• 30 years of lies
• New shocking stories
• Humiliated Kelly storms out 

Keith Durbin wrote Mon 5/21/12 @10:22 CDT
re last week's "Dear Eleanor" column:

I,  myself a victim of this dreaded sleep apnea disease,
have been relegated to wearing one of those masks at
night to help my sleeping. It has ruined my sex life. My
hand refuses to go near me.

Kentucky was among 22 states joining a a brief to the U.S. Supreme
Court supporting a Montana law  restricting  corporate  spending  on
political campaigns in spite of the Court's  "Citizens  United"  decision
that struck down a similar federal law (Indiana was not). . . .

Indiana was among 10 states in which gun deaths outnumbered traffic
deaths in 2009 (Kentucky was not). . . .

William Clyde Gibson, now charged with the murders of three women in separate in- cidents in New Albany (is he a serial killer yet?), had the date of one of the slayings – on his birthday 10 years ago – tattooed on his right arm.

                                                            [courtesy Associated Press]

In  a  primary election in which fewer than 12 per cent of the voters
went to the polls, 42 per cent of the Democrats voted for delegates
uncommitted  to  any presidential candidate  (or,  you can look at it
this way:  President Obama got nearly 60 per cent of the vote).

                                                                             [courtesy AP]

Former University of Kentucky basketball player Michael Porter,
who was arrested in Lexington last week for oral sex with an un-
erage girl,  and his wife,  Bryana,  have a daughter named Payslie
(and, they're all white). . . .

Senator Rand Paul has endorsed Senate candidates in Florida, Tex-
as, Nebraska and New Mexico.

                                               [courtesy Lexington Herald-Leader]

The former Kentucky Kingdom amusement park will be reopened by
the Koch family in 2014 without roller coasters.

                                               [courtesy Louisville Courier-Journal]

"People, especially Republicans, love to hate on Barack Obama for two reasons.  First of
 all, he's black; and they can't stand it. . . .  And the second reason is because he is black."

                – David Bateman, of Lanesville, Indiana, in a letter to the Louisville Courier-Journal

"PAHK-i-stahn . . . TAL-i-bahn . . . af-GAN-i-stan."

                                                                – National Public Radio news hottie Julie McCarthy

Patrick Cash, 47
Theodore Kaczynski, 70
Bob Dylan, 71
Tommy John, 71
Kitty Kallen, 90
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (1878–1949)

Six school buses taking children to a Six Flags amusement
park in Georgia crashed in a chain collision on I-20,  injur-
ing 50 children and a driver.  .  .  .  A dead bird found in a
field in Turkey with a metal ring around its leg stamped "Is-
rael" was suspected of being a spy. . . . Iran threatened to
sue Google for not labeling the  "Persian  Gulf"  (known to
Arab nations as the  Arabian  Gulf)  on  its  maps. . . . Silk
bloomers  said to have been left on an airplane  by  Queen
Elizabeth II on a 1968 visit to Chile were for sale on e-Bay.
. . . A man survived going over Niagara Falls without a bar-
rel. . . .  A high school principal in Walker,  Michigan,  criti-
cized a "senor prank" in which 64 students rode bicycles to
school, with a police escort and the town's mayor. . . . The
Mesquite High School Yearbook in Texas was recalled for
containing a special 2-page section on  "special needs"  stu-
dents,  some of whom were described as  "mentally retard-
ed.". . . In an alumni directory for Harvard's 50th anniversa-
ry of the class of 1962, Ted Kaczynski (alias the Unabomb-
er) listed his occupation as prisoner and his awards as eight
life sentences. . . . The four alternate jurors on the John Ed-
wards case all wore canary yellow shirts to court on Thurs-
day and they and two of the deliberating jurors wore bright
red shirts on Friday. . . . Two  women  soldiers – a colonel
and a sergeant major – sued the U.S.Army and the Defense
Secretary to be assigned to combat units. . . .An ex-convict
walked streets of Fresno, California, with  a  Super  Soaker
squirt gun converted into a 20-gauge shotgun. . . . Two men
knocked down an old woman outside a church in rural west-
ern Pennsylvania trying to steal her purse – which turned out
to be a Bible in a case. .  .  . Cows crashed a backyard beer
blast in Boxford, Massachusetts, and lapped up the suds.

