 Sightings of bizarrely garbed figures have South Carolina residents baffled and worried. 
A rash of scary clown sightings have occurred in the U.S. in the last week in the state of South Carolina, mainly in Greenville and Spartanburg counties. The encounters have varied from clowns attempting to lure children into the woods, to a pair of citizens chasing two clowns into a waiting car driven by a third clown. The photo above is an actual shot made by a man in Greenville, which he posted to Twitter with the caption, “Just spotted a major freak behind Fleetwood Apts.” The building happens to be ground zero for some of the clown sightings.
The favored explanation online for all this weirdness is that it's a publicity stunt for the new Rob Zombie horror movie 31. If that's the case, we've done our part for Rob by sharing the promotional poster just below. But assuming these sightings are publicity stunts, doesn't that seem like a very serious risk to take? American cops are trigger happy, and it isn't glitter and confetti that comes out of their guns. Let's say instead of a clown getting ventilated, though, he was arrested. For what, we aren't sure, since it isn't illegal to offer kids candy, which is what reports say one of the clowns did—but whatever, clown gets arrested. All the suspect would have to say is, “I'm a clown, it's true, but not that clown.”  Absent fingerprints (“No prints, sir, he must have worn gloves.”), shoe prints (“The casts are finished, sir—he wore size 37.”) or DNA (best not to think about that), only an admission of guilt could connect the arrested clown to the previous clowns. Or maybe police could stage a line-up. Of clowns. Bring in a tearful witness. “Yes, officer it was the one on the far left. I'm sure of it. I'll never forget *sob* his big red nose.”
Our guess is that these sightings are one of those instances of bizarro cultural programming, like the one that causes UFO or Bigfoot sightings. Rogue clowns have been reported lately not just in South Carolina, but in Ohio, Wisconsin, California, and even jolly old England. For our part, we hope the sightings simply stop. We don't need to get to the bottom of them. If they're real, we don't want to know who (doubtless one or more smug white guys, though) figured it was a perfectly fine idea to dress in a weird costume and terrify bystanders—this in a country where people wearing nothing more than dark skin end up shot for jaywalking. Which raises the question: if a clown were to be shot, would it be tragic, tragicomic, or just plain comical? Guess it depends on how you feel about them.
 Olympic inspiration Phelps embroiled in weed scandal. 
U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps, who won eight gold medals at the Beijing Summer Olympics last year, was at the center of a scandal yesterday when a photo of him using his superhuman lungs to suck a bong load appeared in the British tabloid News of the World. The photo was snapped at a party he attended at the University of South Carolina during a four-month break in his swimming schedule. Phelps didn’t bother with a denial. Instead he admitted that, yup, he was smoking out with some friends. Got higher than a kite in fact, and got rather memorably laid that night too, but not before snorting several fat rails of coke off the waxed montes veneris of two eighteen year-old Croatian exchange students.
Mere hours after Phelps’ admission, the U.S. Olympic Committee voiced concern for America's impressionable children in a statement describing Phelps as a role model who was “well aware of the responsibilities and accountability that come with setting a positive example for others, particularly young people.” In a seemingly coordinated move, conservatives in the U.S. Congress introduced a bill that would require American cities to restaff all police and sheriff’s departments with children. Republican Mitt Romney said, “We have conditioned Americans to feel such anxiety for the well-being of children that we believe crime will virtually vanish for fear that an all-child police force might potentially encounter it.”
At Pulp Intl. we’re just happy we can put anything into our bodies we wish. In fact, the only time people here in the third world really panic over children is when they’re late for their sixteen-hour shifts at the Puma sweatshop. On behalf of all those trapped in less-enlightened countries than ours, we sympathize, because this “set a good example for the children” routine has truly reached levels that verge on the comical. Have a few drinks too many and it’s “please, set a good example for the children.” Drive your car through a hedge and into a swimming pool and it’s “please, set a good example for the children.” Shoot someone in the head with a bottle rocket because you want to see if their hair catches fire and it’s “please, set a good example for the children.” It’s gone way, way too far.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot. 1912—Pravda Is Founded
The newspaper Pravda, or Truth, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country's leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid. 1983—Hitler's Diaries Found
The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler's diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess's flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison. 1918—The Red Baron Is Shot Down
German WWI fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, better known as The Red Baron, sustains a fatal wound while flying over Vaux sur Somme in France. Von Richthofen, shot through the heart, manages a hasty emergency landing before dying in the cockpit of his plane. His last word, according to one witness, is "Kaputt." The Red Baron was the most successful flying ace during the war, having shot down at least 80 enemy airplanes. 1964—Satellite Spreads Radioactivity
An American-made Transit satellite, which had been designed to track submarines, fails to reach orbit after launch and disperses its highly radioactive two pound plutonium power source over a wide area as it breaks up re-entering the atmosphere.
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