my WTF MOMENTS in the headlines.

Dearest Readers,

Everyone knows at least one of those people who cannot go a day in their life without the watching the news. They are the ones who, when you are having the greatest day of your life, can drag you down with the horrors and happenings in current events. You feel like cutting up when they enlighten you by asking, "hey, did you hear about that child that was dragged away by a Komodo dragon?" These people really know how to rain on your parade. If you think you don't know one, think again. You've just been introduced to one: me.

I don't like to think of it as my fault. I believe I come from a long line of people obsessed with chaos, crime, and especially anarchy. Take my mother, for example, who comes up with the craziest yet beautifully creative theories about how a freak accident must've played out.

"They definitely severed their jugular when they went hit," she fantasizes. "With that kinda velocity and impact, neck probably broke before they went flyin' through the glass".

My mother, god bless her soul, has a habit of dropping the g's off of any word ending in ing, giving her stories a sensational kind of spectator's authenticity. "Yah, bled to death," she'll often confirm without any grounds to back up her hypothesis.

My grandmother, who we all lovingly refer to as Gram, is the best storyteller I've ever known. This is not to say her stories aren't true - most of them are - but if you heard them, you'd scratch your head. Gram grew up on a farm in Rose Valley, Saskatchewan. They grew crops such as wheat and poppies, and raised livestock including wild turkeys and swine. Quite often, Gram retells her stories of her days in the poppy fields where she and her sisters would crack open the pods and eat the fresh seeds inside. Suddenly, she'd hear a slur of Ukrainian rage charging her way as her mother furiously chased them out of the crop. According to Gram, who always giggles as she recalls her poppy moments, "she'd be chasing us and all we could think to do was run... and we'd stand up and try, but it felt like we were top-heavy and running sideways because we were so high!". Yup. My sweet 75-years-young Gram frequently got high on opium in her single-digit years.

Between my mother's unique creative train of thought, and her mother's youthful addiction to pure opium leads me to conclude my attraction for trouble is inherent and not my fault.

I've been watching the news my entire life. Even today I get excited at the thought of switching on the news. In fact, Hamilton's local station, CHCH, was recently sold by CanWest Global to Channel Zero, who turned it into an all-day news station. My life got sweeter that day. Yet, amdist the constant headlines there are days when I watch and I think to myself, "what the flip," when I hear such ludicrous things. I have decided to share with you my WTF MOMENTS of the weekly headlines, beginning this coming Saturday. Please stay tuned for your weekly dose of the stupid things people do.

For now I leave you with this interesting headliner from last week:

1. A 28-year-old woman was charged last week for street racing on the highway at 158km/h with three children unbuckled in the backseat. Of the three children, one, by law, should have been in a car seat. To boot, when asked to produce license and registration, she failed to do so, and was also found without insurance on the car. What a hot mess.