Category: News

In the news today:

• Mysterious monolith found in Utah desert has disappeared.
• Dave Prowse, actor who played Darth Vader, dies at 85.

The world is a much more interesting place when you have a vivid imagination. Or are slightly crack’d.

Well, here we are in 2020.

Man seen exhaling on protesters outside Trump golf club charged with assault

On optimist would say we have nowhere to go but up.

I am not an optimist.

The description of the suspect from Saturday’s post on a shooting at Mayfair Mall was:

“Preliminary statements from witnesses indicate that the shooter is a white male in his 20s or 30s,” Weber told reporters. “Investigators are working on determining the identity of that suspect.”

Turns out:

Police had said Friday that witnesses described the shooter as a white man in his 20s or 30s. But Weber described the suspect as a 15-year-old Hispanic boy. His firearm was recovered during the arrest.

Hey, I understand the mix-up. Everyone under 35 looks like a damn kid to me, so I can easily confuse someone who is fifteen for someone who is thirty and vice-versa.

Police: 8 injured in Wisconsin mall shooting; suspect sought.

Of course it’s Mayfair Mall:

Wauwatosa Police Chief Barry Weber gave no motive for the attack at the Mayfair Mall in a brief update about three hours after the 2:50 p.m. incident near an entrance to the Macy’s store. He said the extent of the eight victims’ injuries was unknown, but all were alive. He added that the shooter was “no longer at the scene” when authorities arrived.

“Preliminary statements from witnesses indicate that the shooter is a white male in his 20s or 30s,” Weber told reporters. “Investigators are working on determining the identity of that suspect.”

* * * *

“Preliminary investigation has led us to believe that this shooting was not a random act, and was the result of an altercation,” said police, who added that the mall was now cleared and secure.

It’s easy to guess as it’s about the only mall left in the Milwaukee area and because it has been in the headlines for a couple of years for incidents including brawls and a police shooting earlier this year that triggered the now-customary “protests.”

Kind of like the Galleria in St. Louis; it had a reputation for being upscale, but its central location allows Sumdoods to congregate there, and we only hear about it outstate when there’s trouble every year or so.

A number of mall owners have entered bankruptcy here recently. I have to wonder if the mall as a concept is dead.

I’ve been seeing Salt Life stickers on rear windows of cars for years. Well, I have been seeing something for years, and I only relatively recently pieced together that the stickers said Salt Life. I wondered what that meant, but never really enough to look it up when I got home. Or maybe I did but it didn’t stick with me.

Well, I know now:

A co-founder of a popular Florida clothing brand has been charged with manslaughter and gun possession in the death of an 18-year-old woman found shot at a South Florida hotel, police said.

Michael Troy Hutto, 54, who co-founded Salt Life apparel in Jacksonville Beach with three friends in 2003, was arrested Friday at a hospital in Jacksonville while wearing hospital scrubs and skid-proof socks, the Florida Highway Patrol said.

To be honest, I don’t really get putting a sticker on your car telling everyone your clothing choice. Or the Ron Jon Surf Shop stickers on cars here in Missouri. Maybe beach people are just different. I am sure Jimmy Buffett would explain it to me.

One thing is certain: I will know what Salt Life is, although I might be seeing it on fewer cars in the future.

Confession: I read the Agony Aunt columns in the British tabloids, particularly Dear Deidre in The Sun. Do I do it for the salacious and seamy/unseemly details? Do I do it to feel morally superiour (the British spelling, if I had my druthers) to the people who might write into Dear Deidre not so much for advice but for some sort of validation that what they did was not wrong, or at least no so wrong:

Of course that’s why.

I have to wonder how much popular culture, from Dear Deidre to Melrose Place (what, that’s not popular culture now? Gentle reader, I don’t want to make you feel old, but the most recent reboot was eleven years ago already, so it’s ripe for another comeback–if there is one boon from dearth of fresh ideas in modern popular mythmaking, it’s that any cultural allusions will be perennially fresh as the same old shows and movies get endlessly recycled), where was I? Oh yes, that popular culture has fictively normalized bad behavior. But that’s neither here nor there.

What I wanted to point out is how the answers to a lot of such letters feature first and foremost the condemnation not so much for how people have betrayed sacred vows or presumed trust but rather for putting people at risk of getting Wuhan Flu. Continue reading “The Real Problem Is” →

One of these things is not like the others:

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE: Missouri adds 1,500+ cases; Arkansas up 800+ cases!!!!

Hospitalizations rising in Missouri, prompting worries!!!!!

Springfield-Greene County Health Department reports 4 additional COVID-19 deaths!!!!!!!

