Snakebit

John LaRue was professor of herpetology at Louisiana State University when a green anaconda wrapped around him one night at John’s previous research place. The LSU professor was rescued by Jacob Gigue, his assistant. Both were guarding the Atchafalaya River Basin from constrictor snakes transported from the Everglades of Florida by a narcissistic criminal parading within academic circles as an international scientist. The fracas between John and Andre Bennelli began one night six years earlier. Then Bennelli had taunted John unmercifully by fondling his female associate, stomping to death his injured pet laughing seagull, degrading John’s truck, and finally hitting John with a triple knotted table napkin. As a result, John gave Bennelli an elbow smash that stumbled him into an antique Coke machine thirty feet across the floor of the Gumbo House restaurant in Saint Martinsville. The narcissistic, double-jointed, and athletic Bennelli never got over losing that fight with John, previously crippled from an accident initiated by a new employee dropping John into a pile of steel girders from a bucket crane of a Shell oil rig located in the Gulf of Mexico. However, Bennelli, after gaining consciousness, asked John to make a life-for-life sporting bet on which one would die first. Bennelli bet John that he would run him and his wife crazy before he finally killed John and molested Lisa LaFay, John’s wife-to-be later. Lisa, a struggling student nurse, had formerly waited tables at Antoine’s Restaurant in New Orleans and been given much money in gratuities—for favors—to Bennelli’s no avail. To fulfill his narcissistic need for dominance over John and Lisa, Bennelli used techniques taught him by Gypsies passing through Dusseldorf, Germany. Raised north of Paris, France, Andre developed a fetish for snakes when he learned in biology class that snakes had no shoulders. Bennelli used the cultural global warming controversy to show mind control, feeding his narcissistic need for such. Consequently, Bennelli put out pythons on the Natchez Trace; the Nottoway Plantation; near White Castle, Louisiana, the Hermitage in Nashville, Tennessee, and within the Little Pigeon River that runs through Gatlinburg, Tennessee, near the Pancake Pantry. Finally, Bennelli, disguised as a juggling clown, succumbed in an unsuspecting manner at the Opp Rattlesnake Rodeo in Opp, Alabama. Oddly, Bennelli had requested that Dr. Cabbot, his psychiatrist, and John act as coexecutors and see that his body was buried in the family wine vineyard in France.

Describes the author's lifelong fascination and career with snakes, including his adventures with dangerous snakes around the world and his associations with some of the world's leading herpetologists.

THE STORY: A study of modern friendship when put to the test, the play centers on Jonathan and his wife, Jenifer, while they visit their oldest friend, Michael, at his home in Los Angeles. Jonathan, an actor, is in L.A. auditioning for a film--his f

The Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English is a revised and expanded edition of the Weatherford Award–winning Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English, published in 2005 and known in Appalachian studies circles as the most comprehensive reference work dedicated to Appalachian vernacular and linguistic practice. Editors Michael B. Montgomery and Jennifer K. N. Heinmiller document the variety of English used in parts of eight states, ranging from West Virginia to Georgia—an expansion of the first edition's geography, which was limited primarily to North Carolina and Tennessee—and include over 10,000 entries drawn from over 2,200 sources. The entries include approximately 35,000 citations to provide the reader with historical context, meaning, and usage. Around 1,600 of those examples are from letters written by Civil War soldiers and their family members, and another 4,000 are taken from regional oral history recordings. Decades in the making, the Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English surpasses the original by thousands of entries. There is no work of this magnitude available that so completely illustrates the rich language of the Smoky Mountains and Southern Appalachia.

What Carroll Shelby wanted was a 2,400-pound sports car sheathed in carbon fiber that was the fastest road car in the world. What he got was quite a different matter! The Series 1 was one of the most highly anticipated sports cars in living memory. It was a magazine cover story seven times and countless more articles were written about it. The car was eventually produced early in 2000-but it reached its owners well behind schedule, at a higher price, and in smaller numbers than first projected. The story of the Shelby Series 1 "is about everything that could possibly go wrong and then did." It's a drama of gigantic and aspiring egos, petty prerogatives, awesome talent, bureaucratic bungling, and brilliant engineering. Of the many cars Shelby created over his career, none was as controversial as the Series 1. Snake Bit - an apt description of what happened to anyone and everyone involved in the project - is required and captivating reading for the thousands of Carroll Shelby fans throughout the world.

A devout Catholic, a visionary—and some say prophetic—writer, Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) has gained a growing presence in contemporary popular culture. While O’Connor professed that she did not have an ear for music, allusions to her writing appear in the lyrics and narrative form of some of the most celebrated musicians on the contemporary music scene. Flannery at the Grammys sounds the extensive influence of this southern author on the art and vision of a suite of American and British singer-songwriters and pop groups. Author Irwin H. Streight invites critical awareness of O’Connor’s resonance in the products of popular music culture—in folk, blues, rock, gospel, punk, heavy metal, and indie pop songs by some of the most notable figures in the popular music business. Streight examines O'Connor's influence on the art and vision of multiple Grammy Award winners Bruce Springsteen, Lucinda Williams, R.E.M., and U2, along with celebrated songwriters Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Sufjan Stevens, Mary Gauthier, Tom Waits, and others. Despite her orthodox religious, and at times controversial, views and limited literary output, O’Connor has left a curiously indelible mark on the careers of the successful musicians discussed in this volume. Still, her acknowledged influence and remarkable presence in contemporary pop and rock songs has not been well noted by pop music critics and/or literary scholars. Many years in the making, Flannery at the Grammys achieves groundbreaking work in cultural studies and combines in-depth literary and pop music scholarship to engage the informed devotee and the casual reader alike.

DIVUsing Faulkner's Go Down Moses as a point of departure, this book explores the conflicting nature of property relations that have slavery in the U.S. at their base and have affected the conceptualizations of rights and representations of African A/div