In Memoriam: Little Shrimp on the Prairie

Some of you will remember that I've been covering, off and on, any news about the Little Shrimp on the Prairie, i.e., Tru-Shrimp's Madison Bay Harbor since 2018.

(See HERE for my adventures with Dark Ally as we went to Bellaton, searching for the lost Salt Water Aquariums of South Dakota Agriculture.  It's worth it for the scene where we found with 5 listless shrimp floating in a hopefully saline home aquarium, probably begging for their blessed release...)  

And, even though Tru-Shrimp got counties and towns to pony up development, money, and lots of publicity, and even though they promised endless pounds of shrimp from their dark saline towers, nothing has yet been built. Anywhere.  

And now it's official, folks, it never will be:  Sob, sob, sob... (feel free to read that anyway you like.)

"In December, 2018, the [South Dakota] Governor’s Office of Economic Development, or GOED, announced plans for a cutting-edge shrimp production facility in Madison, South Dakota. GOED granted $5.5 million to the Madison Lake Area Improvement Corporation for the project.

The Lake Area Improvement Corporation loaned the money to Tru Shrimp, the company, at 2% interest. The company is now known as Iterro. They planned to build the facility in 2019. Then, they pushed it back to 2024. As of today, it has yet to be built...

Rep. Marty Overweg is the Vice-Chair of GOAC. He said they need answers.

“They took that out and got private investors, South Dakota investors, to invest in their company also because the state of South Dakota gave them the startup money of $5 million," Overweg said. "So not only did they stick us for $5 million, they also stuck a whole bunch of South Dakota people who privately invested in this company. And this is bad business. I mean this is a drop ball, huge mistake.”  

(Uh, Marty, this is what South Dakota does best - look at EB-5, Gear Up!, and many, many more...) 

Iterro and the Madison Lake Area Improvement Corporation did not immediately respond to a request for comment."  (LINK) 

(And if they did, Iterro would undoubtedly answer, "How about never.  Is never good for you?") 

And to anyone who wonders how on earth this happened:  Greed.  Simply greed.  Tru-Shrimp might as well have been selling shrimp-shaped trombones - NO ONE WAS GOING TO MAKE MONEY EXCEPT TRU-SHRIMP.  But there's one born every minute, and a lot of them wear suits and ties and seem sane on the outside... 

Oh, and before they ripped Madison off for $5 million in tax dollars, they ripped off Luverne, MN, for $5 million in tax dollars before ditching them.  

So that's their MO, and if someone comes to your small town or city somewhere on the priarie - or anywhere else - says, "Guess what! There's a company that wants to come here and raise shrimp!" RUN, do not walk, away from them, holding all your money tightly to your chest, because otherwise they'll rip it away from you the way you rip an exoskeleton from a shrimp.  

Me and Dark Ally offer our thoughts and prayers:

Oh, how we hardly knew ye.

*******

And now for something completely different...  

Some days it seems like that's all that's out there, doesn't it?

This is why I miss Colombo, Maigret, Tommy & Tuppence Beresford, and other detectives who actually like their spouses and their jobs.  And I keep reading Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, Dame Frevisse and Cadfael, Nero Wolfe and Jackson Lamb's Slow Horses misfits. They all know who they are and are pretty comfortable with it, no matter how weird and wonderful they get.  

And speaking of being comfortable with who you are, if you haven't yet, check out 1989's mini-series "Summer's Lease" with the late, great Sir John Gielgud playing (at 85!) the cheerfully sponging, endlessly lecherous, sometime journalist Haverford Downs, who manages to slide into his only daughter's family vacation to Italy. There they find their host has disappeared, and there's a very suspicious death...  Gielgud won a Primetime Emmy Award for that role and he deserved it.  Here's episode one, from YouTube (which has all the rest of the episodes, too):

Enjoy.

MEANWHILE, BSP!  

A review from London's own "Murders for August" by Jeremy Black:

"Paranoia Blues. Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Paul Simon (Down and Out Books, 2022) is an excellent volume edited by Josh Pachter, following similar volumes for Joni Mitchell (2020), Jimmy Buffett (2021), Billy Joel (2021) and the Marx Brothers (2021). Each story is matched to a song. Hardboiled America is the setting, and the themes are grim but also well-realised. The writing is spare and aphoristic, violence is to the fore, and it would be good if several of the novelists mentioned this month could match the quality of the writing here. There is no space to review all 19 of the stories, but they are impressive, kicking off with Vietnam echoes and killing in the New York subway system in Gabriel Valjan’s “The Sounds of Silence”. R.J. Koreto’s “April Come She Will” addresses fraud and blackmail, with some marvellous lines: “For men, the possibility of sex is actually better than sex itself…. August, the end of summer, a time when relationships die”. Robert Edward Eckels had stopped writing in 1982 but resumed at 90 to write “The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine”, an account of office theft, poor management, and measured retribution. Frank Zafiro’s “A Hazy Shade of Winter” deals with the travails of an elderly mob enforcer: an instructive perspective. Anna Scotti’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” is a brilliant and humane account of hardship, care, and a concealed suicide. Tom Mead’s “The Only Living Boy in New York” takes Civil Rights into violent crime in New York including a spring-loaded leather strap on the protagonist’s wrist. Excellent book."  

I am proud to say that my first "Cool Papa Bell" story (which is also its title) appeared in it.  Cool Papa Ted Bell, former shortstop for a minor league Florida team, is serving life for murder. He feels "kind of bad about it now", but not enough not to turn to the tried and true when he finds Aryan Nation gang The Brand is beating up the infirmary orderly. In prison, justice comes in all kinds of forms. And I never said he's reformed...  

Available at DownandOutBooks:

https://downandoutbooks.com/2022/10/31/new-from-down-out-books-paranoia-blues-crime-fiction-inspired-by-the-songs-of-paul-simon-edited-by-josh-pachter/

And my second Papa Bell story, "Round and Round" is in "Janie's Got a Gun", edited by Michael Bracken.  That one's a ghost story set in a penitentiary, and I can assure you that the ghost is real...  

Available at https://whitecitypress.com/product/janie/

And, of course, both are available on Amazon.com...

Enjoy!
  

Once Again Proving that Reality is Stranger than Fiction

In case you're wondering why I haven't been on the SleuthSayers much lately, I had cataract surgery on each eye, one on one week, and the other 2 weeks later, and an endless supply of eyedrops in between and going on, as far as I can see, until mid-August.  

The surgery actually wasn't as bad in one way as I feared it would be. But they put me (and everyone else) in a giant chair (well a chair made for people much taller and bigger than me), a surgical chair, and that wheeled around, lowered, sat up, flattened out, etc., like a hospital bed. But the top of my head just reached the  bottom of the headrest, and while they brought me a pillow, it all just didn't fit. (I've found the same thing with today's furniture, again, all made for giants, which is why I go furniture shopping at the Hotel Liquidators store.)

Meanwhile, the surgery itself was fascinating for a young adult of the early 70s.  Besides the endless eyedrops, after scooting down to the headrest like a caterpillar (if only I had transformed into a butterfly by the end of it!) I was taped down to the headrest (and, btw, my arms were also encased like a caterpillar; and yes, there was a part of me that thought instantly of the movie Coma).  

And then things happened.  No pain, no scalpels, but it definitely was psychedelic. A group of what looked like rocks, different colors, that changed, and vanished and came back and did that some more.  And then it was over. And they sat me up and rolled me back. Two hours and they were done. My eye dripped all the way home, and all evening along with my sinuses were dripping. But it was done. Ditto the other eye.  

