I don’t know if it’s because the planets get into a certain alignment or the moon is full or whatever, but every once in a while the 24-hour news cycle serves up a scrumptious buffet of weirdness. Consider these three stories, all of them harvested from the News & Observer’s online edition in one sitting.

First up, the marvelous tale of a fired state employee who is fighting hard for her right to sleep on the job:

[The employee], who was paid $55,200 a year, says she has sleep apnea, which prevents her from getting uninterrupted sleep. She uses a breathing mask and special device at night to help her sleep, but the device was malfunctioning, leading to the nap that got her fired …

She says her bosses knew of her condition and she has filed a discrimination complaint based on a “handicapping condition.”

Fight on, brave employee! Win this battle, and you’ll provide hope to a countless number of other office workers (all of them men) who would leap at the chance to claim the right to surf Internet sex sites at work — because, you know, their porn addiction is likewise a disability beyond their control.

Then there’s this account of an airline passenger in Charlotte who apparently decided it was taking too doggone long to get to the arrival gate:

The plane, an MD-80, had just arrived from Charlotte/Douglas International Airport about 1 p.m. and was parked on a ramp when the incident happened.

After opening the door, the man deployed the inflatable slide and slid down to the Aircraft Operations Area, where he was held by American fleet service clerks until airport public safety officers took him into custody.

Hey, I understand the urge. I’ve always wanted to take a ride down the inflatable slide myself — just not in an emergency situation.

Finally, there’s this riveting story of the fellow with the speech impediment who was arrested for allegedly robbing the restaurant where he once worked:

An employee told police that she thought one of the robbers was a former employee named Willie, who was then working at a nearby gas station. The employee told police she recognized the man by a speech impediment or lisp.

There was no comment from Willie. I suppose he realizes he’s already said too much.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 at 1:01 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.