[courtesy Harper's Weekly, Daily Snopes, MSNBC.com, AP]

Our daughter is 42 years old and divorced.  For
the last two years she has  been  seeing  "Matt."
We welcomed him at family gatherings.

Several weeks ago our daughter drank too much
at a party and ended up in bed with another man.
Matt went on a rampage.    He threw bricks into
her car windows,  punched  her  in the eye,  and
showed up at our doorstep to cuss her out.

We advised her to end the relationship;  but  Matt
apologized, went to court-ordered counseling and
now attends AA.  Our daughter has started seeing
him again.

We totally disapprove, but our daughter has asked
us to accept this guy again and welcome him back
to our family gatherings.   We don't want him near
us.    It sounds as though Matt is trying to do right,
but we can't forget what happened.   We worry a-
bout our daughter constantly. How should we han-
dle this?
                                              Concerned Parents

• No makeup
• Refuses to shave her legs
  

Netta  wrote  Sun 5/13/12 @11:02:49 CDT  re  last week's
"Dumb news from Indiana" about the man and wife who had
their four children strapped to the hood of their moving car:

Only the man was arrested?  And only for DUI?  This
needs stepped up to STUPID news from Indiana.

FGDean@aol.com wrote Tues 5/15/12 @05:16 PDT re last Sun-
day's failure of Tabloid Headlines to reach a single AOL subscriber:

I called AOL and spoke with a fellow  named Chris.  I told him a
weekly newsletter I subscribe to by e-mail was  not  received  by
AOL members last Sunday and that the problem had occurred be-
fore.  I described Tabloid Headlines as a newsletter that lists a few
headlines from the tabloids at the beginning but the balance consists
of strange news gathered from various mainstream media. I told him
that the latest edition contained no profanity but that I was still curious
about the possibility of censorship.  He said AOL does not censor any
messages sent to members unless they request some level of screening
via their personal settings. He said the rejections were caused most like-
ly by an unusually high amount of e-mail traffic. . . .

Instead of the "permanent failure" message you reported,   it seems they
could at least hold these messages until the volume is low enough for the
server to release them.

If what Chris said is true, it's even worse than censorship.  AOL can't handle the
traffic?  What's it for?

Thanks for investigating this, and thanks for your report.  – Ed.

Len wrote Sun 5/13/12 @10:11 EDT:

Google makes geniuses of us all.
http://www.stephen-foster-songs.de/foster016.htm

Verse 1:
The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home,
'Tis summer, the darkies are gay;
The corn top's ripe and the meadow's in the bloom
While the birds make music all the day.
The young folks roll on the little cabin floor,
All merry, all happy, and bright;
By'n by Hard Times comes a knocking at the door,
Then my old Kentucky Home, good night!

Chorus:
Weep no more, my lady,
Oh! weep no more today!
We will sing one song
For the old Kentucky Home,
For the old Kentucky Home, far away.

[and verses 2 and 3 follow.]

A naked Indiana University  student  was shot and arrested after  firing  30  rounds from a semi-automatic pistol in Blooming- ton, and was recuperating in jail.  He was charged with attempted murder  and pos- session of marijuana  (Yeah? Well, that was found not on his person but in a sub- sequent search of his apartment). . . . Six seniors were suspended  from  Cas- cade  High  School  in  rural  Hendricks County for covering doors,  desks  and other  parts  of the school  with 11,000 multicolored Post-Its;  the  janitor  was fired  for  watching them do it,  and  50 more students were suspended for turn- ing out in protest of the suspensions and firing. . . . The pastor of the  Sunrise  Christian  Re- formed Church in Lafayette was arrested and fired  for maintaining two hidden vid- eo cameras in the ladies' room. . . . Indianapolis officials reported losing more than a million dollars promoting and secur- ing this year's Super Bowl. . . . Democratic  gubernatorial  nominee  John Gregg proposed eliminating all income tax on Indiana-based corporations.                    [courtesy Associated Press]

Perp (note the I.U.     crimson jump suit)          Cascade                Political perp

                          

The Kentucky Supreme Court voted to maintain low-
er bar association dues  for  judges  than  for lawyers
(membership is mandatory for both). . . .

A University of Louisville study  of  a  tobacco  virus
suggested  that smokers have less risk of contracting
Parkinson's disease. . . .

