For our recent look back at 2011 via Navel Gazing posts, we added what it was we learned from the news items.
Shall we see how long we can keep the string going in 2012?
Glad you agree. Feel free to add your own items and what you think we learned from them in the comments. Until then . . .
]
JAN. 1: Over the 16-day winter holiday crackdown on drunken drivers that ends Jan. 1, 836 people are arrested, but at least no one dies from a DUI wreck. Five people died in DUI-related crashes over the same period a year ago, when 743 boozy, druggy or boozy druggy drivers were popped. What we learned: Croatia's looking better Christmas week 2012 destination.
JAN. 2: William Griffith, 26, drowns while trying to save a friend fighting the
rip currents off Huntington State Beach. The friend is saved by Surf City's Richard Kneebone, who had been taking in the sunset before diving into the turbulent drink. What we learned: Find adult-size floaties.
JAN. 3: Orange County Superior Court
Judge Gregg L. Prickett hands convicted bank teller kidnapper Charles Craig Clements a life prison sentence. The 50-year-old, who gets his first chance to apply for parole at 80, would have received a lighter sentence had the judge not discovered the crook had keys to handcuffs in his rectum. What we learned: An alternative to pockets.
JAN. 4: William Scott Woodin, crawls out of a Theo Lacy Jail window and on to freedom–that lasts just over 24 hours when the convicted wristwatch thief is picked up at a Lake Forest park. What we learned: See, not everyone who hangs out in Orange County parks is a sex offender.
JAN. 4: A task force culled from the FBI, the sheriff's department and three police agencies announces that a serial killer may be targeting Orange County's homeless, based on men who were murdered since Dec. 20 in Anaheim, Placentia and Yorba Linda. What we learned: Quit sleeping under overpasses, or be packing if we must.
JAN. 5: The grand jury indicts Catherine Kieu Becker,
the Garden Grove woman accused of tying down her estranged husband as
he slept in bed, pulling down his pants, slicing off his penis, tossing
the member into the garbage disposal and flipping the switch on. What we learned: See, accidentally zipping up your manhood isn't the worst thing that can happen.
JAN. 6: Foes reveal they can't come up with enough signatures for a ballot initiative to repeal the California DREAM Act, which allows young people who were brought into this country illegally to apply for student financial aid. What we learned: God answers prayers en español.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.