O'Day on Seahawks Shooting, 1 Dead

A former Playboy Playmate broke another shooting story this morning. (Click here for more on the concurrent East Coast shooting, "Webster Shooting: 2 Volunteer Firefighters  & Shooter Dead."

The Seahawks After Party at Munchbar Bellevue (in Washington State) was the site of a multiple shooting at 1:00 am, early morning Christmas Eve Day, December 24, 2012.

This occurred following the victory of the NFL's Seahawks professional football team vs the San Francisco 49ers, 42 to 13, clinching the Seahawks' berth in the playoffs.

One individual was reported dead, with, at least, three others injured. Rumors are circulating that another fatality has occurred.

All the Seahawks players there, reportedly, were said to be safe.

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Update: Bellevue Police have identified 19 year-old, Ja’mari Alexander Alan Jones as a suspect and obtained a warrant for his arrest. The shooter remains at-large, and is believed to be armed and dangerous, according to the Bellevue Reporter.

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A main source of inside-the-party events were first picked up by the media from the tweets of Aubrey Morgan O'Day (b. February 11, 1984). The former Playboy Playmate, and reality television and shorts performer (The Aubrey O'Day Show, All About Aubrey, Celebrity Apprentice, Making the Band 3 + 4, Ed Hardy Boyz 2: The Case of When That Hot Filipina Girl Lost Her Tramp Stamp at Mini-Golf, and others) was there with the Seahawks to celebrate.

It is intriguing in the days of Twitter, this social media exchange became a detailed reference point for the incident.

O'Day's tweets (@AubreyODay) moved from her descriptions of "dancing on tables in Hawks VIP" in a "Niners jersey" to the horror of the shooting.

O'Day wrote:

never been n a situation like that. Every1 was screaming on the floor, we had to crawl out the kitchen. Sea, someone tell me what happened?
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Shit is crazy. I'm telling you. Everyone was on the floor. People got shot. WTF.
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Seriously ppl just got shot n front of me. We hit the ground, never been in a situation like this. For real. Seattle, what's going on?!
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So sad.

Beside the Seahawks there, O'Day tweeted:

there as well as some WSU football players

O'Day said security got her out. As she describes, most people dived to the floored, and then crawled out through the kitchen. Others tweeting her told of a man on the ground, with "blood everywhere."

Update: A 30-year-year old Seattle man was said to be killed and other man wounded. The suspect escaped among the crowd of 600 at the Seahawks festive event.

At Seahawks shooting scene

Munchbar is a chain. Here's what the one in Las Vegas promotes as package experience:

*Guns subject to availability

Start your adventure on the gun range at Machine Guns Vegas, where you’ll fire the HK MP5, made famous by Her Majesty’s Secret Air Service, and the Sig P226, designed for the U.S. Army and carried by U.S. Navy SEALs.

You’ll be hungry from concentrating on targets as you send rounds down range, so we’ll take you over to Munchbar at Ceasar’s Palace, where you’ll dine on the best burgers in Las Vegas. Munchbar is located next to the Sports Bar and Pure Night Club in Caesars Palace, and combines culinary creativity and high-caliber ingredients with wholesome comfort food in an electric atmosphere.

$163.00 per person

Your MGV shoot includes:

Transportation to MGV and drop off at Munchbar

MP5: 25 rounds

Sig 226: 5 rounds

Targets: X3

T – shirt

Note: Some bloggers are incorrectly spelling the Bellevue bar/restaurant/music hotspot as "Munch Bar." Technically, it's name is"Munchbar Bellevue," and it adjoins the Mirror. The Munchbar is known locally as a regular gathering site for the Seahawks.

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More details will be updated as this story develop.

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Former MLB Player Ryan Freel Dies by Suicide

Ryan Freel was born on Monday, March 8, 1976, in Jacksonville, Florida. Freel was 25 years old when he broke into the big leagues on April 4, 2001, with the Toronto Blue Jays. ~ Baseball Almanac

Jacksonville native Ryan Freel, 36, a former professional baseball player, died by in his home on Saturday, December 22, 2012.

