One Weird Story: Link Log for 8.25.23 to 8.26.23

I looked, and found only one story worth adding to...

Weird 

David Paulides, whose Youtube show takes Bigfoot and UFO stories seriously, got hold of a local news item from 1954:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOa2gmWRDA8&t=1865s

His narration of the story made me laugh several times. Here's the Kingsport Times-News' more levelheaded report:

https://sites.rootsweb.com/~vaschs2/molly_white.htm

How easy is it, even for a geriatric patient, to camp out on the Clinch Mountain for a week? Well, the biggest deterrent to most people's doing it is the little woodland creatures--the insects, spiders, and snakes that live in the woods in September. Some of these cold-blooded animals are attracted to warmth and will crawl in under whatever a human is wearing, and some of the bigger and more unpleasant ones are just chasing the little harmless ones for food. Danger of exposure? Very little. Starvation or dehydration? None; if a person knows what to eat, in September the woods offer a feast; the main hazard would be Vitamin C shock.

Would a patient have wanted to get away from friends, family, the doctor whose prescriptions--in 1954--might easily have been toxic, and spend a week camping on the mountain? It's not impossible. We are not talking about the deep woods where a person could get lost. On the Clinch Mountain it is possible to get "turned around" and come down on the wrong side of a ridge, but you're never more than a few hours' walk from a farmhouse, if not a small town. The biggest danger, unless you managed to get bitten by a rattlesnake, would be a leg injury. The Clinch Mountain woods are the kind I'd feel safe going into with children, or alone--though most of them are privately owned, and I'd want to clear it with the owner. If injured, all you'd really have to remember is to crawl down until you came to a house, and shout. 

What probably complicated Molly White's adventure was that, although she did want to visit friends and confide something before she died, when she came to their house nobody was living in it. The house was broken into but not raided or damaged. During a week in Scott County in September there would undoubtedly have been rain, probably a thunderstorm; Miss White might have broken into her friends' house to stay warm and dry.

Miss White might or might not have been confused. People wouldn't have discussed that with reporters while she and her siblings were alive. In 1954 most people in Scott County belonged to Protestant churches that said little about solitary meditation in nature, but some people knew the benefits thereof from experience. 

If she was not badly confused and was in the sort of physical condition many 75-year-olds in Scott County are in, and had gone into the woods with clear intentions of having a last conversation with a friend and then meditating, praying, having a healing vision or dying in peace, there is a very simple solution to the question of how "the most hunted person in the annals of Scott County" evaded the search party. 

When our late lamented Grandma Bonnie Peters was not making a long retreat, but just didn't want to deal with some visitors, she vanished from their world in less than five minutes--by climbing a tree. GBP was not a Missing Person; she just didn't want to talk to the sort of pushy pest of a "friend" who keeps pounding on the front door, and windows, and then snoops around the back as if they want to force you to say out loud "I may be at home but I'm not 'at home to you'." She was doing some maintenance work on a rental property where it was relatively easy to scramble up onto a low branch and just keep climbing. So that was what she did.

People searching the ground almost never think to look up overhead. Most missing persons want to go missing. An easy way to stay missing is to perch in a tree and watch a search party pass by. Once a relatively small person is up in the branches, it's dead easy to climb high enough to elude bigger pursuers; they know the tree won't bear their weight as high up as it'll bear yours. But usually they don't look.

Would Miss White have gone into the woods without shoes? Not likely. Many a child in Scott County looked forward to going barefoot all summer, toughening the soles of their feet to a point where they could have walked in the woods without shoes, but adults seldom did that. If Miss White had been walking barefoot in the woods before the search party passed where she'd been, they would have been likely to notice blood. Likely she left her muddy shoes outside when breaking into the house, or just kicked them off in her sleep, and animals attracted to the taste of sweat-salty leather dragged the shoes away. 

Why the spaniel didn't yap at the search party is the only part of the story that sounds very mysterious to me. There are explanations that don't involve portals to alternate dimensions, but the only one that makes sense to me is that some of the volunteer searchers did not recognize the dog as a clue and told it to shut up and go home.

