'Zine Banal Nightmare

Mysterious graffiti of monkey faces covers buildings, bridges in rural Oldmans Township | NJ.com

From the “You Can’t Go Home Again” Department:

OLDMANS TWP. — Several reports of graffiti are being investigated by state police after members of the community found monkey faces painted on buildings and bridges across the rural township.

State police from the Woodstown Barracks said that many locations had been “tagged” with graffiti on Saturday night. The graffiti included the face of a monkey and sometimes, in addition to the monkey face, the numbers “215.”

Police said that the J.E. Berkowitz building on Straughens Mill Road, the PolyOne Distribution Center on Porcupine Road, the Logan Volunteer Fire Co. Firehouse and the Hudson United Methodist Church, both on Railroad Avenue, were defaced with the graffiti.

The new Pedricktown Bridge over Oldmans Creek, on Mill Street and the bridge over Beaver Creek on Straughens Mill Road, some private residential homes, vehicles, outbuildings, street signs and other public property such as electrical boxes were also painted with the monkey head image.

 Oldmans Township Deputy Mayor Harry Moore said Wednesday that he was appalled by the graffiti.

“The people who did it obviously have no morals,” Moore said. “It’s a shame.”

Ten thousand capitalists march on the Trenton State House. “PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE *HUMAN* RIGHTS”, they cry.  God wraps his big toe around the trigger.

From the Billboard Liberation Front.

WHO PUT BELLA IN THE WITCH ELM is a graffito that started appearing soon after a 1941 unsolved murder. The graffiti was last sprayed onto the side of a 200 year-old obelisk on 18 August 1999, in white paint. The obelisk known as Wychbury Obelisk is on Wychbury Hill, Hagley near Stourbridge, in Worcestershire.

…

Believing this a good place to hunt birds’ nests, Farmer attempted to climb the tree to investigate. As he was climbing, he glanced down into the hollow trunk and discovered a skull, believing it to be that of an animal. However, after seeing human hair and teeth, he realized that he was holding a human skull. As they were on the land illegally, Farmer put the skull back and all four boys returned home without mentioning their discovery to anybody.

On returning home the youngest of the boys, Tommy Willetts, felt uneasy about what he had witnessed and decided to report the find to his parents. When police checked the trunk of the tree they found an almost complete human skeleton, a shoe, a gold wedding ring, and some fragments of clothing. After further investigation, a severed hand was found buried in the ground near to the tree.

The body was sent for forensic examination by Prof. James Webster. He quickly established that the skeleton was female and had been dead for at least 18 months, placing her time of death around October 1941. He found taffeta in her mouth, suggesting that she had died from asphyxiation. From the measurement of the trunk he also deduced that she must have been placed there “still warm” after the killing as she could not have fit once rigor mortis had taken hold.

Since the woman’s killing was so soon after the start of World War II, identification was seriously hampered. Police could tell from items found with the body what the woman had looked like but with so many people being reported missing from the war, and people regularly moving, the records were too vast for a proper identification to take place.

If you’re looking to get the creeps today, two other wikipedia lists you should check out: unidentified murder victims and more generally, unidentified people.

Gooooood morning.  From the Billboard Liberation Front:

“In an uncertain world, customers want comfort and sameness in their eating habits,” the spokesclown [Ronald McDonald] observed, speaking from the cramped office he shares with fellow expatriate Joe Camel. “It’s not just about portion size, though that’s still important. In these troubled times it’s more about familiarity, about conformity, and most of all about not taking any risks. MCD has responded to that shift in consumer attitudes, and has reengineered its product line to reflect a culinary landscape that prides itself on mediocrity.” Mr. Camel, speaking through a throat-tube, added: “McDonald’s is the cardiologist of America’s destiny.”