We're Burying the Lead, Here

Two news stories have captivated my interest lately. Actually, it’s more the stories behind the stories that I’m interested in.

First, some boaters on Lake Mead, near Las Vegas, found a dead body stuffed in a barrel. But the barrel hadn’t washed up on shore. Instead, the shore came to the boaters as the water level of Lake Mead has dropped to historic lows.

As additional details have emerged over the last few days, we found out that, to no one’s surprise, this seems to be the result of foul play.

One additional detail was that the body has an additional hole in it, caused by a bullet. And our unfortunate murder victim has likely been barrel-marinating since the late ‘70s or early ‘80s.

"The victim's clothes and shoes were sold at Kmart in the mid-to-late 1970s," Metro Police Homicide Lt. Ray Spencer told KLAS.

So, based on the wardrobe, I have to assume at this point that the police are looking into disappearances of very, very low-level Las Vegas mob guys forty-plus years ago. Kmart was never high-end, even in the late ‘70s.

We also learned: The decades-old barrel is also believed to have originally been about 100 feet underwater and "several hundred" yards from shore, Lt. Spencer told Fox5 Las Vegas.

The drought has caused a large decrease in water level, and Lake Mead is one of two major reservoirs in the country. According to The Associated Press, Lake Mead and Lake Powell supply water to over 40 million people, but its drop in water level has created major cause for concern.

Here’s where the story behind the story comes in, and the news doesn’t seem to be covering it. They state that it’s the “drop in water level” that “has created a major cause for concern.”

The articles even dropped this little speculation from law enforcement on us: According to Spencer, there's a "very good chance as the water level drops that we are going to find additional human remains."

Even after that cheery news, the press still hasn’t covered the real story here.The major cause for concern is not the water levels. It’s all the dead bodies in the drinking water, people!

I mean, come on! The headline here should be: “Bottled Water Sales Skyrocket in the Nevada/Arizona/Utah Regions”

 

The second story that has me glued to my phone is the Alabama jail break. Lauderdale County Assistant Director of Corrections Vicki White, a formerly model Sheriff’s department employee, seems to have broken her secret jail boyfriend out of said jail.

(Note the fun built-in foreshadowing of the county in Alabama being named “Lauderdale.” You just know damn well this thing is going to all wind up in Florida, the natural magnetic home of American crazy.)

Casey White, our murderous incarcerated love interest, was released from jail a little earlier than expected by Vicki. She broke department policy by failing to bring along another officer when transporting Casey to his fake court appearance and then she broke AMA and HIPAA policy when she failed to show up for her own fake doctor’s appointment hours later.

Initially, the U.S. Marshals Service put out a reward for information leading to the capture of a dangerous fugitive and hopefully, the safe return of his poor little hostage. Shortly thereafter, more information began to arrive.

"Investigators received information from inmates at the Lauderdale County Detention Center over the weekend that there was a special relationship between Director White and inmate Casey White," Lauderdale County Sheriff Rick Singleton said in a statement Tuesday. "That relationship has now been confirmed through our investigation by independent sources and means."

Throughout the reporting of this story, the press has been very diligent in noting the fact that Casey White and Vicki White are not related.

Inmate Casey White and Lauderdale County Assistant Director of Corrections Vicki White -- who are not related -- went missing from Florence, Alabama, on Friday.

Vicky White, 56, and Casey White, 38, who are not related…

Etc.

You might think that this is just a natural result of standard reporting practices, but I believe it to be something more. I think that’s the real story behind the story here.

The reporters keep pointing out that Casey and Vicki are not related for a much different reason than you think. The rest of us around the country would initially see the same last name and think, “Oh, maybe they’re cousins and she’s helping a family member escape.” We would think that before we found out they were romantically involved.

This insanely stupid jail break is serving to showcase a huge media bias that is almost never talked about. The real story here is the elite media snobs’ natural bias against hillbillies. This isn’t a case of racism, it’s a case of regionism. The press are regionists, or whatever you call it when people from Manhattan automatically look down on people from Alabama.

The New York press keeps pointing out that the fugitive lovers are not related because they are simply amazed at the fact that they’re not cousins.

The other thing that amazes me about this particular story is the fact that Vicki is five-foot-five and “walks with a waddling gait,” and Casey is six-foot-nine.

Six feet, nine inches tall.

For the love of Pete, how is this couple hard to find!?

See you soon, and May the 4^th be with you,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2022 Marc Schmatjen

 

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The Tornado Watch

The date was March 26^th, 2014, a day that will live in infamy. Oh, the humanity. Oh, the senseless destruction of lawn furniture. Well, OK, destruction is a bit much. Senseless slight relocation is more like it.

