Tales from the Cryptacize
(06/05/08 1:29pm)
Up-and-coming band mixes indie pop with showtunes for a memorable sound
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Getting the finger
(05/28/08 10:38pm)
Just over a week ago, the Senate Banking Committee approved a bill that seeks to prevent foreclosures among at-risk homeowners and provide greater government oversight of the mortgage and real-estate industries. Sounds dull, right? \nBut recently it emerged that one of the bill’s new provisions is a federal database collecting the fingerprints of anyone involved with the process of providing home loans – including lenders, mortgage brokers and any real estate agents who are compensated in the course of the transaction. The definition of who exactly will have to provide their fingerprints is very broad, and could involve thousands of people in the housing industry.\nAnd it’s about time! Forget murderers, terrorists, drug dealers and practitioners of mail fraud – it is the mortgage industry that is the greatest national-security threat facing these United States today! Even now they could be scheming about adjustable-rate mortgages and two-bedroom townhouses with one-and-a-half baths and parking adjacent.\nOh sure, those namby-pamby privacy and civil liberties advocates might cry “Big Brother” over this – but they’ve never lost a loved one to a drive-by interest rate! They’ve never seen families torn apart by a loan application!\nWe’ve all heard the story before. A young kid from a broken home, with no education and no prospects, sees the opportunity to make a little extra money – so he starts providing six percent, 30-year ARMs to his friends. But the money’s too good, and he starts making riskier and riskier loans and he expands his territory, all to keep himself in Hugo Boss ties and Lexuses and those swinging-ball desk toys. As Scarface taught us, with the money comes the power – and with the power, the women. Soon he’s awash in pretty, young things drawn in by the danger and the romance of the loan-provider lifestyle. And then there’s the respect – going from nothing to the most feared source of sub-prime mortgages in the entire county – that is, until the housing bubble bursts, and debtors start defaulting – and soon he has to write off $379 billion in loans and the financial carnage gets so bad that Federal Reserve has to lower their discount rate and collateralize government securities to provide short-term loans in order to prevent a credit crunch. And in the end, looking down the barrel of a government bailout plan, the young kid realizes that the glamour, the hoochies, the tabletop air purifier from Sharper Image – none of it was worth it. But by then it’s too late.\nFor too long, the authorities have sat idly by, letting chaos and anarchy reign. But now, a bright new day of government monitoring of (not-actually) criminals has dawned! We can only hope that this fingerprint database will grow to encompass providers of car loans, boat loans, business loans, personal loans – and recipients, too. And how about anyone who owns stocks or bonds, or starts a savings account or changes a $5 bill for five $1s? Because only by controlling every last, little aspect of our lives can the government ensure our freedom.
All your bass are belong to us
(05/14/08 11:29pm)
Joe Lally will play Bloomington's Art Hospital May 19.
Raising the bar
(05/12/08 5:55pm)
It’s the first summer session, and most of IU’s roughly 30,000 undergraduates have left Bloomington to return to their families, go on internships, travel, work summer jobs, tend crops and so on.
Raising the bar
(05/12/08 1:45am)
It’s the first summer session, and most of IU’s roughly 30,000 undergraduates have left Bloomington to return to their families, go on internships, travel, work summer jobs, tend crops and so on. Parking has become available, and traffic ... well ... isn’t quite as bad. During the day, Bloomington is sleepy and quiet, with only a few summer students shuffling from place to place. \nBut at night: The grad students rule.\nNot literally, of course. But loads of us are still here, and our workloads are reduced. And like a mighty machine abandoned for lack of fuel, an entire local industry based around the mass production of intoxicated undergrads lies at our disposal. But much as an engine needs to be converted from regular gas to diesel, the Bloomington bar scene could use some changes to help it smash grad students at the most efficient rate possible:\n• Make good beers affordable, rather than making cheap beers super-cheap. Grad students aren’t rich, but we do tend to have more rarified tastes – and few things are as disappointing as going to the pub and finding that the only special is on Bud Light. Also, we no longer have 21-year-old (or, considering cheap beer’s consumers, more likely 18- or 19-year-old) digestive tracts. I’m sure that serving mass quantities of super-cheap beer is profitable during the school year – but since you can’t sell mass quantities during the summer, maybe another approach is warranted.\n• The music: “If it’s too loud, you’re too old,” goes the sneer. Well, all right jerk, maybe we are – but we’re the ones at the bar with the folding money; and we’re there to visit with friends and chat each other up, not be pummeled by the bass line to the latest glorified ringtone limping up Billboard’s pop charts. And while yours truly would be happier with newer music – I suspect many of my colleagues would appreciate it if you made an effort to work in some hits from 5, 10 or 15 years ago.\n• Studying. Probably the greatest barrier holding back grad students from going out is the need to study or the guilt of not studying – but why does study have to be divorced from the consumption of (moderate amounts of) beer? Check out all the people hanging out at the local bookstores and coffee shops sometime and ask yourself: Why couldn’t a pub do that?\n• Trivia night. Alcohol and competition have a well-established relationship, of course; as do academics and efforts to establish intellectual superiority. So why not combine the two? Let us form teams and settle our long-standing intra- and inter-disciplinary grudges somewhere other than in the letters sections of journals. And make it hard – we don’t need no wussies answering trivia.\n• Card us. Yes, we might have gray hair, crow’s feet, bald spots and bifocals – card us anyway. \nAt the end of August, the undergrads will return, and Bloomington’s watering holes can return to business as usual. But for now, you’ve got us, and we’re gonna be thirsty.
