News flash: World chock full o’ idiots

It’s either very sad or very comforting that this - from today’s Myrtle Beach Sun News – is what passes for “breaking news” in South Carolina:

“Woman wets herself during shoplifting arrest”

Rather than try and sum up this earth-shattering development, why not let the Sun News handle the heavy lifting:

A 25-year-old Myrtle Beach woman who was arrested and charged with shoplifting urinated on the ground and was transported to the hospital after claiming she was having a seizure.

Krystal Lynn McMillan was detained by an employee at Ulta Cosmetics in Myrtle Beach, after McMillan allegedly put cosmetic testers and other makeup in her purse at about 5p.m. Wednesday, according to a Myrtle Beach Police Department report.

The incident was captured on surveillance video.

She was released and booked into jail. She was charged with shoplifting first degree and breach of peace.

After police arrived and McMillan was place in handcuffs, she began to scream for her boyfriend and said she needed her medication. She threw herself on the ground and said she couldn’t breathe and was having a seizure.

Emergency Medical Services was contacted. McMillan started spitting on the floor and said she needed to pee and “had explosive diarrhea”, according to the report.

She squatted on the ground and appeared to force herself to urinate, leaving a pool of urine on the ground.

When EMS arrived on the scene McMillan was transported to Grand Strand Regional Medical Center.

As ridiculous as it was for the paper to include this on its website as breaking news, one has to take just a tiny bit of pleasure in the fact that this moron’s actions were highlighted under a headline about her wetting herself, and included details of ”explosive diarrhea.”

The ridicule she’ll face is probably a far worse punishment than any court could ever give out.

SC museum receives Civil War desk

A campaign desk belonging to Confederate Lt. Gen. Stephen D. Lee was donated to the Charleston Museum recently.

The gift of a Lee descendant, the desk is in near-pristine condition and still carries mementos of the War Between the States, including a few Confederate stamps stuck to a lid and a pair of contemporary bullets where the ink well once sat, according to The Charleston Post and Courier.

Lee, a Charleston native  who saw action in many of the war’s key battles, including Fort Sumter, Manassas, Sharpsburg, Vicksburg and Franklin, used the desk as a stable writing surface while on campaign. The item is made of mahogany with inlaid ivory.

“These were common and in high-demand, especially among officers in the Civil War,” J. Grahame Long,  the museum’s curator of history, told the paper. “It would have traveled with Lee, but obviously he loved it very much. He took care of it.”

Lee was a remarkable individual. He entered the Confederate forces as a captain in the South Carolina Militia and rose to become the youngest lieutenant general in the Confederacy.

Following the war he was a planter, legislator and author, and later served as the first president of Mississippi A&M College, now Mississippi State.

Lee also served as a delegate to the state’s constitutional convention in 1890, was the head of the Vicksburg National Park Association.

Late in life, Lee was the commander-in-chief of the United Confederate Veterans.

Simmons’ legacy lives on in Charleston

Among the many tributes to Philip Simmons, the Charleston blacksmith who died recently at age 97, was this in The Charleston Post and Courier by Leo Twiggs, the Distinguished Artist-in-Residence at Claflin University.

Twiggs succinctly summed up what Simmons meant to the Lowcountry in the final paragraph of his piece:

“Perhaps the most heartwarming summation of Philip’s significance to all of us was spoken some years ago by Frank Hodsoll, then Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. He said, ‘Philip Simmons is probably the most important single reason that Charleston has remained Charleston.’”