A Midweek Cornucopia

All the news that's fit to link:

• A tabloid-fueled scandal was debunked in the U.K. recently when it turned out that a baby-faced 13-year-old boy is not the father of his 15-year-old girlfriend's child, as he had claimed. (The real father turned out to be...another 15-year-old. Oh yeah, that's a lot better...)


• The new winner of American Idol was announced tonight. Do you care? Not me; in fact, I have yet to see an entire episode.


• A Polish citizen living in London was lucky to escape jail this week after he went on trial for attempting to hire a prostitute for his 14-year-old son's birthday. (He was trying to give his son the gift of losing his virginity. No, seriously, I'm not making this up. And Dad got arrested because the hooker that Son chose turned out to be an undercover officer.)


• A man in Germany beat up a roadside produce-seller--and a female one at that--because he didn't like the prices on the rare seasonal asparagus she was selling.


• Even if you don't know a lot about soccer, you probably know that it's illegal to use the hands (unless you're a goalie or bringing the ball in from out of bounds). So that means that pulling an opposing player's hair, as Brazilian star Ronaldo did recently, is totally verboten.


• Speaking of sports, let's give it up for Cowboys assistant coach Joe DeCamillis. After suffering fractured vertebrae in his neck when the team's indoor practice facility collapsed in a storm a few weeks ago, he's already back at practice after showing enough improvement only 15 days after surgery that his doctors cleared him to return to the team. (:Let me tell you, that's pretty inspiring to someone who's about to undergo his own surgery pretty soon.)

There's a music post I've been meaning to do since right before my accident; I'll try to get to that in the next couple of days.