Meanwhile, things did not slow down just because I was seeing fuzzy: 

For the criminally minded, we've had the usual weekly/twice weekly arrests of child predators and child porn. We've had a lot of hit and runs of late. And we had two beheadings in South Dakota this year:

• Yankton, South Dakota (January 2025): Craig Allen Nichols Jr. was charged with murder and manslaughter after the decapitated body of his girlfriend, Heather Bodden, was discovered in her apartment. Bodden's head was located in a trash bag inside the apartment, along with bloody clothing and weapons. Nichols had a history of prior arrests and had been recently released from a mental health facility.  Well, he's in jail, he's going to prison, one hopes to the mental health unit.  
• Clark, South Dakota (July 2025): Bowen Fladland was charged with the murder of his mother, Marlene Fladland, after her decapitated body was found in their front yard. He allegedly admitted to assaulting her, kneeling on her neck until she was deceased, and then using a tool to remove her head. Fladland had a history of domestic violence against his mother, including a prior aggravated assault conviction.  He's in jail, and he's going to prison, probably to share the prison's mental health unit with Mr. Nichols.

Then again, they both might get the death penalty. If so, they'll still end up in prison in Sioux Falls.  

BTW, is this a new trend in murder?  

Anyway, speaking of prison, our prison task force is finalizing a location in Sioux Falls for a new state prison with a $650 million budget (which is after 3 cities turned us down for the new prison), our legislature passed a ban on sanctuary cities (we have none), and the state ended the fiscal year with a $63 million operating surplus, which will be set aside for a rainy day, and when that comes, we still won't see any of it. I know South Dakota.

We also had 200 new laws come into effect as of July 1, 2025.  

My least favorite:  Senate Bill 100, which allows college students to conceal carry firearms on campus if they have an enhanced permit. 

“There is a lot of concern that we’ll see in coming time that it is unfounded and that we can get along just right, honoring and respecting our Second Amendment rights the way they were intended,” Governor Larry Rhoden said. God only knows what that sentence means. 

All I know is that all of my fellow retired colleagues from SDSU agree that we are SO glad we are no longer teaching, because there's a percentage of students (small, but enough) who are unstable and have a tendency to go off like a firecracker. Plus most of us taught a class or two in the Rotunda, which was just what it sounds, a rotunda containing pie-shaped classrooms with tier after tier of seats for students, leading down to the poor teacher at the bottom, who was a standing duck if one of those unstable students decided to exercise their "Second Amendment rights the way they were intended."

My favorite is HB 1067 which defines the term “must” to mean a mandatory directive and does not confer any discretion in carrying out the action so directed. And then goes on to say that "shall" means the exact same thing.  Soooo glad that's cleared up. 

And another polygamous sect has taken over the compound in rural Custer County, about nine miles southwest of the small town of Pringle, blends into the landscape just like other properties in the southern Black Hills that used to belong to the Warren Jeffs group of The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS). Thankfully, Mr. Jeffs is now serving a life sentence in a Texas prison for sexual assault on a child. 

But there's apparently more where he came from, and this time it's the Order, – aka the Kingston Order, the Kingston Group, the Davis County Cooperative Society (DCCS) or the Latter Day Church of Jesus Christ (LDCJC), and while they're not officially affiliated with the FLDS, they practice most of the same stuff:  polygamy, incest, child abuse, child labor violations and fraud, according to the Associated Press.  (LINK)  

BTW, if you want to see the place, some of the buildings at the property have recently been posted as available for rent on Airbnb.  

Sigh…

Well, at least I can see better.

What We Get Wrong About Violent Crime

 by Eve Fisher

On May 2, 2025, The New Yorker posted an article by Malcolm Gladwell, "What We Get Wrong About Violent Crime".  (LINK) Now I'll read about anything by MG - don't always agree with him, but he's generally interesting - and this was worth it.  

Here's the official story that sparks it:

"Late on a Sunday night in June of 2023, a woman named Carlishia Hood and her fourteen-year-old son, an honor student, pulled into Maxwell Street Express, a fast-food joint in West Pullman, on the far South Side of Chicago. Her son stayed in the car. Hood went inside. Maxwell is a no-frills place—takeout-style, no indoor seating. It’s open twenty-four hours a day. Hood asked for a special order—without realizing that at Maxwell, a busy place, special orders are frowned upon. The man behind her in line got upset; she was slowing things down. His name was Jeremy Brown. On the street, they called him the Knock-Out King. Brown began to gesticulate, his arms rising and falling in exasperation. He argued with Hood, growing more agitated. Then he cocked his fist, leaned back to bring the full weight of his body into the motion, and punched her in the head.

When the argument had started, Hood texted her son, asking him to come inside. Now he was at the door, slight and tentative in a white hoodie. He saw Brown punch his mother a second time. The boy pulled out a revolver and shot Brown in the back. Brown ran from the restaurant. The boy pursued him, still firing. Brown died on the street—one of a dozen men killed by gunfire in Chicago that weekend.

In the remarkable new book “Unforgiving Places” (Chicago), Jens Ludwig breaks down the Brown killing, moment by moment. Ludwig is the director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, and he uses as a heuristic the psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s version of the distinction between System 1 and System 2 thinking."

System 1 - "Expressive Violence" - fast, automatic, intuitive, emotional:  hurting someone in a sudden burst of frustration, anger, confusion, or drug addled state.

System 2 - "Instrumental violence", acts such as a carefully planned robbery, whether of an individual or a bank. Or a serial killer. 

Now, according to Ludwig, our criminal justice system is largely based on the idea that most violence is System 2, instrumental, i.e., planned, BUT the real problem is System 1, expressive violence, i.e., spontaneous. "The ongoing bloodshed in America’s streets is just Maxwell Street Express, over and over again."  I totally agree.

South Dakota's incarceration rate is 370 per 100,000 residents, which is higher than the national average, and higher than any other democratic country in the world.  We are, as all our gubernatorial and legislative candidates are proud to say, "tough on crime."  Most inmates (around 80%) are in for non-violent crimes, mostly drugs and/or DUIs.*  Of the violent crimes, most are (in percentage order) in for assault, sexual assault, manslaughter, sexual assault of a child, robbery, first degree murder, burglary, kidnapping, child abuse, 2nd degree murder, weapons charges, arson, and stalking.  If you added up all the sex crimes, they'd outnumber assault, but that's another blogpost. Let's just say that there's a lot of sex crimes in South Dakota, and every week someone is arrested for one, but no one really talks about it.

*Sentences are harsh up here, and very little in the way of drug and alcohol treatment or rehabilitation is provided.  So a significant number are revolving door inmates - they get out, they come back, they get out, they come back...  

In my years volunteering in prison, I've met inmates convicted of any and all of the above.  And heard a lot of stories.  

The inmate who'd served 30+ years for a drunken teenaged bar brawl that got taken outside.  Both tried to kill the other, and one succeeded.  

The middle-aged inmate who'd tweaked out so often on meth that his brain was still addled after 20 years hard time, but he could clearly remember the time he was tweaked out, and his meth buddy was grabbing a beer that he thought was his, and he went ballistic and stabbed him.  

The inmate who killed his wife because he couldn't take one more minute of living with her. "What's wrong with divorce?" I asked. "Too damn expensive," he said.

The inmate who killed someone in a drug deal gone bad and left him in a car in the middle of winter outside of town...  Took a long time for that body to be found. 

