Megan Crafton, a  22-year-old assistant cheerleading coach  at Shelbyville  High  School,  was arrested for  sucking  off  a 17- year-old  player  on  the  boys basketball  team.     [courtesy Indianapolis Star]

Three teen-agers and a deputy sheriff were injured when a  golf  cart
overturned in the jail parking lot at Elkhart, in a DUI class simulation.

A falling tree killed a mounted guide at Brown County State Park.

                                                            [courtesy Associated Press]

[Read this fascinating story in the Indianapolis Star about how a cy-
bersleuth in Texas tracked down the origin of the video of a 3-year-
old  Greensburg  boy  singing  "Ain't No Homos Gonna Make It  to
Heaven"  and turned it viral.]

Edmonson County celebrated July 4  on June 22  (see  next-to-
last of the "Quotations of the week,"  below).

                                                    [courtesy Edmonson News]

The state's Court of Appeals reversed the conviction of a man
who fatally stabbed another man in the back in a street brawl in
Newport, citing the Kentucky "stand your ground" law.

                                                    [courtesy Indianapolis Star]

Three Mercer County school buses were taken for joy rides in a
period of 11 days – one of them twice in six days – and one of
them was driven into a trailer park mail box in Harrodsburg. . . .

[See how two grandmothers screwed up their attempt last year to
promote  their  granddaughter  for  Kentucky  Secretary of State
(you can call it a campaign ad, or a comedy video – she won the
office anyway).  One of the grandmas has died now.]

                                            [courtesy Lexington Herald-Leader]

A lawsuit filed in Hart County alleges  that the driver of a tour bus
that rolled over shortly after taking off for Washington, D.C., with
a load of students,  already  had  been on the road for eight hours,
from the bus company's headquarters in Chicago,  was crazed on
"energy" drinks, and refused to slow down on the twisty seconda-
ry highway from Cub Run to I-65.
                                                                             [courtesy AP]

A Louisville father on his way to work forgot to drop his 8-month-
old baby off at day care,  and found the boy dead of heat prostra-
tion in the car when he left work 10 hours later. . . .

"This is your last free article.  Subscribe now."

                                                        – Louisville Courier-Journal

The morons.  About a month ago the newspaper, under new
management,  decided that it would give no more "free rides"
on the world wide web and that readers would have to either
subscribe to the Courier-Journal  for a ticket to its reports on
line, or pay for the service on line directly.

We did subscribe to the Louisville Courier-Journal  once upon
a time – but they couldn't get it here on the day of issue (well,
once in a while – every other day, at best). Subscriptions come
only in the mail here in the boondocks. So we canceled our sub-
scription  and began buying the paper at the local "news stands"
– the Minit Mart and Hilltop Chevron,  to both of which the pa-
per is delivered every day by contract vendors,  not by the post
office.

Except:   We don't buy it  on  Sundays,  Mondays,  and Tuesdays.
There's no news on Sundays; there's nothing in the paper on Mon-
days (except Sunday sports scores)  and Tuesdays;  and the cross-
word puzzles are too easy all three days.

So,  do we get credit on line for buying the paper at a news stand?
No.   Did we ask?   Yes.

The New York Times, they think they are.  They will lose readers,
not gain revenue.
                                                            Editor, Tabloid Headlines

"I think there will be scandals associated with the worst decision of the United States
 Supreme Court in the 21st century.  Uninformed, arrogant, naive.  I just wish one of
 them  [the  deciding  justices]  had run for county sheriff.  That's why we miss people
 like William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor."
                                                                                         – John McCain, on Citizens United

"Happy Father's Day – or, as they call it in my family,
  happy Brother-in-Law's Day."
                                                      – Woody Allen's son Ronan Farrow

"And they think they're doin' it right."
                                                            – Jonell Carder

"There is no Rhonda."
                                        – Brian Wilson

"If someone likes Justin Bieber in Sweden, we don't care.  We let them.  We don't
 call him 'gay' if we mean 'he sucks.'  We say 'he sucks'."
                                                                                                        – Sonja Abrahamsson

"Egypt's protesters responded slowly to the army's moves to limit democracy – we'll ask
 why, and if that could change in this hour of Morning Edition."  [It didn't.]