It started like any other spring day in the greater Sacramento region. Then the weather moved in. Thunder clouds, lightning, actual heavy rain. Wow, this is exciting, we thought.

I must pause here, and explain the greater Sacramento area weather to all of you who are lucky enough to not be from the greater Sacramento area. We have the most boring weather on earth. And not in the good way, like in San Diego, where the residents “complain” about how the weather is boring because it’s always the same.

“OMG, 78 and sunny again today! It’s supposed to be winter! Sometimes I wish we had real weather! It’s so boring here. LOL”

Bite me, San Diego.

Sacramento weather is not always the same. We have noticeable seasonal weather changes.

We notice in the spring when it’s 29 degrees in the morning and 85 degrees by noon. Our kids go to school in snow suits and come home in shorts. We lose a lot of jackets.

We notice that it gets so hot in the summer that we can’t touch our steering wheels or the metal parts of the seat belt. Vinyl car seats? Good luck.

We notice when the fog gets so thick in the fall that we have to feel our way down the road. Watch out for that boat launch ramp!

And we notice when it rains all winter, but only snows once every ten years, and only for five minutes. Quick, kids, make a snowman… never mind.

You see, that’s the problem. We get weather, just not any of the exciting kind. It’s all the boring kind. I guess the incredibly thick fog isn’t exactly boring, but you get tired of accidentally driving into things after a while.

We’re in the flat part of California. In less than two hours we can drive to the place that has the most recorded snowfall in the United States (in California, believe it or not), but we don’t get any snow ourselves. The beach is far away. The forest is near, but we’re not in it. Because of the location, we don’t get any of the exciting natural disasters, either. No mudslides, no forest fires, no hurricanes, no blizzards, no ice storms, and no tornados. Until March 26^th, that is.

We were just finishing dinner, gathered around the dining room table. (Actually, I need to be honest here, we don’t eat in the dining room, it just sounds better in the story.) So anyway, like I was saying, we were all spread out around the kitchen table/bar area/sink just finishing dinner, when my mobile phone buzzed furiously in the front pocket of my jeans. It didn’t feel like any normal text, and when I pulled the phone out to look, my heart dropped into my stomach. Or it may have been the burrito.

A red triangle with an exclamation point inside was flashing at me from the screen.

“Severe weather alert – Tornados in your area – Seek shelter immediately.”

Some unknown weather authority with access to my phone had just advised us to “Seek shelter immediately.” So what did we do? We went outside.

Tornados? Cool! We’re not going to miss this!

From under the edge of the patio cover in the backyard we looked up into the sky, and amid the thunder and lightning we saw a very large cloud, directly over our house, swirling lazily in a circle. No funnel, but the cloud was certainly spinning.

Hmm…

We went inside and turned on the news. The local meteorologist was almost wetting his pants on the air from all the excitement.

Finally people will take me seriously! There is actual news that I am in charge of. I’ll bet that anchor chick that makes three times more than me doesn’t even know how to spell funel cloud!

Funnels had been spotted. At least three of them. None of them had actually touched the ground, but that was beside the point. One of the newscasters was chasing the storm, taking incredibly bad video from the front seat of the vehicle, reporting breathlessly back to the meteorologist who was now in charge of the whole broadcast for the evening. Shut up, Nancy. This is my show, now. Weather channel, here I come!

As the winds in our backyard began to pick up we stood around and contemplated just where to go. We don’t have a basement. Being outside probably isn’t the best idea, but that swirling cloud above us hasn’t dropped a funnel out yet, so we’re probably still OK. How about a bathroom? Hmm… Lightning, metal pipes… I think I heard something once about that being bad... Or maybe it was good because you would be grounded… I can’t remember.

We settled on the downstairs hallway. We didn’t actually go there, but we did decide that was the best place.

As we continued STORM WATCH 2014 from the patio, one of our three-pound plastic Adirondack chairs was blown over and moved a full two feet. It almost put a dent in the lawn. The two swings on our play structure became hopelessly tangled for a minute, then untangled, but that minute was almost unbearable.

Then it was over.

When the fearless roving newsman made it to the highest point in town, the tornado had passed, but do you know what he found?

The rest of the town.

Everyone had jumped in their cars to do the same thing; follow that tornado! So many people ended up on the high overlook road that the reporter couldn’t even find a parking spot.

Other people may seek shelter in a tornado, but not us. We’re so starved for weather excitement, we follow it with our cell phone video cameras rolling.

People in Kansas might just call that a normal summer day, but for us, it was all we could talk about for the next week. Birdhouses had been knocked down. Fences had been blown to a precarious 30 degree angle. Tales of wanton lawn furniture relocation were plentiful.

Turns out, it is pretty exciting here. Take that, San Diego.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2014 Marc Schmatjen

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