2010-01-25

Two exciting stories over the weekend

Greetings all, sit and listen to thrilling accounts of neat events you may have missed over the weekend:

First off, thousands of Edmonton Oiler fans packed Rexall Place to forget about the team's recent woes in the regular season to catch the annual Skills Competition. I didn't go, but I heard it was pretty entertaining. There was a bit of an odd moment though, and I'm seeing it didn't get well reported in the media, but everybody I know was talking about it: an old man (probably suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's) actually managed to accidentally wander onto the ice during the Fastest Skate competition. It took the Oilers players sixteen minutes to catch him.

Secondly, and this is admittedly a long way from Edmonton, but there was a bit of a tense moment in a Chicago jury selection process when a woman tried to appeal to be removed from jury duty for reasons of bias. "Your Honor," she told the [American spelling] judge, "I'm prejudiced against the defendant: I can't consider myself a neutral open-minded arbiter of the case! As soon as I looked at him and saw that evil sneer and those beady eyes, I just knew he had to be guilty." The judge however, would have none of it: "sit down ma'am, you aren't going to be excused: that's the President."