Geez, what is this, like the 50th cloudy day in a row? You know what I hate about cloudy days? It's that the sun's doing it's job; the problem is the clouds. It's not like there just weren't enough golden rays to go around. I could understand that, the sun deciding to take a day off. But that sun is up there, burning. And we'd all be down here, soaking up photons, maybe converting some Vitamin D, if not for the big, stupid, lazy clouds.
Today started badly. I opened up the 'ol web browser, up popped the homepage, and I started skimming headlines while the water boiled. The Dow is down, T-bills are up, the Euro is down, the Dollar is up. It's a roller coaster. A big, painfully-boring roller coaster made of numbers and high-blood-pressure medication. Then to the news headlines, where I see the front page of the Chicago Tribune announcing, "3 Bodies Found In Car."
The bodies were all bound, gagged, and shot to death, the article noted, and should not be confused with the "3 Bodies Found In Car" article from last month, where the 3 Bodies had been bound, gagged and beaten to death.
What? Are you kidding me? We live in a city where -- for all its genuine wonder and worth -- we run the risk of confusing one ghastly, grisly situation with another? Because, sorry, but as gruesome and atypically horrific as a crime scene might be, that chalk outline is a dead ringer, if you'll pardon the pun, for a chalk outline we drew yesterday. If they'd have just died in the same place, we could have saved on white chalk. Ridiculous.
In my righteous anger, I pulled up the Minneapolis Star Tribune, wondering how the Twin Cities' beastly crime-du-jour compared. With the population difference, I figured they maybe had "1.2 Bodies Found In Car" or something like that. 1.3 at the most. But they didn't. It's worse than that. Dear, sweet, Tessa, it was so much worse than that.
"Darned Asparagus Beetles" screamed the headline. I swear; you couldn't make this stuff up. Not even a farm report on the spread of pestilence. Just "Darned Asparagus Beetles" followed by an article about, well, beetles. To the delight of children everywhere, Crioceris Asparagi, as they're known to smart people, apparently spent most of this month feasting on the helpless stalks of local asparagus. C. Asparagi also holds the record for "Insect With the Stinkiest Pee". Front page.
Minnesota, the land of ten thousand lakes and zero cars full of dead bodies. A land where every chalk outline is as different as the crime that led to it. A land of where even the biggest headlines are of questionable importance. And should you miss the headlines, you can go about your day with the relative certainty that your car will likely not become your casket, and that the greatest threat to your way of life is quietly eating vegetables in your garden.
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