So what I find easiest to picture happening is this: Little old lady goes to friend's house. Friend and her family have moved across town. There weren't telephones back then, and there's not time for the gossip system to work--the edge of a hurricane is coming on. Little old lady breaks into friend's house, leaving her muddy shoes outside, and shelters there. During the night a dog or some other animal that's attracted to salty leather drags her shoes into the undergrowth. Then she sees police approaching, realizes she's committed a crime, and remembers the easy way to disappear. She roosts in one of those big green shade trees until the searchers are gone. Then she comes down, can't find her shoes, and limps up into the woods. She is old. She has probably had a completely undiagnosed cardiovascular disease for years, while dear old Dr. Grigsby has been telling her not to worry and prescribing mild painkillers for her occasional arthritis. She covers some steep ground, fast. Nature takes its course. The dog, having docilely shut up and gone home a few days earlier, comes back into the woods, smells the faint trail of bare feet, and finds his human

Of course, there are other possibilities. Apart from the alien abduction Paulides' audience probably want to imagine, there's always the one where a vindictive former student steals her shoes, ties her to a kitchen chair, forces her to write ten thousand penalty lines, and then chases her off into the woods...

And there's always the one that appeals to writers of speculative fiction: She stepped through a portal into a different world and stayed because things on that side of fourth-dimensional space were just so interesting. Maybe she was gone for only a week in our time, but spent twenty years on the other side of the portal, and someone kindly took her home for burial when she died of old age.

A Quick One for Karen Kingston

No link, because I really think less publicity for this is better, but you can find it if you look...Karen Kingston, one of the "whistleblowers" working on issues other than glyphosate in the CHD network, has claimed that somebody's trying to "hunt her down" and kill her. She looks hunted, all right. You don't get bags that size under your eyes by losing one or two nights' sleep. 

She has some reason--Karen Kingston is not a person who says things without a reason--for thinking Dr. Robert Malone is in charge of the "hunt."

Is that the sort of thing he does? Read his book. I don't believe it. I don't think Dr. Malone writes like a person who would have people murdered. I don't believe that, if he did, he'd go after fellow CHD'ers when there's Pfizer and Bayer and Merck and Lilly and Moderna. And I will never believe that, if Dr. Malone were hypocritical enough to want to have some nonviolent younger person murdered over some petty disagreement, he'd be amateurish enough that that person would guess he was doing it.

No. Kingston has done straightforward research so long and so well--I understand this, I have tendencies in that direction too--that she's overlooking the first rule of harassment. 

Whether you're just trying to play pranks that distract the teacher from boring old math lessons, or you seriously want someone dead, the first rule of personal harassment is to make it look as if someone else--the more improbable, the better--is doing it.

So, for instance, if you're my demon-possessed third cousin who covets my little house and orchard, you would not say "Hello, my name is Sicky McGoon and I'm going to saw through the water pipe below Priscilla King's bathroom sink tonight." Not to me; not to the general public; not to your wife. You would say to your wife, perhaps, "I'm going to an electronics fair in Atlanta. I'll be back late tonight, about four o'clock in the morning." Then you would go somewhere, as it might be up in the woods behind my house where any of our mutual relatives who saw you would think you were just hunting, and lay low for a few hours. Might even take a pistol and a game bag; might even bag a squirrel. And then at three o'clock in the morning you'd sneak into my cellar, reach up around the pipe and turn the water on full blast, and saw through the pipe in the cellar. And then you'd puton dry clothes and go home, maybe tell your wife you had to change a tire by way of explanation for any dirt stuck to you, and enjoy a good long lie-in next morning. Then people would be saying, "Somebody sneaked into Priscilla King's basement and sawed through the water line below the bathroom sink," and you'd look interested, in a cousinly way. "What had she done, told those teenagers down the road not to pick her raspberries? Or there's poor old Joe Blow--everybody knows he's lost his marbles--maybe he thought that'd be funny. Maybe he was trying to get her attention." That's how my Professional Bad Neighbor got away with harassing me, and everyone else in the neighborhood, back when he had a wife. People knew that some people they'd heard accused hadn't done the stupid pranks that had been done, but they didn't know who had. Only after all the teenagers had gone to college, and all the senile and feeble-minded suspects were dead, did anyone start to think that a full-grown man who had a job might have been doing this stuff.

If you're either a murderer or a corporate goon who wants to discredit a whistleblower, you wouldn't say a word. You'd set up evidence that would make it look as if somebody like Kingston had done some detective work and found this evidence implicating somebody like Malone. 

