"Snark Bites" 08/16-22

08/22
Local Lawsuits "SLAPP"-Happy Lately
Latest suits involve SLAPPy developers, vulgar monkeys

From APB reports. KNOXVILLE - In recent days, Knox County lawsuits have been sprouting like mushrooms in this year's copious summer rain - and some of them weren't filed by attorney Herb Moncier, even. Three sprang up this week.

In one development, poor local developer Victor Jernigan is threatening to sue the mighty nonprofit Tennessee Clean Water Network for suing him to "attempt to defang me and deprive me of my right to make a living through my developments, which never, ever have any sort of stormwater violations whatsoever."

In another suit, Brad Majors, a plaintiff in a lawsuit involving Knox County's mulch operations, is suing the county and two key county officials to obtain primates that he contends will prove that County Solid Waste Director Tom Salter sent trained chimpanzees to insult an attorney using Majors' name.

The third suit is whatever is the latest jab Herb Moncier is taking at former Sheriff Tim Hutchison. It also may or may not involve former Knox County Law Director and current Chancellor Mike Moyers, a situation which caused Knox County Chancellor John Weaver to throw up his hands in dismay and announce Friday that he will recuse himself from the suit.

"I have in this case documents filed by Mike Moyers since he has become chancellor," Weaver said in a motions hearing Friday. "How can I find whether he is or is not involved in this case? I don't know, but I know Herb is involved in it, so I think I don't have any choice but to recuse myself from this matter."

The Knox County Chancery Court lawsuit by Majors, who runs the Rocky Holler Mixture Grow Mulch Shop, is against Knox County, Salter, and Bruce Wuethrich, director of the county's Engineering and Public Works Department. It claims that Salter, in a series of e-mails, developed a scheme to send a trained chimpanzee to attorney Mark Napier, who represents Natural Resources Recovery of Tennessee in the ongoing lawsuit by Majors, and play tape-recorded insults to Napier.

Majors' most recent lawsuit, filed Thursday, demands the county comply with the Open Records Act and turn over any primates sent by Salter to Napier with Majors' name on them. For example, the lawsuit states that a monkey dressed in a telegraph delivery boy's costume came to Napier's office with a note pinned to its lapel that read "Brad created a Monk-e-mail-o-gram just for you. Now what did you do to deserve that?" under which the address of "brad@rockyholler.com" appeared. Majors alleges this is not his e-mail address.

The lawsuit contends the chimpanzee had a tape recorder slung around its neck with a Post-It note reading "press here to play" on it. Upon the play button being pressed, the lawsuit alleges "that the monkey mouthed along to the message, making it appear to be a talking chimpanzee that had vulgar language inserted into its vocabulary."

The suit seeks to have Salter permanently "cease and desist" from training vulgar monkeys and have Knox County pay for the "deprogramming and reintegration into primate society" of all chimpanzees affected by the insult-a-gram program.

Salter declined to comment on the lawsuit, but a monkey in his office characterized the suit as "bananas..."


08/18
Ragsdale Won't Say Who Wrote Lyrics for 'Kosovo'
Were song's verses lifted from Kosovo 3rd graders?

From APB reports. KNOXVILLE - Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale won't reveal who wrote the lyrics to "Kosovo," his ode to Eastern Europe, which was supposedly composed during his trip to the eponymous country. But when asked about the junket on Monday, he said, "It was written over there, and no one from the county had anything to do with it."

Before and after a meeting of the Halls Republican Club at the Mandarin House on Maynardville Highway, the mayor's answer gave rise to speculation that the lyrics may have been "inspired" by homework assignments the mayor saw while reading to a group of Kosovo 3rd graders.

Ragsdale briefly addressed reporters' questions as well as some tough questions from audience members about the origin and meaning of the song and the workings of the creative process.

The eight-day trip to several cities in Kosovo was part of a possible citizen-swap program whereby the mayor could acquire some citizens less inclined to question his administration's previous missteps, according to the mayor's office. The trip was paid for by an unnamed business interest, which may be in the lyric-writing sector. Ragsdale and his operatives have repeatedly declined to identify who wrote the "Kosovo" lyrics.

"Other than myself, no one in Knox County government has written song lyrics during my tenure in office, and as far I know, no one in the unnamed business has either," Ragsdale said before his talk to about 50 GOP faithful.

After a speech in which he outlined his administration's accomplishments in reading to children, reading to toddlers and reading to infants, Ragsdale fielded questions from the audience.

Bruce Willis, a sometime-songsmith who has cast doubts on Ragsdale's "stand-up mayor" ambitions and who also started an unsuccessful attempt to have him "gonged" from office, asked if taxpayers were footing the bill for his musical ambitions or if "internal auditor Richard Walls would find spending improprieties in another audit that shows who you paid to write those lyrics."

Ragsdale did not directly answer Willis. Instead, the mayor said Willis wasn't "concerned about whether the lyrics were paid for - you just want to cast aspersions on my songwriting talent."

"Songwriting talent? Song writing talent!" hooted Willis. "That song is execrable! Those lyrics are right out of your left armpit! A 3rd grader could have written better meter..."


08/17
Knox County Hosts Parasite Experts
"It seemed like the ideal environment for up-close study," says one expert

From APB reports. KNOXVILLE - Hookworms and fluke worms and bureaucrats - oh my.
Like a bad government official, a parasite lives and eats off another organism without giving anything helpful in return. The victim is called, ironically, a "host" - and in the bureaucrat parasite's case, the party's on the taxpayers' tab.

Knox County has been hosting more than 250 parasite experts from several countries this past weekend at the 84th annual meeting of the American Society of Parasitologists at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. This year's meeting was highly anticipated by members of the ASP, as parasitologists flocked from around the world to observe the thriving parasitic activity in Knox County.

"With everything that's been going on in Knox County government, we all just thought this was an obvious location for holding our conference," said Society President Ivan Du Sukublod. "How often do we get the chance to see parasites in their natural habitat? So we were very excited about coming to Knox County. If you ever saw that episode of The X-files with the human fluke worm, well, that's what we're hoping to encounter here."

The theme of the conference is "Parasites on a Shrinking Budget," and more than 140 scientific papers on government leeches are being presented, according to conference organizers. They will range from basic research on parasite economics and how budget change affects parasite behavior to issues surrounding perhaps the most commonly known parasite: bureaucrats.

Government sinecures, poorly supervised programs and some independently elected offices are the most common areas for parasite invasion in Knox County, according to Dr. Rafael Isea, a local government parasitology professor who is helping organize the event. He is a former president of the society as well.

Not every parasite is bad, he insists.

"Some cause horrible scandals, and some cause very little harm to the host while still remaining the life of the party, so to speak," says Isea. "If they go along, doing their little parasitic activities unobtrusively, then you'll never even know they're there, even if they are human fluke worms. It's only when they call attention to themselves by trying to siphon too much off the host that things go bad. We think they're wonderful. We don't want them to cause government inefficiencies or otherwise destroy the county, but we do think they're fascinating. To me, they're not gross - they're part of life's rich pageant..."