FGDean@aol.com wrote at Mon, 19 Aug 2002 20:24:16 PDT:

"Slow news week"?  I'm not so sure.  Tatum's bust is significant;
it serves as evidence that she is still alive.

But who is Justin Timberlake? . . .

Tatum's bust is significant?  Gee, we don't know -- last time we
saw her was in Paper Moon, and she was sorta flat-chested then.
Justin  Timberlake  is Britney Spears' former boy friend  (fiancée?
signficant either?)  –  as  if  anyone of our generation would give a
fuck.

We got a letter from our crusty old ex-assistant-city-editor  of  the
Indianpolis Star, Richard R. Roberts – who wore black T-shirts to
work  and barked into two telephones and squeezed tennis balls in
both  hands  to  strengthen his wrists  (all  at  the  same  time),  and
thought he was  Norman Mailer  ("But Norman Mailer stabbed his
wife!" gasped Margie Brahms, who at the time was a fellow repor-
ter with us under RRRRRRRRoberts' tutelage), and whose tooth we
knocked out in a party game  in which we simply stood facing each
other taking turns slapping one another in the cheek with open hand
(he caught the tooth in his left hand and stuffed it back into its sock-
et),  and who is now in his late 70's  –   in which he said  "the lot of
good actors is paltry now along with other cultural indices  –   when
Ben Afleck and Mike Myers are the best we have, it's unfortunate."
On other matters he commented, "Most fiction I have seen lately is
like  being locked in a ladies' powder room  or  getting  your  head
stuck in a milling machine.  Most music sounds like dinosaur farts."
He wrote also:

"An  axiom:   Never trust a man until you know you can knock him
down at  any time if he gets out of line.  Use fist, hammer, ball bat –
anything handy and dependable.   This applies also to male women,
which are far more numerous than they used to be . . . ."

Thank you for writing.                                       -- The Editors

   Brandenburg, Ky. – Jeremy Hylemon, 15, and John Grubs Jr., 16, were critically injured
in a one-car accident here early Wednesay, July 31.  Both were flown to University Hospit-
al in Louisville,  where the boy identified as Grubs died the same morning.  His  funeral  was
held three days later. The boy identified as Hylemon lay in a coma in the hospital those three
days as his family sat and stood watch.

   A friend of the boys attended the funeral, looked in the casket,  and recognized the corpse
as  Hylemon's,  not  Grubs'.  He rushed to the hospital to tell Hylemon's mother.  She  called
her mother, who rushed to the funeral home, not in time to stop the funeral (it was over), but
in time to stop the cremation.

   Numerous attendants at the "Grubs" wake had said, "That doesn't look like John," but were
told that his severe head trauma required heavy makeup.     At the hospital Hylemon's mother
had said,  "That don't look like Jeremy.  His  nose  is  too  big."  The hospital said he suffered
head trauma when he went through the windshield.   She  said,  "Well,  his upper lip is fatter."
And they said that's due to the head trauma.

   In short, the hospital, mortuary, police and coroner's spokespersons were "blaming the vic-
tims"; and they blamed all misidentifications on the victims' families.  But all family spokesper-
sons said that none of them was ever asked  for positive identification;  they were simply told
who was who.

   And Jefferson County Coroner Richard Greathouse added insult to death and injury,  com-
menting to a reporter,  "I wouldn't have any trouble ID'ing this young man if he were my own
son."

   Meanwhile the mourners, who had mourned three-and-a-half days for naught, and those ho-
ping and praying for the survival of a loved one,  who had hoped and prayed three-and-a-half
days for naught,  traded places. . . .

dss <newnewtonium@netscape.net> wrote Tues 06 Aug 2002 @19:26:24 EDT:

Frank Reed <Jansblooms@aol.com> wrote
Sun 28 Jul 2002 @12:07:09 CDT "for Jan":

Reply: