I started doing this about three years ago, and it proved to be relatively popular among the readership, by which is meant that not one of them has commanded me to cut it out or face the Wrath of [insert name of presumably wrathful entity]. Besides, as the DJ used to say, the hits just keep on comin’.

strength through repetition:  Like I said, I started doing this about three years ago.

pics glittering elegant crossdressers:  Did you expect them to be slobs?

how to deal with plagiarists:  Hang on a minute while I cut and paste this article.

“anarchist” “bi-sexual” “tattooed” “pierced”:  Geez. The Democratic convention is over.

southerners use Hellman’s:  And a damn sight too much of it, if you ask McGehee.

list spam words viagra sex huge young hot women how to write message rules in outlook express 6:  You can block any or all of those words, but then you have to deal with, um, creative misspellings like V14GR4.

what turns fifty this year:  More alleged 43-year-olds than you think.

hen house construction:  Wait for the Fox News documentary.

thermo focker:  We had one of those in the hen house. Cost $300 to replace.

is it okay to vanish over venetian plaster?  Do you think you’ll leave a shadow or something?

girl accidentally becomes a invisible girl:  Was Venetian plaster involved?

is it illegal to drive from oklahoma to texas to buy budwieser beer and bring it back:  Oh, come on. It’s Bud, fercrissake. Plead insanity and get it over with.

dustbury i.q.:  Somewhere in triple digits. I think. (This was requested by a coworker who probably had no idea that I read the logs. Until now, anyway.)

The trouble is, it’s not small enough:

It’s painfully boring to me to say hello over and over again. If this bit of show is what separates us from the animals, I’ll happily take my place with the ants, busily working with no efforts made to be constantly sociable. “Can’t talk now, I’ve got to drag this dead fly home”. I’m thinking as I walk, and I don’t want that thinking necessarily interrupted by a string of meaningless words.

It’s worse when they’re trying to be amusing. However, this is simply a reflection of an unfortunate fact of life: most people seem to believe that they possess a better-than-average sense of humor, a notion that by definition cannot possibly be true. And expanded to email, it’s worse yet, because the humor-impaired, for some reason, are far more likely to forward you tons and tons of crap. I’ve had to cut the list of people from whom I will accept this sort of thing to maybe half a dozen; everyone else is rewarded with a blacklist entry in my mail filters.

Still, the words aren’t really “meaningless,” are they?

Okay, they’re not meaningless words in a cultural sense, and they really don’t separate us from the many animals who also have gestures of greeting. These little acts string us all together as a society. They keep us buzzing around the same hive. It’s the glue that provides some loose solidarity. What if everyone stopped chit-chatting?

But everyone won’t stop chit-chatting. There’s just a few of us that aren’t into it. We’re free-riding on the sociability of others. A few deviants are not going to destroy the bonds of the rest of them. And some of these weirdos actually advance society through brilliant innovation as they fail to discuss the weather sufficiently.

I don’t claim that anything I do advances society — indeed, there are times when I think my current career path actually retards it substantially — but I see nothing to gain by feigning interest when the chatterboxes start grinding out their resolutely unmelodic themes.

[I]t’s not that I have courage to be different from the crowd, but that my obliviousness to social constructions gives me extraordinary freedom.

“Don’t ask me how I am,” I tell them.

“Why not?” they ask.

“Because I’ll actually tell you.”

Eventually they learn.

Addendum: The Local Malcontent takes exception to this premise:

There’s gotta be a mistake — I’ve missed something, a punchline or an inside joke I hope. Or maybe he woke up grouchy this morning. The man who creates the verbose “Dustbury” anew every hour or so, implies that he doesn’t like the simple small talk which is the byword, the lifeblood, the very identifier of regular Oklahomans.

I am both shocked and disappointed, if true.

It’s seldom I get this reaction from someone I didn’t actually go out with.

Further addendum: Lynn observes:

Small talk has never annoyed me a lot but I’ve always found it a little sad that most people never go beyond that. What does annoy me sometimes is the idle chatter of strangers. I’ll be waiting in a long line, for example, and the person next to me will decide to chat me up but she (or he) won’t say much of anything, just chatter about the weather, how much she hates waiting in line, etc. If they’re not going to actually say something I wish they would just leave me alone with my own mind because what’s inside my head is always more interesting than the weather.