Freel was discovered deceased from a self-inflicted shotgun blast which occurred around 4:00 p.m. at his Brookchase Lane home in Jacksonville, Florida.

On June 28, Freel was named the baseball coach at the St. Joseph Academy, but later withdrew from taking the position.

A Jacksonville native, Freel grew up in Jacksonville, played Little League baseball in Arlington and was a star high school baseball player at Englewood and Sandalwood high schools.

Freel was selected by Toronto in the 10th round of the 1995 draft out of Tallahassee Community College and played in the Blue Jays farm system six seasons before his major league debut in 2001. Freel’s best stretch was a six-year run with the Cincinnati Reds. He was a career .268 hitter with 143 stolen bases. Source.

The Cincinnati Reds, where Freel played from 2003-2008, released the following statement:

The Reds family is deeply saddened to hear of the death of Ryan Freel. His teammates and our fans loved him for how hard he played the game, and he loved giving back to the community. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends.

USA Today noted that,

He was hit in the head with a pickoff throw in 2009, an injury that put him on the disabled list. Two years earlier he went on the disabled list for five weeks with head and neck injuries after colliding in the outfield with Norris Hopper. He said at the time that he'd had "probably nine or 10" concussions in his life.

Baseball player suicides are not as rare as one assumes, and my study of them in the mid-1980s predicted a wave of self-deaths in 1989. Half of the suicide victims were pitchers, and all of those during the 20th century were right-handed.

Ryan Freel is survived by his wife, Christie, and three young daughters. Our condolences to his family and friends.

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Update: Altoona Shooting, 4 Dead, Shooter Id'ed, Victim Id'ed

Altoona is called the "Mountain City." Having a population of 46,320, it is a rural city in Blair County, Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania officials said a deadly shooting in Altoona, Pennsylavia, left four people dead and two Pennsylvania State Troopers injured, CBS Pittsburgh reports.

Blair County District Attorney Rich Consiglio says three people were shot Friday morning along a rural road in the Altoona-Hollidaysburg area of Frankstown Township, about 70 miles west of Harrisburg.

Consiglio says two men and a woman were shot and killed and the suspected male gunman is also dead.

The troopers were shot, but are expected to survive. They reportedly shot and killed the suspect. Apparently, the suspect was on a rural road in the Altoona area, shooting randomly.

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USA Today gave these updated details:

The woman was slain about 9 a.m. at Juniata Valley Gospel Church in Geeseytown, near Hollidaysburg, in central Pennsylvania, The Altoona Mirror says. The gunman fired through the church hall's windows, killing the woman as she and another woman decorated for a children's Christmas party, the Rev. James McCaulley told the Mirror. The second woman was not hurt.
The state police have not identified any of the victims or the gunman. McCaulley identified the dead woman as Kimberly A. Scott, 58, of Duncansville. Citing sources, the Mirror also identifies the gunman as Jeffrey Lee Michael, 26, of Hollidaysburg. [Age correction? The gunman is Jeffrey Lee Michael, 44, of Hollidaysburg, noted the Mirror later.]
At a news conference, State Police Deputy Commissioner Lt. Col. George Bivens said the gunman then killed a man at a nearby residence. Fleeing, he later crashed head on into another car and shot the driver dead. Farther down the road, the gunman crashed head on into a trooper's car and began shooting when he got out. Three troopers returned fire, killing him, said state police spokeswoman Marla Finn.

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Enki notes:

The recent rash of red dawn events has overlapped with the theatrical run of Red Dawn and the holiday shopping season, so Hollidaysburg is a synchromystically significant place name. You noted that Scrabble was developed by a Newtown resident. Interestingly, another traditional Christmas gift for children, Slinky, is manufactured in Hollidaysburg.

