WhiteBoard News for Monday, July 21, 2003

Chattanooga, Tennessee (AP):

Henry Ritter had no plans of biting a suspect he was chasing, but he saw nothing wrong with barking. 

Ritter and Richard Gough, both deputies with the Hamilton County Sheriff's Department, stopped a car July 12 because of a broken taillight. The driver, 21-year-old John Nicholas Hood, jumped from the car and ran into the woods, according to the arrest report. 

The officers' calls to Hood went unanswered so Gough said they were sending a dog after him. Ritter started barking. 

"He stood up and said, 'I'm here. Call off the dog,'" Ritter said. 

Hood, of Decatur, appeared in court this week and was charged with driving under the influence, driving on a revoked license, evading arrest and a taillight violation. Judge Bob Moon bound his case over to the grand jury. 

"I suppose as long as the officers have had their shots and don't bite, I'll allow them to continue that technique," Moon said. 

Ritter said it wasn't the first time he and Gough have barked at a suspect. 

"We've played that card, and it's worked," he said. 
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Vienna, Austria (AP):

Doctors in Vienna have carried out the first successful tongue transplant on a human being, the hospital where the surgery took place said Monday. 

An unidentified 42-year-old man suffering from a malignant tumor affecting his tongue and jaw underwent a 14-hour operation at Vienna's General Hospital on Saturday in which doctors removed the tumor and attached the new tongue, hospital spokeswoman Karin Fehringer said. 

The patient is in good condition, Fehringer said. 

No further details were immediately available, but the hospital said a medical team would provide more information Tuesday. 
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Atlanta, Georgia (Ananova):

A US woman who drove a truck under a bridge to protect her sofa when it started raining caused 24 vehicles to crash.

Police say the woman suddenly swerved to get the truck under the overpass in Atlanta, Georgia, and had planned to stay there until it stopped raining.

But her driving caused a series of accidents which left 11 people with minor injuries, reports CNN.

Police said she changed lanes so rapidly that she cut off cars as she made her way to the shoulder of the road to get under the overpass.

Sergeant Pat White of the DeKalb County Police said: "She cut off two vehicles initially, right away, and that caused those two vehicles to collide with each other. We had a total of 24 vehicles at the end of it."

Eight separate accidents were reported as a direct result of the woman's poor driving, he said, but added the woman's truck wasn't hit.

"It was a mess. She did stay at the scene and was charged with improper lane change," he said.
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Jackson, Mississippi (AP):

A Virginia man's wordy parody of Goldilocks and the Three Bears was neither too serious nor too silly, but just right and judges selected his spoof as the winner of the 14th annual Faux Faulkner contest. 

"Appendix: The Sound and the Furry" by Michael Edens was chosen as the best example of the style of Nobel laureate William Faulkner, whose stream of consciousness tales of complex Southern souls have won acclaim the world over. 

"Goldilocks," wrote Edens, 43, a technical publications supervisor from Virginia. "Slim blond avatar of unreasoning womankind: who loved not the porridge itself, nor even the act of reiving it from whatever unknown animal might have been responsible for its preparation. ... " 

And so his sentence continues for another 133 words until it winds down to this: "...and I can no longer remember the subject of my sentence." 

Second place went to Gordon Runte of New York for his "Abs Begone, Abs Begone," about an informercial hawking pills guaranteed to give the user a midsection with "rows sexpartite and distinct one from the other" six-pack abs. 

Third went to Orange County, Calif., resident Shan Wu for his "Signifying Nothing," about a shopping trip to Target. 

Larry Wells of Oxford, Miss., is founder and coordinator of the Faux Faulkner contest, along with his wife, Dean Faulkner Wells, the author's niece. 

Faulkner Wells said the contest is growing in popularity and drew entries from around the world, including one from a man in Kuwait. 

"It was very, very mystical, true stream of consciousness somewhere between Arabic and English," she said. "Pappy would've been, I think, amazed." 

The winning entries were published in United Airlines' Hemispheres magazine. 
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