Mad money
(04/27/08 10:23pm)
Today, the federal government is due to start mailing checks to taxpayers in its stimulus package to help boost economic growth.\nAnd let me tell you: I’m going to stimulate the hell out of this economy.\nWhy, I’ve been working on plans for months – new, bold plans to tackle the big issues dogging our economy’s future. The types of plans that small minds might dismiss as mad but that geniuses will hail as ... uh ... genius!\nFor starters, I’m developing a super-light, super-fast wind-powered land craft that could revolutionize the U.S. transportation system. By relying on a freely available, non-polluting, renewable source of power, it will help to break our dependence on finite natural resources. But I know what you are thinking: What if there is no wind? Well, under those conditions it will feature powerful, hand-cranked fans driven by galley slaves endowed with inhuman strength through daily consumption of anabolic steroids and controlled via pin-sized explosive devices attached at the bases of their medulla oblongatas. And to further our leap into sustainable fuel, my crew and I shall employ this mighty craft to prey upon the slow, vulnerable, petroleum-driven vehicles that wend up and down North America’s miles and miles of land-based shipping routes. The result will be that people will either turn to wind power, or stay home. And I will be hailed as both a savior of the environment and the most feared pirate in the history of the interstate highway system.\nOr there’s my idea for saving the U.S. housing market. Like many of the best-laid plans, it starts with a giant robot: A 100-story high, nuclear-powered, titanium-armored, state-of-the-art killbot, to be precise. See, the values of homes have been falling – and what is the simplest way to increase the value of something? Why, decrease the supply. Thus, with my trusty killbot, I will provide a public service by traveling around the country employing its 2,000-ton feet to gleefully crush all the excess homes. Oh, don’t worry: I won’t crush them with people inside. I’m not a monster. I’ll install a loudspeaker in the killbot’s cockpit, so that my maniacal laughter will warn people of my approach.\nThen there is the need to create new jobs. And not just new jobs – jobs that can not only employ those who lack a college education, but that also cannot be outsourced. This means locally based service jobs – like exterminators, for example. Well, I have just the thing: With chemicals bought using my stimulus check, I’ll unleash a plague of flesh-eating zombies, thereby creating an opportunity for brave souls willing to cull the ranks of the undead horde. The training is simple (“aim for the head!”), and the demand for recruits will stay constant or growing. After all, if you’re not good at hunting zombies, you’ll simply end up joining them. Eat your heart out, Lou Dobbs!\nYes indeed, a brave new day is beginning for the U.S. economy, and ... What?\nOh, we’re only getting $600? I guess I’ll just spend it on groceries, then.
Asia minor
(04/23/08 2:03am)
Asia, of "Heat of the Moment" fame, is back with all four original members. Prog rock, it turns out, has difficulty staying progressive after 25 years. The good news is that they sound just like they did in 1983. The bad news? They sound just like they did in 1983.