Emphasis added.

Thanks to initial news tip from T.C.

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If A Mayan Knocks...

"Just to be safe, don't let any strangers wearing feathered headdresses into your home for the next 24 hours," tweeted, on Thursday morning, by a Mexican friend going by the handle Red Pill Junkie (RPJ).

Okay. That's worth a nervous bit of laughter. 

So I searched for an appropriate image to go with RPJ's comment. Though not colorful, this first one I found (below) struck me. But I had not visualized a dwarf when I read RPJ's line. So why a little person, I asked myself?

Mayan Dwarf, AD 550-850 (Late Classic), Walter Arts Museum:

Dwarfs were important members of royal Maya courts. They are portrayed serving food, playing musical instruments, holding sacred objects for the ruler, and as diviners and scribes. Their elevated social roles were steeped in cosmology and religious mythology, especially that of the maize god, who was assisted by a dwarf when the deity set the Three Stones of the cosmic hearth at the beginning of Creation. The Classic Maya viewed dwarfs as the living embodiment of the maize god's supernatural helpers, who continued their sacred duty in the regal court. Maya peoples today believe that earlier creations were populated by a race of dwarfs who now reside inside the earth, living below the ruins of the ancient cities. The ornate turban worn by this dwarf is typical of the courtly garb of key individuals serving the ruler. This so-called spangled turban headdress is especially connected to gods and humans associated with Creation and scribal duties. A curious feature of this dwarf is what may be a halved cacao pod held in his right hand. His cheeks are covered with what appears to be a thin, woven fabric; this recalls other figurines, many of which are dwarfs, with an unidentifiable material plastered to the lower half of their face. These features suggest the depiction of a formal rite. The graceful rendering of this figure and the exceptional attention to detail reveal the work of a master artist.

I pasted in the above paragraph, because this public domain image definitely needed explanation. Then I went back to Twitter to double-check RPJ's exact "headdress" wording, to make certain I had typed it correctly.

I don't know why I should be surprised, but here's what RPJ also posted soon after his first one, but I had not seen it: "In case a weird dwarf knocks on the door, have a pen in hand...."

That's sync-linking working on parallel planes, I'd say. (For more on the twilight language of suicidal dwarfs, see here.) At the top is a Yaxchilan ballplayer shown with two dwarfs.

During my undergraduate college years, I actually worked with Robert L. Rands, Ph. D., one of the first modern era archaeologist to work at Palenque. Hundreds of sherds later, I had great respect for what he would find there, even though it was not as exciting as what Mayan conspiracy theorists see in his results.

What do I really think about the supposed Mayan calendar business, with all the melodrama about the end of the world coming tomorrow? This morning, my interview on the topic, with Dangerous Minds' columnist Thomas McGrath, appeared in "The Eve of Destruction? DM Talks 'End Times' with Loren Coleman, America's Unlikely Cassandra."

And finally, if you missed it, check out Boing Boing friend David Pescovitz's December 20th contribution, "The Future, As Imagined by Hollywood."

If you are going to go Mayan, you might as well do it in style, a la' The Blade Runner.

Okay. Everyone seems to be tired of the Mayans. Time to move on the Olmec?

A Vera Cruz Olmec figurine holding a skull and wearing an eagle headdress associated with the Olmec death cult and human sacrifice rituals. 

And, won't you know it, here is an Olmec dwarf.

Source.

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What's Next? Beyond Newtown and the Mayan Calendar

As we all creep towards Friday, and the first week anniversary of the Newtown, Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and the alleged end of the Mayan calendar, it is time to pause. To look back and forward.

Counting Victims as Victims, Not Killers' Body Counts

First off, what is wrong with the general ability of people to count? Twenty-six wreaths, twenty-six candles, even twenty-six flares.

But, at Newtown, on that horrific day of violence, 28 people died. Twenty children at the school, six teachers and staff at the school, the shooter's mother at her home, and the shooter by his own hand at the school. Twenty-eight. 28. There is no reason to de-humanize Nancy Lanza and Adam Lanza by not counting them.