The inmate who assaulted and damn near killed a guy who owed him 6 soups (Ramen, the prison favorite and a form of currency).  "What was I supposed to do, let him get away with disrespecting me like that?"

BTW, much of the violent crime in the prison is based on someone's perceived disrespect - which must be instantly dealt with, before other inmates start perceiving you as weak, i.e., prey.  

And many more.

Basically, almost all of the violent criminals I've met are System 1 criminals.  As Ludwig writes, 

"System 1 thinking is egocentric: it involves, everything through the lens of ‘What does this have to do with me?’ It depends on stark binaries—reducing a range of possibilities to a simple yes or no—and, as he notes, it “focuses more on negative over positive information.” In short, it’s wired for threats. System 1 catastrophizes. It imagines the worst."

I ran into this all the time in our AVP (Alternative to Violence Project) workshops.  We'd be doing exercises on the root causes of violence, on anger (which is always a masking emotion - no one runs out and gets angry because it's fun), on act/react, etc.  A lot of responses were, "Well, what the hell am I supposed to do when someone disrespects me?" "You let someone take your stuff, you'd better get them right away, or everyone'll think you're just a punk." "You HAVE to react, around here."  

Thankfully, we always had inmate facilitators who would explain that you didn't HAVE to do anything you didn't want to.  But first you had to learn to slow that reaction, that anger down...  Deep breaths. What's going on? Is this worth time in the SHU?* What would really happen if I just walked away?  

*Segregated Housing Unit, i.e., The Hole.

It didn't always work, and it often took a long time to become part of someone's way of thinking and acting, but when it did... it was remarkable.  Our facilitators, and our inmate graduates, stayed out of the SHU, and stayed out of gang wars.  Which were always based on respect/disrespect issues, i.e., System 1.

"Brown’s encounter with Carlishia Hood pushed him into System 1 mode. He made an immediate egocentric assumption: if he knew that special orders were a norm violation, then Hood must know, too. “Given that System 1 assumption,” Ludwig explains, “from there it is natural that Brown believed the person in front of him was deliberately holding things up.”

"Hood, meanwhile, didn’t know about the special-order taboo, so she was operating under her own egocentric assumptions. She “knew she wasn’t being disrespectful and deliberately trying to hold up everyone else in line, so the curse of knowledge led her System 1 to assume that Brown surely also knew that,” Ludwig writes. “So why was he getting so bent out of shape? She didn’t mean to be inconsiderate to the people behind her in line; she just wanted the Maxwell Street Express people to change whatever it was that she wanted changed on the burger.” Neither had the cognitive space to consider that they were caught in a misunderstanding. They were in binary mode: I’m right, so you must be wrong. From there, things escalated: 

Hood says to her son, who’s standing behind Brown, “Get in the car.”

Brown seems to think that comment is directed at him—another misreading of the situation.“WHO?!?” he says. “Get in the CAR?!?”

Hood says something that’s hard to make out from the video.

Brown says, “Hey lady, lady, lady, lady. GET YOUR FOOD. GET YOUR FOOD. If you say one more thing, I’m going to KNOCK YOU OUT.” You can see his right fist, clenching and unclenching, over and over.

She says something that is again hard to make out on the video.

He says, “Oh my God I SAID if you say one more thing, I’m going to knock you out.”

At which point he punches her—hard.

Hood’s son is standing in the doorway, watching the assault of his mother. Had he been in System 2 mode, he might have paused. He might have asked for help. He might have called 911. He could have weighed the trade-offs and thought, Yes, it’s unbearable to watch my mother being beaten. But, if I kill this man, I could spend years in prison. But he’s filled with adrenaline. He shifts into catastrophizing mode: There is nothing worse than seeing my mother get pummelled by a stranger. Brown punches her again—and again. The boy shoots him in the back. Brown runs. Hood tells her son to follow him. There is nothing worse than letting him get away. Still in System 1, the boy fires again. Brown collapses in the street."

And that, my friends, is what most homicides look like. Out of nowhere. No good reason. Shit happens.  

BTW, this is one of my favorite parts:  

"Much of what gets labelled gang violence, Ludwig says, is really just conflict between individuals who happen to be in gangs. We misread these events because we insist on naming the affiliations of the combatants. Imagine, he suggests, if we did this for everyone: “ ‘This morning by Buckingham Fountain, a financial analyst at Morningstar killed a mechanic for United Airlines.’ Naturally you’d think the place of employment must be relevant to understanding the shooting, otherwise why mention it at all?”

"The Chicago Police Department estimates that arguments lie behind seventy to eighty per cent of homicides. The numbers for Philadelphia and Milwaukee are similar. And that proportion has held remarkably steady over time. Drawing on data from Houston in 1969, the sociologist Donald Black concluded that barely more than a tenth of homicides occurred during predatory crimes like burglary or robbery. The rest, he found, arose from emotionally charged disputes—over infidelity, household finances, drinking, child custody. Not calculated acts of gain, in other words, but eruptions rooted in contested ideas of right and wrong."

Meanwhile, our criminal justice system is designed with the idea that people weigh the costs of their actions and act accordingly.  In the heat of the moment, especially if alcohol, drugs, and/or mental disturbances are involved, no one thinks about "Well, I'll go to prison for life if I do this", especially if they're young. Teenagers run on surging tsunamis of emotions that wipe out all sense of sense.  Too many adults - in and out of prison - are still emotionally teenagers, because they've never been taught how to deal with their emotions.  And these days our entire advertising system is aimed at getting you to buy (products, ideas, politics, wars) without thinking. We have got to spend time and energy training children, teenagers, and adults how to navigate life the way it is: constantly changing, often volatile, and sometimes downright violent and dangerous. We live in a world full of drugs, alcohol, guns, and violent social media content, and we're still commonly assuming our towns are Mayberry, and everyone's the Waltons. Gotta cut that OUT.  

Three other things we've got to cut out, according to Ludwig is to 

(1) "stop talking about criminals as if they occupy some distinct moral category." As I tell people when I've done presentations about AVP and prisons, everyone is one bad decision, one bad night, one bad choice, away from going to prison.  Everyone.

(2) "stop locking up so many people for long prison terms." Mass incarceration drains adults from troubled neighborhoods and their families, and the longer you keep someone in prison, without rehabilitation or education, the less able they're going to be to deal with the world outside.

(3) "spend more time thinking about what makes one neighborhood safe and another unsafe." Ludwig cites a randomized trial in New York City’s public-housing projects, which found that upgrading outdoor lighting experienced a 35% decrease in serious crimes. Help bad neighborhoods clean up.  

"[Ludwig] describes one of the program’s exercises, in which students are paired off. One is given a ball; the other is told he has thirty seconds to take it.

"Almost all of them rely on force to try to complete the assignment; they try to pry the other person’s hand open, or wrestle or even pummel the other person. During the debrief that follows, a counselor asks why no one asked for the ball. Most youths respond by saying their partner would have thought they were a punk (or something worse—you can imagine). The counselor then asks the partner what he would have done if asked. The usual answer: “I would have given it, it’s just a stupid ball.”  Exactly. It’s almost always a stupid ball."

Now to just convince them - and us - that almost everything is almost always a stupid ball.    

Little Girl, Watching Movies

Imagine a young girl, tween, early teen, sitting by herself in front of the TV on an early or late afternoon, watching the station that showed a lot of old (and once in a while reasonably new) movies. Tarzan movies (Johnny Weissmuller, of course), sci-fi, horror, dramas, comedies, and weird movies that no one else, apparently, had ever seen.  

