Like building a fire or doing your taxes , knowing how to drive stick is a life skill that's no less useful if your life is one of crime. That's the lesson a South Carolina man learned this week when his kidnapping attempt was thwarted by a manual transmission, the Associated Press reports.

The prayers of the deranged have been answered: Crime is back in Times Square. On Sunday, a man dressed as Cookie Monster was arrested in the Midtown hellhole after allegedly groping a 16-year-old tourist.

A Florida man was given a valuable lesson in the importance of being yourself on Saturday, when the pretend cop reportedly pulled over two true detectives, landing him in actual jail.

On Friday, authorities in Arizona released a video showing a chaotic brawl between police and a family of Christian street performers, an incident that left one man dead in a Walmart parking lot last month.

A 40-year-old contract worker was arrested in Tokyo Thursday after police matched his DNA to semen found on an 18-year-old schoolgirl's skirt while she was riding the Japan Rail Sobu line. The serial jerkoff artist is suspected in around 110 similar incidents on Tokyo trains over the past few years, the Asahi Shimbun reports.

"A rapper known as Wais P the Pimp, who contributed to Jay-Z tracks in the 90s, was charged with promoting prostitution on Thursday, police said."

Pimpin' ain't easy, but pimpin' while commuting from your La Jolla beach house to occasional evening confinement with a friendly roomie in a San Diego penal facility is jelly, according to convicted Ayn Rand interpretationist Dinesh D'Souza in a new bizarre video profile by Vanity Fair.

Didn't think shit could get crazier than bath salts? Damn, look how wrong you were.

Setting a new standard for dowdy, cross-dressing bank robbers nationwide, a man dubbed the "Mrs. Doubtfire Bandit" is being sought by Santa Cruz police, the L.A. Times reports.

It's bad enough that the "broken windows theory" of policing, with its constant harassment of small-time hustlers, is back in vogue in New York City. Do they have to steal the churros, too?

In a bizarre (and thus plausible) addition to the Legend of DMX, WPIX reports the rapper is accused of acting a fool, losing his cool, and robbing a 21-year-old New Jersey man at a Newark gas station early Easter morning.

In many professions, "fake it 'til you make it" is a time-honored method of breaking into the industry. In law enforcement, however, it can also be a class B felony, as a New Hampshire teenager learned earlier this week.

After a Maryland man allegedly stripped naked, broke into a neighbor's apartment, punched a mother and tried to steal her child, the suspect's roommate attributed the episode to "bad weed" and suggested it was not his fault, WJLA reports.

Capital New York reports that "Columbia University students are bugging out" after their favorite, smartphone-compatible drug dealer was busted by the cops. You'd think a bunch of Ivy Leaguers wouldn't need to be reminded, but paying for drugs with an app that logs the exact details of a transaction is a bad idea.

The Minnesota man who masturbated into the coffee cup of a co-worker he had a crush on pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of indecent exposure on Thursday.

Prisons in Texas are hot. Too hot for human beings.

The teenager who accidentally shot himself in the head Monday night after dropping his handgun as he was playing with a cat in a Nashville park has died.

A Philadelphia-area couple was discovered dead in their home by their teen son on Tuesday, bearing what authorities say were "severe" cuts from a chainsaw, the Associated Press reports.

The snack-provoked crime wave continues in America: One week after a father allegedly shot his son in the butt over an empty orange juice container, a woman in Akron, Ohio, allegedly stabbed her boyfriend in the stomach because he ate all of their salsa.

A German violinist on tour in the U.S. was arrested after he reportedly got naked at a Manhattan hotel and tried to strangle another guest, a 64-year-old woman, in her room.