Two girls  at  Lexington  Catholic  High School  were
told they could not attend the prom together. . . .

Police closed the southbound lanes  of  I-75  near  the
Tennessee border for three hours to clean several tons
of salami off the highway that  spilled  when two semi-
trailers collided  (like, they couldn't have called out the
dogs, or the Dagos?). . . .

A full-page ad in the Louisville Courier-Journal for a
motivation business seminar listed,  as speakers,  Bill
O'Reilly,  Bill Cosby,  Steve Forbes, Steve Wozniak
(but  not  Steve Jobs),  University of Kentucky  bas-
ketball coach  John  Calipari,  University of Louisville
basketball  coach  Rick  Patino,  discredited  Medal
of Honor winner  Dakota  Meyer,  and "Go Daddy"
cheesecake race car driver Danica Patrick.  And it's
only $4.95 apiece  for advance tickets  (at the KFC
Yum! Center, which seats 22,000 just for basketball
– you do the math – it's $225 a ticket at the door).

                                     [courtesy  Courier-Journal]

"I feel like a pimp for loan sharks."
                                                         – New York University professor Nicholas Mirzoeff
                                                            (speaking of student loans and the rising cost of tuition)

"It's ten minutes till 4 a.m., Central time; ten till 5, Eastern."

                                                               – Joe Corcoran, WKYU-FM radio, Bowling Green,
                                                                  Ky., at 4:50 a.m. CDT (5:50 EDT), May 14, 2012

"It's 5 a.m., Central time; 6, Eastern."
                                                               – Joe, ten minutes later

Tina Fey, 42
Gabriela Sabatini, 42
Enya, 51
Yannick Noah, 52
George Strait, 60
Nancy Kwan, 73
Anna Maria Alberghetti, 76
Malcolm X (1925-1965)
Pol Pot (1925-1998)
Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969)

A catfé opened in Vienna, Austria, with feline hosts Sonja,
Thomas, Moritz, Luca, and Momo. . . .  Jerry Brown sold
out. . . . Newsweek touted Barack Obama on its cover as
"the first gay President.". . . A Guantánamo defense attorn-
ey's reference to the CIA as "the men and women wearing
the big-boy pants"  was bleeped from the audio feed of ar-
raignments to the public. . . . The Government Accountabil-
ity Office found in a study on the efficacy of a study evalua-
ting the cost of producing studies  that  Pentagon  practices
were  "not fully consistent with relevant cost estimating best
practices and cost accounting standards."  .  .  . The British
Cheese  Board  asked songwriters to compose  a  national
Cheddar anthem.  .  .  . Chocolates in the forms of breasts,
penises and copulating couples were distributed for  Moth-
ers Day at a grade school in Woodberry, Australia. . . . A
Lexus landed in a family swimming pool  in Laurente, Cali-
fornia.  . . . Indonesia revoked its permit for Lady Gag-a's
June 3 "Born This Way Ball" concert, already sold out, af-
ter protests about her sexy clothes and dance moves.  . . .
Two men who robbed an internet café in Calima,  Colom-
bia, were caught because one of them forgot to log himself
out of Facebook on a computer there. . . .Cops Tasered a
mother at Guntown Middle School in northern Mississippi.
. . . A man in Port Richey, Florida, was arrested for hitting
his girl friend in the back of the head with  a  thrown  Bible.
. . . Will Smith slapped a male Ukrainian TV reporter who
tried to kiss him at the Moscow premiere of Smith's movie
Men in Black III.  . . . Hal Holbrook won the Mark Twain
Award. . . . An Israeli woman swallowed a toothbrush.


Recently married Katrina Hayman, a pig midwife on a farm in
New Zealand, drew a storm of criticism for this page 1 photo-
graph of her in the Taranaki Daily News swigging  a  beer  at
the Taranaki Bride of the Year competition.  "No  one  would
have said anything if I had been  sipping  a  glass  of  wine,"
she cried.

[courtesy Harper's Weekly, Daily Snopes, MSNBC.com, AP]

The University of Louisville women's team had a 53-3 record going into the national collegiate tournament but was ranked only as high as 7th in three major polls.  The sports question was, where do "students" find the time  to  play  56 games in a season, half of them "on the road"? (Most teams had played at least 59 games.)  <–––––––– U. of L. ace Tori Collins ––––––––>

The Roger Clemens perjury trial was interrupted by a
cell phone call to Judge Reggie Walton,  who had for-
bidden lawyers, witnesses, jurors, reporters and spec-
tators to bring cell phones into the courtroom.