                                            – Linda Wertheimer, National Public Radio, June 19, at 5 a.m. EDT

"Can we all get along?"
                                          – Rodney King

Elizabeth Warren ("Fauxcahontas"), 63
Aung San Suu Kyi, 67
Paul McCartney, 70
Mick Fleetwood, 70
Roger Ebert, 70
Shirley "Cha Cha" Muldowney, 72
Kris Kristofferson, 76

Mugly, an 8-year-old Chi- nese crested from the Uni- ted Kingdom, won the 20- 12 World's Ugliest Dog a- ward in Petaluma, Califor- nia  (yes,  the meet is held at the Marin-Sonoma Fair Grounds in Petaluma!). . . .

Police confiscated marijuana plants and a pitchfork from
the home of the late Rodney King. . . .Two kindergarten
teachers in suburban San Antonio,  Texas,  disciplined a
6-year-old bully by making his 24 classmates line up and
hit him. ... Parents in Peaster, Texas, sued a school nurse
and a counselor for giving their 8-year-old son a bath. ...
Students  in  upstate  New  York  brought a 68-year-old
school bus monitor to tears  with a 10-minute verbal bar-
rage  that  one of them  posted  on  YouTube  (if you can
stand that see if you can take Faith Karimi's whiny report
of the incident on CNN). . . . General Mills announced its
corporate opposition to gay marriage. . . .A couple in An-
derson, South Carolina,  burglarized the home of "friends"
with  Facebook  knowledge  that  they  were out of town
(and they were arrested with the help of Facebook).  . . .
 
A "Benny and Joon" Johnny Depp wannabe was arrested
for  disorderly conduct  at a park in Cincinnati,  Ohio,  for
asking people if they wanted to "laugh at the crippled girl,"
promoting a comedy act by a friend with muscular dystro-
phy. . . . Charlie Sheen announced his retirement. . . . Adi-
das canceled the introduction of its new  shackle  sneakers
after a storm of protest.
[courtesy Daily Snopes, MSNBC.com, AP]

   Indiana University's Sarah Pease leads the field in a sloppy Olympics track trial

My husband and his brother, "Sam," are both in their 50's.  My
mother-in-law thinks Sam is the golden child.    He and his wife
receive  the  best  gifts, and we get whatever trash she can find.
She gives my sister-in-law sapphires and diamonds;  she  gave
me a mood ring.

My  main  concern  is how this makes my husband feel.   When
Sam is expected, "Mom" gets her hair and nails done and stocks
the house with goodies.  When my husband suggests a call, she's
busy.    My husband deals with this by lowering his expectations,
but I find it hard to handle.   I think "Mom" has a sick obsession
with my brother-in-law, and she also made it clear that she'd like
my husband to get back with his first wife  (that  won't  happen).
Is there anything I can do to make her see how hateful her beha-
vior is?
                                                                                 Sad Wife

Kenneth Huey wrote Sun 6/10/12 @14:15 EDT:

Thanks   for  the  sustained  effort.  I got an Email with subject line
"Mail Delivery Failure" from you folks this morning, and I've spent
the whole day so far  in  fear  that  I was going to miss this week's
transmission.

Editor's  note:   Mr. Huey and at least five other subscribers did not get
their Tabloid Headlines last Sunday until our  seventh  attempt  to trans-
mit to them, finally by deleting a section our transmitting "server," Wind-
stream, suspected of carrying a "worm" ("E-mail we did open . . . "). 


Bruce Mitchell wrote Sun 6/10/12 17:32 PDT:

Translation,  please,  of last week's bumper sticker.  The takeoff
on "I my dog" is obvious. What's lacking is an explanation of
what the shamrock means or why the slogan is misogynistic.

We're guessing you don't play cards.  That's not a shamrock.  It's a club. – Ed.

