The title of this post was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery & Imagination, which was later the title of an album by the Alan Parsons Project.
The innocence potentially lost takes us to Alabama, where a 65 year old paranoid retiree, Jimmy Lee Dykes, is holding a kindergartener hostage. For what reason, we don't know at the moment, but what we do know is that Dykes snatched the 5 year old off a bus Tuesday afternoon, and killed the bus driver who tried to stop him. Seems to me that Dykes doesn't want anyone on his property for any reason, even if they're just passing through. Well, if that was the case, where are the "Private Property" signs?
Yahoo! reports that Dykes has had a history of legal troubles, including a bust for drug possession in 2000, and an arrest in Florida 5 years earlier on a charge of improper exhibition of a weapon, which was dismissed. It seems as though Dykes hasn't learned a thing, and may be on the bong, even though he has sense enough to allow whatever medication the child seems to need to be brought into his underground bunker. We can only pray that this comes to a safe conclusion, and Dykes finally is brought before a court of law, though I'd think at this point, with his advanced age, Dykes may be a candidate for an insanity defense.
In New Orleans, Super Bowl hype is, naturally, in overdrive, but the media is dredging up old news on Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis.
First, there's the double murder he was linked to in 2000, but charges against Lewis were dismissed. Now, some fly-by-night jabroni clinician named Mitch Ross, head of something called SWATS (Sports With Alternatives To Steroids), claims he supplied Lewis with----get this----deer antler spray to speed up the recovery from a torn bicep injury suffered during the regular season. The spray formula supposedly has a growth hormone banned by the NFL. All I see is Ross looking for his 15 minutes of fame, leeching off the Lewis Retirement Tour. What a dweeb.
In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre last month in Connecticut, school officials are over-reacting to kids being kids, especially in kindergarten. I have read over the last few days of one child who was suspended for a day just for using "finger guns". Like, didn't we all do that when we were children? Of course we did. But now, you can't create a gun with your thumb & forefinger without attracting undue attention. Another little girl was needlessly disciplined for telling a classmate she'd shoot the child with a bubble gun. Uh, hello? She means to shoot water or soap bubbles at her playmate! While the NRA keeps its collective head in the sand, school administrators are running the risk of being diagnosed as being excessively paranoid if this keeps up.
Finally, we have the sordid tale of Notre Dame's Manti Te'o and the phony "girlfriend", Lennay Kekua, who was the creation of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo. Tuiasosopo appears on Dr. Phil today & tomorrow to tell his side of the story, and an excerpt was previewed on NBC's Today on Wednesday. Now, it comes out that Tuiasosopo had a serious crush on Te'o, leading Dr. Phil McGraw to ask Tuiasosopo, as Katie Couric had asked Te'o a week earlier, if he was gay. Tuiasosopo initially said yes, then backed up a bit and claimed he was confused about his sexual identity.
When news first broke of this tale two weeks ago, it was reported that Tuiasosopo was also in a Christian rock group. That being said, my only advice for this young man is to consult the Bible to get the answers he really needs. Once that's done, he should seek out Te'o, and offer a public apology, man to man, for nearly damaging Te'o's reputation, not to mention his status in April's NFL draft.
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