Friday Snippets and Soundbites

Welcome to the first Friday of August. While you may be going back to school soon, there's still no reason not to enjoy every day! Well, especially Fridays, since that's when we post all the random news you want to hear.

Ready for some strange tales, not-so-smart criminals, and all things weird? Let's go! And if today's edition isn't enough weirdness for you, check out page 38 of this month's (and every month's) issue of ec!

Robbery gone bad. (Also, don't mess with Grandma!)
Last week, Derrick Gauthreaux was arrested in Louisiana for attempted burglary. But that's not the reason we're telling you this story. Gauthreaux was arrested last week while he was passed out at the scene of the crime. Apparently, he had been released from a New Orleans jail around midnight on Thursday, and around 10:30 a.m. the next morning, he attempted to break into an 82-year-old woman's home. Scared and recovering from a broken leg, the woman called 911 and reported someone was trying to break in. (She also assured the operator that she was armed with a crow bar and would be OK.) Police rushed to the scene where they arrested Gauthreaux, who had apparently simply passed out while trying to break in to the mobile home. After his arrest, he was taken to the hospital to be checked out, then booked into jail on one count of attempted burglary. Police also say that he had been cited earlier in the night for having an open alcoholic drink. To learn more about the case, go here.

Being switched at birth? Not so bad.
Dimas Aliprandi of Brazil always felt a little out-of-place in his family. "There was something different," he told The Associated Press in a phone interview. "I had blonde hair and blue eyes and my sisters had dark hair and eyes . . . something did not add up." When he was 14, Aliprandi saw a TV show about babies switched at birth due to mistakes at the hospital and asked his parents for a DNA test, but it was too expensive. But Aliprandi never forgot and paid for a DNA test on his own in 2008, when he was 24. The results? Aliprandi wasn't the biological son of the people he'd always called Mom and Dad. At first, his parents didn't believe the results, then agreed to help the young man search for his biological parents. That search led them to Elton Plaster, born at the same hospital on the same day. But instead of causing a terrible upset and family upheaval, the discovery instead pushed the two men to join their families and lives. Since Plaster and Aliprandi both wanted to stay connected to the families they'd known for 25 years, the men decided to "expand their families." About a year ago, Aliprandi and the parents who raised him, accepted the Plasters' offer to move to their 35-acre farm. It's located about 30 miles away from where Aliprandi grew up. Now both sets of parents and both sons live and work on the same farm."It's not everyone who can say he has two fathers and two mothers living together with him," Aliprandi said in the Associated Press interview. To read more about the interesting tale, go here.

Say what?
Remember kindergarten? Where you learned about sharing, ABC's, and being nice to other people? Apparently, some people haven't quite learned all those lessons. We say that because this week two Southern California mothers were charged with misdemeanors stemming from a fight they got into during a kindergarten graduation. Police say the women were arguing in a field near the June ceremony at an elementary school. When the fight got physical, several men also got involved and the incident turned into a brawl that forced school officials to place the school on lockdown until police sorted things out. The two women were charged with interference with peaceful conduct at a school (and therefore could face up to six months in jail) and unlawful acts committed on school grounds this week (which calls for 90 days in jail if convicted). To learn more, go here.

And just for fun, watch this video of an amazing basketball shot.