Nixa, Mo. Mask Order: Mixed thoughts on new masking ordinance!!! and City of Ozark, Mo. enacts masking ordinance after cases spike, wherein two nearby towns went through the whole legislative process, where the city councils met, had citizens make their voices known, and ultimately decided to not have a masking ban, but the news and the executives at the hospitals are now SHOUTING EXCLAMATION POINTS, so the mayors, modern day Cincinnatuses (Cincinnati?) have unilaterally taken EMERGENCY ACTION.

But: Mo. State COVID-case downturn leads to ending lease with Q Hotel:

Confirmed cases of coronavirus have dropped off substantially at Missouri State University so that the school no longer needs to use a local hotel to house students who’ve tested positive.

The “Q” in The Q Hotel & Suites stood for “quarantine” when Missouri State announced in August that it was leasing the then-closed 120-room building next to Hammons Field as a place to house students who contracted COVID-19.

* * * *

At its peak on August 31 the university was housing 122 students in either quarantine or isolation.

Now that number is 10.

Where are the exclamation points for this data?

Does anyone else here draw parallels between counting deaths and casualties in the Iraq War, with Grim Milestones based on context-free metrics, every day up until a different party took the White House and today? Will Karens become the Cindy Sheehans of 2020 and disappear should Biden win?

Ask me in a couple of months!

At SFGate.com, ‘No one signed up for 2020’: San Francisco retailers struggle to survive the pandemic.

At the San Francisco Chronicle site, Rampant shoplifting leads to another Walgreens closing in S.F..

I have to wonder if the current unpleasantness is really what’s to blame here. And by here, I mean there, where they run things differently yet.

It’s supposed to be a heartwarming story of people getting out there and voting [the right way], I guess: Michigan woman travels 300 miles to vote:

A 94-year-old Michigan woman went more than the extra mile to vote in this year’s election.

In fact, [redacted] traveled over 300 miles to make sure her vote was counted.

She’s apparently been an activist in Detroit for most of her life, but:

[Redacted] is staying with family in a suburb of Chicago and when she did not receive her absentee ballot, she asked her son to drive her to Detroit so that she could vote.

Questions abound outside the text of the “news” story, such as:

• Does she live with relatives in Chicago?
• Did she not get issued an absentee ballot because she had no residence address in Detroit, and Michigan would not mail it to Chicago?
• If so, why was it so important to vote in what might be a swing state this year and not in Chicago, which is in a pretty solid Democrat state?

Those questions come to my mind, but cynicism is my life, not just my vocation. And I am not a professional journalist who is trying to drum up voting on one side of the political equation (see: cynicism is my life above).

Here’s why canned corn might be tough to find at supermarkets:

Add canned corn to the list of supermarket staples that have become elusive amid the COVID-19 crisis.

The pandemic has roiled the supply chain for canned sweet corn in several ways, meaning it might be tough to track down at your local grocery store, a new report says.

The New York Post links to a Wall Street Journal slideshow that has all the normal things: limited sweet corn production, limited and expensive transportation, brisk sales in the past. Basically, a lot of people bought canned goods this year, which depleted existing stocks, and not enough will be coming through the pipeline to replace all that was already sold.

I say I could have used this yesterday as I went to the grocery and bought six cans of whole kernel corn on sale, and I should have bought twelve. As it stands, I culled our cabinet collection for the quarter and took a couple hundred pounds of cans, mostly vegetables, to the local food bank. The vegetables at our local grocery tend to have a “best buy” date that doesn’t move but every couple of years; when the canned goods in 2018 say Dec 2020, they will say Dec 2020 until sometime in mid 2020, which means everything I buy for a year and a half will become food pantry fodder at the same time. So I have far fewer just-in-case food on hand than I did earlier this week, and in an election year, too.

Good thing I have news like this so that me and several million of my closest friends can make a run on the grocery stores to clear them of all canned corn to help solve the problem.

Meanwhile, I need to get to the grocery more often. The whole pick up something extra every trip, which goes along with the pick up something for the food bank every trip, kind of fails when every trip is once every fortnight instead of a couple times a week.

Emu runs loose: Big bird named Kermit escapes Haverhill yard, stretches its long legs:

The emu named Kermit was being handled by a Haverhill woman who temporarily cares for animals in need of homes. On Wednesday morning, the woman was in the process of transporting Kermit to a farm in Maine when the bird tried to make a quick getaway. According to a resident who saw the incident, a gust of wind blew open a gate to the property where the bird was being held, and Kermit ran.

The bird calmed down after being given a pear from a nearby pear tree and was carried to safety.

The police did not have to shoot it eight times. Although that was a different time; in the intervening decade and a half, the Carbondale police force undoubtedly has gotten some armored vehicle remainders from the United States Government and can now simply run down the bird with an MRAP if they don’t have a pear handy.

(You can see all of my mockery of the incident here. This link via Neatorama.)