Most murderers don't leave evidence at all. They don't make it obvious that they're "hunting." They don't harass the people they intend to murder. They just shoot. Or drive a car into. Or whatever. 

Most people who harass whistleblowers with the suggestion that someone is trying to kill those whistleblowers really just want either to intimidate the whistleblowers into silence or, failing that, to make them look stupid, paranoid...unreliable. "Kingston says our product is harmful bit Kingston, a-ha, a-ha, also thought Malone was trying to kill her." 

Kingston made a video pleading for Malone or Robert Kennedy to call off the CIA, for pity's sake. For Kennedy...I don't even want to go into the implications. In the video she has not bags but footlocker trunks under her eyes, she's sweating in some sort of undershirt that makes it obvious that she needs a bra, and she's pleading, "They spray the water..."

Karen Kingston, I absolutely do believe that "they" spray open water in Mexico, and that there may be people who could be as miserable as you obviously have bee from drinking water contaminated with some insecticide or other. That is one of the things that could possibly be happening. Whover's been harassing you wouldn't even need to be doing it. From an enemy's point of view that'd be gravy, like, synchronicity, serendipity. Your enemy intimidates you into going to Mexico and then you get really, really sick, maybe not even from drinking but from washing your face in poisoned water. Heh-heh.

But please give the merry lads in Langley their due credit. If you had run afoul of some sort of personal problem with Robert Malone and his Virginia connections, and you ever for a moment were allowed to suspect that anybody was stalking you, the visible evidence would all point to some other unlikely suspect. I don't know. Anybody else you might have disagreed with. Maybe even someone at Pfizer. 

Malone is down around #2000 on any listo of people who might be trying to kill you, Kingston, because you found some sort of evidence that seemed to implicate Malone.

If a crazy hillbilly who's obsessed with acquiring a mostly dead orchard has enough sense to plant bright red hairs just like another neighbor's on the scene where he failed to obliterate his own much smaller footprints, you can be sure that anybody who has a realistic intention either to kill or to discredit you would have enough sense to plant evidence implicating somebody like Malone or Kennedy--somebody who wants nothing less, right now, than a scandal involving a former colleague who'd disagreed with one of them.

Your worst enemy might be your own exaggerated suspicions of people who may have tried to censor you but never dreamed of anything worse, coinciding with a bad chemical reaction, Kingston. Or it might be someone at a corporation on which you've blown the whistle. It is not anyone as close to Kennedy as Robert Malone.

Even though both Malone and Kennedy may well be having the emotion reaction that goes "Oh that Kingston, I could strangle her" right now, they didn't do it. Didn't tell anyone else to do it, either.

Come back to the States, for the reasons the Brighteon guys mentioned, or at least Canada, where you wouldn't look conspicuous and could find True Green allies. Drink some clean water. Get some sleep. You will then agree, Karen Kingston, that if anyone is hunting you it is not Robert Malone.

If It's Not "Biosafe" They Didn't Have to Say It Was

Guest post from Luan Van Le

Luan Van Le, 347-921-1466, info@gmofreeusa.org

Toxin Free USA Sues REI Outdoor Clothing Company for Kids’ Jackets Containing PFAS Chemicals

 Washington, DC, Nov 10, 2022 — Toxin Free USA, a nonprofit dedicated to consumer protection and education, filed a lawsuit against Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI), an outdoor clothing and equipment retailer, alleging deceptive marketing of its Kids’ Rainwall Rain Jackets.

REI represents itself as a company where with each purchase, a consumer is “choosing to steward the outdoors, support sustainable business and help the fight for life outside.” It has also stated, “Bluesign®-approved materials conserve resources and protect the health of the environment, workers and wearer (your kid!)”.

Lab testing revealed high levels of organofluorine, which is an indicator of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a class of toxic chemicals that studies have linked to cancer, autoimmune disease, thyroid disease, liver damage, decreased fertility, birth defects, hormone disruption, obesity, decreased immunity, and high blood pressure. Studies also show PFAS, which are also known as “forever chemicals”, do not break down naturally in the environment, bioaccumulate in human bodies, and can be harmful at ultra low levels.

