Police Blotter of the Day: Assault with a deadly sausage
The victim told police he was riding his bike about 8 a.m. Sunday when Michael A. Baker, whom he does not know, came up to him “and started swinging sausage links at him,” Lt. David Dickinson said Sunday.
“He said he was trying to hit him with that. The victim had no idea why,” Dickinson said.
Full story (Brockton, Mass., Enterprise)
Language curmudgeons: the next generation
Over at msnbc.com, I recently chronicled the announcement that the Queen’s English Society is disbanding after 40 years of fighting to preserve the language in amber against the impurities of modern speech and Twitterese.
In the spirit of fairness, I wanted to point you to this gloriously dyspeptic objection in defense of the society and of “proper” English by Brendan O’Neill, the editor of Spiked, an author whom I admire.
I vigorously disagree with O’Neill here, but I get a big kick out of his precocious curmudgeonry. It’s worth a read.
And from the archives, here’s an explanation of why I write the way I write, for those of you who may wonder why I disagree when my own writing seems so formal.
‘Alternative story telling’? No — just telling the story
Sometimes reporting, editing and producing a breaking news story can be frustrating, because two new developments land on your doorstep before the last one has made it through the production process.
That’s what happened when a gunman entered a real estate office in Valparaiso, Ind., today and took about 10 hostages. So in parallel with writing msnbc.com’s running main story, which you can read here, I also set up a Storify stream, immediately publishing news, images and local reaction as they came in. By the end of the day, it was a lively, largely unintermediated narrative of the entire drama as it unfolded:
Police Blotter of the Day: Darth Vader. Robbing a bank. On a bike.
Really, there’s nothing else you need to know, other than that it was in Toledo, Ohio:
Full story (WNWO-TV of Toledo, Ohio)
Police Blotter of the Day: Cop twice uses Taser on mom at Mississippi middle school
A police officer working as a school resource officer in northern Mississippi twice stunned the mother of a Guntown Middle School pupil with a Taser during a heated argument at the school Wednesday morning.
The woman — identified as Michele Lee Eaton, 39, of Saltillo, about 15 miles north of Tupelo — was arrested on disorderly conduct, public profanity and other charges.
Guntown is where Adam Mayes, who allegedly killed a Tennessee woman and one of her daughters before killing himself earlier this month, was spotted on a convenience store surveillance camera.
Full story (M. Alex Johnson/msnbc.com)
Police Blotter of the Day: Driver throws hammer at motorist yakking on cellphone
The man called 911 and reported he was just passed by a car driven by a 44-year-old Waterloo man who suddenly stopped his car in the middle of the roadway, forcing the caller to stop in the roadway, at which point the man in the car began waving a hammer at the other man yelling “get off the phone,” he then allegedly threw the hammer at the caller. …
“These types of conflicts can easily go bad and are best left to authorities,” stated Sheriff Todd Nehls.
Full report (Dodge County, Wis., Sheriff’s Department via WMTV-TV)
In re the frumious beer bet
Update [May 9, 8:10 p.m. ET]: Now you can even buy a Bandersnatch Cummerbund T-shirt.
Original post: I worked there seven years, but it took this to finally get my name in The Washington Post.
In re Bandersnatch Cummerbund controversy (Lisa de Moraes/The Washington Post)
Alex Johnson - Journalist at Large 