A 12-year-old boy in Columbus told his friends, "Watch this"; hit
a bullet on a sidewalk with a hammer, and shot a 15-year-old girl
in the neck. . . .

A car driven by a 14-year-old girl crashed head-on into a tree in
Indianapolis, critically injuring three teen-age boys aboard.

                                                            [courtesy Associated Press]

A day care van crashed into a tree in Louisville, killing a woman a-
board and sending 14 children and the driver to the hospital.

                                                                             [courtesy AP]

April, 1970:  Gordon Lightfoot's song "Poor Little Allison"  was released on his album "Sit
                      Down, Young Stranger" (the album was quickly retitled "If You Could Read
                      My Mind" when another song on the album, by that title, became a hit).

May, 1970:  Allison Krause, 19, was killed by the National Guard at Kent State University
                      in Ohio, along with three other students.

July, 1971:  Alison Krauss, soon to be a Bluegrass prodigy and later to be a Bluegrass hot-
                     tie, was born in Illinois.

"I get quite annoyed when people think that shin-kicking is quite literally two guys facing
 each other and kicking each other as hard as possible in the shins."

                                                                                – event  judge  James  Wiseman  (and
                                                                                   what is it? Follow the link, if you care)

"A dingo took my baby!"
                                            – Lindy Chamberlain; Meryl Streep

"I wanna go home."
                                        – Bristol Palin

The i-Poo will enable you to share your experience
on the toilet with others in the same position.

Ashley and Mary Kate Olsen, 26
Diana Taurasi, 30
Steffi Graf, 43
Boy George, 51
Donald Trump, 66
Newt Gingrich, 69
Joe Arpaio, 80
Charles Rangel, 82
Barnabe Googe (1540-1594)
Charles the Bald (823-877)

Lindsay Lohan rear-ended a semitrailer with her Porsche
in Santa Monica, California (she blamed her brakes). . . .
Madonna bared one of her 53-year old tits at a  show  in
Turkey. .  .  . Two turtles at an Austrian zoo,  married for
more than a century,  appeared headed for a divorce. . . .
A 96-pound woman, banned from an apartment building
in Portland, Oregon, for destruction of property, was be-
ing smuggled in in her lover's suitcase. . . . A 31-year-old
Atlanta, Georgia,  policeman died as he and a friend were
having sex with a woman not his wife, and a jury awarded
his widow $3 million against a doctor  who had not warn-
ed him to avoid strenuous activity. . . .The Japanese drop-
ped a campaign to educate women on nuclear safety  that
compared radiation to the screaming of an angry wife. . . .
Georgia received an application from the Ku Klux Klan to
"adopt" a mile of highway. . . . A woman driving a car with
a license plate reading  "ZOMBIE"  struck two pedestrians
in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and then shot the father of one
of the victims with a stun gun. .  .  .  A man was arrested in
Murdock,  Florida,  for repeated calls to 911  to complain
that a strip club would not allow him to enter with his kitten.
. . . A man called 911 in East Hartford, Connecticut, to re-
port a deli that did not fix his sandwich correctly ("little tur-
key, little ham, a lot of cheese, a lot of mayonnaise"). . . .A
30-year-old woman already on probation for  armed  rob-
bery held up the same  liquor   store  in Fall River,  Massa-
chusetts,  three times in 24 hours. . . . A tourism "tweet" by
Lake Erie Shores & Islands promoting Sandusky, Ohio, as
"perfect for Fathers Day" led followers to the Jerry Sandus-
ky trial in Pennsylvania.

During my granddaughter's visit,  I heard strange
chanting from her room and smelled incense. I'm
so fearful that she's joined a cult.  What  do  you
think?  Is she in danger?
                                             Harriet in Arizona

                                                                                                        [reported by Fred Dean]

Who'll DIE next?

• Nick Nolte?
• Demi Moore?
  
• Liza Minnelli?
• O. J. Simpson?
• George Jones?
• Mary Tyler Moore?
• Heather Locklear?

Amber Portwood,  MTV's "Teen Mom" (now 22),  said she did
not regret withdrawing from a drug program that could have kept
her out of prison,  adding that she's been a druggie since she was
12  (she'll be doing five years now).