Adam Lanza, 20, Death #28.

Adam Lanza, sixth grade.

Bretton Woods

Breaking news today was that Adam Lanza was alone in the days leading up to the Newstown shooting, when his mother had traveled to Bretton Woods Resort, New Hampshire, to take a mini-vacation. Adam Lanza was was unsupervised for two and a half days with his mom’s guns before Friday’s massacre, according to a new report from HLN.

"Nancy Lanza had only just arrived back at her home Thursday evening, following a two-night trip to Bretton Woods, New Hampshire," according to CNN.

HLN reports "that Lanza checked into the Omni Mount Washington Resort at 12:10 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 11, and checked out at 12:27 p.m. on Thursday. The drive between Bretton Woods, NH and Lanza’s hometown of Newtown takes nearly five hours and clocks in at just under 300 miles."

The Mount Washington Hotel and Resort is one in the last surviving New Hampshire grand hotels.

The Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, was recently mentioned on Olive Stone's The Untold History of the United States. Preparing to rebuild the international economic system as World War II was still raging, 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations gathered at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States, for the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference. The delegates deliberated during 1–22 July 1944, and signed the Agreement on its final day. This historic Bretton Woods conference in 1944 that laid the groundwork for the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

The hotel was featured in an episode of the television series Ghost Hunters, when it was searched by the TAPS paranormal investigation team on February 6, 2008. I was a guest of Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson at two TAPS conferences held at this elegant hotel, and I spoke in the same grand ballroom where the 1944 Bretton Woods conference occurred. (In 2011, George Soros convened Bretton Woods II.)

Video Games Debate...Again

How about the video games played by Adam Lanza? Over-the-top comments have been posted on the web about Lanza playing various video games nonstop. But the recent concentrated discussion of his alleged obsession with one specific game, according to my consultant CCCC, fails to take into account that "Starcraft is a strategy game and only one of the races even uses guns (the other two are insectoid and psionic). That's the media though."

Coming Copycat Incident At A Sporting Event?

My friend and research associate Jerome Clark passed along the following from Esquire's   Daily Politics Blog by Charles P. Pierce:

Since 9/11, more than a few administrators, coaches and athletes have expressed to me the concern that one of their events may be used for a statement by one of our many sociopaths with a motive, political or otherwise. (This has a little to do with the fact that so many of our athletes have armed themselves.) After all, these are people whose lives depend on regularly scheduled mass events. And, while major events like the Olympics and the Super Bowl are thick with security, the average major college football or basketball game is not, and an incident at one of those would be just as devastating. (Boeheim's teams average over 30,000 people per game.) The people involved in our games have been talking among themselves about this for years. [Syracuse coach Jim] Boeheim wasn't just talking gun policy there. He was talking about workplace violence, and good for him.

I have had similar thought. It does seem fortunate that the USA has not suffered a "Black Sunday"-type terrorist incident, to date, especially after Black Sunday appeared as a novel by Thomas Harris in 1975, and a successful film directed by John Frankenheimer in 1977.

On a smaller scale, I too have been quietly cautioning that the copycat shooters appear to be moving from school, workplace, and postal shootings to church, mall, and theater violence, then returning to school venues, often, as their captive "fishbowl" theaters of murder. These, of course, are frequently followed by the actual purpose of the shooting - the suicide or suicide-by-cop of the shooter. 

I have been aware that sporting events - baseball games, football contests, and other large audience confined stadium events - may be the next "target."

It was especially disturbing to see that in The Dark Knight Rises, it was at a football game where Bane declared the beginning of the chaos that would destroy Gotham City. And then it began there.

I have wondered if a self-fulfilling agent of the media-driven sensationalistic interest in the alleged "End of the World" on Dec. 21 will result in chaotic events on Friday, or blowback frustrated incidents on Dec. 22-23, needless to say, at sporting events, as well as other locations?