My husband is a snorer, and he has gotten louder
over the years.   Finally he want to a doctor who
diagnosed him with sleep apnea  and  gave him a
CPAP mask – but he won't wear it.  He says it's
uncomfortable and unflattering.   So I have to go
to another room to cop my Z's.  Help!

                                 Starved for Sex in Savannah

Publius Leget wrote Sun 5/06/12 @13:47:56 CDT re last
week's headline "Romney's gay security spokesman quits":

What is gay security?  Does this have anything to do
with condoms?

Look it up.  – Ed.


Stephen Yates, an obviously angry Kentuckian. wrote Sun 5/6/012 @17:59 CDT:

1.  The town where the kid shot the kid is Radcliff, not Radcliffe.  No "e."
2.  How did you not notice they did not sing "My Old Kentucky Home…."; they sang
     "The Old Kentucky Home."  I AM OUTRAGED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3.  My wife picked the winner. AGAIN!!!  And, again, she had no one she could trust
     to place a bet for her.

Our bad on "Radcliffe."  We could have looked it up.

As for "My Old Kentucky Home," that's the title Stephen Foster gave the song;  but the lyrics he
wrote have "the old Kentucky home" ("The sun shines bright on . . . ") in the first line of the verse
and in the last two lines of the chorus ("Weep no more, my lady . . . "), where it is repeated:

    "We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home,
     For the old Kentucky home, far away."

The last line of the verse is the only one with the phrase "my old Kentucky home" (". . . Then my
old Kentucky home, good night"),  and that is true of all three stanzas  (the second two of which
you never hear at the Kentucky Derby).   Here's a reprint in the Louisville Courier-Journal of the
lyrics Foster wrote, except for "darkies" – you know what became of "darkies" (we have a 19th
century songbook with the same lyrics, but  with "darkies" intact).

We did not find a recording of this year's singing;  but  a  "My Old Kentucky Home Sing Along"
video on YouTube, with printed lyrics, produced apparently in 2011 and embedded in the Ken-
tucky Derby web site, puts "my" in both the first and last lines of the verse and in the next-to-last
line of the chorus,  with "the" only in the last line of the chorus.   A couple of YouTube videos of
the 2009 Derby singalong have "my" in the first and last lines of the verse  and  "the"  in  both the
last two lines of the chorus.   In a YouTube video of the 2008 singing,  it is hard to distinguish the
words; but it seems to be "the," "my," "my," "my."  All of which demonstrates one of our constant
themes:  There are no standards, any more.  Thank you for sharing our concern.

P.S.   Here's a news tip for you:   We hear that Churchill Downs has appointed  a  committee  to
consider revising the second line of the verse to go,  " 'Tis summer,  the Negroes are queer . . . ."
You can look it all up.     – Ed.

A man was arrested for DUI in Fort Wayne after he and his wife
drove away from a liquor store with four children – aged 4, 5, 6
and 7 – strapped to the hood of their car. . . .

A 12-year-old boy  stole $20 from a neighbor in the Indianapo-
lis suburb of Beech Grove and drove his mother's car, with two
other children, aged 7 and 6, three miles to Little Caesar's for a
pizza. . . .

A 14-year-old girl stabbed her 4-year-old cousin to death and
was found wandering the streets of Indianapolis  covered  with
blood. . . .

A soldier who lost a leg in Afghanistan shot off a gun outside a
bar in Lafayette the night before a parade in his honor, and an-
other man was left injured by falling debris. Prosecutors agreed
to let the soldier off with probation; but the Judge, who had lost
a hand in an accident, rejected the plea  (see  Quotations  of the
week, below). . . .

Senator Richard Lugar was defeated in the Republican primary
election by the "Tea Party."