                                             [courtesy Anderson Herald Bulletin]

Erin  Moran,  who  played Richie Cunningham's wisecracking little
sister Joanie on the '70's sitcom  Happy  Days,  is living in a trailer
park  in New Salisbury  (in Harrison County in Southern Indiana),
victim of a 2010 Southern California foreclosure.

                                         [courtesy Louisville Courier-Journal]

A man was knocked unconscious when his hot air balloon flew into
power lines in Clark County, just after he had proposed to the wo-
man aboard (who had said yes, and revived him with CPR).

                                                                  [courtesy MSNBC.com]

A school bus ran into a house in Carmel (the driver was the only one
aboard).
                                                            [courtesy Indianapolis Star]

A tour bus carrying 34 middle schoolers and 20 parents toWash-
ington, D.C.,  overturned on a state highway only five miles from
Cub Run, where the trip began  (no one was killed).

                                            [courtesy Lexington Herald-Leader]

The May 31 obituary page in the Edmonson News carried 6½ col-
umn inches of obituaries  and 17½  column inches of display adver-
tisements for tombstones.
                                                   [courtesy the Local Astonisher]

An  environmental  activist  with a photo of a 5-year-old girl taking
a bath in discolored water in Pike County was questioned by Cap-
itol police under suspicion of child pornography  after she attempt-
ed to show the photo to a House committee in Washington. . . .

Capitol police arrested 20 Kentuckians protesting mountaintop re-
moval at the House Office Building in Washington, including six of
them singing "Amazing Grace" in the office of Kentucky Congress-
man Harold Rogers.
                                                            [courtesy Herald-Leader]

"This is not an election; it's an auction."
                                                                 – Bonnie Raitt

[Hear David Greene's latest effort to wrest the National Public Radio stuttering
 championship from his Morning Edition co-host Renée Montagne.]

"Communicate effectively!  Craft your Words to Create
  the Emotions You Want with EffectCheck!"

Kim Clijsters, 29
Anna Kournikova, 31
Sara Watkins, 31
Bonnie Tyler, 61
Donald Duck, 78
F. Lee Bailey, 79
João Gilberto, 81
Dr. Ruth, 84
Eddie Gaedel (1925-1961)
Van Lingle Mungo (1911-1985)

Snigdha Nandipati  knocked down "guetapens" to win the National Spelling Bee. . . . I- daho, threatened with a law- suit by a Utah distillery, can- celed its prohibition  of  Five Wives vodka. . . .  A Mary- land  college  student  killed and ate a boarder in his par- ents' home. . . . Sheep in an overpass collision rained on cars  passing  below  near Melbourne,  Australia. . . . Jesus appeared in the mold on a shower wall  in Splen- dora, Texas.  . . .  An artist in  Amsterdam  made  a re- mote control helicopter out of  his  dead  cat.  . . . Dull,  Scotland,   invited   Boring, Oregon, to be its sister city. . . . An essay-grading com- puter  program  scored  the Gettysburg Address  about 2½  on a scale of 6  (call  it a C-minus). . . . Joyce Max-

"Teddy bares" celebrate the Queen's Dia-          mond Jubilee in Hertfordshire, England

ine Gregory, 35, of Shelby, North Carolina, was charged with "malicious castration"
for squeezing a man's testicles out of his scrotum. . . . A Greek legislator threw wa-
ter on a woman legislator and punched another woman legislator in the face on live
TV (and then fled and became the subject of a manhunt). . . . In  a  poll  of 15,000
students by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,  58  per cent  of
high school seniors admitted "texting" or e-mailing while driving automobiles.

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

My mom and dad plan to adopt a burro, but all our
friends and family say it will end badly.   Do you a-
gree?
                                                    Sonny in Missouri

Postal notification,

Our company's courier couldn't make the delivery of parcel.
Reason deny:Postal code isn't specified.

