Friday Snippets and Soundbites

We at ec hope that you all had a blessed Easter. We certainly enjoyed spending some time with our friends, church families, and families and focusing on what Jesus did for us. He is risen! He is risen, indeed!

But we're also fairly sure you missed your weekly dose of crazy here on the ec blog. So, “Snippets and Soundbites” is back this week. And if you need more random news in your life, be sure to check out page 38 in this month's (and every month's) issue of ec!

Let's get on with the show. . .

A way with words

This first story leaves us wishing the San Francisco Giants and Majestic, the company that manufactures all of the jerseys worn by Major League Baseball, knew Emily Cole, the production editor for ec. That's because Emily has an eye for the details and she would have caught the typo on Giants reserve player Eugenio Velez's jersey long before he took the field. On Wednesday night, the Giants were playing the Astros and Velez entered the game in a double swith in the seventh inning. But his road gray uniform didn't say "San Francisco." Nope, it read "San Fracicso." Yes, you read that correctly. That's pretty funny for those of us who work with words all day long; it's even funnier when you find out that Velez and no one else on the team says they noticed the misspelling. Apparently, the Associated Press tipped Velez off to the blunder when they reached him by phone on the team bus as the team rolled into the airport on their way home. The city's name was spelled correctly on the rest of the team's jerseys. The typo will be fixed by the team's next road trip, though. To read all about it go here.

Joke's on you
April Fool's Day was last week, and we're sure some of you pulled some fairly elaborate pranks. Maybe not as elaborate as a newspaper in Jordan that's probably regretting their April Fool's Day antics that led to an Orson-Welles-War-of-the-World-radio-broadcast-type hysteria. The paper printed a story chronicling a late-night visit by 10-foot-tall aliens in flying saucers and PEOPLE BELIEVED IT. The story said a UFO had landed near the desert town of Jafr, some 185 miles from the capital, Amman. The report said the UFOs lit up the whole town, interrupted communications and sent fearful residents streaming into the streets. Even the mayor got caught up in the hoax and sent authorities in search of the aliens. Students didn't go to school and the mayor almost evacuated the entire town. The paper has apologized for the whole mess, but the mayor of Jafr still says he might sue. Read about all the hysteria and panic here.

GPS, anyone?
A thief in Utah didn't think through his criminal activity very well. That's because after stealing two phones from a convenience store, the man flagged down an investigating officer and ASKED HIM FOR DIRECTIONS! The police officer noticed the man met the description the clerk had given of the robber. In addition, the thief had left a slip of paper with an address written on it at the scene and the man who flagged down the officer asked for directions to that specific address. The officer grew suspicious, then arrested the man after finding both phones and a small amount of marijuana. Read all about it here.