I read this morning that a man in Christchurch has been arrested because two bodies have been found buried at his property.
One of the bodies is that of the man's own wife, reported as missing last Sunday. The other is suspected to be that of Tisha Lowry, a 28 year old woman who went missing on 25 September last year. Ms Lowry lived two houses away from the property where the bodies have now been found.
The lawyer for the man who has been taken into custody says that "mental health issues" are involved.
No! You don't say?
I'm concerned about the amount of madness out there. Are you?
For example, students across the nation are going mad, and attacking each other with claws and baseball bats. You will have heard about the incidents involving the invasion of a school classroom in Wellington and the near-riot on a rugby pitch in Auckland, but did you know that 30-40 schoolgirls were involved in a brawl at Lower Hutt's Westfield Mall on Friday? ("One witness described seeing some of the students from rival schools in the Hutt Valley having blood on their school uniforms.")
It's a worry.
I have often written here about people who are at least a bit mad. For example:
* John Barlow (see http://tm2.co.nz/forums/forum4/614.html), is obviously crazy. Virtually anyone who has met him can tell you that. Presumably insanity has never been used as an defence because Barlow's vanity won't permit it. But anyone who can piss off the Parole Board to the point that, despite the fact that he's a model prisoner, they won't reduce his sentence by a single day has some very serious issues.
* Peter Robb (see http://tm2.co.nz/forums/forum73/639.html) is another suitable case for treatment, poor fellow.
Gee, I can find only two. Well, how about this one, cribbed from a book I was listing for sale on trademe today:
"Organic gardening is firmly linked to a swelling tide of public apprehension that through greed and folly we have already placed all future life in jeopardy. This book encourages and helps home gardeners who would like to discard inorganic methods and instead cultivate their plots more naturally."
Whoever wrote that first sentence (actually, there's no mystery about it: it was a journalist named Noel Chappell, aka "Jonathan Spade", who wrote a gardening column in the New Zealand Herald in the 1980s) was at least a bit nuts.
My question is this: why can't mad people be encouraged to dress and/or behave in some manner which immediately distinguishes them as belonging to this merry sub-group of people in society? This could have enormous benefits for humankind. For example:
* Would schoolboy invasions and schoolgirl brawls work if those involved had to - say - wear pinafores and hop throughout each violent episode?
* Would Tisha Lowry have allowed herself to be murdered by her neighbour if had he been wearing a clown's outfit?
* Would the two men murdered by John Barlow have had their last meeting with him if Barlow had been wearing his underpants outside his trousers?
* Would anyone ever vote Labour again, let alone listen to her, if Helen Clark had to disclose how much loathing and contempt she has for New Zealand and New Zealanders every time she set out to read us another lecture?
* Would the Wehrmacht have invaded Russia in 1941 if Hitler had been allowed to chew carpet all the time, instead of on special occasions, like his birthday, or when someone had just tried to blow him to bits?
How to stem a "swelling tide of public apprehension": grow some organic vegetables. #3429556 in a series of Handy Hints for the Ages. #3429557 - How to deal with incoming asteroids: blow very big soap bubbles at them. #3429558 - How to deal with global warming: take four lemon-flavoured ice-cubes... [contd p.94]
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