“As a mother, I’m appalled that REI would present its products as safe. It’s very disappointing that a company that promotes environmental activism would make products with highly toxic chemicals, damaging the environment. With each passing month, the scope of PFAS contamination grows. These chemicals are found at dangerous levels in water and farmland throughout the country. REI’s products contribute to untenable PFAS pollution and they must stop immediately,” said Diana Reeves, Executive Director of Toxin Free USA.The REI suit, filed under the D.C. Consumer Protection Procedures Act, seeks to end REI’s deceptive marketing. Toxin Free USA is represented by Richman Law & Policy.

Read the full complaint here. [Content warning: PDF format will be readable with some browsers, not others. Worth reading if you can.]

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GMO/Toxin Free USA is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit advocating for a clean, healthy food system and environment, non-toxic consumer products, and educating consumers about the hazards of GMOs, synthetic pesticides and other toxins. www.toxinfreeusa.org.

Secret Documents for Sale!

On a web page that I don't recommend even trying to read because it's such a mess, but the link is https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-may-have-sold-classified-documents-should-be-arrested-kirschner/ar-AA11qyTJ , a Newsweek.com journalist claims that the existence of empty folders marked "classified" indicates that former President Trump sold the documents.

He would not, of course, have 

* scanned them into an electronic file and shredded the paper to save office space

* used the folders, as everyone who's ever written a book has done, to store rough drafts that were meant to be destroyed after the book was finished (most of us don't use folders marked "classified" for these drafts, but most of us have less to be security-conscious about than Trump had)

* gone through the folders, shredded duplicates, and combined remaining papers into fewer folders, as most people who've ever run a business have done

No. He would have sold the documents. 

"At a garage sale?" asked a snarky commenter at a "conservative" forum. "I need some 'secret' documents!" 

This web site is always glad to help people when we can and so, if you need some "secret" documents, we will sell you some. Each folder will contain at least twenty pieces of paper that somebody has "classified" as secret. These secrets will not affect national security. We are not traitors. They will not even affect the security of individuals since all names and identifying information will be obliterated. 

Head on over to Zazzle, order your folders marked "classified," send them to the address at the bottom of this web page, and for only ten dollars we will fill them with somebody or other's formerly secret documents. 

(This post is, of course, a joke, but if you buy and mail your folders they will be filled. This web site takes its jokes seriously.) 

Book Review: More News of the Weird

A Fair Trade Book

Title: More News of the Weird

Author: Chuck Shepherd et al.

Feature's web site, from which primary author retired this summer: http://www.uexpress.com/news-of-the-weird

Date: 1990

Publisher: Plume / Penguin

ISBN: 0-452-26545-2

Length: 210 pages

Illustrations: drawings by Drew Friedman

Quote: "As a condition of the sale, members of the shaven-headed sect agreed to wear wigs so they wouldn't frighten the neighbors."

In the concluding section of this book, Shepherd and collaborators discuss the nature of weird news: "Most of the stories in News of the Weird are funny, but 'funny' is only a small subset of 'weird.'" Some true stories of "weird" violence are horrific: "But murders and mutilations...can hardly be learned from reading books...there is at least as much evidence that calling a problem to attention by ridicule might prevent or lessen the incidence of the problem." The collaborators "view ourselves mainly as recorders of human behavior," with some interest in the way "the study of strangeness gives us...faith that we're personally not so peculiar. Our work gives us the opportunity to tell ourselves, 'I thought I was a little strange, but then again, I never stood on the front lawn wrapped in aluminum foil.'"

One of the weirdest stories was later reprinted as The Concrete Enema. Yes, it seems a man allowed a very close friend to give him one. If you've ever wondered what that would feel like, this book provides the following hint: The lighthearted lavender lads confessed all in the hospital emergency room.

Also during the 1980s:

* "Appealing his prison-escape conviction...a convict said that he was just trying to escape the prison's 'drug-filled environment.'"

* "Three teenage boys...stole a woman's purse and tried...jumping onto a five-by-four-foot slab of ice floating down the Hudson River. They were stranded on the ice until rescued by police helicopter."

(Yes, those "Least Competent Criminals" stories have always been the hilarious highlights of "News of the Weird.")

* A man "rammed his car into ten trees and three street signs...Police quoted him as saying that he only gets that way when there is a lunar eclipse."

* "In 1989, people in Houston, Pontiac (Michigan), Miami, and Tampa committed suicide minutes after...minor traffic infractions."

