FlashCast Minisode 2 - Poop Storm: Illegal science, cannibal cop, & Sandy.
The Skinner Co. Network
FCM002 - Poop Storm
[music] Hello, and welcome to Flashcast Mini Sode 2, Poop Storm. [music] Hi, I'm Opopinax, and joining me for this unexpected audio explosion are Jessica May. Hello, and J.R.D. Hello. We don't particularly enjoy doing these little interstitial episodes, the emergency episodes. Well, I'm looking forward to it, but we would rather have a full episode out, I think is what he's saying. Indeed, but unfortunately, as mentioned in the title, we have been in the middle of a poop storm. We are in the Toronto area, as you may know, and we were, although not entirely affected by Sandy, sort of in the path, so there was a lot of prep and panic going on before the storm got here. A lot of wind. And then, yeah, we got a lot of wind. It was very rainy, but it wasn't anything like Jersey and New York, and our thoughts are definitely with those folks. Robert Snyder, Robert Snyder from the mob, he still has no power. Oh, right now. I know, Strasburg just checked in the other day. It's kind of sad too, because we have a new entry from the box. The box seems to have duplicated itself. We got the Stras box in, which was full of goodies we want to talk about. We've got some excellent mail, which we haven't been able to touch on at all. Anyway, it'll be an excellent flashcast, and we'll be putting it out on Friday. And in the middle, there will probably be a coffin episode on Wednesday. It should be a fun one. I'm very excited about it. Both important to the coffin mythos, but also just a fun episode in general. Antopical. Antopical, which is an oddity for our episodes. Speaking of topical, however, did you guys, Sandy got me thinking, these were actually a couple stories that I was intending on keeping in flashcast 73, but they seem so topically related that I needed to mention them now. So have you guys heard about the Italian quakes scientists who are arrested? No. Or I should say actually convicted? No. 2007, you may recall, I believe it was 2007, and I'm taking a guess at this name. I'm sorry, Italians, Laquilla, the Laquilla quake, which is a fun tongue twister. April 2009 killed more than 300 people. Wow. Very sad event. But what ended up happening is the six geologists essentially were charged with manslaughter for not predicting the massive earthquake. Whoa. And not only were they charged with manslaughter, they were convicted. Wow. So what are their sentences? Me and slaughter for like 300, 300 people? Sentence, six scientists, and a government official to six years in prison. Oh, wow. But six years in prison for not conducting the science that they wanted. And then the thing is earthquake science, as I'm sure everyone must know, is not a very predictable thing. Like it's not something you can just... They just wanted to put their anger somewhere? Yeah, I think 300 people died, and everyone was just really mad. So why not? Blame the scientists. It seems so weird. So backwards. Unless it was a case of them, like they could have been able to monitor it, and they just weren't really doing their jobs. Or they in fact caused the earthquake. Listen, that still seems a little... Somebody can correct me, but my understanding about earthquake prediction has always been that it's a very tenuous science. And people really can't... It could be like now, or in 50 years. Yeah, exactly. You're talking about the shift of tectonic plates, and there's so many factors. Like I don't understand how they... Anyway. So I mean, if... I guess we'll probably get to a point, maybe not in earthquake science, but in certain sciences where... Like, can you hold a drug company responsible if they don't release a medicine? Or if they theoretically have the capacity to develop a medicine? But they don't come out with it? But it's too expensive or something about it is... Very odd. And then on the flip side of that, what I was thinking on was... Can people just do weathermen for Sandy? I hope not. Well, that was predicted, so... Yeah, I suppose. But at the same time, 24 New Yorkers died, right? So what if they were to... You know, it's just... It seems so weird. These are acts of nature. There's no way that you can possibly... Anyway. So I thought that was interesting, but even more interesting. Did you guys hear about the... Cannibal cop in New York? No. Well, theoretical cannibal cop, I should say. Jessica May? Jessica May? Ringing a bell? How can you be a Cannibal cop? Cannibal cop? So there was this fellow Gilberto Valley, I guess, or Vale? Vale? Vale? He was taken into custody by the FBI. He's a former policeman. Well, now he's a former policeman. He's alleged with planning to consume over 100 people, I think. What? Planning, so he hadn't eaten 