Then there’s Idol chatter, which is a pestilence all its own.

The old Western Electric / Lucent / whatever plant on the west side of Oklahoma City has been opened up as a shelter for evacuees from Hurricane Gustav (and presumably Hanna, now that she’s been promoted), and about 2000 folks escaping the wrath of the storm have now arrived.

Meanwhile, the Highway Patrol is dispatching airboats and rescue boats to southern Louisiana to assist with rescue efforts, and the Military Department has sent troops, a cargo plane and a helicopter; the Air Force has announced that seven C-17 cargo aircraft are being sent from Altus Air Force Base.

Third of Five: You probably don’t know what it’s like to be lost and frightened. You will listen to any voice who promises change.

Commander Riker: Even if that voice insists on controlling you?

Third of Five: That’s what we wanted. Someone to show us a way out of the confusion. He promised clarity and purpose; he seemed like a savior; promised to make us superior, but he had no idea how to keep his promise. He began to ask for sacrifices for the sake of the greater good….

(Referenced here.)

Worthwhile advice from Virginia Postrel:

First, you should buy shoes that are comfortable enough that you aren’t in pain. But even the world’s most comfy shoes, like these, can chafe — and limping around with blisters is not glamorous or even attractive. And, of course, it hurts. Band-Aids are only a slight improvement.

The solution, if you can find it: Band-Aid’s Blister Block Stick, which, well, blocks blisters. It’s still mentioned on the Band-Aid Web site, but actual packages of the product seem to be elusive at the moment.

Oh, and the shoes? Tahari Treaty Patent Leather Sandals, with a 3½-inch stacked heel, which can be had from DSW for a modest $59.95. Presumably Ms Postrel herself is modeling them in the photo, not that I’d ever notice such a thing.

Apparently this guy isn’t too thrilled by Sarah Palin.

“That trick never works,” suggested a friend of his.

It’s downright hot on the Freeway of Love:

Soul queen Aretha Franklin has joined Madonna and Alanis Morissette in forcing fans to break a sweat at her concerts — because of her gripping fear of air conditioning.

The “Respect” singer left a legion of celebrity fans including Christie Brinkley and Rosie Perez in a sweat at her New York concert last weekend. According to the New York Post, the singer turned up the heat in the middle of steaming summer, prompted by fears the coolant would destroy her sultry voice.

I can understand this if she’s had throat issues recently: air conditioning, after all, removes moisture from the air, and if you’re dry and scratchy before, you’re going to be drier and scratchier afterwards.

But “coolant” in the air? This sounds like a major mechanical malfunction to me.

(Via Fark.)

Veteran forward Donyell Marshall, waived by Oklahoma City a couple of weeks ago, has signed with the Philadelphia 76ers, pending the results of the usual physical.

Marshall will be paid $1,262,275, the minimum for a 10-year veteran, in addition to the $5.9 million salary due him from Oklahoma City on his previous contract.

They say you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar. (”Why would I want a whole bunch of honey-coated flies?” asks Pixy Misa, but that’s another matter.)

If you really want to catch flies, though, you need a Swimming Pool of Death.

Who knew? Besides the guy who’s been wrestling with Sendmail since it shipped with BSD in ‘83, I mean:

[Y]ou’ll get a helluva lot more UCE-spam as Aardvark@[domain] than as Zebra@[domain] — and hugely less if your name starts with a number. (Why the numbers? It’s a droid thing, you wouldn’t understand).

Assuming these are the droids I’m looking for:

“At some point, it occurred to the spammers that if john@example.com was a valid email address then perhaps john@another.com was valid as well, so they started to combine local parts (to the left of the @) with other domain names. This method of creating email addresses to attempt delivery to is called a dictionary attack (or sometimes a Rumpelstiltskin attack).”

In other words, with apologies to Zbigniew Brzezinski, there simply aren’t that many Zbigniew’s around, so he is pretty safe.

Here’s the study in PDF format. In the case of the specific ISP being studied, “around half of all the email which is being given to the Demon Internet spam detection system is destined for non-existent mailboxes.” It figures.

