Local News

[Vyn]

The town I live in has about ten thousand people in it. It was founded in 1880, has a world famous hotel in it, and is a semi-rural, nice place with nice people. It has a part of town where the bad folks live - meth heads and thieves, but not very many. Crime is small-time, consisting primarily of the aforementioned dope and thievery.

The town has a reputation for being a redneck haven, and that isn't too far off the mark. Affluence is not what it is known for. But people are friendly and keep to themselves for the most part. I've grown to like it. I might feel differently if I was a minority, though.


A year ago, there was a guy in my town that got arrested for kidnapping. Short version:

A disheveled and naked woman (wearing only handcuffs and a rope around her neck) banged on a neighbors door, asked them to call the law, they did, helped her, arrested a guy from whose home she escaped.

The kidnapper was separated from his wife and his nine year old son was over for a stay when this was going on.

Cops interviewed the woman, and she told tales of other women he had done the same thing to, and they were all dead.

Fast forward one year, they have found one body (on a small island out in the Missouri river) and have leads on several more. The bad guy has been in jail this entire time, now being charged with a list of perverted shit the length of your arm.

He has kept mum about it all, but the facts are gradually coming out regardless.

Seems that for quite a few years, there has been this jackass living in the bad part of town doing super-bad shit. The news shows his mugshot whenever the story comes up, but I don't recognize the guy, but I still wonder if I ever ran into him at a gas station or grabbing take-out from the local diner.

Bleh.

[Zzzptm]

Makes me think of Southeast Kansas...

[Charger]

That's some freaky shit Vyn...

You might never know what kinds of monsters might live near by....That's like an old Criminal Minds episode setting there.

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

There's always some weirdos in your community... if you don't know who they are it might be you!

I shouldn't be flippant, but this sort of thing is so rare it shocks me that you had someone like that in your town.

I used to read true crime books and while they covered some killers outside the US, most were from there.

[Charger]

There's always some weirdos in your community... if you don't know who they are it might be you!

Oh I KNOW it's me! 

[Vyn]

Haha, yeah, weirdo I can handle. Homicidal perverted scumbag weirdo...no can do.

[Zzzptm]

I used to live next door to a neo-Nazi homosexual drug dealer that worked at a pornography store. Not the best of neighbors, but we tolerated each other well enough.

[Vyn]

That wouldn't bother me as long as he wasn't trying to proselytize his ideology to me, while grabbing my over-size guitar pick with one hand and shoving whacky pills into my pocket with his other hand, with a porno blasting on the TV.

As long as he stuck with saying hi and waving while doing yard work, I'd have no issues  

[Zzzptm]

It was apartments, so we got to have a whiff of his spliff every morning if we had our windows open. We could also hear when he and his boyfriend were having arguments.

But, he liked to play tabletop wargames, so I went over there for that fix. Got to watch innumerable drug deals going down and was offered cocaine once by this old German guy that was born in 1945, he was a real character. I politely declined the blow and he was cool with that. He was offering to be polite, not to see if I was a narc.

Ironically, it was the drug dealer that was working with the local police to flip his dealer. The day I was moving out of the apartment, he confided that he was about to take off to new places, didn't know exactly where. I sensed he was clearing out before stuff got hot for him relative to his professional relationships with competing interests.

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

I don't know if the news has spread outside the borders of the UK, but the band Oasis have reformed... and you would think that The Beatles had reformed the level of excitement there is surrounding the shows and the tickets!

... it's almost like people have forgotten how mediocre they were!

[Charger]

Yeah the news has been hitting the media here as well..and I really don't understand it either...that band was as bland as saline without salt.

[Vyn]

I haven't seen anything about it yet, and wouldn't know if it wasn't for the post here. Maybe it will pickup steam over the weekend?

I am surprised that European outlets are making such a big deal about it; sometimes things that are gone should just stay gone lol

[Zzzptm]

^ It's the end of August news slump. *Anything* can be a major story with not a whole lot going on.

[Thelemech]

Oasis is a cheap imitation of the Beatles and not a very good one
I remember getting one of their albums from Columbia House in one of the 10 cds for a penny offers and I listened to it a half dozen times and was thoroughly unimpressed

[Zzzptm]

They're a load of hype, to be certain. Never understood the craze for them.