Across Difficult Country

He raised alarm "Eye witness account informed our reporter that three women had approached the man at Nwaja round-about opposite the Tantalizers restaurant Trans-Amadi, Port Harcourt, and asked him to assist them with the sum of N100 as they have run short transport fare. According to the account, the man who told them that he had no money later started feeling a sensation inside his body. The man who later spoke to The Weekend Tide under condition of anonymity said, “as soon as I told them that I had no money, I discovered that my penis was disappearing, so I raised alarm." - Irate crowd strips woman naked , a terrifying true tale of terror from The Tide News Online . Reptoid Musulman "Villagers in a suburb of Katerini, a small city at the foot of Mount Olympus in northern Greece, claim to have seen a brown Reptoid prowling around their homes…Residents of the Katerini area are wondering if the Reptoid is a scout for an alien force. Or if he is perhaps an escaped prisone...

Was a cow really attacked by a carnivorous tree in Padrame (or Patrame), India? 1 Skeptics have repeatedly pointed out how unlikely it is a tree, which after all only has slender branches to strike with, would attack prey as large as a cow. Birds, rodents, or other small game perhaps, but a cow, the skeptics argued, would be too bulky, and honest cryptobotanists conceded they had a point. But now, thanks to the fieldwork of intrepid reporter Melka Miyar , we have more details on the case, including a photograph of the injured bovine, a photo which changes everything . Everyone assumed the animal in question was a big fat Texas-style cow, the kind white men turn into delicious steaks and hamburgers. In reality it was a tiny jungle cow, roughly the size of a large dog, the kind men who wear towels around their waists instead of pants worship as a god. The tallest of pili maras wouldn’t dare attack the former, but even a small pili mara would have a no problem taking a bite out of the l...

In the village of Padrame in the Uppinangady forest range of India cows are being attacked by carnivorous trees : According to reports, the cow owned by Anand Gowda had been left to graze in the forests. The cow was suddenly grabbed by the branches and pulled from the ground. The terrified cowherd ran to the village, and got Gowda and a band of villagers to the carnivorous tree. The cow escaped after Gowda and the villagers beat the hungry tree into submission. Locals call such trees ‘pili mara’, or tiger trees, and many believe snacking pili mara are the reason so many of Padrame’s cows have been coming home at night with missing tails.

“By the way, building the pyramids would not have been so difficult, if the stones were lighter at the time; they might also have been, these stones, very porous, which helps (and I say helps) explain why the Egyptians appear to be able to walk sideways, and through walls. It is as if they, the Egyptians were actually two-dimensional. Only later did the pyramids actually unfold, if you can imagine that! This reminds me of that cardboard Pirate Ship my grandmother gave me...” - Lloyd Mintern posits an alternate Egyptology .

I will be spending the rest of the week attempting to acquire adequate socks. 1 (Was it Jeffrey Apern, or Apern's butler who said, “Every sock goes on one’s foot, and not another sock”? 2 ) Despite our differences, I think we can all agree it would be nice if posting resumed Monday. And maybe it will. 3 1 Something which requires more drinking than you might imagine, at least for me. 2 See comments to the entry of 14 October. 3 Extraneous Notifications would make a good title for a blog. Feel free to use it.

Why is the ocean salty ? Galen McKinley, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison may finally have the answer to this age old question. According to his theory, “The saltiness of the sea comes from dissolved minerals, especially sodium,” or, to put it in layman’s terms, the ocean is salty because it has a lot of salt in it . Where does science go from here? Look for a major breakthrough determining why BLT's are so bacony delicious.

Readers who’ve been following the persecution of Across Difficult Country’s legal counsel Judge Florentine Floro will be delighted to learn Judge Floro has shown up in comments and provided links to the text of all the Philippines Supreme Court decisions regarding his case, to local and international media coverage of the controversy, to his various blogs, to his Myspace and Facebook accounts, to videos of himself on YouTube, and to some other stuff. He’s also listed his email addresses and his telephone numbers (cell and land line). (If you call him, tell him I say “hi”.) I’ve taken the liberty of forwarding this material to my Congressmen, my Senators, the White House, The White Stripes, The Tide News Online (“ A commitment to truth ”), Art Bell (broadcast journalist and former resident of the Phillipines), Wynne Jones (Manager of Arts, Leisure & Cultural Events for the town of Whitby, the United Kingdom), Doudou Diène (United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms ...

From a recent book review : The plains stretch for many cold and lonely miles, but Haven Kimmel fires her bittersweet Indiana novels with a warm sensibility and a compassionate understanding of the people shaped by the chilly, conservative and remote landscape. Kimmel was raised in Mooreland, Ind., population 300, "the dearest postage stamp of native soil a person could wish for." Author of two coming-of-age memoirs, she has a homegrown yet unromantic tenderness for the rural towns rusting quietly away as family farms vanish, and methamphetamine labs and vigorous megachurches flourish, the latter so cavernous they include indoor basketball courts and other secular amenities. I'm reminded of scene from my own life. I'm 16 years old, walking down a side street on an October afternoon... “Hey, you!” It was Jessica. She was with some friends from school: Olivia, Chad, Emily, Rocco, Hampton, Lionel, Chloe, Frijole the exchange student from Mexico, Biff, and Biff’s sister G...

From Missouri comes the sad tale of a man facing a 30-year prison sentence for stealing a doughnut : Scott A. Masters, 41, of Park Hills, Missouri, has been charged with felony second-degree robbery in the theft of a 52-cent doughut [ sic ] from a Country Mart in Farmington, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) south of St. Louis. Store employees said he slipped the doughnut into his sweat shirt without paying last December, then pushed away a clerk who tried to stop him as he fled the store. But what kind of doughnut was it? Chocolate? Jelly? Those ones with the sprinkles? The story doesn’t say. How could the AP reporter omit what is the most telling detail? It must be something taught in journalism school, where being boring is considered a virtue. For crime news done right we must turn to the Philippines. In the sordid story “ Jailed cop tags mistress the killer ”, notice how hard-hitting reporter Jay Dooma Balnig saves the telling detail for last, to devastating effect.

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Last night I had one of those dreams where you dream you’re chewing on a big fluffy cake and wake up to find yourself gnawing on medallions of lamb tenderloin that have been flash cooked in a small wok with hoisin, garlic, and chilies to enhance the lamb’s natural flavors. The Senoi is a tribe living in the mountainous jungles of the Malay Peninsula which have made dreaming central to their existence. In his seminal essay “ Dream Theory in Malaya ” anthropologist Kilton Stewart writes: Dream interpretation...is a feature of child education and is the common knowledge of all Senoi adults. The average Senoi layman practices the psychotherapy of dream interpretation of his family and associates as a regular feature of education and daily social intercourse. Breakfast in the Senoi house is like a dream clinic, with the father and older brothers listening to and analyzing the dreams of all the children. At the end of the family clinic the male population gathers in the council, at which t...