Some YouTube videos I grabbed:
Removed the KVUE video embed because it’s farking up my page loads.
Keep safe…
10 PM Update: 25 homes lost in Steiner Ranch.
10:55 PM Update: Parts of Dripping Springs being told to evacuate.
More video, this time from the Southeast corner of the Griffith League Scout Ranch property near Lost Pines:
Also got an email back from Michael Moorcock, who says he’s OK, and that they haven’t been asked to evacuate yet.
I wasn’t.
Here in Texas, we’re pretty much used to it hitting 100º for several days running in the summer. What we’re not so used to is it hitting 105º every day for weeks on end. Lately it’s been about 95º when I went out to walk my dog at 10:30 at night.
This is, to say the least, unpleasant.
We’re also breaking power-consumption records.
This is the hottest summer I can remember, and the drought is even worse. Not only is it worse than any I can remember, it’s the worst since they started keeping rainfall records. In 1895.
If you need visual confirmation, this graphic should do the trick:
100% of the state is under drought conditions, and 75% are suffering from D4 exceptional drought. Maybe they need to add a D5 level: “It’s dead, Jim.” Yes, it’s worse statistically than the Dust Bowl. (Thank modern agriculture, irrigation and lack of wind for not picking up the topsoil and dropping it on other states.) It also threatens record agricultural losses.
I fully expect it to be cooler in Reno for the Worldcon than it will be in Austin.
One consolation: So far, it doesn’t look like we’ll break the all-time record for the hottest day in Austin history, which was 112º on September 5th, 2000. That was not fun. (I was out riding my bike the day before, when it only hit a temperate 109º…)
Protip: If you’re trying to sell meat door to door out of a truck, don’t try to sell to a game warden.
Especially if you don’t have retail truck dealer’s license.
And you’re wanted in California for burglary.
And the truck you’re driving is stolen. (Scroll down to July 18 on the link.)
Which is to say that so far they’ve found none. Which hasn’t kept other people from jumping the gun. You might want to wait on reporting that until you find, you know, actual bodies. Especially since the tip was reported to come from a “psychic.” This would keep distant outlets like The Sydney Morning Herald from reporting it as fact.
Is “police investigating report of mass grave” just not sexy enough for the news cycle these days?
Attention Austinites: That wet stuff falling from the sky is called “rain.” I know you may not have seen these in some time, but it’s a naturally occurring phenomena.
It should also help ease our extreme drought.
In celebration, here’s Ladysmith Black Mombazo with “Rain, Rain, Beautiful Rain.”
As far as I can tell, there’s been no real news in the Sherry Black murder case since it was featured on the America’s Most Wanted website in January. But in poking around, there is some news on some tangents of the story, and tangents of the tangents.
I recently received a couple of comments on a previous post on the Sherry Black murder, including one claiming to be from Warren Jeffs, accused felon and President of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I know this may come as a shock to some, but people aren’t always who they claim to be on the Internet. (I will now wait a moment for the incredulous outrage to die down.) As far as I can tell, Mr. Jeffs is currently held in lieu of bail at the Reagan County Jail in Big Lake, Texas awaiting trial. The possibility that he might be allowed Internet privileges while under heavy manners, and that he would use such privileges to post random, badly capitalized blog comments, seems…remote. Plus, the ip address of the poster (72.250.219.218) points to Ogden, Utah, not Big Lake, Texas.
Incidentally, Jeffs still seems reveared by the FLDS faithful, with thousands of letters and many visitors (up to the max of ten a day).
Strangely enough, Jeffs isn’t the only famous (or infamous) prisoner currently awaiting trail at Big Lake. Accused serial killer Robert Ben Rhoades, who has been convicted of torturing, killing and raping women, and who has been accused of as many as 50 serial killings, is also held there. For comparison’s sake, 50 victims would put him up in Henry Lee Lucas territory, and more than John Wayne Gacy or Ted Bundy.
Here’s some background on Rhodes, evidently written by someone who bought a pallet of true crime adjectives at Sam’s and wanted to use them up before the expiration date. There’s even a Utah angle here as well, since charges against Rhoades for the murder of Candace Walsh were dropped in 2006, mainly so Rhoades could be tried in Texas, where he would be subject to the death penalty.
As shown in the Deseret News, he even looks like a serial killer.
In arrests of college football players, that is. SI and CBS news listed the arrest records for every team in the preseason top 25, and the two Texas teams in the list did comparatively well. Texas came in third-to-last, with only two players charged, while TCU came in dead last with none at all. Oklahoma came in tied for seventh with nine players arrested, and Pittsburgh ranked first (which is to say last) with a whopping 22 players charged.
The usual caveats (arrest is not conviction, innocent until proven guilty, yada yada yada) apply, but this is one ranking Texas football fans are happy to see their teams rank last in.
(“Texas leads the way” shtick blatantly stolen from Bill Crider.)
There’s been a tiny bit of news in the case of murdered bookstore owner Sherry Black: police have released pictures of a belt that may belong to her murderer. So if you live in Salt Lake City and know someone with criminal tendencies who has worn a belt with the initials “AX” on the buckle (which evidently stands for “Armani Exchange”; fashion is not my beat), police would like a word with you.
A commenter here has suggested that transient Paul David Vara, who has been arrested on aggravated murder and multiple rape charges in the same area, may be involved. There’s certainly no question that (assuming police statements are true) Vara is (to use a legal term) a violent scumbag:
When police found Gabel’s body, they noted that her breasts had been mutilated, according to court documents. An autopsy by the Utah State Medical Examiner’s Office found most of Gabel’s internal organs had been torn out.
The 6-foot-1 and 260-pound Vara told police that he “pulled her internal organs out of her body,” court documents state.
The cause of death was determined to be “multiple factors, including strangulation and extensive loss of blood,” according to court documents.
Vara told police that he “used green string to strangle the female because she was struggling with him.”
Vara hails from San Antonio, and seems to have quite a record of violent offenses:
His adult charges in Texas date from 2007 back to 1998, when he would have been 18. His charges in Texas include aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in 2004, assault in 2001, two separate incidents of assault causing bodily injury in 2000 and another one in 1999. He had several charges of burglary and vehicle burglary in 1998.
And pace our commentator, his record of gang activity (such as it is) seems to be non-Insane Clown Posse related:
Medina said Vara told him that he had come to Utah to escape the Latin Kings gang in San Antonio. Medina, 40, said he left MS-13, a gang he had joined at age 11 and the two men bonded over their mutual hope to leave gangs behind.
(A little background on the Latin Kings can be found here. )
While Vara certainly seems violent and scummy enough to have killed Black, I’m just not seeing any real link to her (or, that matter, ICP). And sadly, the world suffers from no shortage of violent scumbags…
It blew up real good.
Updated: An aerial view: