Sunday in the Park

The first of three potluck picnics sponsored by one of our regional godless groups is being held Sunday, 10 June, at noon, at Columbia Park—Skatje, my wife Mary, and I are planning on being there. Come on out and join the freethought community in the Twin Cities area!

By the way, it’s weird how we’ve got all of these infidel organizations here — the Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists at the University of Minnesota, the Humanists of Minnesota, the Minnesota Atheists, and the Atheists for Human Rights (who in this case aren’t participating in the picnics). The Twin Cities has an embarrassment of riches, while the rural parts of the state are just embarrassingly pious. We have a few students who are going to try and start up a CASH chapter here in Morris next year, and we’ll see how well that goes—if there are any other atheist groups in outstate Minnesota, let me know…and if there are any lonely, isolated atheists scattered here and there (and I know there are), let me know that, too. We should try to build a wider community.

Ted Storck is an inconsiderate, arrogant jerkwad

Hey, I’ve got this wonderful forum that’s read around the world, so I’m going to use it to unload on one of our local idiots, Ted Storck. Storck is one of those insufferable self-important Christians who makes the whole religion look like a lobotomy ward. His wonderful contribution to the cultural life of Morris is that he donated a set of ghastly electronic chimes to the nearby cemetery. And he writes letters to the Morris Sun Tribune.

This Memorial Day weekend, the chimes will play more hymns and patriotic songs at the cemeteries here in Morris.

We hope the few who dislike chimes will tolerate them as we honor the brave men and women who gave their lives to protect this great country.

Ted Storck

U.S. Navy, retired

Morris

Let me count the ways in which Ted Storck is an obnoxious jerk.

  1. Pushing a button to play amplified, sterile hymns over a cemetery honors our dead about as much as slapping a magnetic yellow “I support the troops” ribbon on a hearse.

  2. He knows that there are residents here who find the chimes loud and annoying, yet he announces that he’s going to fire those suckers up anyway.

  3. This cemetery is next door to the university, six blocks from the center of our town, and only a block away from my house. It’s well-positioned to annoy a large number of people.

  4. Ted Storck lives nowhere near the chimes.

  5. He didn’t just start ’em up for Memorial Day weekend. They’re playing this weekend, too. He’s probably hoping to drive us mad all summer long.

  6. And the major reason Ted Storck is a contemptible hypocrite and curse on our community: they’re playing these damned hymns and patriotic songs EVERY FIFTEEN MINUTES. ALL DAY LONG. LOUDLY.

I also live two blocks away from the Catholic church in town. They ring their bells — real bells — a couple of times a day on Sunday, I presume at the start of Mass or something. That’s no problem. It’s even a pleasant sound, and I rather like hearing it—it’s a classic reminder of small town America.

But I want you to imagine this. Even if you are a devoutly religious person who thinks Christianity is the essence of all that is good and true and loving about humanity, try to imagine spending a quiet weekend at home with your family, out on the deck with the barbecue or relaxing in the easy chair with a good book, and every 15 minutes a set of cheesy chimes blares out “Onward, Christian Soldiers” or “Stars and Stripes Forever”. Now imagine being atheist or Jewish or anything other than a blithering Christian sheep and getting slammed with the same noise incessantly.

Ted Storck’s legacy to our community is that he is going to have conditioned lots of us to puke on your shoes if we hear you humming “Rock of Ages.” Thank you, Christianity, for training your members so well to be insensitive, inconsiderate, pushy, arrogant dimbulbs. And thank you, Ted Storck, for personifying one reason why I despise your religion. I still wish you’d shut those damned things off.

I’ll be at City Hall tomorrow to complain, not that I have much expectation that anyone there will do anything.

Hey, Stevens County people!

What are you doing this evening? Two big events:

  • Pirates of the Caribbean 3 is opening at the Morris Theater tonight at 8! I was thinking of going, but Skatje works there, and she’s got the inside scoop: people are already lining up. In Morris. I might wait a few days for the mob to fade away.

  • If PotC3 is too crowded, there’s always Drinking Liberally—7:00pm at Old #1.

Who says Morris isn’t a happening place?