“While I wouldn’t want to rebuild the Berlin Wall or restaff the KGB,” Joe Carter says, “there are a few things I miss about the Cold War era:”

The Commies were atheists: It’s always good to have an enemy that doesn’t believe in the afterlife. Even when the Ruskies had more nukes than loaves of Wonder Bread, you knew they were never going to use them. One push on the red button and it was “Game Over.” This new breed of enemy is different. If Islamic Jihadists get their hands on The Bomb you know it’s time to call your broker and load up on Black-eyed Virgin options.

The loss of a good put-down: Remember when the perfect dis was to call someone a pinko? “You don’t eat meat? What, are you communist?” For some reason, “You don’t eat at McDonald’s? Are you some kind of anti-globalist?” just doesn’t have the same bite.

You knew what Marxists believed: While Marxism had more flavors than Baskin-Robbins, they all traced their lineage to Big Daddy Karl. Now with Queer Theory, Chicano studies, Post-Colonial studies, structuralism, deconstruction, you have no clue where your college English teacher got their wacky ideas.

Ah, a simpler time. And there’s this:

Our allies were still friendly: My friend Matt Powell said it best: “You know what I really miss about the Cold War? Europe knowing their place.”

There’s still time, though, for rapprochement, especially if John Kerry wants a shot at being President of France.

If you ever saw Jerry Reed picking and grinning, and took a look at his hand, that’s what you saw: unlike any of his predecessors, he was working all five fingers into the pluckage, and eventually Chet Atkins at RCA Victor talked him into cutting a record called “The Claw.” It was not a success, but it was a start.

And Reed went places, too, especially after Elvis picked up on his “Guitar Man” and “U. S. Male.” He had a solo hit in 1970 with a Cajun tale called “Amos Moses,” followed in 1972 by “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot.” Occasional appearances on Glen Campbell’s TV show got Reed a reading for Cledus “Snowman” Snow in Smokey and the Bandit, and thenceforth he mixed picking, songwriting and acting in whatever quantities happened to be coming along.

It was emphysema that got him yesterday, and therefore I’ve decided to remember the man with a spin of “Another Puff”, which flopped midchart in 1971. No one ever had so much fun talking about something that was going to kill him.

Database updates are running at about 15 percent of normal speed for some inscrutable reason; if your comments seem to be taking an awfully long time to post, presumably this is why. I have turned in a trouble ticket to the host.

Then again, we had database issues almost exactly two years ago, which resulted in having to scrap the entire structure. I hope I don’t have to go through that again.

Addendum: Working in the database alone is fairly speedy; it’s just the writes to the actual Web pages that take up major minutes. (No, they’re not on the same machine.) Pingwise, they’re equidistant from here, but perhaps they’re a long way from each other in the host network.

Usually I just smile and nod when I read Stuff White People Like, but #108 calls for some kind of verbal response, especially for this:

If a white person starts talking to you about classical music, it’s essential that you tread very lightly. This is because white people are all petrified that they will be exposed as someone who has only a moderate understanding of classical music. When a white person encounters another white person who actually enjoys classical music (exceptionally rare), it is often considered to be one of the most traumatic experiences they can go through.

I’m perhaps not as white as all that — got Mexicans and Syrian/Lebanese on one branch of the family tree — but I have no qualms about admitting here that I have, at best, a moderate understanding of classical music, and by “moderate” I mean “less than Lynn” or “less than Dr. Weevil” or “less than Steph Waller.” And I don’t fear discussion of the topic with any of them, or with anyone else on a similar level, if only because I stand to learn something in the process.

This commentary on Satie, though, is golden:

Composing at the end of the 19th century, Satie has risen to prominence among white people because his music has been sampled by popular musicians and featured in a number of independent films. Dropping this name at a dinner party will show that you are modern and post-modern at the same time. It is also a good idea to tell white people that your tastes in general are “modern and post-modern at the same time.” Don’t worry, you won’t have to explain it.

I figured there are two ways I can drop Satie’s name:

• by mentioning Blood, Sweat & Tears, who, on the first post-Al Kooper album, did a couple of bits from Trois gymnopédies, which mostly reminded me how much I dislike quasi-orchestral transcriptions of piano works;

• by quoting a story about him told by Meredith Willson, about a dustup between Satie and Debussy: supposedly, they were attending a performance of La mer, and during the first movement, “De l’aube à midi sur la mer” — “Dawn to noon on the sea” — Satie is supposed to have said to Debussy something to the effect of “I really like that part in there about a quarter to twelve.” Debussy, in return, turned his dudgeon up to 11.