It was quite an education.  Here are some of the highlights:

Sci-fi Movies:

Forbidden Planet - One of the best of the lot (the other will be found further down). My first meeting with Robbie the Robot.  While it took me years to figure out it was a take-off of Shakespeare's The Tempest, I loved the whole "monsters from the id" line, and the invisibility of it.  Very exciting. 

Unfortunately, most of the sci-fi movies were schlock, and the worst was probably The Queen of Outer Space - Zsa Zsa Gabor and a lot of starlets in cone bras...  

NOTE:  Cone bras apparently were everywhere in the 1950s. Why they were so popular for so long, I have no idea...  See https://www.wmagazine.com/fashion/cone-bra-corset-trend-history.  

Probably second worst:  The Attack of the Giant Leeches - B&W 1959. Has to be seen to be believed, and even then...  Trivia note:  one of the stars of the Giant Leeches was actress Yvette Vickers who was the Playmate centerfold in the July 1959 issue of Playboy, just a few months before the movie's release, which I'm sure increased attendance.  

Lesson to be learned from old American B&W sci-fi movies is that every man, monster, robot and alien wants pulchritudinous white women.   

Japanese movies, however, were different:   

Matango, a/k/a The Attack of the Mushroom People - 1963 Japanese horror movie directed by Ishiro Honda (who directed and co-wrote the original Godzilla and many more).  A group of castaways on an island are unwittingly altered into monsters after they eat certain mutagenic mushrooms...  Although I didn't know it at the time, it was almost banned in Japan because they felt that the monsters resembled facial disfigurements caused by Hiroshima and Nagasaki; although of course, that might have been the whole idea.  Spooky, yet strangely moving, hard to forget.

Movies that scared me silly:

1984 - Made in 1956, starring Edmond O'Brien, Michael Redgrave, Jan Sterling, and Donald Pleasance. The scene with the rats was perhaps the scariest thing I'd ever seen, and it gave me nightmares.  Interestingly, I've never met anyone who actually saw this movie in a theater - I guess it bombed at the box office.  

The Invasion of the Body Snatchers - 1954, and set in a fictional California small town. You know the plot. You know the term "pod people".  But it still packs a punch as person after person is duplicated and replaced...  And they find the pods...  And Becky falls asleep...  Well...  

Trivia NOTE: Future director Sam Peckinpah played the bit part of Charlie, a meter reader.  

The Haunting - 1963.  Based on the Shirley Jackson novel, starring Julie Harris, and Claire Bloom. I think it's the most frightening movie* ever made, simply because you never see anything. You hear it. And by the time those two great actresses, Julie Harris and Claire Bloom, are done with you, you feel it.  And it has the scariest line I've ever heard in a movie:  "God! God! Whose hand was I holding?"   (*Spielberg agrees with me.)  

Not that scary, but one of my favorites:

Rear Window - I was a tween when I saw it, and I could hardly wait to be old enough to live by myself in Jeff Jeffries' (Jimmy Stewart) apartment, watching and listening and following all the crazies around me.  

NOTE:  Interestingly, I rewatched it a couple of weeks ago, and for the first time I noticed one fatal flaw in the movie:  Jeff, who's a professional photographer, has his left leg in a cast, from hip to toes, and is in a wheelchair 90% of the time, so no wonder he spends all his time watching the neighbors.  No problem there. And he figures out that one of them killed his wife, and he's trying to find evidence, long distance, using first binoculars, and then a massive telephoto lens on one of his cameras.  He finally sees Thorvald, after his wife supposedly went on a trip, with his wife's purse, pulling out jewelry, including the wife's wedding ring.  So what's the flaw?  WHY DOESN'T JEFF TAKE A BUNCH OF PICTURES OF THORVALD AND HIS WIFE'S STUFF?  He's a professional photographer.  He's got a telephoto lens which could pick out the feathers on a flying swallow.  Surely he's got film in the house.  I don't know why I never noticed that before...  

Still love the movie, though.

Movies that for years I couldn't persuade people actually existed:

We're No Angels - Still my favorite Christmas movie of all time, with Humphrey Bogart, Aldo Ray, Peter Ustinov, Leo G. Carroll, Basil Rathbone, Joan Bennett, and St. Adolph...  Read my love-letter to the movie HERE.

The Producers - Yes, Mel Brooks' classic 1967 film. I was old enough by then to get most of the jokes, and I nearly died of laughter at the line "don't be a dummy, be a smarty, come and join the Nazi party!" My introduction to Gene Wilder, Zero Mostel, Dick Shawn (hilarious as L.S.D.), and Mel Brooks, as always, going over the top.  Loved him ever since.  

Harold and Maude - I saw Hal Ashby's 1971 classic in the theater, but most people didn't like it. I laughed so hard I was crying. After 10-11 years, it finally hit cult status, and I could finally share it with my friends.  Huzzah!

Highly Educational:

Tarzan and His Mate - 1934, pre-Code B&W, the 2nd in the series with Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan and Maureen O'Sullivan as Jane.  This is the film with the nude Jane/Tarzan swimming scene.  I remember it well...  You can see it on YouTube HERE.  

If I couldn't have Jeff Jeffries' apartment, I wanted Tarzan and Jane's treehouse.  And lifestyle. And I wouldn't have minded having THAT Tarzan...  

Sheer silly fun:

The Pickwick Papers - (1952)  I started reading Dickens early in life, and this adaptation is, imho, the most Dickensian I've ever seen.  B&W, with full throttle performances, perfect costumes, manners, mannerisms, everything.  I bought a copy of it years ago on DVD.  I love it.  

Mrs. Leo Hunter, reading from her own composition, 

"Ode to an Expiring Frog".

The Gods of Power and Money Are Back…

Well, actually, they never went away.  

A lot of people seem to be incredibly surprised by current capers by certain billionaire(s) (especially the guy with the chainsaw), and how/why so many corporations and other billionaires are backing these capers with all their might.  Well, my first response is, "They don't want the chainsaw to come for them."  

So I am going back to the past, about 9 years ago, to an old blog post I wrote called "Gods and Demi-Gods":  about how money and power are the real gods of America. Not only does it currently seem that they still reign, but now it's on steroids. So I've updated it:

• The first thing to understand is the term oligarchy: "a small group of very powerful people that controls a government or society." (Cambridge English Dictionary)  Generally these people are very wealthy and own corporations.  Currently, there are 13 billionaires in our current administration's cabinet, which isn't exactly attuned to the problems of a country in which the majority - 60% - are barely making enough to live on.  
• 
  
• Here are some of the rules of an oligarchy: 

• ALL corporations must make constant profits:  the modern economic doctrine - "maximizing shareholder value" - says that a corporation has no purpose but to make profits for its shareholders. This means that employer/employee loyalty and customer service/satisfaction are both irrelevant.  Pensions and/or health benefits can and must be cut whenever it's expedient to the bottom line. Jobs must be outsourced to the lowest bidder, taxes must be avoided by offshoring or secret, perpetual trusts, and whenever possible, lobbying and promoting certain politicians.  
• NOTE:  The fact that unemployed people do not buy much other than food is ignored.  Also ignored is that the United States is no longer the preferred customer of many corporations. Tesla's largest manufacturing plant and latest market is in China.

