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Above and Beyond

IN SEARCH OF INTELLIGENT LIFE

By James L. McClinton, Ph.D.

 The human race seems obsessed with finding intelligent life on other worlds. But, all of the evidence indicates that we need to focus our search here on planet Earth. Read the following true accounts and see if you agree:

  “Hey! It’s not about the money, OK?!”... When a woman asked for her money back, she drew snickers from the courtroom crowd in Hartford, Connecticut. The cash she requested was $8,500 from a failed bribe to a prosecutor. She appeared in Hartford Superior Court to argue that she is entitled to the money she gave a bagman for a crooked prosecutor six years ago. The bagman was to give the money to the prosecutor who was to argue for the early release of her husband from prison. She got in trouble because the prosecutor wasn’t on the take and the bagman was an undercover investigator. (What did she expect without a receipt?)

“Oh, so the Crown Vics with black sidewall tires, the guns and the badges are all real?”... A Connecticut teenager was arrested while trying to sell drugs to police officers with the word “Police” on their jackets. A police spokesman said narcotics officers were on a routine patrol in Stamford in an unmarked car when the 17-year-old boy waved them down. He opened the back door of the car, jumped in and asked the officers what they wanted and how much. A spokesman said he even told the two occupants, “You guys look like cops.” (Yeah, and  you look like you should be wearing one of those brightly colored jumpsuits!) 

The birdbrain tried to blame it on the other birdbrain... In Managua, Philippines, a lawyer told a court that drugs found in a rooster’s cage belonged to the bird and not his client. He said the defendant didn’t own the 67 kilograms of cocaine or the gun which was found in the cage, and argued in the court that the rooster and two hens owned the drugs and the weapon. The man’s lawyer added, “The drugs were in the possession of a rooster and two hens and the law is very clear that whomever is in possession of the drugs is the one who should be accused.” The attorney general called the defense case “an absurd joke.” (Perhaps the rooster and hens were “set up” by some other barnyard animal?)

These “stiffs” weren’t so “lucky”... A man in California was driving in the carpool lane when he was pulled over for driving alone. The man argued that he was not alone – he had three frozen cadavers in the back of his van and they should be counted as passengers. The police officer did not agree and wrote the man a ticket.  (I guess the guys in the back won’t be called as witnesses.)

“Could you just let me go with a warning this time?”... While on routine patrol, a lieutenant with the McDowell County (North Carolina) Sheriff’s Office stopped a vehicle. When the driver asked why he had been stopped, the deputy told him, “Because you’re driving my car.” The white Honda had been stolen earlier in the week. The driver and passenger were arrested. The deputy said the car was in “good condition.” (That may be true, but chances are you can’t say that about the driver and his passenger.)

I think he should have represented her for free and then pled “no contest.”... A Chicago attorney was permitted to withdraw from representing a 75-year-old alleged serial bad check writer. The lawyer complained that he had taken a check from her for his retainer and it had bounced.  (That, however, doesn’t prove a thing.)

A good reason why she’s his “ex-wife”... In West Monroe, New York, a 33-year-old man called his ex-wife and asked her to come over to see something. When she arrived, she found him hanging by his neck from a tree in his front yard. He was safely secured in a lineman’s harness and was neither dead nor dying, but before he could yell “April fool!” his ex had called 911 and a rescue crew was on the way. Sheriff’s deputies cited him with “falsely reporting an incident” and he faces up to a year in jail. (This is possibly the best example ever of a real “April fool.”)

This genius probably found ‘em in the Yellow Pages... A Texas company called “Guns for Hire” stages gunfights for westerns and such things, but the company recently received an interesting job order. A woman called and said she wanted to hire them to kill her husband. Needless to say, she received a hefty jail sentence. (Time to call Jail Breaks “R” Us!) 

I’m sure he thought it was a “terrorist airship.”... A remote controlled advertising blimp was flying over a vacant lot in Salisbury, North Carolina, promoting a Ford/Toyota dealership when a man in a black Chevrolet pickup drove up, got out, and shot at it with a shotgun, causing $10,000 in damage. A witness wrote down the truck’s license number which turned out to be registered to a nearby Chevrolet dealer. (Maybe they’ll start making advertising blimps out of KEVLAR® now.)

If I had been pulled across two barbed wire fences in the middle of the night, I might have been a little cranky myself... Zoo officials say thieves who stole an alligator called Mr. Cranky Pants released him again after discovering how moody he can get. The four-year-old alligator was snatched from a reptile park north of Sydney, but was later spotted in a nearby creek. A spokesman for the Australian Reptile Park in Somersby said, “Mr. Cranky Pants gets moody so they probably messed with the wrong alligator and dumped him.” The culprits had scaled two barbed wire fences and climbed into an alligator pit to steal Mr. Cranky Pants. (I wonder if Mr. Cranky Pants turned one of the would-be thieves into someone they now call “Lefty.”)

“Can I keep this note as a souvenir?”... During a bank robbery in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the robber handed over a holdup note to the teller which warned “Don’t be stupid.” That was followed on the note by his name and address. (The note should have said, “Don’t be stupid – that’s my job!”)

Don’t come back until you’ve perfected your technique!...The attempted robbery of a BB&T bank in Chesapeake, Virginia, was aborted when the robber and the teller came to a stalemate. The robber pushed a holdup note across the counter, but the teller read it, said, “I can’t accept this,” and passed it back. The robber pushed the note through a second time. The teller wadded the note up and tossed it back at the robber, who picked it up and walked out. (“Stick ’em up!”  “No!” “Stick ’em up!” “No!” “Stick ’em up!” “No!”)