News Weirdness for Today

Some days the weirdness of people just comes to the fore. This, apparently, is one of those days. Here's what today's news brought to my attention.

A fellow named Timothy Elliott won $1 million dollars on a scratch ticket; he's already received the first $50,000 annual installment of his prize. One problem: he's on five years probation for a January 2006 bank robbery in Cape Cod, and one of the conditions of his probation was no gambling -- including purchasing lottery tickets or being in establishments where lottery games are played. He goes before a judge December 7.

My wife heard Paul Harvey talk about someone burglarizing a shop named Everything Amish. He stole a big screen TV. Um, does this sound like a very un-Amish product to anyone else?

She also heard of a man in Aiken, South Carolina who went to the bank to open a new account. He handed the teller a $1 million bill. Hmmm. Seems the last place you want to go to pass off a bill in a non-existent denomination would be someplace where money is exchanged and transferred -- like, I don't know, a bank. He was arrested for disorderly conduct (he cussed the bank tellers when they refused his deposit) and two counts of forgery (he'd earlier bought cigarettes with a forged check).

Finally, I read of Richard Roberts speaking at a chapel at Oral Roberts University, where he told his student audience that he resigned as ORU president because God told him on Thanksgiving to do so the next day. "Every ounce of my flesh said 'no'" said Roberts, but he said he listened to the divine intervention after praying about it with his wife and his father Oral Roberts.

And so it goes.