Nobody at fault
(04/21/08 1:40am)
It’s more than understandable that Friday’s earthquake would set people buzzing. After all, it’s not every day that folks in Bloomington awake to feel the world shaking around them (that is, without having done tequila shots the night before). But seeing as there was no serious damage or injuries, I think it’s time we put this incident behind us. Earthquakes happen – we don’t need to look into it any further. And we definitely don’t need to go around trying to determine if anyone was to blame (especially since, even if anyone was to blame, it was almost certainly an accident).\nYes, it seems unusual that a 5.2-magnitude earthquake would occur in southwestern Illinois, along the Wabash fault zone, far from where tectonic plates collide (in more quake-prone places, such as California). But stranger things have happened. Who among us, even with strongest of constitutions, hasn’t experienced the occasional hiccup? The Earth is the same way. It’s full of strange and wonderful phenomena that will never be completely understood by humans. And it’s not like there are a lot of quakes happening around here – just one itty, bitty one (and, OK, an aftershock). Thus, there’s no reason to send teams of geologists and investigators and, possibly, federal authorities to West Salem, Ill., to look into this little “Earth hiccup.” They won’t find anything there, anyway. Oh, sure, they might hear a few stories about strange noises, or late-night deliveries of unusual equipment or the disappearance of a couple heads of cattle – but what small community is without such tales? Rural America is rich in folklore, and that’s something to be celebrated rather than scrutinized.\nFurthermore, there’s no real reason to go bothering the hardworking people in the mining industry about who might have purchased unusual pieces of specialized commercial drilling technology – or, for that matter, about whether they happen to have lost any such pieces. Just because someone might have acquired a few things that might, theoretically, be used to construct a sonic drill capable of generating 600 hertz of vibrational energy, it does not mean they were up to no good. They could have collected things such as diamond-tipped augers and titanium reinforcing struts purely for their aesthetic qualities. Indeed, it will be a dark day when paranoia regarding who might burrow 1,500 miles down into the Earth’s mantle and why leads the authorities to violate individuals’ privacy.\nLastly, it must be said that there is no evidence whatsoever to connect Friday’s earthquake to former president Jimmy Carter’s recent trip to Syria to talk with the exiled leader of the terrorist group Hamas. In fact, the very suggestion is absurd. The timing between the two is merely an odd coincidence, and couldn’t possibly be the product of a complex global conspiracy centuries in the making. Next thing, you’ll be suggesting that Bigfoot is involved. Which is laughable, as there is no way that Bigfoot could pilot a state-of-the-art digging machine into the Earth’s core.\nNot without six to eight weeks of training, anyway.
Prepare to get shocked
(04/15/08 9:26pm)
WEEKEND reporter Brian J. McFillen discusses the past, present and future of WIUX’s annual Culture Shock festival.
Wait, what?
(04/14/08 1:27am)
I'm not one for boasting, but I cannot hold it back any longer. I must say it:\nI am going to dominate this year’s Little 500.\nYes, I realize this is a bold claim, but I know that I can back it up. For when victory comes for my team and I – and it will, inevitably – I will truly be able to say that I’ve earned it. It has been an entire year of getting up every day at dawn to train; of eating nothing but wheat germ and raw egg smoothies; of cycling for hours in the burning heat, the freezing cold and the soaking rain; of dodging traffic and potholes; of blisters and chafing and strained muscles; of having no time for friends or family; and of abstaining from any and all substances that might pollute the highly efficient racing machine that is my body. But this weekend, when the team and I blow past our competitors, when the crowd roars to the heavens to proclaim us their champions, it will all prove to be worth it.\nYes, indeed, we will show our competition – especially those arrogant prima donnas, the Cutters. Sure, they might have won last year, but their victory has made them overconfident, soft even. Ever since the race’s move to Bill Armstrong Stadium, no team has won the Little 500 twice in a row – for she is a harsh mistress who punishes hubris with crushing defeat. And while the Cutters meander along, blissfully unaware, we shall blow past them – a tempest in spandex, furies on Schwinns. This year it will be our turn to bask in the glory.\nBut it is not for glory alone that the team and I race. No, we race for greater reasons. My teammate Ronaldo races to prove to his strict grandfather, a past champion, that he is heir to his family’s fine heritage. Baker, on the other hand, races to prove that one can defeat the demons of alcoholism and paint-huffing and show the world that even a two-time loser can be worth a damn. Me, I seek to win back my lost love, to convince her that all that time spent in training instead of with her was not wasted. And we all race to honor the memory of our late teammate Edgar, who recently succumbed to his injuries months after a tragic bus collision left him in the hospital, paralyzed. Finally, there is little Timmy, whose family has wagered its life savings on our victory so that they might finally afford the liver transplant that could save his life. We’re racing for you, buddy.\nYes, certainly I have the lung capacity, steely nerves and muscle tone for this race. But, most importantly, I have the heart. It might have been a year filled with sweat, blood and tears – but my victory lap shall wash it all away. No force in heaven or earth can stop me now!\nWhat? \nNo, I haven’t read today’s paper. Why do you ask?