I certainly hope not, but I would warn all public safety agencies be on the alert.

Be safe, be aware.

The Copycat Effect Continues

"Suicides, murder-suicides, and murders – the events that are at the core of the most negative projections of the copycat effect -- will remain newsworthy in the eyes of the media in the foreseeable future and will continue to be reported." ~ The Copycat Effect, 2004.

Here is one of my seven recommendations in The Copycat Effect:

The media must cease its graphic and sensationalized wall-to-wall commentary and coverage of violent acts and the details of the actual methods and places where they occur. Photographs of murder victims, tapes of people jumping off bridges, and live shots of things like car chases ending in deadly crashes, for example, merely glamorize these deaths, and create models for others – down to the method, the place, the timing, and the type of individual involved. Even fictional entertainment, such as the screening of The Deer Hunter, provides vivid copycatting stimuli for vulnerable, unstable, angry, and depressed individuals.

History and Hope Again

I am not about to pick sides in a debate that appears to not understand that the solution to lessen future violent incidents like what happened at Newtown will be multifaceted. But it is intriguing to look back at another "Newtown" massacre, and see what happened.

There once was another Newtown in the news. The another New Town is on the other side of the globe. On April 28, 1996, a gunman from New Town, Australia, opened fire on tourists in Port Arthur, Tasmania, killing 35 people and wounded 23 more. It only took the government of Australia less than two week to announce a bipartisan deal to enact gun control measures. There have been no mass killings since then. Source.

The Wall Street Journal for December 18, 2012, published an article entitled, "Guns, Mental Illness and Newtown" by David Kopel. In that article that mentioned the historical context of the focus of my book:

Loren Coleman's 2004 book The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow's Headlines shows that the copycat effect is as old as the media itself. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 1774 classic The Sorrows of Young Werther triggered a spate of copycat suicides all over Europe. But today the velocity and pervasiveness of the media make the problem much worse.

For Critics of My Book and This Blog

In my book I spoke to the future critics who would question why I would gather a collection of copycat events:

I know that the copycat effect does not propagate well in an environment in which the hidden is made manifest. Now that we understand and know there is a problem, the protective factor is the realization that there are things that can be done to stop it.
My hope, of course, is that [my] book [and blog] might stir up a much needed debate on the subject and hopefully lead to social change, to a change in how the media handles these stories, to put the brakes on the copycat effect. Our future—our children’s future—is at stake.
It is not too late to change what is going on. In the end, the point of the copycat effect does not lie in the details of the individual incidents but in its spread....
The time has come for someone to say, stop it. Stop sensationalizing the violence. Stop triggering violent behaviors now.

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The Twilight Language of Nigel Kneale

One of the most influential television writers of the 20th century and the writer of one of the most important motion pictures in Yeti cryptofiction died six years ago. Now a mysterious book of his life has appeared..

   

That would be Nigel Kneale, here pictured from the 1950s. At the Hammer Film's site, in a remembrance there, writer Robert Simpson shared the news of Kneale's death.

Tom Kneale (better known as Nigel Kneale) died on Sunday 29 October 2006 aged 84. To many he was the godfather of television science fiction, a literary genius, and one whose work for Hammer Film Productions was of immeasurable importance to the development of the company. Established myth has Kneale born on the Isle of Man in April 1922, and although he grew up on the island, he was in fact born in Lancashire, England. Kneale spent time as an actor and a writer of prose before commencing work as a scriptwriter for the BBC. It was whilst at the BBC in the early 1950s that Nigel Kneale wrote the ground-breaking serial The Quatermass Experiment. It was event television, emptying the streets and pubs for the six weeks of its duration. Hammer director Anthony Hinds saw the first episode, and by the time of the second instalment's broadcast, had secured a deal with the BBC for Hammer to make a film version.

 

  Here is Kneale, shown in 2002. 

