Month: November 2005

  • Our health care is killing us

    I read a book by Twin Cities author Vince Flynn over the weekend called Term Limits. The book starts with the assassinations of four venal members of Congress. That didn’t surprise me so much as the reported sentiments of many of the characters of the book that killing four was a good start. I found…

  • The UN and France are coming for your internet

    “Of course I’m running for President. I had my teeth fixed didn’t I?” The story in the Strib stopped short of explaining what exactly it was that the darn UN was trying to do when Coleman accused it of trying to take control of the internet. I’m sure it was an insidious attempt by the…

  • Meeting Mr. Mercy

    For several months I had been staring at the words written in a square on the otherwise blank calendar on my kitchen wall: Meeting Mr. Mercy. I had scheduled this meeting back in the late spring, and only after a series of mysterious phone calls and false starts. Most of the phone calls would come…

  • The Malliest Mall Of Them All

    First I worked in this place in the Food Court that sold French fries and pretzels, for this Vietnamese guy who called himself Jose. Then I moved down another floor and worked at this place that sold nothing but total shit –no vision, none whatsoever: Rattling plastic frogs that croaked and paddled about in a…

  • Canadian Pacific Railway Holiday Train

    Is this another sign that we’re on the verge of a new Depression, or is it simply a really imaginative charity event? The Holiday Train is a string of thirteen cars outfitted with lights and decorations and a boxcar that converts to a stage. Willy Porter, Twin Citizen and Red House recording artist John Gorka,…

  • Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt

    Although singer/songwriter Townes Van Zandt is claimed by Texas, he spent two years in Minnesota at the Shattuck Military Academy in Faribault, where he is remembered as the kid who dropped cherry bombs down the dormitory toilets. Elsewhere, he is noted as the dazzling guitar player who wrote the Willie Nelson hit “Pancho & Lefty,”…