A jury rejected a man's claims he should be compensated for a sleep disorder suffered since was served the wrong soup at a restaurant.

Donald Johnson, 64, sought $55,356 from the Shoney's restaurant chain. The jury instead awarded him $407 for medical bills.

[Shoney's attorney, Charles] Rice argued during the trial that Johnson's anxiety might stem from other experiences, including a prison term for sexual activity with a child under 12 and his public listing as a sexual predator.

hate long lines. It's the same reason I can't stand amusement parks. There isn't a rollercoaster on the planet worth waiting in line for over an hour, especially when you're standing between a 400-pound woman with B.O. and a 13 year-old kid with a third arm sprouting out of his back. It sucks the life out of you. It's the same feeling you get when you watch "Cops," multiplied by 100. Maybe I just don't like other people.

And just the process of standing and moving incrementally -- two feet at a time -- I mean, is there anything worse than this? Anything? You get oodles of this at the NFL Experience, assuming you want to wait in line for an hour so your kid can kick a field goal for 5 seconds.

"He liked to show off his car. He was very proud."

The Honda CRX ended up resting on a lamppost.

Last February, Morgan Spurlock decided to become a gastronomical guinea pig. His mission: To eat three meals a day for 30 days at McDonald's and document the impact on his health.

Scores of cheeseburgers, hundreds of fries and dozens of chocolate shakes later, the formerly strapping 6-foot-2 New Yorker - who started out at a healthy 185 pounds - had packed on 25 pounds. But his supersized shape was the least of his problems. His liver became toxic, his cholesterol shot up from a low 165 to 230, his libido flagged and he suffered headaches and depression.

• Why women are hot
• Nachos, and how they are best made
• My upcoming birthday

I was listening to an episode of Fibber McGee and Molly last night from the massive collection of old time radio shows I suddenly own, as a result of my many deep-seated compulsions. It was a show recorded two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and there were lots of commercials about how the Johnson Wax Company wholeheartedly supports our men and women in uniform, etc. etc.

During the show the mayor of the town mentions that he's in the market for a new globe for his office, and Molly asks if he wants it to include Japan. When the mayor answers yes, of course, she replies, "Well, you better hurry!" This triggered a sustained eruption of applause from the studio audience.

If this happened today the elitists would view it as yet another ugly example of American war-mongering, and would lecture us about how we should sit down with the Japanese and hear their grievances, and maybe learn why they hate us so much. Then later, when we're fighting the Nazis, they'd screech in their shrill nasal voices about it being an illegal war, because Germany wasn't the country that attacked us. Roosevelt would be called a war criminal and many sentences would begin with the words, "Everybody agrees that Hitler is a bad guy, but..."

Pitiful.

[Des Moines tax preparer] DeAnna Rankins . . . was accosted at work Thursday night by a knife-wielding man who tried to rob her.

Rankins backed him down with a stapler. "I felt the power of the Lord," she said.

"I was in a zone, working on taxes," Rankins, 32, said.

Rankins scanned her desk for something she could use as a weapon; something that might trump the pocket knife. She opted for the stapler. It flip-flopped in her hand, she said, but it had a good, solid feel.

She stood up: "I've got no money, and you better get out of here." She stepped toward him. He stepped toward her. She raised the stapler and warned: "I will fight you." The man hesitated, then hurried out of the office.

"I would have stapled him," Rankins said.

Rebecca Jemison, who emerged as the true winner of last month's $162 million lottery drawing, is suddenly even richer. South Euclid [Ohio] city officials were stunned to learn that they can't collect $1.4 million in income taxes from the winning Mega Millions ticket since the city charter wasn't updated to include lottery winnings as taxable income.

The tax mixup is the latest plot twist in an unusually eventful lottery drawing. Days after the Dec. 30 drawing, another woman filed a police report saying she lost the winning ticket and was later found guilty of filing a false police report.

"He doesn't deconstruct the idea of absence and then rebuild it as a dialectical opposition which posits that what's not seen, felt, experienced is as significant, perhaps moreso, as that which is."

In 2000, more than 1,200 people in the United States suffered eye injuries from paintball guns, twice the number injured two years earlier, according to a study released this month. About 40 percent of the injured were children, mostly boys, who often play without supervision or protective gear.

Lashbrook said he will not sell a paintball gun to anyone under 18, even though there is no age restriction by law.

"I don't want to sell one to a 14-year-old kid and have him go out and do something stupid," he said.

A 2000 study of paintball-related eye injuries at Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia found that most injuries between 1995 and 1998 occurred during informal play, instead of war games organized by paintball shops and clubs.

This all makes sense to me; I think I wrote a column last spring about when I took my motorcycle over to the gas station for a fill up, and a guy pulled up in a red compact car of some kind, asking me where he could get CO2 for a paintball gun. He had just bought the gun for his kid, and wanted to go in the backyard and fire it off. At 9pm in April (hence: already dark). As an added bonus, he was horribly drunk! (He put it this way: "Man, I been drivin' all over...drinkin...you know I likes to party!" Nothing but class.)

The News Journal is to be admired for putting the emphasis on parents who don't supervise, instead of on the guns. Nothin' but love from the News Journal from The Hearn.
- posted by Bacon Dad @ 2:09 PM |

Prosecutors said Langston was drunk and talking on a cell phone in June 2002 when she crossed the center line and hit a pickup truck carrying Glenn Clark and his pregnant wife, Annette. He died, his wife remains in a coma and their son, born by Caesarean section five months after the crash, is being raised by relatives.

A judge sentenced Langston to 30 days in jail, plus house arrest and probation, and ordered her to carry a picture of Glenn Clark.