* A man "filed a lawsuit asking $180,000...claiming damages from the church's preaching to him over the years to abstain from sex."

At some of Washington, D.C.'s Metro stations, in the early 1980s, someone thought it was cute to name the drop-off lanes "Kiss & Ride." The original idea was supposed to have been housewives dropping off their commuter husbands. My school friends liked to chortle over the possibilities: "Kiss the bus? Kiss the driver?" Sure enough, in New York, in 1989 a school bus driver was "accused...of molesting several child passengers...by establishing a 'kiss the driver' day."

In the 1990s everyone chortled over the weird news item that a North Carolina traffic cop pulled over "one of those guys who think they're Richard Petty," only to discover that the driver was Richard Petty, King of NASCAR, newly retired from racing and a serious candidate for elected office. In the 1980s the bar of weirdness had already been set higher than that: "H. John Rogers, a candidate for the U.S. Senate...had just been detained four days at a Wheeling mental health center for spitting in the face of a police chief," and, when asked whether Rogers thought this incident would affect his campaign, "Rogers...got up...and punched [the interviewer] in the face." (And you thought the Alabama special election was "Strange"?)

Some ask whether "News of the Weird" is real news. It is. Watch your local newspaper carefully, and you can marvel at the number of weird stories that just don't rate weird enough for Shepherd's carefully selected weekly column. From my part of the world, the report of a convict in the Sullivan County, Tennessee, jail having seriously complained that "we are treated like criminals" made "News of the Weird," but the story of the Hawkins County man who managed to violate the traffic code in nineteen ways in one ride didn't make it...I suppose anybody who really wants to lose their license and/or go to jail can think of lots of different ways to violate traffic codes, all at once.

Regular features in "News of the Weird" do, however, include art projects and grant proposals, where the weirdness is fed by the need to make each project original. The painting-buying public may believe there's room for another landscape painter known for realistic portrayals of natural light, like Thomas Kincade, but nobody's going to get an award from one of those foundations by proposing to paint beautiful sunlit landscapes. The religious image defaced with dung was merely the art project that made headlines in the 1990s. Gems of art, science, and miscellaneous inventiveness immortalized in this book include:

* "a restaurant in a suburb of Winnipeg...called 'The Outhouse,' built on the theme of toilets," shut down "because it lacked adequate restrooms."

* "a pistol-shaped package that allowed children to drink...juice by holding the barrel in their mouths and squeezing a trigger."

* "a bumper sticker...'Have You Slugged Your Kid Today?'"

* "an art show...of elaborate drawings...done on Etch-A-Sketch, at prices from $200 to $500."

* a wheat product that "could be used to manufacture...lightweight armor, a wood substitute, and pasta."

And pages 98-99 document a real incident, in 1982, that inspired Felice Holman's novel The Blackmail Machine.

There are quite a few subcategories in the ever-popular "Least Competent Criminals" section of "News of the Weird," and I'm not even going to try to pick out highlights. Buy the book and pick your own top five. If you laugh at stories where criminals punish and/or incriminate themselves, never read any "News of the Weird" column or collection in public.

Despite a number of un-funny, chilling stories most stories in "News of the Weird" are funny, and there's a high probability that reading this collection may cause not only inappropriate laughter but also inadvertent coffee mis-breathing, or should that be mal-spiration, or maybe you have a more yuppified phrase for the phenomenon of workers snorting coffee onto their computer keyboards? It's recommended for bathroom and bedtime reading.

When Shepherd retired, vintage "News of the Weird" books became collectors' items rather fast. This one has actually been reprinted, so Shepherd probably prefers that you buy it as a new book, but you can get News of the Weird, More News of the Weird, Beyond News of the Weird, and The Concrete Enema, together, for $5 per book plus $5 for the package plus $1 per online payment, from the address at the very bottom of the screen. That's $25 (or $26) for the four-book set, until the publisher offers reprints as a set.

Mat Staver's SMUG Update

This web site is not sharing other sites' fundraising appeals as liberally as it once did. However, because the whole idea of the SMUG lawsuit (see "SMUG Indeed," earlier this month) is so idiotic, we just have to make sure you know who's (senile?) enough to fund the most idiotic lawsuit we've ever heard tell of. Suing that McDonalds outlet because the coffee was hot? Not even. Turns out that lawsuit was at least based on a reasonable claim that the coffee dispenser was overheating and keeping the coffee boiling--and my thanks to Making Light for sharing the details, years ago. That's not in the same class with SMUG's...meta-folly, below.

