Florida Police Searching for Source of Violent, Naked Rampages: It's probably something old and familiar

Florida has been beset by a veritable wave of violent, naked rampages by people – men mostly – who have gone on rampages, confronted police, tearing off their clothes shouted gibberish and fougt with super-human strength against all attempts to stop them.

The Sun-Sentinal posits the problem thusly:  The cases – which happened within four days of each other and left one dead, three injured and a 17-year-old facing a host of charges – may have more in common than their bizarre details, authorities say. They may have also both been triggered by a rare brain malfunction.

I posit that the “rare brain malfunction” could have been PCP, which apparently the experts in Florida are unaware of.

The article talks to experts who say the outbursts could be attributed to “excited delirium syndrome” that can strike people under high stress who are not getting enough sleep and may have a rare genetic abnormality that causes them to excessively overheat (causing them to strip naked) and go berserk.  It can also happen to people who take PCP. 

PCP is a drug that was not so much popular as prevalent in the late 1980’s until the early 1990’s when Rodney King was infamously beaten by a host of LA Police officers for minutes, and still managed to get back up over and over again.  King’s superhuman strength: PCP.  Hospitals in Chicago – which I grew up just outside of – dealt with this years ago: people coming in on a high, then going on a rampage until someone hit them with a super-tranquilizer.  In the street, people just got shot in the head.  If someone was going completely insane with superhuman strength, those around didn’t mess around, and the drug got less prevalent, as these things do.

I am not saying that I have any personal knowledge of any of the persons who were profiled in the report or that the persons in the report used drugs.  Or, if they are tested, that they took any drugs knowingly.  There used to be this nasty habit of people dipping cigarette paper in PCP, and then people unwittingly getting it in their systems.  The paper also notes that the cases of "excited delirium" peaked during the 1980s, also the peak of PCP use.  The toxicology reports have not come back on the three dead delirious, naked, super-human attackers.  T They won't mean much, however, if the toxicologists don't test for the right drugs, or if the drugs left the person's system.    What I'm saying is that there is a set of symptoms with a known cause, and then there is an unproven hypothesis about rare genetic abnormalities and unconfirmed suppositions.  I say control PCP, which may be coming back on the streets.

There’s a principal of Ockham’s Razor.  William of Ockham (1287-1347) laid down the philosophical and logical principal that among competing hypotheses, the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions should be selected.  In practice, it doesn’t always work.  Empirical proof always trumps philosophical theories.  But in Florida, now, there is a lot of theory. 

There is the theory of rare brain disorders, “excited delirium syndrome” and the like.  A clean theory, of a street drug that in high doses causes and has caused the exact behaviors that are being attributed to these new symptoms, ought to get tested first.  Perhaps someone should test the Floridians who have gone on naked, super-human strength rampages for PCP.  If they come back clean, then let's talk about excited delirium syndrome and rare genetic abnormalities all manifesting in a short time period in a small geographic area.  That would be an interesting story of clustering of illness, rather than the comeback of a drug scourge from two decades ago.

Floridians Seem to Have a Problem with Chasing Bears

In the long list if things I am not going to do today, here’s one near the top:  I am not going to chase a bear.  This is not just because I live in an area, unlike Lake County, Florida, and particularly the underwhelming burg called Sorrento.  I can only imagine that it is a pale impersonation of the beautiful town on the Amalfi Coast, Sorrento, Italy (much like Paris, Texas is a shell of the one in France). What Sorrento, Florida may lack in cliffs, black lava pebble beaches and cobalt sea overlooking Elba Island, Sorrento, Florida makes up for in bears.  And people who chase them.

 

Dude who chases bears for fun

In a WTF story that could only come from Florida, WFTV reports  on a man who first claimed he wrestled a bear outside his Florida home.  He called 911 to advise that his arm wounds were from wrestling a bear that surprised him when he was just sitting outside on a lawn chair, hanging out, when the bear approached. Never one to back down from a large mammal, this all-star Floridian allegedly decided to wrestle and the punch the bear.  Then he got on the news to tell all about it.  He said:

"[I was] sitting outside listening to music, and all the sudden I see a shadow go by me. I look off to the side of me and just, I thought it was somebody, and I went to meet whoever it was and it was a bear," said resident Josh Hennessy. “He got ahold of my clothes I just started punching him and he ran off. I got right in his way”

Seems this may have been illegal, though.  Seems like the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission may have had a problem with a dude punching a bear.  Because when someone showed up to take a sworn statement, Mr. Hennessey then changed his story to say that while he did see a bear walk by, he chased it up the road and then fell down and thereby injured his forearms. 

So, while he did not actually punch the bear, he still chased it.  You’d think bears in Florida have enough to deal with.  You’d think dudes who sit in their front yard drinking beer have something better to do than chase bears.  But, you don’t live in Sorrento, Florida.

By the way, this is not an isolated incident.  According to the article, there were 34 other bear chasings in Lake County last year.  That’s 34 people who independently decided to chase down an animal that could turn around and kill them with a swipe or hurt them with a good old-fashioned mauling.  Six of the bears were put down for interacting with humans (for being chased).  Seem the bears ought to at least turn around and hit back at the Floridians who are chasing them.  Or Floridians ought not build (or place) houses so near to where so many bears are.  And if they do, they ought not drink so much Natty Light that they decided to chase bears.

Sorrento, Florida.  Not as awesome as the one in Italy.

World Faces Clown Shortage: Future with Less Terrified Children

The Daily Mail UK reports, in rather histrionic prose (which is actually pretty normal for them – I love them), about the worldwide shortage in clowns.  The World Clown Association membership has fallen from 3,500 to 2,000 in the past decade. 

 

Less of this: Good

The quote of the article is this: The challenge is getting younger people involved in clowning,' said Association President Deanna Hartmier told the Daily News. 

Yes, that’s the challenge.  It’s a challenge to get young people into a career where you dress up like the homicidal villain in a horror novel who lives in a gutter and kills children, like this guy in England.  It’s hard to get people into a profession, where your members double as hit-clowns in Mexico.   They’re freaking terrifying.  Hell, dressing up as a clown is essentially just putting on a criminal disguise.  Take a look at the pictures in the article, and that’s all it takes.

“Clowning” as a profession, rather than as a hobby, where someone clowns someone else in the Urban Dictionary sense, is dying off, and good riddance.  Apparently, even the clown organizations know that as soon as a kid interested in clowns, who isn’t otherwise terrified of clowns, gets to high school and finds out clowns aren’t cool, they drop out and then come back in their 40’s and 50’s when they get paid $300 to show up at a kid’s birthday party and terrify all the children.

The only thing likely to get it back is for the World Clown Association to declare it totally uncool, make it ironic, and have hipsters adopt it like handlebar mustaches and skinny jeans.  Then, there will be a clown enclave in Brooklyn, Wicker Park, and East Austin. 

Next thing up is the mimes.