Across Difficult Country

If she doesn’t get £30 million Whitby will “ fall into the sea ”, or so an “expert” touted by Whitby’s alarmist local newspaper would have you believe. It sounds like a huge scam, though it may be Whitby's Atlantis-like demise is the inexorable fulfillment of some ancient curse. Either way, spending the £30 million will be a huge waste.

Podbury. A stone head depicting my high school history teacher Mr. Podbury was unearthed in a Cupar garden . “Top experts” have no idea who carved the head, but agree it’s “very, very old”. I called Podbury to see if he could shed any light on the matter. When he answered I told him I was with the utility company, there was a gas leak, and he needed to open all his doors and windows then flush his toilet ten times. Some people never change I guess.

William Howard Taft on a water buffalo.

An immense orange UFO witnesses describe as “Dorito shaped” returned to the skies over Dudley. 1  It flew around for a while, then left. 2 I recall writing about the Dudley Dorito’s earlier appearances , but find no mention of it in the archives. 3  I also remember seeing an advertisement for the Chia® Hitler in the back of a magazine, sometime in the early 90’s, but I can’t locate any evidence such a product ever existed, which complicates my Christmas shopping. 1 Apparently the seductive contours of junk food are crowding basic shapes out of the popular mind. 2 The timing is slightly suspicious . 3 The inventor of Doritos, Arch West, died in September. He was 97 .

The Whitby Gazette reports Whitby is “under water” after a “freakish set of circumstances”. Does Whitby ever have any other kind? The Whitby Gazette is not reporting a number of Whitbians were nearly drowned by something in the floodwater that grabbed their ankles and tried to pull them under, but my sources tell me it’s happening. On this day in 1974 a Frenchman, whom we will call Jacques M. because he wishes to remain anonymous, was driving at night when he “suddenly saw a man at least eight feet tall in the light of his car's headlights, standing by the roadside. This being was milky white in color, as if wearing a tight white coverall, and his round head was without hair or facial features.”  On this day in 1979 , a couple in Puerto Rico saw the same figure in white coveralls standing on a “luminous“ flying platform, only now he was also wearing a “large helmet with a dark visor that completely covered his face”, and had shrunk to a height of four feet. On ...

Mulazim Awwal Moamer  Mohammad Abu Minyar al-Kazzafi. In Libya, Sarkozy and Obama helped rebels murder Muammar Gaddafi*. Why is unclear, perhaps they envied Mr. Khaddafi’s style. Obama inserted troops into Uganda , which sounds vaguely dirty, and probably is. In the UK Mike Newman, a blind man, flew a plane for a record setting 26 consecutive loops . He insists he did it on purpose. *Prounced Qadhdhafi .

I can’t always remember their names, but in my nightmares I can see their faces. As the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Corrections from 1992 until 1995, I oversaw five executions. The first two were Thomas Dean Stevens and Christopher Burger, accomplices in a monstrous crime: as teenagers in 1977, they robbed and raped a cabdriver, put him in the trunk of a car, and pushed the vehicle into a pond . I had no doubt that they were guilty: they admitted it to me. But now it was 1993 and they were in their 30s. All these years later, after a little frontal-lobe development, they were entirely different people . - Allen Ault, " I Ordered Death in Georgia ."