For Sale By Owner, Cheap!!

The houding market here is bursting fast. It seems like every other house on some streets is for sale, but no one will buy them at the still inflated prices being asked. I have heard from a source in the mortgage department of a large bank here that there are fewer people than ever applying to purchase a new home, and almost none applying to construct a home. Since construction is among this state's biggest industries, this means the construction companies are out of work, so they are laying people off. It looks to me like the economy of this state is being held in a death-roll by the housing bubble.

A Quiet Leaving

According to Mum, a lot of her neighbors are disturbed enough about the general social climate here that they have quietly moved out of the country. Mostly to Israel. She knows of fifteen families so far who were creeped-out enough in suburban Florida to get the heck out and go to a safer war zone.

Paul went back North for work and because it's safer for him there. I didn't feel safe there after the second shooting, but he is less of a target for being gay there than here. Random bombs and crazy lone gunmen are less of a threat for most people than the social miasma this place is in.

Zombie soldiers in Iraq?

According to a source with battlefield knowledge of the war in Iraq, the US soldiers have been finding syringes with large-bore, very long needles in the insurgents' encampments. These aren't ordinary needles like you might use to shoot insulin or anti-tetanus serum into someone's arm; they are the kind of needle that doctors will use to pierce the sternum to inject adrenalin directly into the heart of a dying drug overdose victim.

The soldiers that the needles appear to have been used on are not ordinary, either. They can be shot several times and they will just keep coming, impervious to pain and the normal debilitation from blood loss. If they aren't physically knocked down by a bullet, they will continue to fight until they drop dead. And if they are not shot, they will fight until they drop dead anyway, with no visible injuries. Whatever is in the drug cocktail they're getting shot into their chest cavity, it makes them super-strong, super-tough, and then it kills them.

Chillingly, there is suspicion that the men who are being "zombified" in this way are not volunteers. They are being conscripted, having their consciousness altered somehow, and turned loose to fight under the influence of some drug that will kill them even if the US soldiers don't.

Forteana in Virtual Worlds

...In video games, anyway.


Excerpt:

It was a true world’s end, where only crude and unpredictable physics applied.

Walking along this rugged landscape, I came to a narrow chasm. As it was impassable, I jumped into it, and found that it actually formed the mouth of a cave leading underground.

Down I went, and at the end of the cave I found—a pile of human corpses.

Eight bodies lying in a stack makes for a hair-raising find on its own. But truly disturbing was that they were all identified as minor characters, at least some of whom I knew were still “alive” elsewhere in the game.3 Imagine finding a graveyard of clones of people you know. That’s what I experienced.

I leave speculation about Fortean phenomena in the real world to the reader.

...And Here It Comes!

Violent Teen Shoould Be Humanely Euthanized

This letter comes from Florida, no less, an hour's drive from here. I really do have a front-row seat. And I have been hearing people saying this in face-to-face conversations, too. I expect it to increase.

Forecast Regarding Prisons

We're going to see a lot of political push to expand the death penalty to crimes other than murder, as well as more talk about getting tougher on incarcerated criminals. We're also going to see unprecedented growth in the for-profit private prison industry, which will be widely regarded as a "good job-creator for small towns."

In the for-profit prisons, initially there will be some minor scandals about cost-cutting by doing things like reducing food allowances and medical care. I can already foresee them cutting out a meal a day ("cuts calories as well, no need for them to get fat on our dime") and progressing to a day a week without food ("even cheaper, we don't need to have the cafeteria staff in that day").
The scandals will soon wane as people get accustomed to the new normal; and besides, "nobody needs to worry about it but criminals."

Currently, the mass mind has decided that criminals can not be rehabilitated. We are even seeing a resurgence of theories about "criminality" being a heritable trait, along with other "anatomy is destiny, you are your genetic makeup and that's that" lines of thought.

Many people are starting from a belief that criminals are criminals because their genes make them criminals, and who therefore believe they themselves are non-criminal due to inherent genetic superiority. This makes "criminal" a class of "other" toward which they feel neither empathy nor ethical responsibility. In this psycho-social environment, especially if we come to a time of scarcity, conditions are likely to result in deliberate killing, as well as exploitation for things like unpaid labor.

Cheap Food is Over

Think you're feeling more of a pinch in your grocery bill? You're right.

What happens, socially, when an affluent population starts starving?