Death notice

The regal old willow that has graced our front yard for longer than I’ve been alive, and which has sadly shown signs of advancing senescence, is scheduled for termination tomorrow morning. It’s a beautiful old tree, but its habit of dropping a ton of log every spring has made it a hazard, so we’ve decided to end it quickly, rather than a slow death by yearly spontaneous lopping of limbs.

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I’ve had several people ask me about this tree, and several have mentioned their sorrow at its imminent passing. If you’d like to pay last respects, tonight is your last chance. Feel free to step into the yard and give it a goodbye hug (be careful, though, and don’t shake it too much—I disavow any responsibility for falling branches.)

The execution of the poor tree will be an all day job on Friday, and unfortunately, it’s got to be carried out in public. For those of you of delicate sensitivities, you might want to stay away from 3rd and College Avenue until Saturday.

Bye-bye, Lileks

As a small tremor in a bit of a staff shakeup at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, James Lileks got the axe — he’s been demoted from a guy with a regular column to a beat reporter. It’s about time.

He’s not a bad writer, in the sense that he does have his own recognizable voice, but yeesh, he’s such a banal writer, the epitome of Minnesota mediocrity. Some of his online writings are cranky-grandpa interesting, the rantings of a deranged 9/11 wingnut, but his newspaper column … dull, dull, dull. You only need to read one column in your life about a guy who goes shopping at Target and watches TV before he goes to bed, anything more is superfluous.

If you’re unfamiliar with our local columnist, here’s an analogy to help you understand: Lileks is the Garfield of the Star-Tribune. He’s technically competent, entirely predictable, and so boring he’s not even mildly amusing any more. They also don’t even need him to provide right-wing balance to the paper now, since they hired Katherine Kersten (she’s the Mallard Fillmore of the paper: screechy, inane, and incompetent). I haven’t read a Lileks column for years, not because I resent him or am somehow boycotting him or am even angered by him — I’ve tuned him out for the same reason I don’t read the recipes for yet-another casserole. He puts me to sleep.

(via Norwegianity)

Start driving!

Did you know that if you left Minneapolis right now, you could be in Morris in time for the last Café Scientifique Morris of the 2006-2007 academic year? Tracey Anderson will be telling us all about aquatic insects, as well as just about anything you might want to ask about arthropods. If you can’t make it to this one, you’ll have to wait until September for your next opportunity.

The Mutant Variety Show

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It’s Thursday, 5 April, and you know what that means: today is the day of the Mutant Variety Show here in Morris! At 7:00 this evening, in the HFA recital hall, all of the local mutants will be exhibiting their bizarre phenotypes to the public. I’m very much looking forward to it, and anyone else in the region should swing on by.

Note: I am expecting mutants. I insist on mutants. If there are insufficient mutants to satisfy me* … well, I have an Illudium Q32 Explosive Space Modulator, and I’m not afraid to use it.

*Or at least a theremin.**

**I might settle for a kazoo. But that’s rock-bottom. No more compromises.

Small town amusements

This is terribly petty of me, but it’s something that always makes me laugh: watching someone in a pickup truck try to parallel park in downtown Morris. You have to understand that traffic is low, there’s always lots of open parking spots, so it’s a skill that doesn’t get exercised much out here. When someone tries it, hilarity ensues. It does snarl up the traffic something fierce — why, there were maybe four or five cars backed up, waiting for this fellow to quit jockeying back and forth and in and out of the lane — and the expressions of frustration in the driver and onlookers are something to see.

Having spent a few years commuting in an urban environment, you learn to slide into a narrow parking space fairly efficiently; also, this was in Philadelphia, where many practice either the ping-pong method (bouncing off the bumpers of the cars in front and back of you until you settle against the curb) or the hell-with-it method, where you just stop in the traffic lane and double-park while running your errands. Little towns are a little different.

Rumors of Spring

So I got up this morning and looked out my front window, and this is what I saw:

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Then I looked out the back door, and it wasn’t any better (as if I’d expected the weather to be localized to only the northeast half of town):

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I hadn’t been paying any attention to the weather reports lately — in the Spring we only have to worry about tornadoes, usually, and the predictions for those are mostly useless — so I hadn’t expected Winter to be reborn. We’ve got 5 or 6 inches of snow out there, with a couple more on the way. And everything had been so naked and brown just yesterday!