More elderly alerts

Another old person involved in crime and meth.
Huerta, arrested in the sting, is accused of demanding taxes from drug money earned by Latino gang members in the Coachella Valley and paying a cut to his Mexican Mafia sponsor, Richard "Psycho" Aguirre, who is serving a life sentence at Pelican Bay State Prison.

Aguirre's mother, 5-foot-1 Jovita Aguirre, 75, collected Huerta's payments and passed along orders to him from her son, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Riverside County.

Dylan

In addition to Springsteen, I have also been listening to someone, like me, who couldn't wait to get the hell out of Minnesota.
This video had been getting replayed a lot in my house for a lot of reasons.
1. The half-smirk on Bob's face in so many shots.
2. The final shot of him eating a hamburger.
3. This is before Katie Holmes got kidnapped and brainwashed.
etc.

Packing and arrangements are taking up a lot of my evenings, so please understand the sporadicism of it all.

Way to set precedent, elderly!

Colbert tipped me off to this.
BAGHDAD -- The U.S. military is walling off at least 10 of Baghdad's most violent neighborhoods and using biometric technology to track some of their residents, creating what officers call "gated communities" in an attempt to carve out oases of safety in this war-ravaged city.
...
"They've been doing it in Florida, and the old people seem to like it," joked the platoon's leader, Sgt. 1st Class Charles Schmitt, 37, as he watched his team create the public entrance to the new gated community.

Minneapolis is like New Jersey

Only with more crime.



It's not often I quote Springsteen, but with certain transitions approaching, I've been revisited by a certain elan I last had when I was 18 and busting to get out of another Midwestern crudpit.

So, to give you a sense of where I am, Bruce Springsteen:

"You hear their engines roaring on
But when you get to the porch theyre gone
On the wind, so Mary climb in
It's a town full of losers
And I'm pulling out of here to win."

Dear Dennis Kucinich,

I'm with ya all the way, buddy.

But I still think you should shoot for all the marbles:

Let's impeach the president for lying
And leading our country into war
Abusing all the power that we gave him
And shipping all our money out the door

He¹s the man who hired all the criminals
The White House shadows who hide behind closed doors
And bend the facts to fit with their new stories
Of why we have to send our men to war

Let's impeach the president for spying
On citizens inside their own homes
Breaking every law in the country
By tapping our computers and telephones

What if Al Qaeda blew up the levees
Would New Orleans have been safer that way
Sheltered by our government's protection
Or was someone just not home that day?

Let's impeach the president
For hijacking our religion and using it to get elected
Dividing our country into colors
And still leaving black people neglected

Thank god he¹s racking down on steroids
Since he sold his old baseball team
There's lot of people looking at big trouble
But of course the president is clean

Thank God.

--Neil Young
from the album Living with War

So Young

Every so often, I try to remember what it was like to be young and earnest and full of energy. This helps.

Even I Won't Go There

As much as I rail against the elderly menace, I at least acknowlege that they are human beings.
Not to be treated like a dolphin or grizzly bear.
'Electronic tagging can certainly help people with dementia achieve greater independence and dignity, and reduce the concern and worry that carers may have about the person they care for. But we need to strike a balance between the benefits to an individual and the ethics of electronic tagging.'

You go, Kiwis!

New Zealand sends old people to jail.
"Despite your age and infirmities, you have deliberately, for a period going on for 10 years, made life a misery for neighbours. The consequences of your behaviour mustbe brought home to you."

Another Reason to hate Minnesota

People here attend Shakespeare productions for all the wrong reasons.
After seeing the Guthrie production, Steve Marsh, an associate editor of Mpls.St.Paul magazine, wrote in his blog that "listening to the wealthy Lutherans in the Guthrie audience cracking up at Jew jokes made me horribly uncomfortable. Angry, even."

Yup. People here see no problem in Germans villifying Jewish people like this.

Now, people who know me know I love Shakespeare. Even though it hasn't gotten me one whit of career advantage, I consider my time studying Shakespeare at Chicago to be among my favorite days. But I think, just as you would not let a second grader read Huck Finn, you shouldn't expose the people in this state to something for which their Cro-Magnon brains have no capacity.

I am the last person to call for censorship. But I think the Guthrie should refuse admission to any Lutheran from Minnesota.

Okie Dokie, Then.

Minnesota Datin'. Donchaknow.

There's Something About the Elderly

Cameron Diaz sells out.
The 34-year-old says, "I look forward to partaking in that elderly lifestyle. I wouldn't mind being in a retirement village where you're in a community with people who are like-minded and have the same interests.
"So often the elderly are just forgotten about, but I think there can be really green pastures at that age."

Farewell, Kurt Vonnegut

I would have liked to see you at the U of C reunion.
In Chicago, Mr. Vonnegut worked as a police reporter for the Chicago City News Bureau. He also studied for a master’s degree in anthropology at the University of Chicago, writing a thesis on “The Fluctuations Between Good and Evil in Simple Tales.” It was rejected unanimously by the faculty. (The university finally awarded him a degree almost a quarter of a century later, allowing him to use his novel “Cat’s Cradle” as his thesis.)

Winter, still.

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
--Wallace Stevens

It is the most depressing thing to see the trees bare in April.

Oh, well.

B.C. creator Jonny Hart has met his maker.
I sincerely hope newspapers open up their comics page space to new, FUNNY comic strips. The last thing I want to see is B.C. and Wizard of Id being immortalized as Peanuts is.

Brrrr...

It's not the 20-degree weather in April that caused me to shiver this morning.
It was this:


Unfunny Comic Strip of the YEAR.

Weekend's Here!

Russian Old People are not to be messed with.
According to Mikhail Usov, senior aide to the prosecutor of the Voronezh region, 300 miles southwest of Moscow, the suspect struck her victim 30 times with a heavy log after the two women quarreled.

Unfunny Comic Strip of the Day
I'll save you the trouble. Here's the punchline:
"Don't you have anything set aside for retirement?"
"My coin jar's almost full."

You're welcome.

Piracy at the University of Chicago. Number 16!

Boston University? Number 3.

I mention the comparison for no real reason.

Florida looks for a new state song. To replace the accurate "Old Folks At Home."

A Holy Week

Passover and Easter are arriving soon.
A strange combination in Maison du Machine.
Rest assured, though, I am NOT pouring beer down the sink, or giving up my usual Friday Cheeseburger.

Posting will be sporadic here, out of respect.