"Honey? Are you ready for your shower and bedtime?"

"No! I don't wanna!"

"You better, or I'll call the police and have them arrest you and taze you."

".... ummm, what?"

An Arkansas woman called the police on her 10-year-old daughter who was throwing a tantrum and refused to take a shower. Not only did the police come and attempt to bring order to the screaming pre-teen, but when the mother allegedly told the officer that he could taze the girl if he needed to, he obliged.

We Need a Little of That Free Health Care Over Here, Please!

The overly-contentious national debate over health care reform took a trip to the hospital -- literally -- in Thousand Oaks, California, on Wednesday. L.A. station KTLA reported that an anti-reform activist had the top portion of his pinky bitten off in a fight with a pro-reform rallyer. (In true local-news tradition, the web version of KTLA's story comes complete with a photo of the bloody sidewalk at the site of the confrontation.)

According to KTLA, two men got into an in-your-face shoutfest during a typical rally/counter-rally over health care reform, and when the anti-reformer, William Rice, felt threatened and took a swing at his pro-reform antagonist, a good old-fashioned fistfight ensued, during which the unnamed (and ultimately un-apprehended) reformer bit off the top portion of Rice's pinky. Rice drove himself to the hospital, where efforts to reattach the digit were unsuccessful.

Robbery Defendant Experiences a Stick-Up of His Own

Attention Canton, Ohio, criminal defendants: best keep your mouth shut when told, or you might find yourself on the wrong end of the duct tape. A robbery defendant in Judge Stephen Belden's courtroom found that out the hard way this week, when the judge cut short their argument by ordering the bailiff to duct-tape the defendant's mouth shut.

According to an account in the Canton Repository, Harry Brown was in court for a preliminary hearing on charges stemming from an alleged fight that Brown had with security officers at a Wal-Mart store, where he was allegedly shoplifting. This led to a robbery charge and a hearing to determine whether there was enough evidence to move forward with a prosecution.

Brown opened the hearing by starting an argument with the judge over whether his public defender was doing enough work on the case. Not surprisingly, this line of argument went nowhere, with Belden offering only the sure-loser alternative of allowing Brown to represent himself.

Headed to court in Will County, Illinois? For your own sake, get a good night's sleep beforehand, or at least a power nap in the hallway beforehand. Courtroom sleepiness is likely to land you in the lockup.

That's what happened to Clifton Williams recently, anyway, according to a Chicago Tribune story. Circuit Judge Daniel Rozak didn't take kindly to Williams' yawning during a July 23 sentencing for Williams' cousin, and slapped him with a charge of criminal contempt of court.

To be sure, at least some courtroom spectators were in agreement that Williams' yawn was no simple, involuntary action, but rather was timed and exaggerated so as to disrupt the sentencing proceeding, however briefly.

As a reward for his performance, Williams will actually be facing more jail time than his cousin the drug defendant, who got two years' probation for his offense. Williams received six months in jail, which, according to the Tribune story, is the max he could receive without actually going to a jury trial. He's expected to serve at least three weeks of that sentence.

"I Hope At Least One of These Things Can Dial 911"

Few would ever accuse the U.S. Senate of being a fast-acting body. But Nicholas Sparks sure made them look proactive last week for introducing texting-while-driving legislation. The Burt, New York resident also made the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute look like real experts for claiming a 23x risk factor for texting while operating a commercial truck. All Sparks needed was a tow truck, a couple of cell phones, and a swimming pool.

It seems that on July 29, Sparks, not content with the ordinary daily challenge of driving a flatbed tow truck with a car attached, decided to turn it up a notch or two. Taking the concept of distracted driving to new levels, Sparks went all out, sending texts with one phone while talking on a second phone.

No truth to rumors that drunken Bookmobile driver is to blame

It's summertime, school is out, and kids everywhere are being shipped off to the library to enrich their minds with . . . the sounds of a seven-car pileup in the parking lot? In Norwood, Massachusetts, it appears that just such an unusual soundtrack enlivened Monday morning's reading activities.

What could cause such carnage at the local library? Was everyone rushing to be the first to browse the August issue of National Geographic? Is there an eighth Harry Potter book hitting shelves that we never knew about, perhaps?

Actually, no. It appears, according to the Daily News Transcript, that an 81-year-old library patron smashed into 6 other cars all by himself on his way out of the lot. He must have had some killer summer beach novels that he simply had to get home and start in on right away. Or, it could be that, as the driver claims, he simply accidentally hit the gas instead of the brake, accelerating into a row of cars as a result.

"Are You Ready to Get Covered in Someone Else's Vomit, Fargo?!!"

You may not find it anywhere in a guide to good manners, but one unwritten etiquette rule is this: Vomiting on other people is the walk-off home run of social faux pas, minus all the cheering. If it happens, you just go home. It's all over.

But don't try telling that to Justin Krohmer, an off-duty sheriff's deputy whose dinner made the kind of encore that the people in front of him weren't clamoring for, at a Kenny Chesney concert in Fargo, N.D. last month. The throw-up led to a throw-down involving Krohmer, his mom, and local police.

According to a police report and the story as reported by WDAY-Fargo, if a concertgoer vomits at the Fargodome (where the show was held), the venue's policy is to ask that person to leave.

The Krohmer Family Handbook says otherwise.

'To Protect and to Serve...and to Overreact'

If you're a police officer, Hollywood has blessed (or cursed) you with a rich history of role models, decades worth of fictionalized examples to follow on TV and in film.

Today, Joe Friday is frowning beneath his fedora. Sonny Crockett just lowered his Ray-Bans to take a second, quizzical look. Even Detective Jimmy McNulty is appalled, and when he isn't inventing serial killers, he's drunk. All because a Virginia cop pulled his gun and killed an aggressive miniature Dachshund that was carrying a menacing 12 pounds on its stubby 11-year-old legs.

Plaintiff: 'Crunch Berries' Aren't Real Fruit
Judge: No #@!%

Four years is an entire term of office for a President of the United States. It's how long Michael Phelps has to wait between additions to his gold medal collection. Four years is high school. It's also the amount of time it took a California woman to learn that the "berries" in "Cap'n Crunch with Crunch Berries" cereal aren't an actual fruit, according to a lawsuit that was thrown out of a California court a few weeks back.

Plaintiff Janice Sugawara and her straight-faced attorneys brought false advertising, misrepresentation, and other consumer protection claims against PepsiCo (which owns Quaker), for allegedly making her believe that the "Crunch Berries" in the cereal are actual berries.

The lawsuit stopped short of accusing Cap'n Crunch of impersonating a military officer, but did seek an unspecified dollar amount and asked that the phrase "strawberry artificially flavored cereal" be placed prominently on the "Crunch Berries" cereal box.

17-Year-Old Junior Puts the 'High' into High School Assembly

Stoners often use the word "epic" to describe a noteworthy event. And "chutzpah" is derived from a Hebrew word for audacity. If you could combine the two (and you can't, trust us) you would get the only word that could accurately describe the actions of a student at a high school near Tacoma, Washington this week.

At a Peninsula High School assembly, while his peers were likely sending no-look text messages to each other in the bleachers and dreaming up their next clever Facebook status update, a junior giving a speech on the legalization of marijuana drove his point home by lighting up a joint.