news of the weird
So I'm sure you've all read that Elizabeth Smart was "found" after being missing for nine months. Seems she was brainwashed into staying with her captors. Um, ok. Brainwashed? Either that's one TALENTED hippie fanatic or she's one STUPID fifteen year old. I admit it must have been terrifying for her to be taken from her house in the middle of the night (if that's what happened, seems they've now downgraded the "gun" in the scene to a "knife") but to spend nine months IN or AROUND your hometown and not figure out a way to come back? Hum.

OK, I was fifteen not five years ago. At fifteen I was pretty freakin' tenacious. I'll tell you one thing, if some freaky guy had kidnapped me, I would not have tolerated being toted around in public for nine months without trying to walk away. I'd like to think that if my fifteen-year-old sister were kidnapped that she'd have something more to say than "they were with me all the time" if she'd spent nine months as a religious vagabond. Weeeeirrrdd.

I can imagine that it's possible Elizabeth's captors tortured and/or raped her. I suppose they could have broken her will slowly. But to the extent that the media describes her as "happy, healthy, and whole" and from the pictures I've seen of her, I doubt it. She doesn't have the look in her eyes. She looks, as best as I can describe it, stupidly innocent.

Still, I think something's fishy here.