• Everything must be privatized, i.e., put into the hands of corporations and the wealthy.  At the same time, the corporations are no longer national, they are global, in order to maximize shareholder value (see above).   Government - on any level - is an impediment to profit, so it must be made as small and neutralized as possible, except when needed to bail out the corporations (see below).  (Only profits are privatized, losses are passed on to the public.)
• NOTE:  I am constantly amazed at how, in one of the most successful propaganda campaigns in history, our government (a democracy, where the government is "we, the people") has been presented as a dangerous waste of resources, while the "private sector" would be much more efficient. Sure, the corporations will make a lot more money, but it will hurt the hell out of most of us who are not wealthy.  Once the Postal Service (which is in the US Constitution) is privatized, then the cost of shipping will go sky-high.  They are trying to eliminate the Department of Education:  setting up public schools was one of the first things that every community prior to today did. And who is going to monitor air traffic, build the bridges, provide health alerts, weather alerts, disaster relief... (oh, that's right, these are all being cut even as I'm writing this...)

• Corporate profits must be maintained, at all costs, including military. Eisenhower recognized the beginnings of this in his Military Industrial Complex Speech.  Since the end of the Cold War, there has almost always been an economic rather than political reason why troops are sent where they are, why outrage is expressed over certain international incidents and not over others.  (This is why, for example, the entire international community joined the United States to invade Iraq in 1990-91's First Gulf War, a/k/a the 710 War, but everyone stood on the sidelines and watched as 800,000 people were slaughtered in the Rwandan Genocide of 1994.)  And many aspects of war - supplies, security, etc. - are now routinely privatized to corporations which make a hefty profit with almost no oversight, including Bechtel (which was accused of  war profiteering), Halliburton, and Blackwater (which was brought before Congress in 2007 for "employee misdeeds," among other things).  
• NOTE 1: In the run-up to the Iraq war, Halliburton was awarded a $7 billion contract for which 'unusually' only Halliburton was allowed to bid (Wikipedia - Halliburton)  It might not have hurt that Dick Cheney had been Chairman and CEO from 1995-2000.    
• NOTE 2:  The current war, of course, is the war on immigrants.  This has caused an increase in spending on detention facilities, ICE employees, etc.  The current Big Beautiful Budget has $45 billion for immigration detention and related services, which would significantly increase ICE's budget for detention. And the private prison industry (in which Tom Homan, the current border czar, has investments) is salivating over future detainees - who become slave labor for whoever needs them.  

• Weapons industries must also make constant profits, and sales must be constant, and thus the NRA preaches the complete and total ownership of any firearm of any kind by anyone at any time.  No license, no training, and in many places, no age limit.  In some states, blind people can carry guns (looking at you, Iowa!, and sadly, I'm not kidding). That's why each new shooting must be propagandized in whatever way that will increase sales:

1. there are crazy people out there with guns, buy more guns now;
2. the terrorists / immigrants are coming to kill you, buy more guns now;
3. the government is coming to take away your guns, buy more guns now. 

• Also, to ensure constant profits for the weapons industry, (plus keep the complaints down about how life is going for everyone), our entertainment and news media must be saturated with ever-increasing levels of threats and violence. BTW, never forget the very important, very underestimated product placement. Every prop / weapon / outfit / drink you see on any screen is there in order to sell one to you.

• NOTE 1:  If you don't believe that media has any effect on people's behavior, then why do corporations spend billions on advertising?  If the constant barrage of news feeds, hour-long TV show, binge-watching television shows, and movies, or unlimited video games has no effect on our minds and behavior, then why should corporations pay millions for a 30-second ad spot?  Why do politicians and super-PACs do the same?  Are they all stupid?  

• NOTE 2:  If you don't believe that violence in media has increased, watch an episode of Gunsmoke on RetroTV some time, and note how seldom Matt Dillon (or even the bad guys) used a gun.  Some day count the number of weapons on display in previews during the morning news.  (The average child will see 8,000 murders on television before finishing elementary school:  Link).  

• NOTE 3:  The quantity of violence not only has increased, but, as the public becomes more jaded, it has become more and more perverse.  On the news, "When it bleeds, it leads!"  Literally.  As for entertainment, in the 1980s, Law and Order SVU was considered fairly hard-core, with story-lines of children being abused and murdered, women and children being raped, tortured, etc.  Not any more. Criminal Minds, Dexter, Hannibal, and other shows upped the ante with on-screen cannibalism, eye-gougings, etc.  Back on "Game of Thrones" human beings were castrated and flayed alive. Live, to-the-death gladiatorial contests cannot be far behind.  (But it's all in jest, they but do poison in jest, no harm in the world...)

When money and power are gods, and corporations are their high priests, there are real world consequences.  And one of those is that the poor - collectively and individually - are sinners, and must be punished by any means at the disposal of the powerful.  The results are:

Propaganda:  The poor are "losers", "moochers", "lazy", "worthless", "stupid". Social Security and Medicare - both fully taxpayer funded, i.e., paid by us - are called "entitlements", which implies that they haven't been earned, but are something we moochers wrongly feel "entitled" to. (Damn straight I feel "entitled" to Social Security - I paid into it for 40 years!)  

        The Truth:

• The truth is, 90% of the economy in this country is done by the people called "the working class" and/or the "middle class".  These are the people who do the actual work in factories, schools, restaurants, grocery stores, any store, who are construction workers, electricians, plumbers, landscapers, teachers, janitors, who pick up the garbage, repair everything from lamps to cars to rockets, etc., and who buy most of the goods, pay almost all the taxes, and keep this country actually working.  
• NOTE:  Again, unemployed people don't buy very much except food and the  gasoline needed to try to get a job.

• The top 10%, which hold most of our country's wealth, spend a lot of money, but for relatively few goods, because what they buy is often maniacally expensive. On purpose. After all, how else are we going to know they're rich if they don't have that $6 million yacht (middle range, actually) or that $499,999 Birkin bag? Or a rocket to take you on a trip to outer space?  And they rarely "shop local".  I remember a very wealthy lady in a small town in South Dakota who wanted to donate art to the library and rather than buy anything from one of the local artists, bought some artwork from New York City and had it installed.  It was not appreciated.  They avoid taxes by offshoring or secret, perpetual trusts, and leave it all to their children, who do the same.  

The most successful and constant propaganda story in history:  "You can't give poor people money or aid of any kind, because they'll waste it on trivial stuff (food, clothing, drink, etc.).  So you have to incentivize the poor by denying them any social services or tax breaks. They just need to work harder. Meanwhile, the rich are incentivized by giving them endless tax breaks, if not eliminate their taxes completely."  

And give them government grants - which they promptly invest in themselves and their trusts.  But of course, this goes back to Victorian times and their version of Catch 22:  "there are the deserving poor (who would never dream of asking for a handout, even if they were starving) and the undeserving poor who ask for handouts, because they are starving, and thus don't deserve it..."  People really need to read more Dickens...

Political restrictions:  Between gerrymandering, voting restrictions, Citizens United, lobbyists, etc., the powerful have done an excellent job of ensuring that the votes/interests/representation of the working class and poor are rendered irrelevant to the political process.  (13 billionaires in one administration...) My own congress people respond to my e-mails and letters with form letters.   

***

The consumer society.  When money and power are gods, individual human life has no meaning other than to make money and consume goods and services, and nothing else. Allegiance must be mindless, generated by carefully crafted advertising, propaganda, and sound-bites. Mental processes must be carefully controlled by endless social media and other distractions, so that no one ever considers that there might more to life than making money, shopping, sports, and/or the latest entertainment craze.  Considering that the average video on Tik-Tok is under a minute, it's amazing any of us have any ability to concentrate at all.