LOCATION:San Francisco
STATUS OF YOUR ITEM:not delivered
SERVICE:Expedited Shipping
NUMBER OF YOUR PARCEL:U194336534NU
INSURANCE:Yes

Label is enclosed to the letter.
Print your label and show it in the nearest post office of USPS

An additional information
If the parcel isn't received within 30 working days our company will have the
right to claim compensation from you for it's keeping in the amount of $9.69
for each day of keeping.

You can find the information about the procedure and conditions of parcels
keeping in the nearest office.

                                                [reported by B. Woods]

Bruce Mitchell wrote Sun 5/27/12 @12:14 PDT re the NPR hot-
tie's pronunciation of Pakistan and Afghanistan (and the Taliban):

Help me out here – is it EYE-stan, or EEE-stan?

English short i, as in "if":  Think "iss-tan" ("iss-tahn").

What we can't figure out  is why one of those Godforsaken countries
gets a "pahk"  and a "stahn,"  and the other gets only an "aff," a "gan"
and a "stan" – while the Tal (rhymes with Cal) still get a "bahn."

You didn't click either of the links?  You could have heard her say it.

How they talk. . . .
                                   – Editor

He's not guilty.

Because he was found not guilty.

He wasn't found not guilty because he was not guilty.

He's not guilty because he was found not guilty.

You understand.  That's our system.

He'd have gotten away entirely had it not been for the National Enquirer.

And the Enquirer did not even get a Pulitzer prize.

Indiana Excise Police, some of them in plain clothes, issued 125 tick-
ets at the 500 Mile Race in Indianapolis – 93  for  illegal  possession
of alcohol, 7 for possession of marijuana, 4 for public intoxication, 3
for resisting law enforcement, and the rest for public indecency, sex-
ual battery and possession of cocaine. . . .

Elizabeth Olivas, 18, who grew up in Indiana from the age of 4, was
stuck in Mexico for weeks, unable to get a return visa from the U.S.
consulate in Juarez until late  Thursday,  just barely in time to deliver
her salutatory last night at the Frankfort High School commencement.

                                                            [courtesy Indianapolis Star]

The pastor put the Apostolic Truth Tabernacle Church in Greensburg
on lockdown after receiving death threats over an internet video of a
3-year-old boy singing "Ain't No Homos Gonna Make it to Heaven."

                                                    [courtesy Steve Yates, TMZ.com]

This sign on a billboard in Lexington drew death threats and then
was stolen. . . .

Two women who worked for the state housing department were
fired for having  sex  in  a closet  with a prisoner assigned to their
office as a janitor.

                         [courtesy J. Ewing, Lexington Herald-Leader]

The Louisville Courier-Journal dropped the Kentucky News sec-
tion from its internet edition  (too much leakage to Tabloid Head-
lines?)  but kept the Indiana News section.

                                                   [discourtesy Courier-Journal]

Three distilleries were sued over "whiskey soot," an ethanol fung-
us (Baudoinia compniacensis) growing on cars and houses.

                                                                           [courtesy AP]

A  snake-handling  preacher  died  after  being bitten by a rattle-
snake in a service in West Virginia. (West Virginia? Well, that's
close enough to Kentucky!  Ask  the  McCoys.  And,  he was a
native of Pike County, Kentucky. And his father did serpent ser-
mons, and he died of snakebite. . . . )
                                                                [courtesy MSNBC.com]

"We destroy some art to save all art."
                                                                – Antonio Manfredi, director of the Casoria
                                                                   Contemporary Art Museum in Italy

"President Obama has created a prairie fire of debt."
                                                                                    – Mitt Romney

"That's a cow pie of distortion."
                                                    – Barack Obama

"Fuck, I'm going back at him! . . . It's going to cost us the race, the fucking overboost. . . .
 These guys are trying to fucking kill me! . . . You didn't put the rear wing in?  That's what I
 was fucking screaming for. . . . I didn't say it because I'm fucking bored. . . .  I don't want
 to give away any more position because we're already fucked."

