Drunks, terrorists, gators & a gratuitious mention of Robert Redford

Time for some quickies:

• Panera Bread opened a restaurant in Missouri where you can pay whatever you want for their overpriced food. It was an experiment intended to help the poor get a good meal. The experiment worked - rich people pay extra and poor people eat for free. Now, they hope to make enough profit to support local charities.

• From The Consumerist: Like a big city pimp waiting to pick you up off the ground when times get tough, Walmart was able to establish its first stores in Chicago through guile, perseverance, and a few meaningless reassurances ...

• Fark headline of the day: Customers want money back from bankrupt furniture store, say they're sofa king screwed. (story)

• Some people have no sense of humor.

• A six year old girl is on Homeland Security's no-fly list. Maybe it's because she has such a suspicious name. I mean, Alyssa Thomas. Obviously, she's a terrorist. DHS refuses to take her off because "The watch lists are an important layer of security to prevent individuals with known or suspected ties to terrorism from flying." Don't you feel safer now?

• Speaking of terrorists, an 8 year old boy in Georgia doused his toy plane with gasoline and set it on fire. Now his relatives are fighting government red tape to help him get treatment for the burns he suffered on 80% of his body.

• A woman in Canada got a little pissed when the court awarded her ex-husband custody of their children. So she tried to hire a member of a motorcycle gang to kill him. The bike dude ratted her out. When she got out of prison, the court awarded her $70,000, her half of the couple's property. Ex-hubby doesn't seem to think that's fair.

• Mel Gibson's sexy Russian baby mama says he punched her in the face and knocked her teeth out. The pair have been trading accusations on TMZ all weekend. His biggest fear seems to be that the secret tape she made of him will become public.

• The editor of Philadelphia Magazine resigned from his job after a female co-worker complained that he gave her a framed photo of the cyst that had been removed from his testicle. What, the frame was too much?

• A woman in Indiana opened her door to get her mail one evening to find a guy standing there drinking a beer. He shoved her inside, stole $38 out of her purse and told her to fry him an egg. When she refused, he went in her bedroom and lay down to take a nap.

• Speaking of stupid things people do when they're drunk, a guy in Florida jumped out of a tour boat because he had a lifelong dream of swimming with alligators. Hey, I have a lifelong dream of swimming with Robert Redford but you won't see me jumping into a swamp. Well, okay, maybe if he was naked.