                            [courtesy Associated Press, Smoking Gun]

Another female teacher, Andrea Conners, 31, of High- land Heights High School in Fort Thomas, has been in- dicted for an "inappropriate relationship"  with  a  male student.                                 [courtesy Cincinnati Enquirer] The state Environmental Protection Agency  found  a private landfill, dating to about 2007, in a cemetery in Harrodsburg,  containing old tires, scrap metal, auto- mobile parts and fencing,  after  oil  was noticed bub- bling to the surface in a flood.                                                            [courtesy AP] "Inside yard sale, McGrew Church Road, Anneta . . . ."             [handwritten sign at Minit Mart, Brownsville]

Andrea

"Unfortunately for [the defendant],  I’m the only judge in Tippecanoe County
 who is not too impressed with the sympathy of losing a limb.  Things happen;
 you've got to deal with it."
                                             – Judge Les Meade, rejecting a lenient plea bargain for a
                                                wounded soldier  (see Dumb news from Indiana,  above)

"Why is this so hard?"
                                        – Capt. James L. Pohl, presiding military judge at Guantánamo

"In just two days we can be proud of our moms."
                                                                                – Ward  Jacobson,  disk jockey on Minnesota
                                                                                    Public Radio's Music Through the Night, two
                                                                                    days ago (i.e., two days before Mothers Day)

"Military preparedness is a form of strength."
                                                                         – Rachel Maddow

Louis Farrakhan, 79
Burt Bacharach, 84
Chang and Eng (1811-1874)

Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, Walid bin Attash, Mustafa Ahmed al-
Hawsawi,  Khalid  Shaikh Mohammed  and  Ramzi bin al-
Shibh were arraigned at  "Camp  Justice"  on Guantánamo
Bay, Cuba, for the attacks of September 11, 2001, as the
prosecutors refused to read the names of all 2,976 people
killed. . . . A study at the University of Vermont concluded
that teens' brains might dispose them to drug use and other
impulsive behavior. . . .  A bouncer at a gay bar in Copen-
hagen, Denmark, told a woman she could not kiss her boy
friend there. . . . South Korea seized thousands of capsules
containing  powdered dead babies,  believed to have come
from China. . . . Last week's item about a dentist in Poland
who pulled all her boy friend's teeth was  reported  to  be a
hoax (what do we know?). . . . No bullet wound was found
in the Army captain who  died  in  Afghanistan  while talking
with his wife in Texas on  Skype  (another item reported last
week). . . .The Sunrise-McMillan Elementary School in Fort
Worth, Texas, corrected the spelling from McMillian, honor-
ing  its  first  teacher, after 8 years of incorrect display on the
building, signs, logos and Facebook. . . . A federal prison in-
mate in Texas got 40 per cent of the vote in  West  Virginia's
Democratic presidential primary. .  .  . Three 6th-grade boys
in Calkini, Mexico, made a cell phone video of their sex with
each other in their classroom during recess.  .  .  . Newly dis-
covered Mayan calendars projected thousands of years  into
the future,  putting the kibosh on predictions of the end of the
world this December.  . . . A 24-year-old woman who lost a
foot to flesh-eating bacteria after a zip line accident in Augus-
ta,  Georgia,  was expected to lose both hands and her other
foot but was reported to be "improving.". . . A woman arres-
ted  in Kearney,  Nebraska,  for renting out her 14-year-old
daughter for sex  was accused of pimping her 7-year-old girl
as well. . . . The marching band director at Florida A&M U-
niversity "retired." . . . A 1½-year-old girl was pulled from a
flight at the airport in Fort Lauderdale,  Florida,  because her
name was on the "no fly" list. .  .  .  A magazine reported that
12 per cent of mothers between 18 and 35 years old use cell
phones during sex. . . .  A judge in Las Vegas, Nevada, gave
no mercy to a 120-pound Rhodesian ridgeback dog  that had
mauled a 1-year-old boy to death,  ordering its execution  de-
spite a plea from a New York rescue organization to take it to
an animal sanctuary in Colorado. . . .  A 14-year-old boy was
arrested in Ragland, Alabama, for hanging his 9-year-old half-
sister. . . . Teens headed for a high school prom inWales,Wis-
consin, fell into a lake when a pier collapsed beneath them. . . .
Michele Bachmann became a citizen of Switzerland.
         
[courtesy Harper's Weekly, Daily Snopes, MSNBC.com, AP]

The University of Pittsburgh filed suit (in a state court in
Pennsylvania) to get out of the Big East Athletic Confer-
ence – which includesWest Virginia, Notre Dame, Lou-
isville and DePaul with Texas Christian, Boise State and
San Diego State on the invitation list, waiting to join – in
order to join the Atlantic Coast Conference  –  including
Florida State, which is only 30 miles away from the Gulf
of Mexico but at least 170 miles from the Atlantic Ocean,
and Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech,  both of them more
than 200 miles from the nearest ocean. Pittsburgh is near-
ly 300 miles from the Atlantic. But,  San Diego is east of
Honolulu. . . .