                                                                            – Marco Andretti, in radio communication
                                                                               with his pit crew at the 500-Mile Race

" . . .  a Romanian location that looks like Eastern Kentucky / West Virginia only if you took
 a steamroller to great swaths of it."
                                                              – Cheryl Truman, in a review in the Lexington Herald-Leader
                                                                 of the Hatfields & McCoys saga on the History channel

"He's a hero and saved a life."
                                                 – Javier Ortiz, spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police in Mi-
                                                    ami, Florida, speaking of a cop who shot and killed a naked man

"This is not to argue against drone attacks.  In principle, they are fully justified."

                                                                                    – Charles Krauthammer, in a column dissing
                                                                                       President Obama's drone cowboy mentality

"Technology will not make us better.  There's no app for that."
                                                                                                      – Leonard Pitts, Miami Herald

Justine Henin-Hardenne, 30
Jhonny (sic) Peralta, 30
Abby Wambach, 32
Alanis Morisette, 38
Annette and Marie Dionne, 78 (r.i.p. their three sisters born the same day)
Andy Griffith, 86

A Miami, Florida, policeman shot and killed a naked man
who  was  eating  another  man's  face. . . .  A man in San
Carlos Park,  Florida,  shot at three neighbors who drove
past him commenting on his saggy pants, and was later ar-
rested wearing only a towel.  . . .  At a McDonald's drive-
through in West Palm Beach, Florida,  a man pulled a gun
on the car next to him to cut to the front of the line. . . . In-
dependent congressional candidate Eddie Gonzalez chang-
ed his name to VoteforEddie.com,  and that's what will be
on the Florida ballot. . . . A 43-year-old man stabbed him-
self in a home standoff  in Hackensack,  New Jersey,  and
threw his intestines at police. .  .  . Fourteen members of a
New York City street gang "friended" a cop on Facebook
and got arrested. .  .  . Five boys at a New York City high
school pitched $500 into a pool on who would be the first
to make out with a hot teacher,  and one of them posted a
video to prove his success; but then he and the teacher de-
nied that it was she with him on the park bench. .  .  .  The
earthquakes in Italy  destroyed 400,000 88-pound wheels
of  Parmigiano  Reggiano  and Grana Padano  cheese. . . .
The director of a museum near Naples  set  fire  to several
works of art in protest of cuts to  Italy’s  arts  budget.  . . .
Burning  textbooks  in  celebration of the end of the school
year,  Pi Kappa Alpha brothers accidentally burned down
their fraternity house at Louisiana Technical University. . . .
A new biography says Barack Obama was a  member  of
the "Choom Gang" in high school  (before hope there was
dope). . . .In protests of a law to curtail protests 500 were
arrested in Montreal and 175 in the city of Quebec,  Cana-
da. . . .  Alligator trappers in South Carolina opened up the
stomach of a recent 13-foot catch  and found a soccer ball,
baseballs, tennis balls, and a smaller gator.  . . . Charles Pe-
ters, a former Green Beret, has refused to return his 1-year-
old daughter to Tennessee,  despite a court order,  until  his
wife returns to face a criminal adultery charge in Dubai. . . .
A judge enjoined further construction of a mosque  in Mur-
freesboro,  Tennessee. . . . A woman drove off in Phoenix,
Arizona, with her 5-week-old boy strapped in a safety seat
on the roof of her car. . . . The word "ingluvies" knocked 6-
year-old Lori Anne Madison out of  the  National  Spelling
Bee.

          
                                              Lori Anne

Other National League baseball teams have been mocking the
Miami Marlins' "Lo viste" ("Did you see that?") sign. . . .

The Cleveland Indians relief pitcher Chris Perez mocked the Kansas City Royals' Jar- rod Dyson with a gesture of Perez' own  after  he  struck Dyson out on three pitches – waving  his hand  in front of his  face  (this  is  the  "You can't see me" gesture – and you have to look fast to see it on the video).            [courtesy MLB.com]

My aunt told me my mother willed her engage-
ment ring to my little sister  because  she  felt  I
was too ugly ever to land a husband.  This  has
wounded me  deeply,  and I have been on anti-
depressant medication ever since.  What about
all this?
                                  Not as Homely as I Look