Friday Snippets and Soundbites

Welcome to the first Friday in September!

On such an auspicious occasion, we chose to celebrate the only way we know how: with all the random, strange, silly, and weird news from the week we could find.

If today's online edition of "Snippets and Soundbites" isn't enough weirdness for you, be sure to check out page 38 in this month's (and every month's) issue of ec.

All that said, let's get to the news!

It's (not) an emergency!
Some things are a big deal, but they're just not an emergency. Your crush calling. A flat tire. Running out of Dr. Pepper. Emotional, frustrating, a big deal? Yes. An emergency? No. Not so much for an Oregon man we read about in this week's new, though. Apparently the man called 911 from the hot tub at a suburban Portland, Ore., home and asked for help. At first, he identified himself as "the sheriff of Washington County" and asked for medical help, then he admitted he wasn't the sheriff and asked for a hug and a warm cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows in it. The report we read said that the man reported he'd been in the hot tub for about 10 hours and his towels had gotten wet—that combined with needing a hug and hot chocolate appears to be why he called 911. The really interesting part of the story is that the man didn't even live at the house. Police did respond to his call. . . and charged him with criminal trespass and improper use of 911. To learn more, go here.

Don't have a green thumb? A cautionary tale. 

Some people just don't have a green thumb. No matter how hard they try, every plant just seems to die. That's not generally a problem—except in this story from Arkansas. Apparently a woman from Paragould, Ark., had planted some flowers in a pot that sat on her front porch. That all happened in the summer of 2009. Of course, the flowers died, but the woman just left them there. On the front porch. Decomposing in the plastic pot. Then, on July 25, fire damaged the family's home. This week, the insurance company determined the cause: the rotten plants. Apparently the plant and potting soul had been decomposing in the plastic pot and that process created heat, which eventually erupted into a fire. Simply put, the dead plants spontaneously combusted. The fire had charred the deck and caught the home's vinyl siding on fire, but was quickly extinguished and no one was hurt. We're willing to be the homeowner's will be investing in plastic plants from now on. Read all about it here.

We don't even know what to say about this story.
It appears texting is the way to communicate these days, especially among teens. But one Montana teen probably won't be texting for awhile. That's because the teen apparently wanted to buy some drugs (marijuana) and sent out a text to a lot of people asking where he could get some. One of the numbers he sent the text to? Yep, the sheriff. At first the sheriff thought the text was a joke, but quickly realized it wasn't. He responded and a detective pretending to be the drug dealer arranged for a meet-up. When the detective showed up at the meeting and showed his badge to the two teens and one adult there, one of the boys even fainted. No citations were issued. To learn more, go here.