News You Can't Use: Nebraska Toddler Gets Stuck Inside Claw Machine

Bowling alleys rule. Assuming they haven't changed at all in the twenty years since I last visited one, which is actually probably a pretty safe bet. I'm not even talking about the actual bowling, which is full of the righteous "mark it as eight" good times. I'm talking about pitchers of warm domestic beer, carpeting that looks like various agricultural machinery is frequently run over it and all those exciting sucker games. Yes, sucker games. The electronic equivalent of the carnival grift, the non-existent chance to win awesome prizes like a stuffed bear, a pack of Spanish cigarettes or a Harvard diploma.

I would submit to you that the health of a civilization can be directly measured by the yearly monetary investment into these sucker games. Oddly enough, the sickness of society can be directly measured by the yearly monetary investment into non-electronic sucker games, such as Wall Street, Real Estate, Investment in the Education of the Next Generation, etc.

Sometimes these fun and colorful lessons in futility even provide "cutesy" moments of child endangerment. Aw! Everyone loves that. Look at the pit bull sleeping in the crib with the baby. This is the heart warmth of insane irresponsibility.

Authorities say a toddler has been reunited with his mother after employees found him playing inside a claw crane machine at a Nebraska bowling alley.

"Mr. Johnson, there's a baby in the claw machine!"

"That brat isn't winning anything in there, right?"

"I guess not."

"Then it's fine."

Lincoln police say a 24-year-old woman called 911 Monday afternoon because her 3-year-old son was missing from her apartment.

Some sort of instinct, a sort of sonar for unwinnable gimmicks, led to this conclusion.

Employees at the bowling alley across the street meanwhile called police to say a small boy was playing with stuffed animals inside the coin-operated machine.

It's not so much that he's in there, it's the messing with the stuffed animals.

The only way to actually win at one of these.

As I look at the above picture I can almost hear our national anthem, whatever it is, playing. If there's any justice the above image will grace the cover on all of next year's history, sociology and mechanical engineering texts. 

A representative from the vending machine company let him out and he was reunited with his mother a short time later. He was not hurt.

Trust me, that's the only way you're getting anything out of one of those machines.

Police say the mother was not cited because she quickly reported that her son was missing and there were no indications of neglect.

Police were actually too busy playing that machine where you try to knock quarters off a ledge to be bothered to file a report.

Full Story.

Comment Corner  

"Across the street"??? And the mother was not cited for neglect? what on earth was she doing at the time her little guy decided to walk "across the street"? Unbelievable! 

People like you are the reason I don't call the police even when I could use them.

I, myself hid in a dishwasher once when I was a kid.

"The claw, the claw!!"

Obozo and his thug cronies are destroying America and this makes the news. WTF?

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