Burglary, spices, sausages, confusion

I have stumbled on this story on Ananova yesterday, and cannot forget it since. Rarely have I seen another example of garbled writing that makes the incident more mysterious than it probably is.

Police in California have arrested a man for breaking into two farmworkers' home and stealing money before rubbing one of the men with spices and hitting the other with a sausage.

The writer tried to convey a lot of information in one sentence, so the sequence of the events is not clear at all. Was the burglar rubbing in the spices and hitting with a sausage at the same time? If not, what was his first act - after the money was stolen?

Now to the motivation of the burglar. Rubbing someone's body with spices makes a lot of sense if you intend to cook and eat someone. Or you can eat someone uncooked, of course, like in steak Tartar. I suspect, though, that our burglar, like our writer, somehow mixed up the prescribed sequence of events - in short, he forgot to kill and to clean his dinner.

The second activity - hitting the other guy with a sausage - makes some sense, I guess. Probably our hero wanted some audio-visual background to go with his meal. His choice of an 8-inch sausage is appropriate and directly related to food, I submit. I distinctly remember a Hungarian meat dish that contained several kinds of meat and sausages artfully wrapped up... but I digress here.

Now that we put back some sense into the first part of the story, we can move on.

Lt Ian Burrimond says Antonio Vasquez, 22, was found hiding in a field wearing only a T-shirt, boxer shorts and socks after the incident.

This short sentence raises a spate of new questions. Why would our hero (we can call him Antonio now, couldn't we?) hide in a field nearby? I think that Antonio fully intended (maybe still intends) to come back to the scene and continue with his dinner. He was just waiting for the unwanted intrusion of police to be over.

Of course, another legitimate question would be the reason for partial clothing state of Antonio. Since the dolt (we can safely call him/her dolt now, I guess) that has written the story for AP, couldn't find his/her own knickers without his/her editor, this vital question wasn't even asked, let alone answered. Pity. But I would venture another educated guess: the famworkers' bodies, when dismembered in the course of a meal, tend to release a lot of innards, liquids and other kinds of gore that could easily stain the consumer's clothes. Our Antonio, obviously being an exacting and meticulous person, made sure his shoes and trousers will remain unblemished. I must say that my sympathy to Antonio went up another notch. Not to mention his sensible choice of boxer shorts (the only important point our dolt of a writer didn't miss).

Yet another important question: why has the incident warranted involvement of such exalted police official as a Lieutenant? If the report, jumbled as it is, does not lie, there were no injuries to speak of - I mean, you cannot in all seriousness classify being rubbed by spices as an injury, some people I know of will even... but I digress again - so why a police luminary? I say there is more to the story than what was unearthed by our dolt. And again I have to come forth with an explanation. I am certain that there were more incidents of rubbing with spices and eating.

We are dealing here with a serial spice rubber cum cannibal!

Well, I hope that my essay, short as it was, spilled some light on the confusing and totally unsatisfactory report. I apologize for its shortness due to lack of time and lunch raising its ugly head. Of course, the late and incomparable Faulkner would have made a book of this undeniably thrilling story. But I have to round this post up.

Not before reflecting on a funny detail (again misinterpreted by the dolt):

Lt Burrimond said the money had been recovered but the weapon, the sausage, had been eaten by a dog.

Of course, the money has been recovered, since the owners remained alive and could verify it. But ascribing the disappearance of the sausage to a mysterious dog (I bet you whatever that the dog will be never found and charged) is really pathetic. Some police habits never die... 'nuf said.

I believe I have succeeded to dispel some of the confusion that reigned over the story. Mentioning confusion:


Yeah, that's it, isn't it?

P.S. On the other hand, the locale of the incident is Fresno, which is in California. This alone explains a lot. Oh well.

P.P.S. CNN is also on the case, but with the same level of details as Ananova.