Neither of these tales, of course, will accord me any concert-hall credibility.

Jeff Shaw looks at the state of Tulsa’s infrastructure, and comes up with a handy metaphor:

I keep this stuff in my trunk called Fix-a-Flat. If I get a flat tire it works just fine, but I know that I’ve got to either go get a new tire, or get the tire repaired soon. A can of that goop costs around $2.00. A repair will cost $30.00. A new tire costs $125.00. If I want to continue to be safe, I’m going to have to spend the new tire money.

But then the macho man in me says “Wait a minute.” Why do I even have to go to the shop in the first place? I can fix a flat. Its been a while, but I’ve plugged a few tires in my day. But the more mature and contemplative me starts to think seriously about the safety of my family, and the responsibility I have to them, about how I need to get it done right.

This is very good, but it omits one semi-crucial detail: when you take the tire in for repair, they’re going to see that you used a can of that two-dollar goop, and they’re going to warn you never to use it again. I don’t know if it’s really bad for the tire, but the guys who work on tires revile the stuff, probably because they have to scrape sticky goop off the inside before they can do a proper fix.

Last flat I had, alas, the implement of destruction got screwed right through the sidewall: not fixable at all.

Disclosure: I have an actual full-sized spare, which apparently is unheard of these days.

File this under Things That Make You Go Hmmmm…:

Men are more likely to be devoted and loyal husbands when they lack a particular variant of a gene that influences brain activity, researchers announced [Monday] — the first time that science has shown a direct link between a man’s genes and his aptitude for monogamy.

The finding is striking because it not only links the gene variant — which is present in two of every five men — with the risk of marital discord and divorce, but also appears to predict whether women involved with these men are likely to say their partners are emotionally close and available, or distant and disagreeable. The presence of the gene variant, or allele, also seems predictive of whether men get married or live with women without getting married.

The brain activity being influenced, apparently, is the distribution of receptors for the peptide hormone vasopressin, which mostly regulates water retention but which seems to have some connection to aggression.

I know I get peeved if I’m retaining water. But seriously:

About 40 percent of men have one or two copies of the allele. [Hasse] Walum, a PhD student, said that men with two copies of the allele had a greater risk of marital discord than men with one copy, and that men with one copy of the allele were at more risk of such discord than men with no copies. The study asked men in married or long-term relationships whether they had experienced relationship crises in the past year that were of such intensity that they considered divorce or splitting. The scientists also asked the wives and partners of the men what it was like to live with them, examining levels of affection, cohesion, consensus and satisfaction.

I’m guessing I have this thing woven through the entire freaking helix. Not that anyone is likely to let me get away with “But it’s genetic!” as an excuse.

(Seen here.)

I’ve never done Blogger, but I’ve seen some of its weirder excrescences, and apparently there’s a fix for one of them: the ginormous blank space before a table. Apparently a little applied CSS is all it takes.

And a lot of applied CSS might actually clean up this site, though I’m not holding my breath. Besides, the existing stylesheet is already 7274 bytes, and it applies only to blogstuff; all the other subsections have their own declarations and decorations and whatnot.

Yeah, it’s Thunder.

And, well, I promised myself I wouldn’t say “Meh.”

The Irritated Tulsan is looking for “Warning Signs the State Fair Is in Town.”

The one that’s always worked for me is “You look at something — anything — on your dinner plate, and wonder what it would be like deep-fried.”

Send him some responses. He’s actually going to give away some Tulsa State Fair passes.

I’m beginning to wonder:

Hard rock enigma Slipknot have once again made history. The band’s fourth album, All Hope Is Gone, has claimed the coveted #1 debut slot on Billboard’s Top 200 chart, after an extraordinary SoundScan recount. The album was initially announced today as a #2 debut, a mere 13 units behind The Game’s #1 debut, marking the closest margin in SoundScan history. The chart positions resulted from a reported 238,272 copies of All Hope Is Gone its first week in stores, while The Game’s LAX reported 238,285. With such an unprecedented margin, Roadrunner Records and WEA requested a historic recount. SoundScan obliged and chart positions have been reversed, with Slipknot claiming #1 and a new margin of 1134 albums. Final recount numbers are 239,516 for All Hope Is Gone and 238,382 for LAX sold during first week of release. This marks a landmark achievement for Slipknot and Roadrunner.

