Sideswipe: May 8 - The story of Jack the Snipper

Jack the Snipper

News nostalgia from 1942 in Pascagoula, Mississippi:

Everybody in town is just as mystified over the motive of the "phantom barber" as they are about who he might try to clip next. Without robbing or otherwise disturbing his victims, he breaks into homes at night and snips the hair of heavy sleepers. He has given haircuts to three persons in the past week and not one of them even woke up during the process. Police chief A. W. Ezell said he didn't have the slightest idea why a man would want to do such a thing, but because the complaints have been coming hard and heavy, his department has staked a $300 reward for information leading to his capture. He also gave pistol permits to six volunteer officers and ordered the regular police force to be on the alert. Bloodhounds, given a man's footprint to start on, have failed miserably. None of the victims could give a description since they slumbered on oblivious of the tonsorial attention they were getting.

Venting on Mumsnet

"Backstory is husband has a bit of form being a performance parent (only attentive or doing any childcare when others are watching). Our daughter is 6 and is having twice-daily catch-up with school work with her class via zoom. Husband keeps getting on the screen when he can, either in the background or doing something unnecessary and looking to see if he is on the screen, or coming into shot and either doing "antennae" behind her head or pretending to be a monster, often when the class are in the middle of something else. I can see she finds it annoying and a bit embarrassing. I keep telling him off for doing this (and physically batting his hands away ... and he is very upset with me and says I constantly stifle and dismiss him. I don't think that's the case. I don't know if I'm so jaded by his behaviour over these years that I am disproportionately irritated by something quite innocent."

Did you know ...

In an effort to keep pesky English words from creeping into the French language, officials in France have been coming up with alternatives to some of the more common phrases of the digital age. Suggestions include: "le mobile multifonction" (mobile multifunction) as an alternative to the English word "smartphone". Previous suggestions included "ordiphone" (from "ordinateur", the French word for computer) and "terminal de poche" (or "pocket terminal"). These, it seems, did not quite stick.