But fear counts above all.  No one must ever question why - living in the richest, most privileged, most free society on earth, the "home of the free and the brave" why people are so afraid, all the time, everywhere.  And like the people in Orwell's "1984", they must never notice that the object of fear constantly changes.  In my lifetime I have watched the enemy - THE ONE WHO WILL DESTROY US AT ALL COSTS - change from Communist Russia to the Axis of Evil (some combination of China/Russia/Iran/Iraq/North Korea, it changed with the President at the time) to Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein to Radical Islamic Terrorism, with a pretty constant drumbeat of fear and horror of blacks, the Black Panthers, drugs, hippies, urban thugs, illegal immigrants, illegal immigrant children, immigrants of any kind, legal refugees, anyone wearing a turban, and anyone with dark skin.  Deep breath.  And, of course, LGBQT+, and the ultimate horror, a transgender person using a public bathroom.  

Speaking of how propaganda works, to many politicians and their followers these days, Putin is now a hero, a strong promotor of Christian and family values... This would have been inconceivable up until twenty years ago. And I am stunned and disgusted by how Nazi salutes and catchphrases have been rehabilitated, to the point where Texas Republican Congressman Keith Self quoted Joseph Goebbels - ‘It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion,’ - at a Congressional subcommittee hearing. (LINK)

• NOTE:  So far, America is still here. So far…

Meanwhile, here are the facts:

• Money and power are abstractions, i.e., fictions, a belief system rather than a reality, to which we daily sacrifice real human beings, not to mention real air, real water, real food, real life.  It's really all about greed.

• No matter how much money and power is worshiped, acquired, accumulated, fought for, praised, and sacrificed to, life will never be 100% safe, and 100% of all people will all still die. Including the wealthiest of the 1%.  The gods of money and power, the church of celebrity, sports and entertainment, the priesthood of politicians, lobbyists and televangelists, none of them will save any human being from that fate.  

This is the truth about the gods that America - or at least a certain portion of America - has chosen.  Like any pagan deities, they require regular human sacrifice.  And they are getting it.  

Voices on a Summer Night

While I mostly write short stories, I have written two novels in my youth:  one for Guidepost's "Mystery and the Minister's Wife" series - The Best is Yet to Be - and a classic teenage post-apocalyptic sci-fi fantasy with what I thought at the time were strong female heroines.  And no, I'm not going to give you a sample of the latter.  (A  collective sigh of relief is heard throughout the land.)  

No, I stick to short stories, partly because I'm more comfortable with the format, because I grew up in a time when people still told stories to each other.  Aloud.  In person.  On a porch.  Or over a summer dinner.  Or over winter cocktails, playing cards, doing a puzzle...  No cell phones, no TV on, maybe a distant radio, just human voices, telling stories that (to child Eve) ranged from boring (how many genealogies do I have to listen to???) to the really, really interesting (especially if I was under the table while the women whispered about things like s-e-x) to the downright scary.  Old monsters die hard.

For example, it was a dark and windy night in summer, and as we did almost every summer, my mother and I were visiting my grandmother in Kentucky.  We were out on the porch, and my mother started telling "The Headless Horseman".  

She was a former teacher and a pretty good storyteller.  She had me huddled up on the porch swing as she built up, slowly, to the peak line:  "AND THERE HE IS!!!!"  And sure enough, there was this guy coming up the porch steps, with his collar pulled up just high enough against the rain that I wasn't entirely sure if there was a head there or not.  Well, I screamed and ran in the house, everyone outside had a heck of a good laugh, and eventually I realized that it was only one of our neighbors.  The story was spread far and wide, to some hilarity, and much shame for me.  But in the end I had the last laugh, because after that, that poor man was always known as "Headless".  Actually, I had the last TWO laughs:  years later I wrote a story sort of based on that, "The Headless Horseman" published in AHMM in 2015. 

The first story I ever published in AHMM (April, 1997) came from those days, too.  "Grown-Ups are All Alike" stemmed from my Kentucky grandmother's next door neighbor's wife.  She was an invalid, and she had her bed in the living room, which I'd never seen before.  We'd visit as a family, of course, but I was also sent over to read to her, though I have no idea why she couldn't read to herself.  (I read my way through many a Reader's Digest that way.)  What I'll never forget is that one year my grandmother talked about her, but she called her a different first name, and that confused me.  

"I thought her name was Sarah."  

"That was his first wife's name," my grandmother explained.  "She died, and he remarried."

"Then why is she still in bed in the living room?"

"Well, she had an accident, and now she's an invalid too.  Some people just don't have any luck but bad luck."

I think we can all see the story potential there.

BTW:  I am the most fortunate person in the world.  "Grown-Ups Are All Alike" was the first mystery story I ever wrote, and I got it published in AHMM!!!!  I still can't believe it.  I really hit the lottery with that one.

There was a difference between my father's relatives and my mother's.  My mother's were all in Kentucky, where the drawl is long and slow and some men sound like they have mush in their mouths.  They take their time, and can keep a story going for many a long hour.  

My father's were all New Yorkers, Greek immigrants, and they talked fast and furiously.  But they were just as good at story telling, and talking around things.  My grandparents lived in a brownstone in Astoria (back when it was an all Greek neighborhood).  When we moved to California, my grandparents sold the brownstone and moved across the street.  Years later, it occurred to me to wonder how in the world my Greek immigrant grandfather got up enough money to buy a brownstone, and asked my father about it.

"Oh, he did a favor for this guy, long time ago, and he gave him a nice little truck route. I've told you about it. We sold pies and stuff to the various bakeries."  

"What kind of favor? Who was the guy?" I asked.

"I don't know what kind of favor, but the guy was some guy named Gambino."  My father gave a mysterious smile, and I will never know if he was joking or not.  

Someday that's going to come up in a story, too...  

***  

Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!

As you HOPEFULLY know, SleuthSayers' anthology, "Murder, Neat" has won the Derringer Award for Best Anthology!  And now it's a finalist for the Anthony Awards!

Thanks, Michael Bracken and Barb Goffman for a fantastic job of editing, and thanks to all of us weird and wacky SleuthSayers for writing some really wicked stories!  Huzzah!  Huzzah!  Huzzah!

Criming and Dying Through History in South Dakota

From the Dakota Scout, some interesting stories from yesteryear:

March 29, 1900 - from the Madison Daily Leader, South Dakota was in the middle of a smallpox epidemic and in Ipswich, SD, schools were closed until fall to limit the spread of diphtheria.  

MY NOTE:  My mother had diphtheria as a child in the Appalachian mountains of the 1920s.  She never mentioned any vaccine (which had just finally been invented), but she did get the old-fashioned treatment for it, which included cauterizing the throat. It was so painful she hoped it would kill her.  

April 5, 1950 - State cement plant employee Ray Deig reported Rapid City's first flying saucer encounter.  He saw one on the night of March 21, but he didn't report it because he thought it "was one of Uncle Sam's secret developments" and "I thought people wouldn't believe me."  (No idea why he changed his mind about folks not believing him...)

April 19, 1900 - Five prisoners escaped the state penitentiary in Sioux Falls by breaking off the bottom of a fence during morning yard work.  

May 2, 1949 - Sioux Falls veterans tried to be first in line for the processing of their WW2 bonus forms, and pilot Joe Foss flew the paperwork overnight to Pierre, but Bonus Director J. J. Kibbe refused to accept it because it hadn't been mailed.  The forms were then mailed to the Pierre post office.  (Meanwhile, I'm sure much cursing was heard and Mr. Kibbe became the most unpopular man in Sioux Falls.) 