I suppose this is an improvement over the Bad Old Days, when chart positioning was based on sales, airplay, promotional cash and the phases of the moon, but I’m finding it difficult to be impressed by 240,000 sales; Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon moves that many copies every six months, and it’s thirty-five years old fercrissake.

(Via Fark. Disclosure: There are a couple of Slipknot tracks I can actually stand.)

I’ve reviewed toasters before, but they were either overly complex or perhaps too simple to do the job, which is one reason why I still have my old clunker from the 1980s.

And I may not get this one, either:

We listen to Gamers and what product do they want the most? Turns out Gamers crave toast. Enter the CrazyPC 5.25 Bay Toaster. What better way to satisfy that late night snack craving than a healthy piece of toast? Just slide in a slice of bread — and voila you have toast in just minutes. The Bay Toaster fits in a standard 5.25 drive bay and installs in just minutes. Comes with Windows software for adjusting heat and time (Mac OS version coming soon!)

Come up with a slot that holds a HotPocket and we’ll talk.

(Via Belhoste.)

Steph Mineart will go half a league onward:

A while back I put off upgrading my blog to Movable Type 4.2 because the upgrade would break the site, according to my webhost.

[I mentioned that here.]

Well, now I’m on a blogging vacation, and I’m ready to blow this puppy to smithereens. Because my custom templates are centuries old now, I’m going to install default templates and edit the design back into something resembling my site from there.

This is approximately where I say “Why didn’t I think of this?”

And you have to admire the preparations:

I’m backing everything up, putting on my flak jacket and diving bell, and arming myself with my lion tamer’s whip and a spare banana. I’m ready, steady, go.

I have faith that she will prevail. (Besides, she’s got seniority, even over the likes of me.)

Blythe has a request. At least, I think it’s a request:

Hurricanes schmuricanes. Gustav? Hannah? Ike? When Barack is the celebrity president, I hope he installs new heads over at the National Hurricane Center that use the wealth of bizarro baby names of celebs for future storms. I think Gustav might’ve gotten more coverage than the Jolie-Pitt twins, but barely.

She’s got suggestions for twenty-three storms, which should be enough for a whole year. (I’m assuming that “Moxie Crimefighter,” for example, counts as one.)

Well, if I were five and a half instead of fifty-five, maybe: the water was a lovely shade of Oklahoma clay red, and it rushed down 50th to greet all of us coming in from Pennsylvania. And it got deeper the farther west I got, which can mean only one of one thing: broken water line. In this part of town, this is hardly news, inasmuch as the lines are fifty to sixty years old, but it’s still a jolt to see ponds forming along the curb on a sunny day.

Former Dallas resident Virginia Postrel remembers Fort Worth’s National Cowgirl Museum:

In stark contrast to the ridiculous Women’s Museum in Dallas, which (the one time I visited it) featured a strange combination of populist kitsch and social-constructionist feminist dogma, the Cowgirl Museum showcased women of no-nonsense character, pioneer (and pioneering) achievement, physical daring, and unapologetic femininity. Full of inspiring role models, the museum presented a piece of feminist history that gets left out of the city-oriented accounts most of us learn. There’s a reason Wyoming was the first state to let women vote and that the first female Supreme Court justice (a member of the Cowgirl Hall of Fame) came from Arizona. The thinly populated western frontier couldn’t afford to waste women’s talents (though Arizona and New Mexico were among the last states to give married women full property rights).

For some reason this made me think of a Robert A. Heinlein observation:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

Please note that these particulars apply equally on both sides of the gender divide and everywhere in between.

Eighty-eight keys, three pedals, and one word: Want.

But:

I still cherish the dream of being able to sit down and play a Bach partita to soothe myself at the end of the day. (Or, heck, in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep. If there’s one good thing about living alone it’s that you don’t have to worry that what you’re doing on your insomniacal hours is disturbing the other members of the household).

But realistically, I fear that I am (1) too busy with other things and (2) realistically, too old to get very good at playing — and again I balk at the cost, even though I’m not the one paying it.

