Ok, ok, I know it’s getting old. But I am obsessed with Frank Melton, Jackson’s mayor, due to the fact that everything that comes out of his mouth is either insane, a bunch of lies, or both.

More on the stopping school buses to get hugs from children story:

1. He bragged recently that he has stopped five more school buses since the April 28 incident.
2. Then he denied it.
3. In response to someone citing the law that says, you know, DON’T STOP SCHOOL BUSES ON THE HIGHWAY TO HUG THE CHILDREN YOU FREAK, Melton said:

“I don’t care what some brain-dead person from the school district says,” Melton said Sunday. “I’m gonna stop a school bus anytime I see them on the street … anytime I feel like stopping them.”

Yeah! You go, Crazy!

Reminder: this is our mayor we’re talking about, not some colorful neighborhood hobo. THE MAYOR OMG WTF LOL.

Today we drove over to the Windsor Ruins, which was magical and weird and Southern, and I fully expected to be murdered by O’Connor’s Misfit the whole time I was there.

I have to go to a meeting in a minute, but I think you should all know that our mayor, who is not sane or, you know, legal, on a good day, what with the toting weapons illegally, impersonating a police officer, going to people’s houses in order to beat on their doors with the butt of his (illegal) weapon, is teetering ever closer to the edge. Yesterday he pulled over three school buses on the highway in order to hug some children.

from “Melton pulls over buses to get a hug”:

“It’s been such a stressful two weeks,” Melton said. “I wanted to shake their hands. I wanted to touch them.”

Not good, people. NOT GOOD.

I went out of town briefly this weekend; this is one of the things I saw.

Does it make me a bad person that, while cleaning out some department files, most of which I actually opened and read, I didn’t think twice about throwing away the Jerry Clower file in its entirety?

What about the fact that I snorted uncomfortably at the file called “Mississippi — Negroes” and the fact that in all the articles from the 30s and 40s, the black people are quoted in dialect?

What about the fact that I have become entranced with a murder case from 1936 in which a woman’s legs were found on the side of the road…and then buried? Headline: “Severed Legs Given Burial Tuesday Morn.”

Sometimes I really, really like my job.

Unrelated postscript: Um, click here if you want to have to wash your eyeballs with soap and water afterwards.

I was looking at the occupation statistics from the 1910 U.S. Census on Friday afternoon (isn’t that how you all waste time at work?) and I found some pretty entertaining information. (more…)

Two smallish pieces of news that show that someone, somewhere, is paying at least a tiny bit of attention:

1. Edgar Ray Killen is back in jail due to the fact that he was seen strolling about and pumping gas, even though he said he was confined to a wheelchair.

2. Michael “Brownie, You’re Doing a Heck of a Job” Brown, head of FEMA, has been sent back to Washington and will no longer head (read: ignore) Katrina relief efforts. Nelson: Ha ha!

Hey, Starkville people: click here for gorjus’s sweet memory of Del Rendon, Rock Star and Legend, who passed away over the weekend.

Del was the best bartender Dave’s ever had, mostly (but not completely) because he’d forget how many beers he’d served you and you could drink all night for $6. He was a good guy, a great entertainer, and was loved and will be missed by pretty much everyone I know.

It’s Saturday, and while we are safe, we are still hot. Like I said in a comment, that’s much different than being hott. (more…)

Thanks to everyone who emailed with concerns for our safety. It looks like everyone in our immediate families is ok, but either has a tree down in their yards, on their houses, or on their cars. (more…)

I came across the names of some now-defunct Mississippi towns Friday afternoon. (more…)

I came across this book the other day and had to share with you some of what I found. Mississippi: America’s State of Opportunity is a rah-rah industry PR book put out by the Mississippi State Board of Development in 1944 in the hopes that business and industry would come to the state. I have to give them credit for one thing: they took a pile of crap and made it sound like diamonds. Every sentence is a testament to the perfection and utter paradise that is the state of Mississippi. (more…)

At lunch on Friday I stopped by the Woodie Assaf estate sale. (more…)

So the Killen jury is deliberating, and last night they were deadlocked, 6-6. Killen’s lawyer is apparently considering it a “victory” at this point; Killen himself is “pleased.”

UPDATE: Killen was found guilty of manslaughter on all three counts! Read gorjus‘s take. (more…)

Interesting thing in Slate today about the Emmett Till case.

Update on the Killen trial: yesterday the old man pulled a Michael Jackson and went to the hospital complaining of shortness of breath and, uh, a headache. I’d have a headache too if I were him.

Anyway, click here for the latest report from the trial, which introduces details from the 1967 conspiracy trial transcripts like this:

“Wallace Miller testified at the ’67 trial about that back-room meeting in which he said Killen shared the details of the plot to kill the civil rights workers, including that he had gotten together the Klansmen who carried out the killings.”