Get Cynical

Holy crap. How did I reach the age of 33 and never hear of this guy before?

HARRY STEPHEN KEELER (1890-1967) is one of the strangest writers who ever lived. In his time, he was pegged as a mystery novelist who also wrote some science fiction. Today, if you’ve heard of him at all, it’s as the Ed Wood of mystery novelists, a writer reputed to be so bad he’s good. Actually, no genre, nor “camp,” can much suggest what Keeler is all about. Take some typical Keeler situations:

A man is found strangled to death in the middle of a lawn, yet there are no footprints other than his own. Police suspect the “Flying Strangler-Baby,” a killer midget who disguises himself as a baby and stalks victims by helicopter. (X. Jones of Scotland Yard, 1936)

Someone killed an antique dealer just so he could steal the face — only the face — from a surrealist painting of “The Man from Saturn.” (The Face of the Man from Saturn, 1933)

A woman’s body disappears while taking a steam bath. Only her head and toes, sticking out of the steam cabinet, remain. (The Case of the Transparent Nude, 1958)

Because of a clause in a will, a character has to wear a pair of hideous blue glasses constantly for a whole year. This is so that he will eventually see a secret message that is visible only with the glasses. (The Spectacles of Mr. Cagliostro, 1929)

Wikipedia has more:

In spite of his popularity, Keeler’s fiction and writing style grew increasingly bizarre, often substituting laboriously lengthy dialogues and diatribes between characters for action or plot. These events led his American publisher, Dutton, to drop him in 1942. The next eleven years were hard for Keeler as his writing drifted even further beyond the norm and short stories written by his wife (a moderately successful writer herself) were found increasingly within his novels. Keeler typically padded the length of his novels with the following device: his protagonist would find a magazine or book, would open it randomly and discover a story. At this point, Keeler’s novel would stop dead in its tracks and he would insert the complete verbatim text of one of his wife’s short stories, this being the story his novel’s protagonist was reading. At the end of the story, the novel would continue where it left off, several pages nearer to its contractual minimum word count. These stories-within-the-novel typically contained only a few scraps of information that were relevant to the novel in which they appeared.

(via Pharyngula)

And Classic Television Showbiz blog has the rest of the clips.

From Wikipedia:

The Tree That Owns Itself is a white oak tree, widely assumed to have legal ownership of itself and of all land within eight feet (2.4 m) of its base. The tree is located at the corner of Finley and Dearing Streets in Athens, Georgia, USA. The original tree fell in 1942; a new tree was grown from one of its acorns and planted in the same location. The current tree is sometimes referred to as the Son of The Tree That Owns Itself. Both trees have appeared in numerous national publications, and the site is a local landmark.

The world’s only repository for the study and display of Zymoglyphic art, artifacts, and natural history. The creative output of the region relies mainly on the assemblage of natural objects. The museum also presents special exhibits on related topics in natural object assemblage, and maintains a curiosity cabinet of items that reflect the spirit of Zymoglyphic culture.

There’s an awards show for reality tv now. I’m assuming this was the highlight.

There have been a lot of mainstream stories about racism in the news lately. The situation in Jena, the white kids at the deaf school who held a black student hostage as they wrote KKK on his body, and the white college students who mocked the Jena 6 incident by videotaping themselves in blackface are the most recent high profile cases of racism that you can find in the news.

But there is hope. Take a look at this inspirational story of blacks and whites working together in harmony and giving us all hope for a better future:

Last night at 11:09pm, officers from District B-2 (Roxbury) responded to a radio call for a robbery in progress at 7 Lambert Street. On arrival, officers spoke with the three victims who stated while waking on Highland Avenue, two males approached them and robbed them with a firearm. The victims described the suspects as a white male wearing a blue and white hooded sweatshirt and a black male suspect was described as wearing all dark clothing.

The victims further stated that they observed the two suspects walking ahead of them on Highland Avenue. The victims stated that the suspect suddenly stopped turned around and the white male displayed a firearm and both suspects demanded the victims’ wallets and money. The victims also stated the white suspect fired two shots in the air after robbing them.

If you should tell a man that the dead were raised two thousand years ago, he would probably say: “Yes, I know that.” If you should say that a hundred thousand years from now all the dead will be raised, he might say: “Probably they will.” But if you should tell him that you saw a dead man raised and given life that day, he would likely ask the name of the insane asylum from which you had escaped.

Robert Green Ingersoll – “Myth and Miracle”(1885)