I can believe (1); I’m not buying (2). (She’s younger than I am, and not by a smidgen either.)

Time to dig out Gilbert Kaplan’s recording of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony. And who is Gilbert Kaplan?

Gilbert Edmund Kaplan (born March 3, 1941, New York City, U.S.) is an American businessman, former journalist and amateur conductor.

He founded the magazine Institutional Investor in 1965 after studies at Duke University, the New School for Social Research and the NYU School of Law. He was publisher of the magazine until 1990, and editor-in-chief for three more years, although he sold it in 1984 for $72 million. He then concentrated on conducting, hiring Avery Fisher Hall in New York for his debut in 1982.

If that sounds like an odd change of careers, it’s a highly-specific one: Kaplan conducts Mahler’s Resurrection. That’s what he does. He’s recorded it twice. He’s written extensively about it, and about the composer. He owns the autograph of Mahler’s original score and has published a facsimile thereof. And he did none of this stuff in his twenties or even in his thirties.

Still, I can’t argue with this:

What I really need is a Time Turner. Or to be able to survive on 4 hours of sleep a night on a regular basis.

Yea, verily.

Sounds like me, especially here:

Your IQ is so high that someone saying I love you or I care causes you to run to your blackboard and work out the mathematical ramifications and symbolizations of those words and develop a theory on the proper response.

Meanwhile, here’s Lesley Gore in a Vandella-esque groove, making a similar point:

Actually, I threw this in for the benefit of the poor shlub who spent part of last week trying to find my IQ.

Okay, it’s more than a little:

The Sulphur city council decided Thursday to approve a resolution to put a name change proposal of Sulphur to Sulphur Springs to a vote of the people on the November ballot.

It is a resolution that people in Murray County seem to be pretty opinionated about. A KXII web poll last week showed that 75% of viewers opposed changing the town’s name to “Sulphur Springs.”

City officials cite tourism and that it just sounds better as the main reasons for a change. They do not want Sulphur to get lost in the shuffle of small towns and say they want to promote the Chickasaw National Recreation Area and the historic “Sulphur Springs” of the area.

It’s about 180 miles from Sulphur (Springs), Oklahoma to Sulphur Springs, Texas. (Me, I’d probably get lost around Denison.)

Zombie plague sweeps the internet. Unfortunately, the one thing they crave is notably absent from the internet.

(Linked to this.)

When the insomnia started to get bad, I determined, to my surprise and to my doctor’s, that significant physical activity tended to make matters worse: all the endorphins and none of the fatigue. This finding suggested that I should confine the yard work to Friday and Saturday, since I don’t have to get up at six the next day.

Then Thursday evening presented me with 75-degree weather and a front lawn that had grown rather a lot in six days, so I decided to risk it. The results were Not Awful, and gleeful at the prospect of not having to do any of this stuff on a Saturday, I finished my ten-hour work day Friday and attacked the back yard, which is way larger.

Sore, though not especially tired, I betook myself to bed about a quarter to ten, and stayed there eleven and a half hours. And judging by the condition of the bed this morning, it was a rough night indeed. No fewer than three narratives were played out in dreams:

• Cher, of all people, had consented to appear in an online centerfold, on the condition that the photo be impossible to reproduce elsewhere on the Net. I was attempting to do exactly that, and failing: the handy Save As command didn’t work, since the filename kept changing randomly, and none of my graphics tools could get a grip on the file.

• I was attending a session at a Guatemalan bingo hall, hosted by someone who looked a lot like Wink Martindale. I had no problem with the processional, during which we were blindfolded; however, those who wanted a place in the competition area were asked to surrender their shoes temporarily, and I never got mine back for some reason. While searching in the coat-check room, I managed to pull down a set of blinds, and discovered some very un-Bingo-like materials: I’ve played this game before, and no one has ever called out “C-4.”
• A desperately-ill child has undergone an amazing synthesis: the body was allowed to die, and the consciousness was somehow uploaded into a device the size of a Treo. Which wouldn’t be a problem, exactly, except that someone has infected the poor kid with some sort of virus, and Venomous Kate and I are searching the backwoods of northern Missouri for clues to the identity of the perpretrator.

Note to self: Take fewer drugs.