Speaking of Manson

I heard the following on the news yesterday:

Day to Day, May 20, 2008 · For nearly 40 years, rumors have swirled that dozens of victims of Charles Manson’s family are buried at a remote, mountainous ranch in California’s Death Valley National Park. Now, with the help of a dog named Buster, authorities are investigating whether the talk is true.

A police detective last year took Buster, a dog trained to find cadavers, to the site where Manson hid after a killing spree that left seven dead in the summer of 1969. Buster’s agitated behavior indicated the presence of decaying human remains, Los Angeles Times reporter Louis Sahagun told Alex Chadwick.

Subsequent searches were inconclusive, as were soil tests, but Inyo County Sheriff Bill Lutze said he would allow a limited four-day excavation at Barker Ranch beginning Tuesday. The main targets of the dig were to be hot spots that Buster had flagged.

“There was no consistent response from the dogs that searched and no conclusive findings from the soil samplings tested by top experts in the field,” Lutze said in a statement. “The only way to determine once and for all whether there are bodies buried at Barker Ranch from the time of the Manson family is to proceed with limited excavation.”

Locals, however, have predicted that the only remains investigators will unearth will be from ancient Indian graves. They are concerned about the dig’s costs, Sahagun reports. Even if investigators find remains, it’s unclear whether Inyo County can afford to perform the necessary tests to identify the victims.

Manson is serving a life sentence at the California State Prison in Corcoran for the murders, whose victims included actress Sharon Tate. Manson had been sentenced to die, but that sentence was commuted after the California Supreme Court declared the state’s death penalty unconstitutional in 1972. It was reinstated several years later.

Sagahun posits that if Manson were to be convicted on additional homicide charges, it’s possible he might once again receive a death sentence.

From NPR staff and wire reports

Kudzu Third Degree

I burned several blobs of blister on the soft underside of my right arm last evening. Never mind how it happened: I was drunk and blind in a forest fire, no, not this time, I walked uphill backwards bumping into lit kerosene, no, a manipulative, handsome man poured hot oil on me, actually, I was saving a family of eight from a burning house (the parents started the fire because they thought Charles Manson’s devil-worshipping ways were getting the best of their children, and they read in an anti-witchcraft manual they’d bought in Topeka that anything burnt to ash was properly awash of the devil).

What’s brilliant about the burn is that it’s directly atop a mysterious allergic rash that was not only swollen, but pickled with rosebush thorns. And rather than throw up all over the library, and risk creeping out patrons who just wanted to check out their books with my dense fever and thusly sweaty face and hands, I sent myself home to allow the uninvited demons out for an evening. I doubt that upon falling asleep I carbonized into some bloodied she-dog with the taste for human skin, but whatever was poisoning me, did so swiftly and I could do nothing but sleep for almost 24 hours.

Besides the burn, I was dutifully weeding my landlord’s property a few days prior, as I bleakly swore I would, and encountered a few ghastly growths that were not only unwelcome, they ignored this lack of invitation stealthily, with roots I’ll have to maneuver out with tools, some as thick and brawny as my own little arms. Mind you, this is but a villa on the coast compared to the oceans of landscaping others seep their knees into, but one little villa that is transforming into a jungle. These long, vine-like weeds creep into the bushes and flowers, not unlike kudzu, except, of course, for kudzu retains an obvious design to uncontrollably (it is after all predatorless beyond cranky Southeastern gardeners and farmers) take over the United States. This species only wanted me to sacrifice my arm, this kudzu-look-alike. Ruthlessly, I tore it out of the ground, not to know until a little later the gross gagging factor of no relent.

All things considered, I’ve been in worse shape, but I’ll save my “pain” and “trauma” memories for the Scientologists who will be interviewing me later. According to experts, kudzu grows so dramatically fast that during the summertime you can watch it make one 360 degree turn upward towards its new destination within a half-hour. That’s one beast to conquer, I can’t imagine what the damage might be if it had brain tissue.

Death By Spike

Four of us stood in a metallic neon-lit elevator, waiting to descend the ten floors. We had been watching one woman on the veranda of the top and tenth floor grill steaks for some massive party of meat-eaters, smoking cigarettes and holding glasses of champagne. We were making way to the dining room, staring blankly at each other, looking down at one another’s high heels, giggling. I watched the large tray of meat in the frizzy-haired woman’s hands, some of which had tiny hair follicles and an oozy sanguine. Green and red and furry. One steak on top began to squirm and pulsate, we watched furrowed. Soon it slid straight to the floor near the square outline of feet and began prodding itself, slumping upright as if with a face turning around as if with eyes to see its surroundings. In sloppy thrusts it pulped towards the elevator walls and, like a slug, climbed with a trail of greasy muck. It caught a speed, crawling up the walls to the elevator’s ceiling, four women hypnotized by the movement of part of a dead beast. Its hair follicles plugging to the walls and sitting still, turning around. At its finale it almost began inching onto the frizzy-haired woman’s foot when she took the spike of her heel and destroyed it with one violent stab in its center. “If it wasn’t dead before, it is now.” We lit her cigarette and exited the elevator.

The Hall

I walked into a bejeweled hall, whose ceilings were so limitless a new world with a new sky was lit. Banisters of gold flanked muralesque windows. Mahogany pews with crystal ashtrays at each end rested in brass stands. Spidery decorative plants in silver containers were arranged geometrically at this point and that. Important looking men and women with furs and tuxedos, specially tailored hats and hairstyles, disappeared down other avenues of the hall, entering and exiting mysterious doors. Walking past the bank depot, I found a cafe with a bar in the open air of the great hall.

Dressed in a suit and tie alongside two or three other men, my grandfather stood at the bar with a stiff whiskey, hat cocked towards his brow. He was forty years younger, I could see most of the black in his hair below his hat line. The eyes deeply set and mischievous sans the wearing of age, brow sleek, one fastened up as if with a hairpin. He looked from his drink and towards the young woman walking to the bar. Before any words could be spoken he took my hands and began dancing around the cafe’s tables. I laughed, gracious about the gesture, whispering, “be careful, a table behind you,” but it didn’t matter. With the devil’s grin he laughed intimately and kept us going. He knew what he was doing, dipped me a few times without a threat to a hair on my head. Claude was a ballroom dancer from heaven and, regardless of the layers of my dress, he gathered me unruffled and moved us silently and quickly from corner to corner. Twirling me towards the bar, we bowed to one another and he gestured towards the bartender to put anything I wanted on his tab. Winking, he put his hat back on, gathered his coat and walked away.

Upon recognizing where he was walking to, I thanked the bartender and my high heels clicked towards the outdoor pool’s entrance. The pool was a big cerulean blue in the center of a walkway of cement. Three or four elongated steps spanning the width of the courtyard whisped to the dip of the water. On the steps were sunbathing chairs, where I found Claude in a big white robe looking in his briefcase. Upon closer inspection it was full of cash. He looked up at me, concerned and determined. Immediate coherence led me to conclude he was being followed. He closed the briefcase and handed it to me, winked once more, derobing and dived into the water without a splash to follow.

Promoting Shamelessly

Catch me on the local airwaves at WRFL 88.1 FM. Fridays 6 – 9 a.m. You can also access the live stream at http://www.wrfl.fm/ if you’re not from these parts. This morning was my first show of the summer. Mayhem (A.M.) Tracks.