone. He made the Virginia Tech threat in the fourth e-mail on Sept. 10, Rodgers said. Someone else involved with the reunion brought it to the attention of law enforcement.

“Nobody talked to me back then, so stop talking to me now … I can make Virginia Tech look like a f—— birthday party,” the sheriff’s office said he wrote in the email.

Vaughn, who is unemployed and lives with his parents, told deputies he never planned to use the explosives. It was not clear if he had a lawyer.

jay: after multiple harassing emails from classmates.com, this doesn’t seem like an wholly unreasonable response to me. while his threats (and his arsenal) are a little strong for my taste, i get his sentiment — i don’t do high school reunions either. it always just seemed a little easier to me to just delete the emails. then again, i don’t live in florida, i don’t live with my parents, and i’m not an amateur bomb-maker. there but for the grace of g-d go i.

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

NYTIMES - Iowa, Oct. 3 — Twenty-four minutes after he began speaking in a small restaurant the other day, Fred D. Thompson brought his remarks to a close with a nod of his head and an expression of thanks to Iowans for allowing him to “give my thoughts about some things.”

Then he stood face to face with a silent audience.

“Can I have a round of applause?” Mr. Thompson said, drawing a rustle of clapping and some laughter.

“Well, I had to drag that out of you,” he said.

[…]

Voters who came out to see Mr. Thompson as he traveled through Iowa, even while expressing admiration for his views and intense interest in his candidacy, said they were struck by how little energy or passion he appeared to bring into a room.

“I hope his campaign strategy works for him, but I’m not sure it will,” said Kay Odell, a retired child-abuse worker, who talked to Mr. Thompson as he campaigned at a coffee shop in Iowa Falls. “He comes across as very low-key.”

She added, “I’m sure he’ll make a good president.”

(full article)

rob: man, we’re like whipped dogs now. just about anyone seems like they’d make a good president. when you’re talking about the u.s. presidency, it seems “good” has been redefined as “not outwardly horrific.”

jay: frankly, i’m having a hard time finding a candidate who isn’t outwardly horrific. other than kucinich, i mean. vote vegan.

By CHRIS KAHN

AP - PHOENIX - It sounds like science fiction but it’s true: A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die.

Even though encounters with the microscopic bug are extraordinarily rare, it’s killed six boys and young men this year. The spike in cases has health officials concerned, and they are predicting more cases in the future.

“This is definitely something we need to track,” said Michael Beach, a specialist in recreational waterborne illnesses for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“This is a heat-loving amoeba. As water temperatures go up, it does better,” Beach said. “In future decades, as temperatures rise, we’d expect to see more cases.”

jay: like i don’t have enough shit to worry about? now i have to add brain-eating amoeba to the list? global warming, if i didn’t hate you before, i fully hate you now!

AP - PORTLAND - Snake collector Matt Wilkinson of Portland grabbed a 20-inch rattler from the highway near Maupin, and three weeks later, to impress his ex-girlfriend, he stuck the serpent in his mouth.

He was soon near death with a swollen tongue that blocked his throat. Trauma doctors at the Oregon Health and Science University saved his life.

“You can assume alcohol was involved,” he said. Actually, not just beer. It was something he called a “mixture of stupid stuff.”

It happened at a barbecue with friends.

Wilkinson, 23, had downed a six-pack and his ex-girlfriend asked him for a beer. He handed her one, not realizing the snake was also in his hand.

“She said, ‘Get that thing out of my face,”‘ Wilkinson said. “I told her it was a nice snake. ‘Nothing can happen. Watch.”‘

So he stuck the snake in his mouth.

“It got a hold of my tongue,” he said.

He was having breathing problems when his ex-girlfriend drove him to the hospital. “She was the only one sober,” Wilkinson said.

jay: i’m not buying this ’sometimes a snake is just a snake’ malarkey. also, sux that the ap doesn’t mention whether or not she took him back.

By KERY MURAKAMI

Seattle P-I — There’s a story going around South Lake Union, but a spokeswoman for Vulcan, Paul Allen’s development company, says it’s just an urban legend.

That aside, the story that the neighborhood’s streetcar line now under construction was called the South Lake Union Trolley until the powers that be realized the unfortunate acronym — SLUT — seems here to stay.

Officially, it’s now the South Lake Union Streetcar. But the trolley name already has caught on, and in the old Cascade neighborhood in South Lake Union, they’re waiting for the SLUT.

At the Kapow! Coffee house on Harrison Street, they’re selling T-shirts that read “Ride the SLUT.”

“We’re welcoming the SLUT into the neighborhood,” said Jerry Johnson, 29, a part-time barista.

jay: i’m sorry, what? his company is called ‘vulcan’? dork. oh, and the slut thing is funny.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Music, books and Hollywood films… China can now add testimonies of regret by corrupt officials to its exhaustive list of copyright violations.

Zhang Shaocang, former Communist Party chief of state-owned power company Anhui Province Energy Group Co Ltd, wept as he read a four-page “letter of apology” during his corruption trial at a court in Fuyang, Anhui, according to a Procuratorial Daily report reproduced in Wednesday’s Beijing News.

But Zhang’s sentiments were later found to be strikingly similar to those of Zhu Fuzhong, a disgraced former party chief of Tongan village in southwestern Sichuan province, whose apology letter was printed in the Procuratorial Daily less than two weeks before.

“Before working, I never gave much thought to money and regarded achievement as the starting point and end result of my work,” the paper quoted both of the letters as saying.

“I gradually lost my bearings and the scope of my position,” Zhang said at his trial, an exact copy of Fu’s own wording.

Apart from using whole sentences word for word, Zhang also — more craftily — made “slight changes” in other areas.

The Procuratorial Daily, the official paper of China’s top prosecutions office, is distributed as reading material at many “supervision venues,” the paper said, referring to the often secret locations where Communist Party officials are held for questioning.

It was possible that Zhang, while being investigated for charges of bribe-taking, had drawn inspiration from Zhu’s apology in the hope of gaining leniency from the court, the paper said.

“Because of this, Zhang’s apology was dismissed as ’show-boating,’” the paper said.

rob: i’m not sure how “crafty” the subtle word changes were in the context of entire sentences being lifted intact, but still: bonus points for weeping.