"The Star Spangled Banner" will be sung at at the 500-Mile
Race in Indianapolis by  Martina  McBride,  who will show
you that black chicks like Mary J. Bilge  and Beyoncé  and
pasty white boys like Rascal Flatts  and  the Fray  have not
cornered the market on desecrating the National Anthem –
but you may have to wait for the last line to hear  her  really
mess it up.

My husband, "Ken," has been self-employed for
25 years.  He owns two large trailers and has al-
ways parked them  in  our  driveway.  But in the
last two months, we've had visits from the police
nearly every night.   A neighbor we've never met
keeps reporting us – he complains that when my
husband gets home from work he parks with one
tire resting in the dirt.

A  city  ordinance  requires us to have the section
where we park either rocked or paved. We can't
afford that. Ken tries very hard to park his trailers
ers and truck in the driveway without touching the
grass,  but  that's  difficult.  The police are sympa-
thetic; they say the neighbor has been targeting us.
They know him as the local troublemaker.

We are honest, hardworking people, and would-
n't harm a soul.    Yesterday we asked the police
officer to file  a  neighbor  nuisance  report.   We
don't know what else to do.  I  can't  sleep,  and
I'm scared for my family.  I  have  no  idea  what
else this man is capable of.

                                      Good Citizen in Illinois

    Styled alpacas on farm near Salzburg, Austria

                                            [courtesy MSNBC.com]

      The above is not our ad.   We found it in a throwaway flyer for the
      Cee Bee Food Store inserted in the latest issue of the local Aston-
      isher.    We would not inflict  such  profanity  on the local readers,
      who include  children  and  screaming  Baptists.   Our  product  is
      Heavenly  Dip.  Heavenly  Dip  is  good.  One more thing:  We have
      tried "Heluva Good" dips,  and they SUCK.  (P.S., guys:  There are
      two L's in "H---.")

Henry Velenosi wrote Sun 4/29/12 @07:02 PDT
re last week's Kohler toilet ad:

The male sensor:  Does it raise the seat, or spread
a tarp for those of us who don't aim well?

Dunno. – Ed.    Here's a female perspective:

Dianne Hopkins wrote Sun 4/29/12 @09:03 CDT:

Is this a toilet or a sex toy?

One of 21 states now "carding" voters,  Indiana  sent 5,000 postcards to eligible voters in Indianapolis with wrong  addresses  of the polls to which they were as- signed. . . . The Floyd County prosecutor said it's too early to call a man  a  serial  killer  who is charged with  offing  two women in his home and in whose back yard police dug up the remains of a third woman last week. . . . More dumb news from Indiana in the sports, below.                                           [courtesy Associated Press]

                                                           

A 13-year-old Laurel County boy was strangled (but not fatally) on
a home-made "zip line" he was riding from a tree to the ground. . . .

A 3-year-old boy found a gun in his home in Radcliffe and shot and
killed his 1-year-old sister. . . .

A soldier at Fort Campbell, whose indictment for killing his wife and
her former mother-in-law in Hardin County was dismissed after four
hung  juries,  is now on court martial  for the same offense  (and you
thought there was a "double jeopardy" clause in the 5th Amendment).

                                                                                 [courtesy AP]

For more dumb news from Kentucky, see "There's an app for that,"
below.  And  the  sports,  of course.  They ran the Kentucky Derby
yesterday.

"Someone stopped payment on my reality check."
                                                                                – Dusty Hopkins

"There are 25 professionals named Chris Thiele who use LinkedIn to
 exchange information."
                                         – linkedin.com  (perhaps to be confused with
                                            the mandolin player Chris Thile, perhaps not)

"President Obama was on his way back to Washington after an unannounced
 visit to Afghanistan."
                                    – Jean Cochran, National Public Radio news (Unannounced?
                                        It  was  on  page 1  all  over  the  world.  Not pre-announced,
                                        perhaps.  How about "surprise" visit?  – Editor

"It depends on who you ask."
                                                    – Louisa Lim, NPR news ("whom" you ask, honey –
                                                       but don't do that, in any event:   You're  the  reporter.
                                                       You figure out whom to ask.  – Ed.)