100 people yet? My understanding is that they eventually got him on a sting operation, in which he negotiated with somebody to kidnap a woman for $5,000. And he wrote that person a note saying $5,000. To eat her? Yeah. And now kidnap and eat her? Wow. Yeah. Well, I think a lot of... It's weird. A lot of these communications seem to be conducted online. Well, no, that's not. I suppose we've talked in the past about how this is an opportunity for people of like minds to meet up and kind of be odd together. But it ends up with a lot of text evidence. And it's kind of funny that people don't notice this. I will really get off on knocking her out, tying up her hands and bare feet and gagging her. Then she will be stuffed into a large piece of luggage and wheeled out to my band. And that's just probably the beginning of his description. So had he done it successfully before? No, it sounds like he was a planner, but not a doer. He was a dreamer of 100 bodies. I don't understand. Okay, cannibals, all of you out there, write nothing down. Yeah, apparently. Well, and the... That 100 number I must add, I do not see in this article, but I'm sure that I read that 100 number somewhere. That's pretty crazy. Anyway, so what I thought was interesting, though, or what I thought would be funny in a pulpy sort of sense, would be to have Sandy hit and then have this guy suddenly, you know, burst out of police custody, be running around in the hurricane. Cannibal cop. Like, can't you see that big? Why would that be hilarious? That'd be terrifying. One man has to stop the Cannibal cop. Oh, god. 100 skulls, one badge. No? That's terrible. I don't know. We'll work on it. We'll work on it. Yeah, we'll work on it. After Sandy, we ended up having Halloween, which was a bit of a rush. Yep. Oh, it is, though. But it was so much fun. Happy birthday, J.R.D. Happy birthday. Thank you very much. Unfortunately, though, we discovered that evening that Sandy, although it hadn't done much damage in our area, had somehow killed our water heater. So we ended up having no hot water for a couple of days, which was its own sort of unpleasantness. Especially since he was covered in green paint. Yeah, as I went as Frankenstein's monster. Yeah, so we walked over to Moms and used the facilities. And then we had a sort of special problem this weekend, and I don't think we really want to get into it too much. If you're interested, it's been a hectic weekend. Yeah, it's just a sad thing. Listen, if you're out in the world and you see something that's not right, and you know that someone needs to intervene, please step up. Please be that person who, by just a minor action, really can change somebody's life. Because I think it's really on us all to make the world better. We could all be Batman. And we did our part this weekend. You don't always have to be asked to do the right thing, to do the right thing. Yeah. And it's hard. It is hard. Yeah, well, no matter how hard it is, doing the right thing right now. Anyway, if that wasn't cryptic enough. Yeah, if that wasn't... If that was cryptic enough, you can go check out my Twitter feed. Yeah, because they have some really juicy nuggets there. It's fine over at JRT Skinner on Twitter. Anyway, we did release an episode last week, a couple of episodes. I don't want to get into it too much. Yeah, turn around. I wanted to mention the turnaround really briefly, because I quite enjoyed our second Halloween entry. What I loved about Turnaround was your female character behind the wheel. Oh, Tamara. She was kind of a Buffy-esque to me. Yeah. You know, she doesn't freak out. She's just like, "Oh, hell, now!" And then she, you know, has the... I have to admit, I just wanted to put a responsible team in a horror story for once. It's not something dopey about her. It was so refreshing. And she's getting wandered into an axe. Yeah. Yeah, I liked it. That was unexpected. Anyway, 293, the turnaround. Check it out if you're interested. Mm-hmm. Very good story. We will be back Wednesday. In the meantime, if you want to hear what's going on with us, you can check us out on Twitter at SkinnerCo, or individually at JRT Skinner, the Jessica May, or Opoponax with a zero. Huge thanks, as always, to Lord Jim. Absolutely. Thank you, Jim. He hosts the spooky.flashbop.com and flashbop.com. Enjoy this ever-so-brief show, tell a friend, really enjoy this ever-so-brief show. You should. We've got a donate button on the site. Really? Few of comments, questions, or suggestions, you can find us at flashbop.com, or email us, text her in p3s to comments@flashbop.com. The entire run of flashbop can be found at the site, or via the search bar in iTunes. Flashgas is released under the Canadian Creative Commons attribution non-coercial to Black Diamonds. [Music]