If it were to turn out that SMUG's lawsuit is based on a reasonable claim that this pastor was barging into bars or cafes and grabbing people by the collars, instead of preaching his interpretation of the Bible as Christian pastors are expected nay required to do, this web site will retract the term "meta-folly"--but I trust Mat Staver's judgment.

"

As I write, Liberty Counsel's litigation team is defending a pastor who is being charged for "crimes against humanity" in violation of "international law" — akin to genocide and war crimes — simply because he traveled to Uganda and shared his biblical views on homosexuality.

A homosexual rights group from Uganda is suing in U.S. court against our client, Massachusetts Pastor Scott Lively.

And guess who is working in the shadows to attack this pastor: George Soros!

The Soros-funded Center for Constitutional Rights is behind this outrageous lawsuit that seeks to charge Pastor Lively with "crimes against humanity." As I told FOXNews:

This lawsuit is a gross attempt to use a vague international law to silence, and eventually criminalize, speech by U.S. citizens on homosexuality and moral issues.

This month, Liberty Counsel filed our second brief (150 pages) calling for the dismissal of this lawsuit against Pastor Lively. My litigation team is deeply engaged in this fight and we are bracing for even more attacks in the coming weeks.

Please understand what we are up against....

This Soros-backed attack against Pastor Lively has already encompassed four years, hundreds of hours of depositions, and some 40,000 pages of legal documents. Their goal is clear — to criminalize Christianity!

That's why I'm asking for your help.

I urgently need an additional $20,000 from our online team for our litigation fund before the end of this month so we can fight for Pastor Lively and many others against deep-pocketed groups funded by George Soros and other radicals.

Please go here now to help replenish our litigation fund so we can fight for Pastor Lively and many other people of faith who are coming under hostile attack in courtrooms across America:

We know these groups are spending tens upon hundreds of thousands of dollars to strip people of faith of our rights. At times, the battle can feel overwhelming, but we have the TRUTH on our side, along with faithful friends like you who are standing with us.

Will you help?

Please prayerfully consider making a tax-deductible contribution today.

Again, we know that these anti-faith groups have a clear goal -- to criminalize Christianity! This attack on Pastor Lively seeks to make our biblical views a "crime against humanity."

"

Priscilla King Was Arrested...

(Blogjob tags: Amazon book links, Amazon movie links, Amazon record links, Busted magazine, celebrity names, local police blotter.)

Last summer, while cleaning the house of someone who had been collecting a local magazine called Busted, I learned for the first time that Priscilla King had been arrested for underage drinking.

Obviously, that's not a close relative of the writer known as Priscilla King (and it happened long enough ago that I doubt that the teenager known as Priscilla King, down in Tennessee, is still underage). However, it was quite interesting to note how many other well-known names appeared in Busted. Reportedly these are the legal names of people, nearly all petty offenders, who just happen to share the names of people who are or were famous (even if, in some cases, fictional). At least commenting on these coincidences gives me something to write about that invites lots of book and movie links.

Local police line-ups have recently featured traffic offenders, non-payers of child support, drunks, and other misdemeanants who share the names of...

Richard Adams...not the late author of Watership Down.

Bill Bailey, on a traffic charge...possibly trying to get home. (A classic song of the early twentieth century: "Won't You Come Home, Bill Bailey?")

William Bennett, not the one known for writing about virtue.

John Birch, not the one whose life and work are commemorated by the right-wing John Birch Society.

James Brown, not for "saying it loud, I'm Black and I'm proud." The one arrested wasn't even Black.

Laura Bryant, not to be confused with Laura Militzer Bryant.

Robert Byrd, not the late Senator, nor from West Virginia.

Miguel Cervantes...it's been so long that he probably doesn't even know whether he is a remote descendant of the great Renaissance author.

Angela Davis, not on charges connected with political activism.

Jimmy Dean, not the late singer.

John Fox, neither the author of The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come nor the coach of the Chicago Bears.

Judy Garland, not on charges related to the disappearance of witches.