August 18, 1899 - the Weekly Capital reported that Manly Beaver, a 13 year old boy, saved the lives of 93 teachers taking a train ride into Spearfish Canyon, who were stuck by the wreckage of an accident on the train bridge.  Beaver ran down to flag the next train and warn them of the danger ahead.  Beaver received $10 and a "free course of education at the Madison Normal School" (now Dakota State University).

August 24, 1899 - Trainmen operating a freight engine in Hermosa had to fight off half a dozen tramps, one of whom drew a gun on the trainmen.  The workers forced the tramps into the depot and kept them locked inside until the law arrived.

September 4, 1949 - The Daily Plainsman reported that Redfield Maynard Schultz was charged with murder after getting involved in a private fight, and becoming so angry he rushed into the police station, grabbed his own .38 service pistol, and returned to the parking lot and killed Roy Sieben.  (Sadly, no backstory given, as in what was the argument about?)

September 9, 1899 - the Kimbal Enterprise reported that a customer paid a 20 cent lunch tab with a $20 bill, but no one noticed that it was a Confederate $20 until the guy left the restaurant. "When reported to federal authorities, the restaurant owner was told that the government didn't regulate the use of confederate money."  (I think they started regulating after incidents like this...  But you could always try it at a restaurant of your choosing.)  

September 17, 1999 - One hundred years later, an Alaskan man was buying rounds for the house until Sioux Falls police showed up and arrested him. Charles Cooper (don't you wish it had been D. B. Cooper?) was wanted for robbing the nearby U.S. Bank before heading straight to the bar.  Loren Bultena, who was one of those getting free drinks, commented, "He can't be all bad, he bought beer."  (Spoken like a true bar fly.)

September 13, 1924 - Mr. and Mrs. Steinbaugh and Tom McGray met with City Attorney Steinback, trying to reconcile their marriage after an affair between Mrs. Steinbaugh and McGraw. Everything went well until Mr. Steinbaugh pulled out a pistol, killed McGraw, and then shot himself to death.  (I hope Mr. Steinback gave up marriage counseling after that.)

December 4, 1924 - From The Black Hills Weekly:  Blackie Brady and Jack Wilson broke out of the Pennington County Jail and stole a Ford car.  Trouble was, it was snowing (no surprise there) and the car left tracks in the snow.  The two headed toward Buckhorn, Wyoming, and the authorities were alerted, and the two men were arrested at a nearby lumber camp.  (It really is all about winter in South Dakota.)

Now this one is out of sequence, but has modern repercussions and stories to go with them:

March 31, 1950 - An explosion at the Black Hills Ordnance Depot munitions facility in Igloo (named after the dome-shaped storage buildings) killed 3.

BHOD Landscape, taken by Vigilante Scout, Wikipedia

UPDATE: "The Vivos xPoint survivalist community was developed in 2016 on the site of the former Black Hills Army Depot munitions storage facility. More than 500 above-ground concrete bunkers are marketed for lease to those who are worried about a potential national or global disaster or who want to live mostly off-the-grid. It’s located in a remote area 8 miles south of Edgemont in southwestern South Dakota... The concrete bunkers, which look like earthen igloos, held military conventional and chemical munitions from 1942 to 1967. The town of Igloo grew up around the depot and was once home a young Tom Brokaw, a South Dakota native and former NBC anchor. The base and town are now abandoned."  Which sounds great, BUT

In 2024 "David Streeter thought abandoning his traditional life to relocate into a survival bunker in South Dakota would allow his family to retreat from the stresses, expenses and restrictions of the modern world.  The family of three also wanted to be prepared in case an apocalypse of some kind altered the course of mankind and threatened their lives and way of life.

"But 18 months after leasing a former Army munitions bunker in the Vivos xPoint residential complex south of Edgemont, the Streeters have had their dreams shattered. And they now find themselves embroiled in a situation that has brought on a level of upheaval, worry and danger they specifically sought to avoid...  In August, Streeter – an Army veteran who was injured while serving in Bosnia – shot a Vivos contract employee at close range. Streeter said the man had threatened his family and he was defending himself. No charges were filed in that case or another fatal shooting involving Streeter in Montana in 2010.

 

(Read more HERE.  You know you want to.)

Who could have predicted that a community of off-the-grid doomsday preppers could be a dangerous place to live?  

MEANWHILE:  HUZZAHS ALL THE WAY AROUND!

SleuthSayers' anthology, "Murder,  Neat" has won the Derringer Award for Best Anthology!  Thanks, Michael Bracken and Barb Goffman for a fantastic job of editing, and thanks to all of us weird and wacky SleuthSayers for writing some really wicked stories!  Huzzah!  Huzzah!  Huzzah!

REPEAT BLATANT SELF-PROMOTION:

Rabia Chaudry reads my story, "The Seven Day Itch" aloud on her podcast, Rabia Chaudry Presents The Mystery Hour with Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

Listen to it here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-seven-day-itch/id1581854514?i=1000703738987

Also available in Instagram!

 

A Little Religious Conspiracy Theory: Redux

(In the interest of maintaining openness and transparency, most of this blog post first appeared in March, 2015.  I thought a repeat would be timely, especially since tonight is Maundy Thursday, although I have updated it a little...)

As you hopefully know by now, I love a good conspiracy theory.  And some events generate lots of them.  A very early event that has not yet stopped generating conspiracy theories is, of course, the death of Jesus, and since Easter is in 4 days, I thought it would be a good time to review some of most interesting conspiracy theories.  If nothing else, just to prove that it's not just politics that brings out the crazy...

First of all, there were at least three real conspiracies that surrounded Jesus:

• The first one is in (among other places) Matthew 26:14-16, where the chief priests paid Judas to betray Jesus so they could have him executed, quickly and relatively quietly, before the Passover.  

• The second, of course, was the show trial before first Caiaphas and then Pilate, complete with manufactured witnesses and a lot of fake weeping, wailing and tearing of clothes in horror.  (This is in all the Gospels)

• The third is in Matthew 28:11-15, after the finding of the empty tomb:  "Now while they [the disciples] were going, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests everything that had happened.  After the priests had assembled with the elders, they devised a plan to give a large sum of money to the soldiers, telling them, “You must say, ‘His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ If this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.”  So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story is still told among the Jews to this day."  
• BTW that "keep you out of trouble" part was VERY important, because Roman guards who lost prisoners were killed in their stead.  (See where the guard gets ready to kill himself in Acts 16:27 because he thinks Paul and Silas have escaped.)  

But enough with reality, let's get on with the crazy:

"When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage & Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent 2 of his disciples & said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, & immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it & bring it. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’” They went away & found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, some of the bystanders said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” They told them what Jesus had said; & they allowed them to take it. Mark l1:1-6

Then came the day of Unleavened Bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and prepare the Passover meal for us that we may eat it.” They asked him, “Where do you want us to make preparations for it?” “Listen,” he said to them, “when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you; follow him into the house he enters and say to the owner of the house, ‘The teacher asks you, “Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?”’ He will show you a large room upstairs, already furnished. Make preparations for us there.” So they went and found everything as he had told them; and they prepared the Passover meal. Luke 22:7-13

The above  two passages have been used repeatedly to prove that there was a plot, a conspiracy, and Jesus was in on it and/or was the mastermind. But what kind of plot?  What kind of conspiracy? Folks, there are a lot of them:

(1) That Jesus would be replaced by his twin, or doppelganger, who would die on the cross for him so that he could appear to be resurrected and, thus, start a whole new religion. Or get out of town later. Both ideas have been used. The most likely candidate?  Thomas Didymas, a/k/a "the Twin". Conspiracists know that he really was Jesus' twin, which certainly puts a whole new spin on Doubting Thomas, doesn't it?

