It seems impossible to escape bad news these days. Scan the headlines of any newspaper, watch television or cruise the Internet and you'll be fed a diet of budget deficits, skyrocketing unemployment figures, big-business bailouts, rising prices and real estate foreclosures.

No respite looms on the horizon. Even President-elect Obama says the crisis "is likely to get worse before it gets better."

So this morning let's take a break from all this gloom and doom and start out the week on a lighter note. Here are some interesting and amusing stories I found while cruising news sites last week.

The queen mother

One of my favorite movies is "A Christmas Story," where Ralphie wants Santa to bring him a Red Ryder BB gun but keeps running into the "you'll shoot your eye out" roadblock.

A memorable scene in the movie is where Ralphie is helping his father change a flat tire, the lug nuts go flying and he utters "the word, the big one, the queen mother of all swear words. The f-dash-dash-dash word."

In the next scene, Ralphie has a bar of soap stuffed in his mouth.

According to Cincinnati.com, a lawyer suffered a harsher punishment after he dropped an f-bomb during a court hearing. According to the Web site, Judge Robert Ruehlman sentenced attorney Michael Brautigam to six months in jail for contempt of court after he called the opposing counsel an "f-dash-dash-dash-ing liar" as the two walked away from the bench.

The judge overheard the comment and asked Mr. Brautigam if he had, indeed, used the queen mother of swear words in his courtroom. The lawyer admitted he had.

Still, Ralphie's punishment may have been more effective. A lawyer standing in a courtroom and chewing on a shower-sized bar of Lifebuoy would make most of us smile.

Boy, George

In the 1980s, British singer Boy George crooned the song "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?"

Apparently, the answer is "yes."

According to a British newspaper, MailOnline, Boy George, whose real name is George O'Dowd, was convicted of handcuffing a Norwegian male escort to the wall of his flat and whipping him with a chain. The Norwegian "fled in his underpants and alerted police." (Let's just assume here that the Bobbies were already sufficiently alerted just by actually seeing a fleeing Norwegian wearing only his underpants.)

According to MailOnline, Mr. O'Dowd is facing jail time for false imprisonment. Meanwhile, we wrestle with the question: When will washed-up pop music icons learn they can't falsely imprison Norwegians and get away with it?

And finally

A story on MSNBC's Web site told the harrowing survival story of a border collie named "Jiffy" who spent one night frozen to a sidewalk in Sheboygan, Wis. According to the story, the dog survived because he was so morbidly obese, the extra layers of fat kept him from freezing to death. Sheboygan County Humane Society workers freed him the next day by pouring warm water over his hindquarters and melting the ice.

The owner was arrested on suspicion of animal neglect. Meanwhile, a Humane Society worker says it's too soon to determine if Jiffy, who weighs 120 pounds, will suffer any long-term effects.

Well, that's it for your Monday morning diversion. I imagine that we can expect more bad news this week, but try to have a good one anyway.

Steve Booher's column runs on Monday.

He can be reached at steveb@npgco.com.