From today’s News, the latest found-object story: local dry cleaners found a note reading, “You have committed a murder, but no one believes it. All I can do is kill myself, then everyone will see what you have done.” Being total squares, they called the police instead of Davy Rothbart.
Now here’s the kind of A2 found-object enterprise we can get behind; no arty pretensions, no author/rapper/self-promoter frontman, just a little off-kilter voyeurism. And it’s free.
Deadspin has a great thread on the Columbus-based band The Dead Schembechlers’ latest, “Bomb Ann Arbor Now,” which places them, along with us and Jay Nordlinger, among the most obsessive of Ann Arbor detractors. One Ann Arborite defends his city: “Ann Arbor, or ‘A2′ as it’s known among the hispter [sic] locals, is a very cool place with many Long Island undergrad beauties running around in track pants. The rest of Michigan isn’t that great, but A2 is a beautiful liberal paradise.”
Another dumpster diving article? you may be thinking when you pick up the new Current. How many do they need to run in one year? But that’s where you’d be wrong. The story is actually about “reusable resource liberation.” While dumpster diving is about getting cool stuff, reusable resource liberation involves “a wide range of emotions … from a self-conscious shame to righteous indignity.”
NIMBY or Palestine? If you’re watching a speaker at the public comment portion of City Council meetings, you usually have to choose just one. But now Ann Arbor has a council candidate that embodies both of these hot local causes. Third Ward Green Party candidate Pete Schermerhorn supports a greenway, opposes loans to developers like the Broadway Village one and laments a “pro-development-at-almost-any-cost environment,” although he does support a reconsideration of accessory dwelling units and some development downtown. He also calls for “divestment from oppressive governments such as Israel.” And if that isn’t enough, he “helped found a simplicity circle.”
We already knew that parking lots are more or less comparable to war zones. Now it turns out that having a police station near the library is almost — just almost, we don’t want to get carried away or anything — as bad as Nazi Germany.
The members of the Lower Town Historic District task force are still waiting for their thank-you notes from council, which showed their ungratefulness for all those hours of work by actually voting on the proposal. Acme Mercantile or Jefferson Market should really step up to the plate and get in on the niche market of city task force volunteer thank-you cards.
We were a little put off this one time when Zingerman’s mixed up our order and gave us a sandwich with mayonnaise, but it never occurred to us to call Fox News Detroit and The Washington Post. If only we’d taken our cues from Ann Arbor activist Tess Karwoski, whose lawn was mistakenly sprayed with pesticides, the national news media would have been alerted to this travesty. (And if anyone’s an anti-mayonnaise activist, we would qualify.)
We just brought the sandwich back, but Karwoski took the opportunity to educate the ChemLawn worker about the hazards of his profession. “By the time she was done, she said, the young man’s eyes were watering. ‘I don’t know if it was the pesticides or what I was telling him,’ she said.”
So how did ChemLawn end up targeting this innocent woman’s house? Turns out she’d had a contract with them “which was only to aerate her three-quarter acre lawn and turn her sprinklers on and off.” They were only supposed to waste water beautifying her sprawled-out yard, not do anything environmentally irresponsible.
A South Lyon man is outraged by a News sports column taking a positive view of dove hunting. “The column has no place … in an Ann Arbor-based newspaper.”
“The use of the terms ‘hunting’ and ‘doves’ in the same sentence is shameful,” he continues, adding, “The next sentence is true. The previous sentence is false.”
Jay Nordlinger’s mother spots an “only in Ann Arbor” bumper sticker: “I know my car is crappy, but I have a Ph.D.”