R.E.M. revved
(04/09/08 4:48pm)
The Monster’s Revenge! If only R.E.M. had chosen that title for its latest album Accelerate.
Wanted: Scandal
(04/06/08 11:23pm)
This has been a good couple of weeks for us here at the paper: a new basketball coach, a crooked IU Student Association election, the run-up to Little 500 ... \nBut there are only about three weeks left in this semester’s edition of the Indiana Daily Student (our last Spring ’08 issue is on Monday of exam week), and you know what would really cap things off? What would make this the best semester ever? If we could close it with a sex scandal.\nLook, for example, at the coverage of not just former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s resignation following the exposure of his patronage of high-price call girls, but also the dirt dug up about his replacement David Paterson’s affairs – not to mention the allegations that former New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey and his wife had a ménage-a-trois with their driver. If we just applied ourselves here in Bloomington, we could share in this excitement!\nNow, I know this is IU. Sometimes – say, while reading the “Overheard at IU ...” Facebook group – it seems like it would be difficult to still scandalize the campus community. But we’ve managed it in the past. Take, for instance, the furor last year that stopped “Girls Gone Wild” from sponsoring an event at Jake’s Nightclub. Or the 2004 controversy over the IU student who posted on her Web site semi-nude pictures of herself in her dorm room and the Briscoe-Shoemaker showers. Or the brouhaha over the porn film shot in Teter Quad six years ago. And, if I might say so, all these were pretty lame – we can certainly do better.\nBringing Former President Bill Clinton to campus last week was a good start – sort of a prologue, perhaps, a nod to the past. But we need to come up with something original. The idea of the student-professor affair is pretty tired, as is the fraternity-sorority orgy. No, we need something that will get pundits roiling. Something that incites water cooler debate. Something that touches upon hot-button issues in American society. Something that will get the resultant IDS article linked to the Drudge Report. \nWhile, for reasons of preserving journalistic distance, I can’t determine what shape this scandal will take, I have faith in the vast stock of imaginative minds populating IU’s campus. I would, however, note that the past scandals have been rather tacky and sexist, whereas we have the potential to come up with something tawdry and titillating. This scandal needs to be as much about high ideas as nether regions. \nBut see here: This isn’t just about helping the newspaper move copy or pushing the envelope on societal mores. At present, IU rests at number 75 in the U.S. News and World Report College Rankings; the Hoosiers were beaten in the first round of the NCAA tournament; and we didn’t even make the Princeton Review’s top five party schools. At the present, we have to ask ourselves: If not for a big dirty sex scandal, what will we be notable for?
Lonely together
(04/02/08 7:19pm)
Reading the reviews accompanying each Raconteurs album, it’s hard not to feel a bit sorry for Brendan Benson.
Taking hold of the scene
(04/02/08 5:13pm)
Okkervil River's Will Sheff tells Weekend how a porn star and Danny Bonaduce, among other things, influenced its music.
Explicit content!
(03/31/08 2:42am)
An Indiana state law due to take effect July 1 will require any new bookstores selling sexually explicit content to pay a $250 fee and register on a list that will be passed to local officials who can then scrutinize the bookstores for any violations of their obscenity codes. According to IU law professor Henry Karlson, who spoke to the Indianapolis Star for its Mar. 25 story on the new law, the state definition of “sexually explicit” includes anything that “appeals to the prurient interest in sex of minors” – that is, anything that could get a youngster hot and bothered.\nNow, granted, the Indiana Daily Student is given away by bookstores rather than sold, but just in case, I figure you local merchants should know: I’m about to quote a rather racy bit of poetry. If you don’t want to rankle the authorities, you might want to toss this issue out. OK, here goes – don’t say I didn’t warn you:\nHow beautiful are thy steps in sandals, O prince’s daughter! The roundings of thy thighs are like the links of a chain, the work of the hands of a skilled workman.\nThy navel is like a round goblet, wherein no mingled wine is wanting; thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies.\nThy two breasts are like two fawns that are twins of a gazelle.\nThy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes as the pools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim; thy nose is like the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus.\nThy head upon thee is like Carmel, and the hair of thy head like purple; the king is held captive in the tresses thereof.\nHow fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights!\nThis thy stature is like to a palm-tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes.\nI said: ‘I will climb up into the palm-tree, I will take hold of the branches thereof; and let thy breasts be as clusters of the vine, and the smell of thy countenance like apples;\nAnd the roof of thy mouth like the best wine, that glideth down smoothly for my beloved, moving gently the lips of those that are asleep.’\nI am my beloved’s, and his desire is toward me.\nCome, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages.\nLet us get up early to the vineyards; let us see whether the vine hath budded, whether the vine-blossom be opened, and the pomegranates be in flower; there will I give thee my love.\nOof – did it suddenly get hot in here? \nOf course, if the Biblical Song of Songs doesn’t do it for you, there’s always Shakespeare’s sonnets (and the naughty jokes spread throughout his plays), Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” or ... well, pretty much countless works dating back to the dawn of writing. This is why we leave such questions to the wisdom of parents rather than government apparatchiks – and why this absurd and unconstitutional law must be repealed.