(2) Another theory says that these 2 messages - the colt and the guy with the pitcher of water - were coded messages, letting the conspirators know that the time was at hand for a major magic act to take place.  This conspiracy theory breaks down a couple of ways:

• One version says that the plan was for Jesus to be arrested, tried, convicted, crucified and drugged with that vinegar on a stick which actually had opiates in it (John 19:28).  He was then taken down - comatose but still alive - nursed back to health, appeared to the disciples, who spread the story of his resurrection while he went off to Tibet to become a monk in the Himalayas. 

• Another version was given in the 1960's book "The Passover Plot", where they said that everything was going according to the above plan BUT then came some stupid soldier with a spear.  For some reason, he hadn't been bribed, and he killed a living Jesus on the cross by mistake.  And then the disciples had to make up a story and stick to it.  Hence, John 19 & 20, Luke 23 & 24, etc.  

• Dorothy Sayers in her "The Man Born to be King" says that it was a code, a conspiracy, but it was set up by the Zealots:  they offered Jesus a choice between a horse and a colt, and if he took the horse, they'd follow him in an uprising against Rome.  If he took the colt, he was on his own.  They'd find another leader.  He took the colt, and death was the result.  BUT Judas didn't know the details, and he thought that by taking the colt, Jesus had turned political, and so Judas turned him in for being less holy than Judas wanted/needed him to be.  Actually, I kind of like this one - at least it makes sense in the political climate of the time, and it gives Judas a reason to betray Jesus.

(3)  Jesus never existed, but was a myth.  Variations:

• D. M. Murdock, in her book "The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold," says that Christianity was invented by a variety of secret societies and mystery religions to unify the Roman Empire under one state religion.  Without, of course, bothering to explain why the Roman Empire needed one state religion when it already had one in the Emperor Cultus...  Let's just say that this is the kind of book that makes historians like me go bang their head against a wall over and over again...

• Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and the Holy Grail - ad infinitum, ad nauseum…  Dan Brown, you have a lot to answer for.

• My personal favorite of all conspiracy theories is in an obscure book from the 1970's, "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross" by John Marco Allegro.  According to Allegro, Jesus was actually a psychedelic mushroom. Or hallucinations resulting from taking psychedelic mushrooms.  And, in case you're wondering, yes, I absolutely do believe that psychedelic mushrooms were consumed in the conception and writing of that book…

Why do people come up with these things?  Or believe them?  Well, there's a lot of reasons.  But I think the main reason is simple:  conspiracy theorists feel like members of an elite club or cult, in which they are in on the "real" truth.  People love to be in on a secret - it makes us feel like we belong, like we're knowledgeable, like we're superior.  Nobody can fool us. We're in control, because we're in the know, whether it's about 9/11 or Roswell or Bigfoot or a death in Judea 2000 years ago.

BTW:  If you like this blog post, you might also want to read/reread my "Who Killed Judas?" HERE.  And I think I'm onto something...  But then don't we all?

BLATANT SELF-PROMOTION

Rabia Chaudry reads my story, "The Seven Day Itch" aloud on her podcast, Rabia Chaudry Presents The Mystery Hour with Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

Listen to it here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-seven-day-itch/id1581854514?i=1000703738987

Also available in Instagram!

Plot Holes as Big as a Buick

We've all read a book, or watched a movie, one which we actually enjoyed, but later went...  "Wait a second.  What about???"  

And I 'm not talking about tropes, which are everywhere, ranging from "meet cute" to "discussing highly confidential secrets while an evil person is standing right outside the door listening" to "the supervillain who is always one step ahead of the detective, spy, superhero*" to "the genius detective who is never wrong."  You can either stand them or not, and it's usually based on who's playing the part.  

BTW, Allan Rickman could play either the supervillain or the romantic hero and I was always all in for it.  

No, I'm talking about plot holes, the size of my father's 1955 pink and white Buick, where you just shake your head.  And again, you either accept it or you don't...

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins has two plot holes, but I still love it with a passion.  It has tremendous suspense, one of the great villains of all time (Count Fosco), secret illegitimacy, faked deaths, mental asylums, an evil mother (Mrs. Catherick), an innocent heroine cruelly treated (Laura Fairlie), an even more innocent victim who dies (or is killed?), a dauntless hero, a dauntless heroine (Laura's half sister, Marian Halcombe) and enough twists and turns to keep anyone happy and thinking.  A nice, long winter's read.  But, the plot holes:

The plot turns on wealthy heiress Laura Fairlie's remarkable resemblance to a mentally ill young woman (Anne Catherick), and how, after her marriage, where she becomes Lady Laura Glyde, she is drugged and placed in a mental asylum under Anne's name, while the exceedingly ill Anne dies (or is helped along the way) and is buried under Laura's name.  

First Plot Hole: "The most well known error of chronology is that first described in The Times of 30 October 1860. The plot relies on the fact that Laura’s departure for London took place the day after Anne Catherick had died under Laura’s name. In the book edition the date of that death was 26 July whereas as the reviewer points out ‘…we could easily show that Lady Glyde could not have left Blackwater Park before the 9th or 10th of August. Anybody who reads the story, and who counts the days from the conclusion of Miss Halcombe’s diary, can verify the calculation for himself.’"  (The Wilkie Collins Society)

This was eventually corrected, but not until the fourth edition of the novel - and then the correction interfered with later dates in this tightly woven, complex novel.  Those of us who love the book have learned to live with it, and ignore all, including the second plot hole:

Second Plot Hole:  Long after Lady Laura has been rescued from the mental asylum she and her true love Walter marry, but before her identity as Lady Laura has been confirmed and reinstated by the law.  So what name did she get married under? Was it truly legal?  We are never told.  

There is a similar problem in Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend.  Bella Wilfer marries John Rokesmith - however John Rokesmith is actually John Harmon, using an alias, which leads to the obvious question, how could their marriage be legal since he married under a false name, and did they remarry once John Harmon revealed himself?  

All I can say is, just ignore it and keep reading. 

The Big Sleep - the movie, not the book.  The book, of course, was written by Raymond Chandler. The movie was written by Leigh Brackett, William Faulkner, with touch-ups by Jules Furthman and Howard Hawks.  

Plot Hole:  The legendary "who killed the chauffer?" (whose death starts the whole movie and investigation) is unanswerable. None of the writers knew; so Hawks cabled Raymond Chandler, who said later, "They sent me a wire ... asking me, and dammit I didn't know either."  (Wikipedia) 

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie.  

Plot Hole:  Both the book and the movie have a fatal flaw:  why kill the maid?  Yes, the maid is blackmailing the killer, but the killer has money, and they're on a steamer on the Nile.  Why not just pay the maid off, and keep paying the maid off for a few months, and kill her later when everyone's back home and no one will notice if the maid, for example, gets a little blood poisoning from a scratch and dies of it, or just plain disappears?  Obviously, the only reason was that Ms. Christie (whom I revere in many ways) had made such a complex, ironclad plot that it was the only way to make it possible for Hercule Poirot to solve the case.  

And right there is a lesson for us all:  don't make your plot so tight you can't find a way out of it.  Leave room for errors and basic screw-ups, because we humans do that all the time.  

For that matter, leave room in your life for basic screw-ups, because they will happen.