Going out with a bang, The American Family Association

Good week for:

Going out with a bang, after the family of a White River, Ind., man had some of his cremated remains mixed into a fireworks shell that created a final white burst in the sky for the finale of the town’s Fourth of July celebration. Meredith Smith ran the event for 40 years.

Multitasking, after Russian Nikolai Sazhin won the world chess boxing championship by pummeling his German opponent in the ring and then checkmating him. “I took a lot of body blows in the fourth round and that affected my concentration,” said the loser, Frank Stoldt. “I did not see him coming for my king.”

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Getting some relief, after a Nevada brothel offered an incentive of a $50 gas voucher to all clients who purchased $300 worth of services. The vouchers sold out in a week.

Bad week for:

The American Family Association, which got an unintended result when it used an auto-replace filter to change “inappropriate” words such as “gay” in the news stories on its website. A story on American sprinter Tyson Gay was headlined, “Homosexual eases into 100 meter final at Olympic trials,” and repeatedly referred to him as “Tyson Homosexual.”

A sense of privilege, after a first-class passenger on a Delta Air­lines flight from New York became so angry that economy passengers were let off the plane first that he opened an emergency hatch and slid down the chute. The indignant passenger was promptly arrested.

Self-defense, after a California woman whipped out her .44-caliber Magnum and began firing at the mice scurrying across the floor of her trailer. She dropped the gun, and it fired a bullet that pierced her knee, bounced off a friend’s keychain, and grazed his groin before coming to rest in his coin pocket.