Booming success
(03/26/08 7:12pm)
The rhythmic chant is an ancient and potent musical element – one that erodes the barrier between audience and musician, forming a larger, unified whole.
Ugly games
(03/24/08 1:04am)
There may be more than four months yet to go until the Beijing Olympics, but the big game has already gotten under way. No, not basketball or track or swimming – this is really a game with only one contestant, a test to see whether an established benchmark can be surpassed, then whether a new benchmark can itself be overcome. \nThe name of this game? “What awful thing will China do next?” \nAnd, thus far, the Chinese authorities’ progress in making themselves progressively more detestable has been nothing short of stunning. What’s remarkable is not so much the fact that the regime does awful things, but rather the sheer number and variety of those awful things. For example, it comes as no surprise that the Chinese government cracked down brutally on protests in Tibet. And its support for the genocidal regime in Sudan is nothing new (although the recent allegations that it is not merely buying oil from Sudan, but also selling the government weapons and providing training on them, managed – incredibly – to make its role look even worse). But then there are all the extraordinarily ugly little things that have come out about China’s Olympic preparations.\nTake, for example, the government’s massacre of cats throughout Beijing (the cats are rounded up and left to die in government pounds). Or how about its ban on live broadcasts from Tiananmen Square during the Olympics? Or its shutdown of several of the country’s video-sharing Web sites? Or the U.S. State Department’s recent warning that visitors to the Beijing Olympics should expect their hotel rooms to be bugged? Or how about the accusations by Human Rights Watch that the government is exploiting the migrant workers employed in its Olympic construction projects? (Funny thing for a “workers’ paradise...” ) They even managed to find a non-evil thing to do that is, nevertheless, rather lame: The Beijing Municipal Tourism Bureau is currently employing linguists to correct the city’s hilariously mistranslated English-language signs.\nThus, the question becomes: What can the Chinese government do to top all this? Turn a blind eye to toxic Olympics souvenirs? Ban any athletes who criticize it publicly? Pave over the entire region surrounding Beijing to provide a super-sized Olympics parking lot? Ban cheering? Nothing seems out of the realm of possibility.\nNow, in the wake of the Tibet violence, there have been some calls for countries to boycott the Olympics in protest – but while this idea is noble, I think it’s a mistake. No, countries need to have their athletes there in Beijing because otherwise, their citizens won’t pay attention to what happens there. And the world should be watching when the Chinese government commits every act of brutality and every petty cruelty because the world needs to see what authoritarian regimes do to get what they want. And because much of the world seems eager to think that China will supplant the United States as the global superpower. \nSo, to the countless individuals around the globe tuning in to the Beijing games, I say take a nice, close look: there’s the future.
The groaning dead
(03/19/08 5:02pm)
George A. Romero’s “Diary of the Dead,” his fifth and latest zombie tale, opens from the viewpoint of a TV-news cameraman filming raw footage of a reporter at the scene of a murder-suicide.