"You know, it's -it's interesting because I -I -I -I . . . and -and -and . . . ."

                                                        – David Greene, substitute for Renée Montagne as host
                                                           of NPR's Morning Edition, who, in this sound clip, ap-
                                                           pears to have learned how to stutter just like her

"A lawyer for one accuser said one of those four priests had raped him
 at St. Timothy's Parish rectory in Philadelphia."
                                                                                – the Associated Press

Central Baptist Hospital in Lexington, Ky., is offering
maternity patients a mobile  app  to help them choose
baby names from most popular baby names,  celebri-
ty baby names, biblical figures, athletes, foods, artists,
comedians, country music stars,  Disney,  science fic-
tion, social media influences,  and tech stars,  among
others.

Ray Parker Jr., 58
Bianca Jagger, 67
Engelbert Humperdinck, 76
Ron Popeil, 77
Francis Stephen Castelluccio (Frankie Valli), 78
Willie Mays, 81
Hosni Mubarak, 84
Ann B. Davis, 86
Pete Seeger, 93
Elizabeth Cochran Seaman ("Nellie Bly") (1864-1922)

A dentist in Wroclaw,  Poland,  pulled  all  of her boy friend's teeth after he dumped her for another woman; and now his new woman has dumped him because he is toothless. . . . Nicole Houde, 26, Miss New Hamp- shire USA in 2010, was arrested for punching, kicking, scratching  and biting  her 33-year-old boy friend when he took her  cell  phone  away from her in an argument. . . . A man was fined $1,000 and sentenced to proba- tion in Yorkville, Illinois, for calling 911 five times in a day to complain that his i-Phone was not working. . . . A wo-man in transition from female to male was ticket- ed  for  using  the  ladies'  room  at a hospital in Dallas, Texas. . . . A U.S. Army captain's wife in Houston saw her husband get killed in Afghanistan as they chatted on Skype. .  .  .  D'Avonte Meadows,  6,  was suspended from school in Aurora,  Colorado,  for telling one of his 1st-grade classmates, a girl, "I'm sexy and I know it" (a song by "LMFAO" popular on YouTube).                  [courtesy Daily Snopes, MSNBC.com, AP]

Perp of the Week     Nicole Houde (sorry, no photo of  the Polish dentist)

A 75-year-old Florida golfer looking for a lost ball
in a canal was bitten by a 9-foot alligator, slammed
to the ground, and dragged into the water. . . .

An Iowa high school girl went  to  the  prom  with a
cardboard cutout of Tim Tebow. . . .

Baseball broadcaster Tim McCarver suggested that
global warming is producing more home runs. . . .

Jim Nabors will not sing "Back Home Again in Indi-
ana" at this year's 500-Mile Race,  missing only the
2nd time in 26 years, for scheduled heart surgery....

Cyndi Lauper,  grand marshal of the Kentucky Der-
by Festival's Pegasus Parade,  blurted  "Fucking idi-
ots!" into a microphone  she  thought  was  dead  as
she was meeting a  group  of  children  and about to
sing "Girls Just Want to Have Fun"  to  kick  off  the
parade  (it's on YouTube, of course). . . .

As promised, here's Mary J. Bilge singing the Nation-
al Anthem at the Kentucky Derby.  It's  even  worser
than her performance the day before at the  Kentucky
Oaks. . . .

Tabloid Headlines contest:  Pick the winner of next year's Kentucky Derby  (deadline, July 1, this year). First  prize  will be a  free  appointment  with NBC's Donna Brothers' hairdresser! . . . Question:  How come we can't sing "darkies" in "My Old Kentucky Home" any more, but we can still sing "gay"?  (" ' Tis summer, the 'people' are gay . . . ") . . . If you need to know who won the race yesterday, you can look it up. . . . And,  finally,  here's our first softball hottie of the season:

Yeah, that's Donna! (on the left) . . .

     
       Morgan Ellington,  1st basewoman, Mercy Acad-
       emy, Louisville, Ky.
                                       [Courier-Journal photo]

I think my neighbor is trying to poison her husband.
I saw her sprinkling  some  kind  of powder  on his
lunch. 
                                      Suspicious in Shreveport