Remora

How about them corpses? Surely the movie is coming. Surely some b movie producer, some Hollywood scientologist, is on this like white on rice. Psycho is one thing, but Georgia rednecks are a whole other level of grotesque. They were good enough for Flannery O'Connor, so they should be good enough for you. The NYT story about the corpses of Walker County is another sad reminder that these are times that try the non-tv watcher's soul. I mean, camera man's delight. The woods. The voiceover. The faux conversation (Tammy, what is the sherriff saying about the body up in the crook of the pine tree there?). Essential tv. And here's the essential graf:

"After a dog walker stumbled over a skull on Friday, law enforcement officers discovered at least 120 rotting corpses in sheds and on the ground near the crematory, and state officials said that that figure could double by the time the area is fully examined. Some of the bodies had been there for years and were nearly skeletal, while others, fresh from the funeral home, still bore toe tags.Human bones, weathered white, were scattered through the woods like leaves, skulls mixed with leg bones in a ghoulish jumble that one state trooper compared to a scene from a Stephen King novel.

An infant's body was found in a box in the back of a rusting hearse.Some bodies had become mummified and may have been at the site more than 20 years, said Dr. Kris Sperry, Georgia's chief medical examiner. Nearly two dozen coffins that had once been buried were also found on the ground, Dr. Sperry said, and in some cases their embalmed contents had been dragged out and left exposed to the elements for years"

And here is the perfect tabloid ending. I mean, can a news story have a better sign off line?

"His wife and son just didn't want to spend the money to fix it up," said Mrs. Horton, who grew up in Noble and now lives in Atlanta. "Lord Jesus, I don't know how they could go to bed at night with all that outside their window."

All that outside their window. An image that reminds us of some impossible rencontre between Walter Benjamin and the National Enquirer at a funeral director's convention in Sarasota Springs.