Wee folk, big threat
(03/17/08 12:01am)
While you’re distracted by the joy of returning for another seven weeks of school, a menace from abroad is slowly infiltrating our society. A mysterious cabal, working secretly towards who knows what end, amassing resources, quietly monitoring us from the fringes of our perception ... an ancient and dangerous group known for its sly cunning and its skill in crafting quality footwear.\nI speak, of course, of leprechauns.\nOh, but you say, leprechauns are a myth – a trumped-up folk legend used to boost Irish tourism and sell millions of tiny, brightly-colored marshmallows! Ha! I was once like you: blissfully unaware of the storm gathering in the nation’s verdant glens and rings of mushrooms (called “fairy circles” by top national security experts). But now I have seen the face of evil. And it has wee hat with a buckle on it!\nThis revelation came when I was in the midst of celebrating my Irish heritage via the rich and wholesome tradition of drinking assorted green liquids. This year, March 17 falls during Holy Week, so the Catholic Church officially held St. Patrick’s Day on Saturday, March 15, but some secular authorities are celebrating it today, as usual. Thus, not wishing to offend anyone, I have simply commemorated St. Pat’s for the last three days – and, therefore, have consumed a very great quantity and variety of green liquids: green beer, green tea, green soda, absinthe, industrial-grade disinfectant, Chicago River water ... I had imbibed one of these many potables when I saw him, standing on the curb of the street, smug as could be. He was out in broad daylight, but no one seemed to notice him. That is their way – to hide in plain sight. Like ninjas.\n“Hello, leprechaun,” I said. “Are you having a good day?”\n“Sure am,” he said. “I just brought down the value of the dollar another 5 percent.”\n“What?” I said.\n“Oh, just part of our scheme to bring about a global economic depression, so we can conquer the world.”\n“But why?”\n“You humans keep screwing up – violence, pollution, Uwe Boll movies. And if we don’t take over, the unicorns will.”\n“Yeah, right,” I said. “And just how do you plan to do that?”\n“Do you have any idea what the profit margin on shoes is? We pay Indonesian kids about 20 cents an hour and sell them for $150 a pair,” he said. “Collectively, we have the single largest gold holdings on the planet. Ted Turner is really one leprechaun standing on another’s shoulders.”\n“Why are you telling me?”\n“You were just drinking peppermint schnapps mixed with floor polish – who’s going to believe you?”\n“Well, I’ll stop you!” And with that, I picked up a loose paving stone and hit him. But he had turned into a fire hydrant. I got doused with water and arrested for damaging public property.\nBut that has not prevented me from informing the world. We must stop these radical extremists! Pots of gold coins cannot silence the free press! And as long as I’m alive, I’ll ...
Wee folk, big threat
(03/17/08 12:00am)
While you’re distracted by the joy of returning for another seven weeks of school, a menace from abroad is slowly infiltrating our society. A mysterious cabal, working secretly towards who knows what end, amassing resources, quietly monitoring us from the fringes of our perception ... an ancient and dangerous group known for its sly cunning and its skill in crafting quality footwear.\nI speak, of course, of leprechauns.\nOh, but you say, leprechauns are a myth – a trumped-up folk legend used to boost Irish tourism and sell millions of tiny, brightly-colored marshmallows! Ha! I was once like you: blissfully unaware of the storm gathering in the nation’s verdant glens and rings of mushrooms (called “fairy circles” by top national security experts). But now I have seen the face of evil. And it has wee hat with a buckle on it!\nThis revelation came when I was in the midst of celebrating my Irish heritage via the rich and wholesome tradition of drinking assorted green liquids. This year, March 17 falls during Holy Week, so the Catholic Church officially held St. Patrick’s Day on Saturday, March 15, but some secular authorities are celebrating it today, as usual. Thus, not wishing to offend anyone, I have simply commemorated St. Pat’s for the last three days – and, therefore, have consumed a very great quantity and variety of green liquids: green beer, green tea, green soda, absinthe, industrial-grade disinfectant, Chicago River water ... I had imbibed one of these many potables when I saw him, standing on the curb of the street, smug as could be. He was out in broad daylight, but no one seemed to notice him. That is their way – to hide in plain sight. Like ninjas.\n“Hello, leprechaun,” I said. “Are you having a good day?”\n“Sure am,” he said. “I just brought down the value of the dollar another 5 percent.”\n“What?” I said.\n“Oh, just part of our scheme to bring about a global economic depression, so we can conquer the world.”\n“But why?”\n“You humans keep screwing up – violence, pollution, Uwe Boll movies. And if we don’t take over, the unicorns will.”\n“Yeah, right,” I said. “And just how do you plan to do that?”\n“Do you have any idea what the profit margin on shoes is? We pay Indonesian kids about 20 cents an hour and sell them for $150 a pair,” he said. “Collectively, we have the single largest gold holdings on the planet. Ted Turner is really one leprechaun standing on another’s shoulders.”\n“Why are you telling me?”\n“You were just drinking peppermint schnapps mixed with floor polish – who’s going to believe you?”\n“Well, I’ll stop you!” And with that, I picked up a loose paving stone and hit him. But he had turned into a fire hydrant. I got doused with water and arrested for damaging public property.\nBut that has not prevented me from informing the world. We must stop these radical extremists! Pots of gold coins cannot silence the free press! And as long as I’m alive, I’ll ...
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