John Gilbert, obviously no movie star.

Melissa Gilbert, ditto.

Patrick Henry, on petty and unpatriotic charges.

John Holt, not the late educator.

Andrew Jackson, from Tennessee, possibly a proud descendant of our seventh President.

Carol Jackson, no resemblance to Carole Jackson. (It should perhaps be mentioned that it's considered an encouragement to good behavior, in my part of the world, that if you drive recklessly, swear in public, etc., Busted will Color You Ugly with a photo that may look like something from an amusement park's "House of Mirrors.")

Michael Jackson, not the late singer.

Jesse James, not for robbing the Danville train.

Jennifer Jones, not a movie star.

Jim Jones, not the late, unlamented Communist cult leader.

James Jordan, not the Congressman.

Edward Kennedy, probably not a close relative of the late Senator.

Mary Martin , not the actress.

Steve Martin, not the comedian.

Michael Moore. Actually, at least two guys called Michael Moore have appeared in Busted, one Black and one White. Neither of them is likely to be mistaken for the filmmaker.

Terry Nichols, not the conspirator, who was safely in prison at the time.

Timothy Peters, not the truck racer.

Ronald Reagan, not the late President.

Howard Roark...on charges relating to a lawsuit about his alleged failure to perform construction work according to contract. Nevertheless, Ayn Rand didn't make this guy up. The one featured in Busted is real.

Jimmy Rogers, not the late Jimmie Rodgers.

Adam Smith, not the author of The Wealth of Nations.

Connie Smith, not the singer.

John Smith. Yes, people do call their sons John Smith.

James Taylor, not the singer.

John Thomas...that seems downright mean.

Charles Williams, not the late writer.

Does sharing a name with a celebrity make it more likely that people will commit misdemeanors? Probably not; the majority of people featured in Busted don't have celebrity names, and many local people who do share celebrities' names, like the James Dean, James Ray, and John Glenn at my school, seem to stay out of trouble. However, sharing a name with a celebrity does make it more likely that people will notice and remember any trouble into which a person gets.

Don't Try This at Home

Oliver Darcy shares the story and video of a woman who "saved" an orphaned puppy by giving it human milk...

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/02/10/what-a-woman-says-she-had-to-do-to-save-an-orphaned-puppy-has-generated-a-lot-of-controversy/

Not recommended! Young animals can usually survive for a short time on milk from a different mammal species, but each creature is designed to thrive on milk from its own kind. Powdered milk "formulas" to replace dogs' and cats' milk are available at some pet stores, at some discount department stores including Wal-Mart, and from the vet; although not as good as milk from a healthy foster mother of the same species, these formulas contain a reasonable approximation of the major nutrients in the balance a puppy or kitten needs.

Disease germs can migrate from infants to their mothers or foster mothers during the nursing process. This woman probably exposed herself (and her baby) to a variety of canine diseases humans don't normally get by trying to feed puppies as if they were baby humans. If I had to try to "save" an animal on human milk I'd at least pump the milk and bottle-feed the animal.

Too Much Is Too Much of Anything

[Gross-out alert: This news item is about a form of child abuse you didn't want to know existed.]

Reading this Blaze report...

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/02/07/how-drinking-soda-as-a-punishment-killed-a-5-year-old-girl/

...reminded me of a news item we discussed in 1976 or 1977, I forget, but I remember it was in grade six. Some other horrible person ordered a child to drink water as a punishment. Water only--not soda pop--from an unspecified "bucket" that a younger child was able to carry. At that time things like ice cream and peanut butter were sold in one-quart and one-gallon plastic "buckets" that could be reused around the house for years (we only have one left, but I still use it to pick berries). Anyway, reportedly, the child ingested most of six "buckets" of water and died on the way to the hospital.

Do these gruesome stories indicate that drinking too much soda pop will kill a person faster than drinking too much water will? Sounds reasonable, because soda pop contains a good deal of sodium, and any imbalance between sodium and potassium in the blood (either way) can cause distress; a severe imbalance between those two chemicals (either way) can cause death. Then again, as I recall the story from my childhood may have involved a bigger child.

Either way, note the forty-year time gap. Nobody drinks enough of either water or soda pop to cause death. A sensation of fullness sets in. When people die of what the story from my childhood described as "internal drowning," force can reasonably be suspected.