Before the power outage, my favorite news story of the day was about the failed thumb reattachment for the little girl in Romeoville who had her thumb chewed off by a pit bull.

I should explain that Romeoville is the companion city to Joliet Illiniois...no kidding.

I think this story is fascinating for several reasons...there's the grotesque horror of the dog chewing the 8-year-old's thumb off, of course. But also the fact that the dog's owner, a 55 year old man, came in contact with a group of kids in the first place. And why was that? Because the kids' family invited him over TO GET A PLATE OF MACARONI AND CHEESE becasue his own mother was in the hospital and therefore apparently not cooking for him. Anyway, he shows up to fetch the food and the kids want to see his exotic lizards. He brings them back home, shows them the lizards and when they see the lizard food (which is giant cockroaches) they start screaming, apparently freaking out the dog who goes for the nearby 8 year old.

Dude can't make his own macaroni and cheese? He's 55 for god's sake. That was, I thought, practically the whole point of macaroni and cheese, other than being really cheap was that it's easy, just as easy as Ramen and certainly something that a loser guy like the dog owner should have been able to manage on his own.
Also it's a nice touch that this idiot doesn't blame the dog and, presumably, not himself either. Which just leaves the 8-year-old to take the heat.

Finally, as a white, well intentioned liberal it always makes me uncomfortable when people make racist remarks about non-whites behaving carelessly so I'm oddly relieved when white people do dumbass stuff like this, as if it somehow makes everything even (you can't see it in this link but if you register at the Chicago Tribune site you can see the dog owner is indeed a white guy).