I've got friends who love the south, at least in principle. And as with all things people love, it's not based on a deep critical understanding of the finer points of social and political protocol (Witness 80s nostalgia. World on the brink of nuclear destruction. Wall Street Junk Bond Traders making themselves uberrich by savagely rogering retirees out of their pensions. AIDS. Crack. Bernie Goetz. [1 point]. But people love the 80s. Did they love all that stuff? Nah. I asked my friends. They liked the big hair, the tight jeans, and Tommy Tutone.), but with the vairous trappings. People like the south because they like the artifice. Warm lazy days, southern hospitality, honeyed accents, the fact that you can get any foodstuff you like deep fried. At least, I hope that's what they like about the south, and not the poverty, racism, heart disease, bible-thumpin' redneckery, and the quality of their schools.
Because it's down in the great state of Kentucky where a
Zombie massacre amounts to terrorism. You can read the link, but the gist of it is that a high school student wrote a short story about zombies attacking a high school, and was arrested on "second-degree felony terrorist threatening charges".
Do what now?
Yeah. It seems that if you write a story in which zombies attack a high school, this is legally "close enough" to writing down your own personal plans to blow up your own high school. Quoted in the article, the relevant police detective said, "Anytime you make any threat or possess matter involving a school or function it's a felony in the state of Kentucky."
Assuming, of course, that this article is not being misleading, it doesn't sound to me like any actual threat was made (It's possible, of course, that the article, for the sake of sensationalism, glossed over the fact that while the zombie story alerted the suspicion of the student's grandparents, *actual* threatening material was later found, but I'll take the folks at LEX 18 at their word and assume for the moment that all the kid did was to write a zombie story.), so it's the second clause "possess matter involving a school or function." Obviously, this is sloppliy constructed, and I won't take the cheap shot of supposing that, as a school handbook "involves a school", it too would be taboo. But the following people had better steer clear of the derby state:
- JD Salinger
- Joss Whedon
- Adam Cadre
- Me (See below)
- Hundreds of horror movie and book writers. Also, people who wrote non-horror movies where something bad happens at a school
[In eighth grade, me and my
entire class had a week-long creative writing assignment wherein we had to write a five-part story about how kidnappers had abducted our class during a field trip and stranded us in our choice of: the north pole, the Sahara desert, the Amazon rain forest; with only a swiss army knife, some rope, pencils and paper, a cigarette lighter, several army blankets, and our bag lunches. We were not only
allowed but actually
encouraged to kill off anyone we wanted (In a 26 person class, incidentally, I died 20 times. Which was frankly quite good. People didn't hate me, they just thought I made an interesting death scene.) while we MacGyvered our way back to civilization (My well-known MacGyvering skills are what kept me alive in the remaining six stories).
Furthermore, in my sixth grade reading class, we were ordered to write a horror story in which a fellow classmate was the victim. I think we were actually *assigned* victims, because I only got murdered once, by the same guy who I had fall victim to Kent Island's infamous and much missed Pac Man Tree (see below).
Thus, in Kentucky, I would have not once but *twice* committed a felony, under orders from my school. Seriously.]
[All through my youth, there was an old tree that stood by the side of MD-8 in Stevensville, Maryland, my hometown. Because electicity and telephone service relies on these overhead wire things, some wires had to run through the space in which the tree stood. Because the tree was sufficiently old to be Historically Signifigant, it could not be chopped down to make way for the wires. So a big notch was cut out of the tree's very large and round and unusually symmetric crown, which was pruned yearly to keep the tree's natural desire to have its crown be round and symmetric from pulling down the power lines. So as you were cruising down the main (read: only) road that got you from the north bit of the island to the south bit (and vice versa), you would pass this tree with a big, round, green crown with a big chunk missing such that it looked exactly like the tree was about to eat the power lines. Many people noted the resemblance to the famous video game character, and thus, insofar as anyone ever needed to refer to the tree by name (I am possibly the only person who ever needed to do this, since I wrote a story [see above] about it coming to life and eating one of my classmates), the tree was called, "The Pac-Man tree". Sadly, in the late 1990s, the Pac-Man tree was knocked down by a bad ice storm that also put an anonymous tree through the side of my parents' house and through the windshield of my dad's car. It was not a good year for trees. The Pac-Man tree is no more, but on the spot where it once stood now stands the Pac-Man Tree Memorial Coffee and Smoothie Chuckwagon. Only I'm the only one who calls it that.]
[Length of the footnote now exceeds length of the article. Beat that, Garrison Keillor [.5 points].]
So remember kids, Nudity is bad. Violence is okay. As long as schools aren't involved.
And don't go pissing off any Zombies
or trees.
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