Springfield has extended mandatory virtual signaling, and they have followed the Science!^TM:

“We know that whether or not masking is 20% effective, or 50% effective, or 90% effective, they are effective, and they will save lives,” said CoxHealth CEO Steve Edwards.

One wonders if 0% effective would still be effective, since it is the noun that the percentage modifies regardless of what the percentage is. According to this accounting, sneezing on a chain link fence is effective if but one tiny virus clings to it instead of floating free.

Sixty percent of the time it works every time.

Pokin Around: Story of Robert Rosendahl’s boat has a new chapter: Destination Tahiti:

Stories hold a force that can transcend life.

Few have the power of the tale of Robert Rosendahl, World War II vet who survived the Bataan Death March, and his boat.

Rosendahl died at age 98 on Feb. 2. The love of his life, Bettie, had died 40 days prior on Christmas Day 2019.

But that is not the end of this story.

Six men in their 60s, including Rosendahl’s son Eirik, plan to fulfill Rosendahl’s dream of finishing the boat — that he first started to build in the early 1980s — and sail it to Tahiti in the South Pacific.

For decades, the boat has sat unfinished on the lawn of the Rosendahl home near Golden Avenue and Republic Road.

After Pokin’s first story on the boat ran in 2015, I looked for the boat when I was driving through that area. It was a bit hidden amongst trees, but I spotted it from time to time. When I didn’t think it was on Scenic Avenue just to the east and look for it there.

Golden has become one of our preferred bike riding routes, so I passed that boat a bunch this year. It’s easier to spot as some of the woods around it have been pared back. And I knew that one day soon, something that I’d seen in my few years in Springfield, something whose history I knew (thanks to Steve Pokin), would be gone. The house would be sold, perhaps razed for a business or multifamily housing, and a bit of Springfield lore lost forever.

If it’s going to go, though, I am glad it will be used as the former owner intended.

For some reason, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has this story on its front page, albeit at the bottom, today:

Oh, come now, we can all know the reason: It wants to hurt a Republican.

It looks like the Journal-Sentinel has a rotating series of stories in the same area, and they might have that one thing in common.

Editorial: West on fire, Great Lakes on the rise, and other climate perils:

The Midwest doesn’t generally have to cope with wildfires, but here, too, climate change is altering our environment in ways that are powerful and dangerous to people as well as property. The most obvious effect is the rising waters in the Great Lakes. Lake Michigan, Erie and Huron set all-time records for high levels this year, and Superior broke its February record. Recent years have been the wettest for the Great Lakes in more than 120 years.

I am so old that I remember a couple years ago when the very opposite worry was true:

Lake Michigan has officially sunk to an all-time low.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reported Tuesday that in January the lake plunged below its previous record low level, set in March 1964.

The water is now more than 6 feet below the record high, set in October 1986. The water level is tracked by gauges placed around Lakes Michigan and Huron, which are actually one body of water connected by the Straits of Mackinac. Daily measurements are then averaged at the end of each month for record-keeping purposes.

Remember, gentle reader, when anyone talks about climate measurements being the mostest and the worstest in history, they do not mean like since Ur and the flood that appears in many historical mythologies (the current amount of fresh water, a scarce commodity in many parts of the world, is a CIVILIZATION ENDING EVENT!). History in this case means a hundred years or so when measurement began, and where the measurement in the early part of “history” was not standardized or as precise as it is now.

But the countdown is on to the next set of stories talking about how low lake levels are not going to provide enough water for the cities and the fish. I think it’s got about six years of sand in that particular glass.

1. Bank branches/lobbies are closed.
2. Depositors cannot deposit coins through the drive-thru.

The end.

I don’t know if that’s completely the case, but I don’t see businesses who would normally deposit coins putting their money in the Coinstar machines.

The people with piles of coins at home or charities that generally accumulate a bunch of quarters, dimes, and nickels, though, also don’t have a way to deposit those coins.

Could it be as simple as that?

The headline is Missouri burns through $1.3 million in veterans’ money in effort to limit marijuana businesses.

But the story is:

Seven months after state officials finished awarding medical marijuana business licenses, regulators have spent $1.3 million in court to defend themselves against a wave of lawsuits filed by businesses whose applications the state denied.

* * * *

The money spent on legal fees to private law firms — $1.29 million so far — comes from fees medical marijuana cardholders and business applicants have paid the department. Those fees, after covering the cost of running the program, are supposed to be deposited into a new Veterans’ Health and Care Fund.

It is not clear what programs the “journalist” would prefer to cut to pay for the increased costs that the appeals and lawsuits cause. Education? Tax abatements for developers or film producers? Health care for the poor?

Missouri doesn’t have the magic beans that can grow the unlimited red ink trees that the federal government has. Maybe that’s the key: more money with puppetmaster strings from Washington!

It’s almost like some people have never learned basic balance sheets or budgeting.