Well, maybe not entirely frivolous, because this actually brasses me off more than a little. See, most of my childhood was spent in Minnesota, from whence hail a sizeable fraction of my Mom's side of the family.
Now, I'll grant you, the state doesn't sport quite all the amenties of civilization, most notably the ability to buy a bottle of wine at the grocery store--particularly on a Sunday. That's a definite knock right there. But, in the main, they share any number of our Wisconsinite values--and much the same weather. In other words, Minnesota is like the little piece of Canada that moved south, donchaknow.
Up until today, however, the worst Minnesota-themed nightmare my twisted imagination could have devised revolved around a Vikings Superbowl victory led by...[spits]...The Traitor of Titletown.
Oh, how very, very wrong I was.
Nay, my friends, the perfidy of our neighbor to the west extends not only to harboring...[spits]...He Who Shall Not Be Named, but even to--dare I write it?--arresting zombies.
Yes, yes, yes: I understand that we live in a world where people think they're making a point about liberty & freedom by showing up at rallies dressed as George Washington, who called 316 human beings "legal property" at the time of his death. (2006--like 2010-was an election year: Nuances will be lost. As will a whole lotta sensitivity to raw irony.)
But classifying amplified "creepy music" as "simulated weapons of mass destruction" and using that as the rationale for holding people w/o charges for two days?
Seriously?!?!
True, I suppose that the detained protesters might count their blessings that the Folks in Blue merely broke out the handcuffs and not shotguns and flame-throwers. (Although--and I hang my head as I confess this--if it had come to flinging 80s LPs like Frizbees as Simon Pegg and Nick Frost did in Shaun of the Dead, I totally would have paid money to watch that. Laughing my butt off the whole while.)
But.
Personally, I think that whoever negotiated the $165,000 settlement was straight daft. Not only because you know as darned well as I do whose pockets that will line. But also because, really, such a piffling amount--heck, a government the size of Minneapolis can fund that by lifting the seat-cushions on its municipal buses--is tantamount to encouraging stupidity. Not, mind you, unlike the way an ineffective antibiotic will grow a super-virus.
And we all know what that means. Next thing you know, there'll be rampant
- Arguing with drunks
- Violating the Prime Directive
- Dividing by zero
- Tugging on Superman's cape
- Spitting into the wind
- Pulling the mask off the old Lone Ranger
- Making Jim Croce roll in his grave
That's just how it works, friends and bretheren. And all because some souls never got the memo that stuffing geeks into lockers isn't cool in the Sixth Grade, much less in adult life.
But here's the thing: Geeks evolve too. And if the next protest...perchance...involves steampunk zombie velociraptors? Well, now, whose fault is that, I ask you?