"It's tough to say goodbye to Greg," coach Dick Vermeil said Tuesday while fighting back tears.

In a disappointing development, the city of Charlotte will not be able to show the Carolina Panthers’ playoff game live at the Gateway Village this weekend.

The Saturday afternoon viewing was supposed to be the main attraction of an uptown pep rally that would coincide with the Celebration of Hope fund-raiser. But the NFL has a strict policy against showing live broadcasts to create a public event.

The uptown party will help the Make-A-Wish Foundation reach their $1 million goal and fulfill the dying wish of Hope Stout, a 12-year-old Weddington girl who died Sunday from a rare form of bone cancer. Stout wanted all the other terminally ill children in the area, more than 150 of them, to have their wishes granted. Her selfless wish inspired many across the state and the country.

TO SUSANNAH Park and most any Asian-American, the word "chink" is as hurtful as the n-word [Note: that word would probably be "nigger." - Ed] is to African-Americans. So when Park, of West Philadelphia, found out about Chink's Steaks, in Wissinoming, she was horrified. Park called the restaurant owner and has since begun a campaign to change the shop's name.

But Joseph Groh, owner of Chink's Steaks, on Torresdale Avenue near Benner Street, doesn't understand the hoopla and says changing the name would destroy the business. Opened in 1949 by the late Samuel "Chink" Sherman, the steak shop has become a neighborhood legend.

"He had slanty eyes...and the kids started calling him 'chink,' " Mildred Sherman said. Many people didn't learn of his real name until they attended his funeral in 1997. Sherman said the nickname is etched on her husband's gravestone. Sherman called the controversy "ridiculous. We are Jewish. We're far from racist. We have Chinese customers," Sherman said. "My husband was well-loved by everybody."

John Fox versus Mike Martz. I'll take Fox. You can have Martz. Which one of us feels better right now? (I'll give you a hint: It's not you.)

(Keep an eye on the background behind one of the traumatized Dallas football players towards the end of the video.)
- posted by Bacon Dad @ 12:14 PM |

Unhappy with college football's split national championship, the head of a computer company [specifically Ted Waitt, chairman and CEO of Gateway, Inc.] thought he could entice Southern California and LSU to play each other later this month by offering $30 million in scholarship money.

The NCAA quickly hit the "delete" button, saying there was no way such a game could be played.

"It's just not as simple or easy as doing that," said Wally Renfro, the senior adviser to Brand. "Decisions about postseason football are made by the membership of the association. Those two institutions would not be able to make that decision in any event.

"Right now, by the bylaws, it couldn't happen."

• The NCAA doesn't really give a crap if there's a split national championship. Their first concern is making sure they get their own way.
• The NCAA certainly doesn't care about the opportunity this gives to the two schools and their students. $10-20 million in scholarship money could help a lot of kids get into college, which is surprising given the NCAA's stance on making money ("if you have it, we'd like you to give it to us. We'll suck your dick if you want!").

At least 100 racers in the Paris-Dakar Rally were stopped at Mauritania's border by armed guards demanding $64 to pass.

Customs officials had earlier imposed the passage fee, and even though rally organizers overturned the order, it appeared word did not reach security forces at the border, race spokesman Roger Kalmanovitz told The Associated Press.

During an event in St. Louis for Senate candidate Nancy Farmer, Missouri's state treasurer, [Senator Hillary] Clinton introduced a quote from Gandhi by saying, "He ran a gas station down in St. Louis."

A grandmother jokingly demanded money from a bank teller — and ended up spending the night in jail.

Ellen Ann Sheets, 43, was arrested Monday after a teller at American Heritage Bank called police and said Sheets had demanded money. Sheets was released Tuesday after a night in Benton County Jail.

A judge in upstate New York has resigned after being accused of saying domestic abuse cases were "a waste of the court's time" and stating most women asked to get "smacked around," the state's Commission on Judicial Conduct says.

Don’t take that teat, baby. That is a raw tittie. College is a red raw areola, and instead of milk it releases highly acidic French dressing.

The basement was totally huge, pretty much the size of a warehouse. There was a main room, with a high ceiling, the size of a Rugged Wearhouse sales floor, and several adjoining rooms, one of which contained a large number of books and knick knacks.

The basement was a mess, which was not surprising, considering my lifestyle of filth, but mainly it was a mess with dust and vast numbers of musical instruments. There were something like a dozen broken double basses, along with electric guitars and a variety of other stringed instruments. It was very odd.

I think I made Lauren fall in love with me, which was cool, even if she is only 16. (I'm going to hell.)
- posted by Bacon Dad @ 12:44 PM |

South Euclid- Elecia Battle says proof that she won Ohio's largest-ever lottery jackpot slipped through her hands in a convenience store parking lot.

She plans to offer a reward for its return.

"Sorry I took your baby Jesus. It was a childish prank," the perpetrator said in a handwritten note. "As far as his new color, I thought I would point out that Jesus was not an Aryan but actually a man of color. Although you probably knew this but would rather not be reminded."

The thief added that the paint job was "not some sort of racial thing ... actually I’m white. But I know what color Jesus was."

Even the unnerving sight of Angelica Jolie (Voted “most likely to pull a knife on you during sex”) doesn’t bother me.

Connery brings one exemplary moment of pure craft to the film; when the father and son realize they’ve both slept with the same blonde Nazi temptress, they say not a word. It’s all done with expressions, and in this case it’s the acting equivalent of two blues guitarists trading licks. It’s a wonderful moment. But it doesn’t excuse the bad Hitler.