Simpson detailed most of his column with background on The Quatermass Experiment television series, and the movies of the same name, directed by Val Guest. But for one paragraph, Kneale is remembered for the reason he is most significant to me.

   

 Simpson wrote:

Kneale also adapted his own BBC serial The Creature for Hammer as The Abominable Snowman in 1957 and wrote the final script for Joan Fontaine vehicle The Witches in 1966. Hammer Film Productions' Chairman Larry Chrisfield said "He made a huge contribution to Hammer's  history and we are greatly indebted to him." 

 The Abominable Snowman, also known as The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas is one of those remarkable films that captures so many levels of the cryptozoological pursuit of the Yeti. It has a status similar to Half Human (1955 in Japan, 1957 in the USA), in my mind, and elevated the story of the Snowman above the level of other 1950s movies, such as The Snow Creature (1954) and Man Beast (1956), which had more in common with drive-in theater fare.

   

The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas is the story of an English botanist, Dr. John Rollason (played with extreme intelligent by Peter Cushing) who agrees to go on an American expedition lead by Tom Friend (Forrest Tucker), who is at first covertly looking for the Yeti. As it turns out, the Friend character is out to kill and/or capture the Yeti.

   

The curse of the Snowman dogs the expedition after the trapper Ed Shelley (Robert Brown) kills one of the creatures, as he and others die throughout the film. I won't spoil the movie if you haven't seen it, but the portrayal of the Yeti comes out far better than that of the ugly American characterizations.

 

Especially interesting to me is a question I have never had answered: Was the character of the American Yeti hunter and exploiter "Tom Friend" (shown above next to the film's Yeti body) based, in some part, on the real Texan Yeti hunter Tom Slick.

Slick received a good deal of mass media attention from the mid-1950s through the beginning of his February 1957 expedition. The fact he was bringing guns, was accused by the Chinese of spying, and in general a "rich American" looking for the Abominable Snowman got the attention of such press outlets as Time Magazine, Newsweek, Reuters, and The New York Times. Since the movie was based on a teleplay, which would have been very responsive to current events, I think there is a direct link here between "Friend" and Slick.

The English character Dr. John Rollason carries Kneale's dialogue that killing a Yeti by this cold-blooded American ("Tom Friend") is not the greatest idea in the world. This was a common perception that was being expressed in the 1950s' British and Indian press when mentioning the forthcoming Yeti hunts of Tom Slick.

Slick was discussed rather chillingly as an "American millionaire" out to catch a Yeti and a person who pushed hard to obtain special permits from Nepal to shoot one in self-defense, if it came to that. It does not take a deep reading of the media at the time to see that concerns were being raised about Slick's definition of "personal safety."

   

To me, every time I watch The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas, I see one way that Tom Slick was viewed in 1957, and it serves as a significant historical window on how people were against the American search for the Yeti in the Fifties.

I don't have the book in hand, and am having some difficulty ordering it. But if I find a way, I'll be picking this up.

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Shootings: Mayan Theater, Macy's, Newtown, Aurora, Media Madness, and Connecting the Dots

Tucson, Aurora, Oak Creek, Sandy Hook: If it feels like the End is Near, in large part it has much to do with the fearful, the vulnerable, the suicidal-homicidal who are causing self-fulfilling End of the World prophecy events to come true. The red dawns are all around us, and awareness is important. While we must be alert, we should not live in fear.

The latest event involves a "Mayan" location, and it hardly seems coincidental.

Breaking News: Mayan theater shooting occurred late on December 16th.

