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Last month, a Milwaukee county employee walked into a house that had been repossessed because of a tax foreclosure and found a very disturbing sight: a dead body. It turned out to be the former home owner, David Carter, who had been in the dead in the house since 2007. Yikes. His body was "nearly skeletonized," and showed evidence of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Apparently, Carter, who would have turned 45 on the day his body was found, died in the home and no one noticed or thought to check on his whereabouts. He'd told friends he was moving to New Mexico; so people assumed he didn't live in the house anymore. Still, you'd think someone would inquire after him, but no. Eventually, the utilities were turned off after a neighbor noticed a broken pipe, and the mail was stopped because it was piling up. But nobody ever checked inside. Why would anyone do something simple like that? Silly! There wasn't even a mortgage company to come calling since Carter's mother had paid the house off; so it wasn't until the taxes grew to more than $30,000 that someone came by to see what was up, because $30,000 is the exact number, apparently, when people begin to give a shit. More »
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Something very strange and very creepy is afoot Los Angeles. Yesterday afternoon two women and their nine dogs were hiking beneath the iconic Hollywood sign that overlooks the city when they made a gruesome discovery: the severed head of a man in a plastic bag. Karen Rayner, a spokesperson for the LAPD, described the way the disturbing find came about: More »
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For the past 17 months a giant hole has been dug in front of the White House, leaving the pipes below the Oval Office exposed. It's one of Michelle's damn nutrition-police gardens gone awry, isn't it? Er, no. Government agencies insist they're just updating the building's air-conditioning and electrical systems, which for some reason necessitates tight-lipped construction workers filing in and out of the hole, and lowering huge concrete blocks several stories underground. But that's just how they do heating and cooling in D.C.! Or is it? More »
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Wednesday night, V magazine threw a party to launch its latest issue at the Standard hotel in Manhattan's meatpacking district. Men were asked to wear tuxedoes, ladies were asked to take dress code inspiration from Elizabeth Taylor, and Alexander Wang — whose moves none other than Ryan McGinley has praised — hit the dance floor. Crystal Renn and Courtney Love were there. Then someone had to be carried out bleeding on a stretcher by FDNY medics. More »
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Friday we posted a film clip from 1945, in which women were pummeled and prodded by machines. On Saturday, we received a fascinating email regarding said video. More »
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More than a thousand blackbirds fell from the sky over an Arkansas town, and no one knows why. Wild, rampant speculation time! More »
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A cache of hundreds of Roald Dahl's letters have come to light - but from where? Says the author's biographer, "The guy who owns the letters is old and very keen to stay out of the limelight." Mystery! [Telegraph] More »
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Two previously unknown Hercule Poirot short stories have been found in one of Agatha Christie's homes. They will be included in the upcoming Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making. [Guardian] More »
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If you haven't read any Sarah Waters? Lady, are you in for a page-turning, spine-tingling, word-smithing, sexy treat! Four words: lesbian historical ghost stories. More »
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In a time when we all need comfort, publishers roll out The Complete Miss Marple — and the stealth sage of St. Mary Mead gets her due. More »
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We've recently become fixated on Connie Converse, a 1950s folk singer whose work has just been rediscovered. Converse, who'd long since given up her musical dreams, disappeared in 1974. [NPR] More »
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Greenway, Agatha Christie's 18th-century Georgian country home, has been restored and opened to the public, exactly as it was when it served as the inspiration for a number of the author's mysteries. [AP] More »
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If you've ever wondered at a dynamic that allows both mother and daughter to pursue competing careers as suspense-writers and also regularly collaborate, well, you'll get a charge out of NPR's interview with the Higgins-Clarks. More »
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• A pair of goodwill pandas arrived in Taiwan from China on Tuesday, a sign of improving relations between the two countries.• More »
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Agatha Christie's fan base is as devoted to the legend of the notoriously press-shy writer as to her large body of mysteries, not least because of the dearth of personal information available. As such, her grandson's recent discovery of a cache of scratchy audio tapes Christie made later in life is a veritable literary windfall. The tapes, probably intended as the basis for a memoir, are a wealth of information on the author's life and work. Also something of a time machine; says Christie’s biographer, "Nobody sounds like that anymore. She’s old England. She sounds like an Edwardian, like a gentlewoman, like a lady. It’s as though she’s suspended in an early-20th-century world where the social order is intact, and murder is only conducted in a socially acceptable arena — arsenic in the crumpets, or something.'” [NY Times] More »
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Let me spin you a yarn. The time: August, 2005. The Place: Canal Street, Manhattan, New York, NY, USA, North America, Earth, The Galaxy. It was late afternoon, very hot, and for those who are not familiar with the crowded knockoff-Coach mecca that is this corner of lower Manhattan, crowded and unpleasant. Anyway, I was trying to walk along a packed sidewalk when my progress was blocked by an altercation between a tourist (I think European) and the older woman who ran the kiosk. Here is what the latter woman was yelling: "You said 'fuck you' to me? You said 'fuck you' to me? Say it again your pants come off! SAY IT AGAIN YOUR PANTS COME OFF!" Then a younger woman came out and held her back...from pulling off her pants? More »
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The Jimi Hendrix Sex Tape: has there ever been such a majestic parade of thoughtlings you never wanted to think? And the Hendrix estate having no comment: that means it's true, right? Or just that when you die your level of "shame" sinks down to Paris Hilton's? How did all those private detectives embark upon their "probe"? (I mean, private investigators: they can't get jobs like this a lot, right? It's pretty obscure shit. Think that in the course of this investigation, they uncovered some Lost Art of Boomer Sex Taping that predated the present Sex Tape era but everyone forgot because they were high, the way it went with the Chinese/gunpowder/opium? Will we ever know for sure? What was the first sex tape? If someone taped you having your haziest one night stand, unbeknownst to you, and then posted it on the internet, would you even be able to recognize yourself? And if the answer to that is "no," is that a good thing? Because my answer is no. Oh wait, and also am I the only one who didn't know there was a plaster model of Jimi Hendrix's schlong? The somewhat NSFW trailer is after the jump. More »
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