For no good reason except the weather ...

Here's a 1999 post from the Wood-Charles News Service -- sort of appropos, with all the Daimler-Chrysler news and so on, plus, hey, it's April 6th and it's snowed, off and on most of the day.

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I REMEMBER BABYLON

Ann Arbor: Transitional moments, moments of preparation, tinged with foreboding. So you're sitting around the table, finishing the toasted bagel, checking on a recipe to see what you might have to pick up for dinner, maybe still in your stocking feet. You're 'not ready' to go out yet. But eventually, the minute hand crosses a predetermined point along its arc, and it's time to 'get ready.' And lately, as we put on boots, rinse out the thermos mug, make sure the keys are in the proper pocket, grab the parka off the rack, I hear the soundtrack from Apocalypse Now in the background, the scene where Duvall's battalion is saddling up to go take Charlie's point away from him -- helicopter turbines spinning up, troopers loading magazines, someone's nervous musical quote: "dum da da DUM dum, dum da da DUM dum..."

"I don't know, Sir. It's pretty hairy out there. That's Charlie's driveway!"

"CHARLIE DON'T SHOVEL!"

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DESTRUCTIVE ANACHRONISM

Ann Arbor: There was a story in UPI's Michigan daybook, quoted here in total:

"Man Holds Up Bank With Crossbow - (MATTAWAN) -- The F-B-I says they have never seen a robbery quite like it. A man brandishing a mini-crossbow held up a bank in Mattawan. There's no report how much cash was taken in the robbery at the Kalamazoo County State Bank. There are no reported injuries and police have no suspects. Authorities say it's the first time they've ever heard of a crossbow being used to rob a bank."

Later reports indicated that police are seeking a short, bearded man, dressed in striped tights and a slashed white overshirt with a bright red undershirt pulled through the slashes. He was said to be wearing a leather jerkin and a floppy hat with a long feather, carrying a katzbalger as well as the crossbow, and driving an unlicensed oxcart with the bumper sticker, "Free the Canton of Uri." Although no one was injured in the incident, the bank manager was forced to stand with an apple on his head until the perpetrator had left the bank.

In an apparently unrelated incident, a convenience store in Wayne was held up by a large group of men and women dressed as Munro's regiment of foot, circa 1745. They took all the brown ale the store had, but fled at the appearance of an off-duty Wayne police officer, dressed as Prince Charles Edward Stuart.

Meanwhile, Ford Motor Company, rumored for some weeks now to be in search of a foreign acquisition, set aside stories of a merger with Volvo, BMW, Honda, or Moto Guzzi, and confirmed that it would be attempting a hostile takeover of the Duchy of Milan. That some action was forthcoming had been indicated by ads being run in German, French, and Genoese newspapers, offering "well-paid, temporary employment" to experienced pikemen, arquebusiers, and doppelsoldners, and the otherwise inexplicable presence of a large train of siege guns in Ford's booth at the International Auto Show.

Ford President and CEO, Jac Nasser, reiterated his commitment to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, but would not rule out the use of trebuchets to fling dead horses at the Milanese legal team.

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The Wood-Charles news service has been brought to you by the Odd Town Tavern, located at the corner of a large pile of snow and a vast, frozen pile of snow, in beautiful downtown Pile 'o Snow, Michigan, and by a shadowy group of investors, dressed as the Guise family and Don John of Austria.

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