It's nice to be thought of...

Yesterday was one of those strange plate of shrimp days. The lattice of coincidence made several connections.

On the one hand, it's nice to know that readers and friends think of me and are quick to send stories that they think I'll get a kick out of, or use here for material. On the other hand, it's a sobering moment when you realize that when people see a story about predatory clowns or goat f*cking, you're the first person they think of. Take that, high school teachers who thought I'd never amount to anything!

Yesterday, March 13, was the 29th anniversary of the conviction of famous clown and Democratic precinct captain John Wayne Gacy. I thought that was a nice opportunity for a creepy clown post.

Before I could get started, I got an email from noted ghost hunter Marni alerting me that Stephen King's IT is about to be released on the big screen. You can thank her for the nice picture at the top of this post.

Splotchy sent me a BoingBoing link titled Mark Dery's Pyrotechnic Insanitarium Revival. You can thank them for reminding me of one of my favorite clown pictures, which I offer to you here:

Mark Dery is the author of The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink, a rollicking millenial nightmare published in 1999. He has recently put an essay from that book up on the interwebs in readable PDF format. It's titled Cotton Candy Autopsy: Deconstructing Psycho Killer Clowns. Enjoy the read.

Then another email from my favorite provocative and occasionally potty-mouthed pastry chef Jin. She thoughtfully updated me on the Florida legislature's ongoing efforts to make bestiality illegal. The case featured in the article involved a man who was arrested but never charged after asphyxiating Meg the Goat during copulation. He was prosecuted after another kidnapping (heh) several months later.

Yes, Florida currently has no law against bestiality. They've been working on addressing this problem for more than a year, and still haven't arrived at a suitable piece of legislation. The last time Florida's "anything goes" bestiality problem was in the news was in April 2008, when blind man Alan Yoder was arrested for sodomizing his guide dog. I profiled his case, and a few others, here.

I have no good closer for this, so I'll leave you with Crispin Glover. Have a nice day.

Lattice of Coincidence...

"A lot o' people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch o' unconnected incidents 'n things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice o' coincidence that lays on top o' everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either..."

--Miller

Way back in August 2006 the lovely and talented Melinda June mentioned the Compound favorably on her blog. I started reading her, and checking out the sites she linked to, and then the sites the people she linked to, linked to. It took me a a little while, but I realized that quite a few of these bloggers:

• were from the midwest
• specifically from the Chicago area
• about the same age as we were
• had a bunch of the same interests we did
• frequented a bunch of the same bars and hangouts we used to

Melinda, it turns out, grew up in Iowa a short distance away from a bunch of MizBubs' family. Melinda, Lulu and Coaster Punchman all went to school in the same town as some of MizBubs' family. Tenacious S is a huge fan of Naked Raygun, and MizBubs' best friend dated their drummer for a long time. Lulu grew up a short distance away from where we now live, and now lives about a couple blocks away from where I used to live--we've essentially switched neighborhoods. Johnny Yen went to the same grammar school as MizBubs, and had the same teacher in the gifted program. He also worked at a barbecue joint next door to the tattoo parlor where MizBubs and I both got some work done.

And yet none of us ever ran into each other. Until recently.

MizBubs and I had the good luck to have met Lulu, Tenacious S and Johnny Yen recently. Last Friday night we all met and had a couple of well-deserved drinks at Tiki Terrace. The coincidence continued; Lulu informed me that it used to be the site of a Mexican restaurant that allowed underage teens to drink, and I collected bloody clothing on one of my first big cases from the 7-11 across the street.

I can't remember the last time three or four hours passed by so quickly. Let me tell you--I don't think you could ask for a better group of conversationalists. At times it almost turned into a game of "6 degrees of separation", made more surreal by the Hawaiian language version of theCarter Family tune "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" playing in the background.

Oddly enough, no one ordered a plate of shrimp. Maybe next time.