Two men were transported with unknown injuries following a shooting near the Santikos Mayan Palace 14 theater complex late Sunday. The shooting ended with a deputy shooting the suspected gunman, confirmed Lu Antu, Bexar County Sheriff's Office spokesman. The shooting occurred just before 9:30 p.m. Sunday.
Antu said the suspected shooter shot a man at nearby China Garden, located in the parking lot of the 1900 block of South West Military Drive. The shooting then moved toward the Mayan movie theater [at about 10:40 pm], where an off-duty Bexar County Sheriff's Office deputy working security saw the suspected gunman armed.
Antu said the deputy shot and hit the suspected gunman. Both shooting victims were not immediately identified by Antu. The Bexar County Sheriff's Office is the lead agency in the case, he said. Source.

Movies playing at this San Antonio Mayan theater range from Red Dawn to Playing for Keeps, from The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn to The Hobbit.

With the so-called Mayan Apocalypse looming large in the week ahead, the name of this theater is hard to ignore.

Enki writes:

There has been speculation that anxiety about the upcoming Mayan "end date" has been a contributing factor to the recent rash of shootings, so it is interesting that this event ended with the gunman's being shot near the Santikos Mayan Palace 14 theater. The Southwest Military Drive address seems interesting, as well. Those who read my essay "An Alchemical Dawn," which Loren published on this blog last month, may recall that I mentioned the area southwest of Dallas as a place to watch. San Antonio is to the south and west of Dallas. The Santikos Mayan Palace 14 is currently showing Red Dawn.

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Meanwhile, the Newtown news continues, with nearly complete wall-to-wall coverage and cut-ins on television programs occurring with "breaking developments." Some old links are being developed.

Past Ponderings

"... ain't found a way to kill me yet-

yeah, they come to snuff the rooster..."

-Alice in Chains, Rooster

Connecticut (connect/cut) executed New England's first "witch," Alse Young, in 1647.

Part of the movie Adam's Rib was filmed in Newtown. Adam's Rib is a 1949 American film written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin (who owned a farm in Newstown, Connecticut, used as the location for some scenes) and directed by George Cukor. The movie starts with Doris Attinger (Judy Holliday) following her husband (Tom Ewell) with a gun, then seeing that he is having an affair with another woman (Jean Hagen), Attinger fires at the couple multiple times. One of the bullets hits her husband in the arm.

Contemporary Reflections

Some are seeing events that are rather obviously linked to one another. Some are seeing the media making massive mistakes. The miscues piled up: two shooters were said to be in the school, when there was only one; the wrong name of the suspect was identified; the incorrect Ryan Lanza was named; the Lanza mother was not a kindergarten teacher at the Sandy Hook school; the number of dead was given out prematurely and was wrong; a kindergarten class was said to have been attacked, when it was a first grade class; the Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle was not found in Lanza's car, but instead was next to his body and the primary weapon of the school shooting; and a growing list of mistakes were aired. The media began writing about their own media missteps (see here, here, and here).

On the ground news was making everyone jumpy too. A bomb threat called in sent a SWAT team to protect, but also, yes to invade the public sanity of local residents, anew.

Here, a SWAT team was photographed preparing to enter St Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church, Newtown, which received an anonymous bomb threat during noon mass, on Sunday, December 16, 2012. Daily Mail.

Intriguingly, a new sync popped up, as mentioned in the following comment left on the Daily Mail's site:

2 Mass Shootings Connected To Libor Scandal.The father of Newtown Connecticut school shooter Adam Lanza is Peter Lanza who is a VP and Tax Director at GE Financial. The father of [the alleged] Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooter James Holmes is Robert Holmes, the lead scientist for the credit score company FICO. Both men were to testify before the US Sentate in the ongoing LIBOR scandal. The dots are connecting. - Abbs, Dublin, 16/12/2012 22:15

The London Interbank Offered Rate, known as Libor, is the average interest rate at which banks can borrow from each other. Sixteen international banks have been implicated in this ongoing scandal, accused of rigging contracts worth trillions of dollars. HSBC has already been fined $1.9 billion and three of their low level traders arrested.

But is this more rumors that has been elevated to "fact"? One informant tells me that Sorcha Faal is the dispenser of Holmes' father Libor info. But Faal is allegedly a disinformation agent who makes claims about several people.

