Re: Jesus: for ransom!

1

And thus does native terrorism comes to America.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 12:30 PM
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It wasn't.

It wasn't.


Posted by: Timothy Burke | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 12:30 PM
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That was hilarious. My favorite line was the one at the end where the woman says, "I thought, my God, something like that is going to be safe in your yard, and it wasn't. It wasn't."


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 12:34 PM
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Yeah, it's the way she trails off, gripped by a revelation about life in America. She's kind of a middle American Kurtz, whispering "The horror. The horror." as the piece closes.


Posted by: Timothy Burke | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 12:36 PM
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It is kind of funny that they didn't just ask her to pick up the poop.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 12:38 PM
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Pwned by Burke.

I could easily be driven to extreme measures by people whose dogs leave deposits in my yard.

Quit looking at me like that, I didn't do it.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 12:40 PM
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I can't believe this was actually run on a television news program. There is a reason I get all my news from the internet.


Posted by: pasdquoi | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 12:42 PM
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8

Could someone explain? I don't have sound. One neighbor kidnapped a Jesus icon because the other neighbor's dog shit in her yard?


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 12:52 PM
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That idol-worshipper cracks me up. I'm really on the vandals' side; it makes me crazy when people don't clean up after their pets.


Posted by: FL | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 12:52 PM
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8: Yeah.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 12:54 PM
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There is absolutely no point in watching this video without sound. I've listened to it three times. I think if Edgar Allen Poe had heard this, he'd have realized it gets even better than "cellar door."


Posted by: mano negra | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 12:55 PM
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Slol: "deposits." Too urbane to say "crap."


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 12:59 PM
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11: I think you want Wallace Stevens, but I'm not sure.

8: The woman is pointing to the the clay footprint of a golem, right outside her front door. The golem seems to have strode directly over her house; he has enormously long legs, though he leaves a small footprint.

Her mailbox writes her letters in the collage style of late Burroughs. When the words "Jesus", "Wiener" and "Poopie" showed up in the same letter on the day after the golem bestrode her house, she knew she had a local news angle.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 1:04 PM
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OH MY GOD THIS IS THE GREATEST THING EVER.


Posted by: strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 1:05 PM
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What's with the no sound, Emerson?


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 1:05 PM
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I heard it as Poe, but it's actually Tolkien.


Posted by: mano negra | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 1:14 PM
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11, 13: I think Wrongshore is right. Poe has knocking, knocking, knocking at my chamber door. I think.


Posted by: oudemia | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 1:14 PM
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"Thursday morning, Jean walked outside, only to find...Jesus was gone."

Now she knows how the apostles felt.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 1:18 PM
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Poe and Stevens, both wrong. But the Poe misattribution at least can be traced to Edmund White and Richard Kelly.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 1:19 PM
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I like "graspy voice."


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 1:24 PM
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The only thing better would have been if the idol-nappers figured out how to leave cloven hoofprints, and then the woman might have worked in the anti-Semitic angle. But really, it's pretty close to perfect as is.

I hope they start sending back the statue in parts.


Posted by: Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 1:25 PM
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the Poe misattribution at least

I confess that I read this as "the Poe masturbation test."


Posted by: Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 1:27 PM
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Ulalume, ulalume, nevermore, ulalume.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 1:28 PM
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Based on that one minute and forty four seconds of local news, I feel I have enough information to definitively say that her life is better for having had the statue stolen. I mean, she can dine out on this story for months.


Posted by: washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 1:32 PM
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"It wasn't... it wasn't..." was pretty great, but the tone of the reporter's voice while reading the note about "wiener poopie" was pretty damn fantastic.


Posted by: mrh | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 1:37 PM
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Well, there are at least 13 ways of looking at weiner poopie. But they all stink.

I too liked the "graspy voice." Did it reach out over the phone? Did the voice take Jesus?


Posted by: wrenae | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 1:38 PM
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I don't care if it rains or freezes / Long as I have My Lord in pieces / Returned to the corner of my yard...


Posted by: DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 1:44 PM
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28

the cellar door business, is neither Poe nor Stevens, but Tolkien.


Posted by: Sybil Vane | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 1:49 PM
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29

pwned.


Posted by: Sybil Vane | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 1:49 PM
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30

Cellar door? I don't even know her door.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 2:18 PM
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18: It's that half-sentence pause before "Jesus was gone" that's so wonderful. Why do they all learn to talk like that? It's like the classic, "It was being installed ... on their car."


Posted by: arthegall | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 2:23 PM
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32

I love the bit about how it must be a young person because no adult would put the Lord's name in scare quotes.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 3:18 PM
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Jesus Vanishes from Garden! Judas Suspected! Film at Eleven!


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 3:19 PM
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But they weren't scare quotes! They were little "I am sparkling" lines all around JESUS. Like, Jesus is too magical for regular handwriting without flying serifs!


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 3:27 PM
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32: Those weren't scare quotes. The kids had drawn little lines going out from all around the word "Jesus", like it was glowing or something.

I think those kids have a bright future ahead of them.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 3:30 PM
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36

ursine pwned.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 3:31 PM
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34, 35: I stand corrected.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 3:35 PM
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They weren't scare quotes, Cala.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 3:39 PM
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Oh no! I now must burn shit down because of scare quotes!


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 3:43 PM
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Hey, Cala? Those weren't scare quotes. Just so you know . . .


Posted by: oudemia | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 4:02 PM
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41

oudemia gets it exactly right.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 4:03 PM
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42

Married, ogged.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 4:06 PM
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Well, scare quotes or no, you should still have a healthy fear of Jesus.


Posted by: ed bowlinger | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 5:18 PM
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Like, Jesus is too magical for regular handwriting without flying serifs!

So it was Sarah Silverman who stole the icon?


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 5:19 PM
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Nobody in that story seemed to have ever heard the word "Dachshund." Even the reporter called them "weiner dogs."


Posted by: politicalfootball | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 5:21 PM
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Even the reporter called them "weiner dogs."

That's what they prefer to be called.

Speciesist.


Posted by: Golza | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 5:44 PM
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Dude, the *letter* called the weiner dogs.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 5:51 PM
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Dude, the *letter* called the weiner dogs.

It did, but after that, the reporter also calls them that, in his own narrating voice.


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 5:54 PM
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49

Right, because that label has been established by that point.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 6:00 PM
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50

It's the reporter's job to report the news. If the press release ransom note said "weiner dogs", it's not his job to take a position. Same with "poopie".


Posted by: Golza | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 6:23 PM
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Yeah, this is the kind of stenography that makes the media look like an obsolete relic. If the note had referred to the dogs as "liberal fascists", would the reporter have used that as his preferred term?


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 6:35 PM
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COme one, the reporter has to be in on the joke when he says "poopie" and "wiener"


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 6:49 PM
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Pre-pwned multiple times, but I heart "graspy voice".


Posted by: essear | Link to this comment | 02- 5-08 7:47 PM
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OMG.

This is the kind of story the BBC used to have at the end of Newsround.


Posted by: Jesurgislac | Link to this comment | 02- 6-08 3:52 PM
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(Well, except the BBC wouldn't have used "poopie". I can't remember what they did use on kid's TV when animals shit, but it wasn't "poopie".)


Posted by: Jesurgislac | Link to this comment | 02- 6-08 3:53 PM
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