If you wish to learn more about the complex Libor scandal, read the Wikipedia summary, here.

Bill Grimstad reminds us to not forget the alleged links between Aurora suspect James Holmes' father and DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), which has this intriguing logo:

The Dark Knight Rises Again

Also, on Sunday, images spread around the Internet that in The Dark Knight Rises (the movie central to the Aurora shootings) a map of Gotham City showed a "Sandy Hook."

AWG at RDR shared this:

From The Dark Knight Rises ... Sandy Hook reference (image shown below).
You had "Aurora" in Skyfall. Bring down the sky. Bring it down.
And pointing to "Sandy Hook" on the map he says: "...bring it down."
Falling sky.
Jared Lee Loughner said on his YouTube account: "I want you to imagine a comet or meteoroid coming through the atmosphere."

"There's a storm coming, Mr. Wayne."
"Batten down the hatches."
You had Superstorm Sandy.
Now "Sandy Hook" shooting.
What's the third surprise?
Is it in the lyrics of the new Bob Dylan album? 

Macy's Meanderings

On Friday, December 14, 2012, on the first Newtown posting, I wrote:

The game of Scrabble was developed in Newtown by local resident James Brunot. In 1938, American architect Alfred Mosher Butts created the game as a variation on an earlier word game he invented called Lexiko. In 1948, James Brunot, a resident of Newtown, Connecticut – and one of the few owners of the original Criss-Crosswords game – bought the rights to manufacture the game in exchange for granting Butts a royalty on every unit sold....he also changed the name of the game to "Scrabble," a real word which means "to scratch frantically." In 1949, Brunot and his family made sets in a converted former schoolhouse in Dodgingtown, a section of Newtown. They made 2,400 sets that year, but lost money.

According to legend, Scrabble's big break came in 1952 when Jack Straus, president of Macy's, played the game on vacation. Upon returning from vacation, he was surprised to find that his store did not carry the game. He placed a large order and within a year, "everyone had to have one."

The killer of two in this week's Clackamas shooting first ran through the Macy's store in the mall (on December 11, 2012).

Then on December 15, there were three shootings (one in a hospital and a mall parking lot in the Birmingham, Alabama; one at a mall in California) that made the national news. 

The incident in Newport, California, involved a Macy's, as noted by the LA Times:

A gunman at Fashion Island in Newport Beach apparently fired more than 50 rounds in a parking lot at the busy shopping mall Saturday before he was apprehended by police, authorities said.
Marcos Gurrola, 42, of Garden Grove, was arrested in the parking lot near the Macy's department store shortly after allegedly firing the shots about 4:30 p.m., said Kathy Lowe, a spokeswoman for the Newport Beach Police Department. Officers on bike patrol apprehended Gurrola as he was standing by a white Honda.
Police searched the mall but did not find anyone who had been injured by the shots, which were apparently fired either into the air or at the ground.
More than 50 rounds from a handgun were recovered at the scene, said Deputy Chief David McGill.

It will be recalled that this year, for the first time ever, a man collapsed and died, as he was working the crowd associated with the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. He was a clown.

The media reported that "the clown who died performing at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was much more than a goofy guy in a costume, loved ones said. Robert Blasetti, 67, was the green thumb of his close-knit Yonkers community, and shared his produce with neighbors."

Blasetti's wife, extremely upset, was taken away after her husband collapsed.

“He was a wonderful, bighearted Teddy bear,” said Dr. Anna Dolan, a psychiatrist who had employed Blasetti as an office manager for the last 30 years.

Robert Blasetti was performing with his wife, Irene, in the Macy’s parade when he collapsed. Dolan said his death, after collapsing on Sixth Avenue at West 39th Street, was a great shock.

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Thanks for information from Ann, Theo, RPJ, AP, Anon, Arcadia, MBell, and Enki. Thanks to Mark for reminding me of Macy's logo.

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