Senator Elija Creek Reacts to Ann Arbor Deer Management Plan

We're pleased to have another guest post by Senator Creek.

There are a lot of people wanderin' around my office these days. Some of 'em, I even recognize. This one young gal, for example, is the one who's always giving me pieces of paper. I keep tryin' to tell her I have plenty of paper, thanks, you keep it. But she doesn't. She makes me keep it. It's gettin' hard to see around the stacks of it. But it dawned on me, maybe it's a security measure. Givin' me something to hide behind, you know. In case that Trump fella busts in or maybe one of my constituents.

Anyway, this morning she handed me another piece of paper. She wanted to know what I thought of it. "Well," I said, "it's flat. And sort of white. Got nice black ink on it, too."

That wouldn't do, though. She said she meant the content of it. What it said, you know. Why didn't she say so in the first place, is my question. But so, I read it.

Turns out, it was all about these guys in Ann Arbor and how they're all worked up over managin' deer. With my eyesight bein' what it is, I read it as "beer management" at first, but the young lady straightened me out on that. And she said it'd be a good idea if I could address the issue. So, here goes.

First of all, I hear that they got some kind of college there in that town, and that a lot of people hang around it, talkin' about management. Now, I didn't know that managin' deer was that much of a problem, with regard to the nation's economy, but I can't see, if it is, why it's any more difficult than managin' anything else. As my old pal, Walt Kelly, suggested, time was when a worker'd be happy if you gave him fifty cents and a pat on the back with a shovel. But I guess with deer, it'd be a little ambiguous just where to deliver the feedback. They're pretty fast, too.

Another thing I noted is that somebody in that town don't know how to spell. I had to read that word, "cull", five or six times before I got it. For your future guidance (as they say to me a lot around the Senate), that's spelled with a "K" and an "I". I looked it up. A town like that, you'd think they wouldn't make that kind o' mistake.

But then, I got to the real crucks of the matter. That's "crucks". A cross between "crocks" and that Ted Crux fella. Throw in "crooks", too, while you're at it. Perfectly good word.

Anyway, the crucks of it is in the details, as it usually is. Details without a crucks is like a candidate without voters. Like Rick Perry. Or Millard Filmore. Yeah, I know he's dead. So's Rick Perry. But my point is, they're gonna have these sharkshooters, runnin' around after dark, with silenced gums, trying to cull things. Now, that may sound sensible to you. It did to me, for a while. But then I looked up Ann Arbor on a map, and dang if it ain't a good long way to anywhere you'd expect to find sharks.Twenty, thirty miles, at least. So I went back to the woman who brought this up and I said, "This here is incomprehensible to the ordinary mind. And where we gonna find one o' them?"

"Sharp," she said. "Sharp shooters." So I went back and re-read it with my glasses on. But I still couldn't make head or tail out of it. If you can, well, I suppose you could talk to the lady in my office. I'd give you her phone number, but I can't remember her name. Or if she has one. A phone, I mean. So probably the best thing is just to hope it goes away. I know I do.

Elijah Creek, concerned citizen, addresses City Council

Good evening and thank you, Senators and Councilwomen. I'm told that it's an honor to address this august body, and I mean that in the most sensitive manner. I myself have a November body, and I know how some of you must feel. Tonight, I do not wish to waste the council's time with ill-considered rubbish. I have given this rubbish -- as I do all rubbish -- long and careful consideration, and I can only hope that all of us have as well.

I wish to draw the council's attention to the question of animal eligibility. While you are considering new regulations for determining which animals may reside here, in whose backyard, and run for political office, I remind you all that our former rules were,  in fact, declared unconstitutional in 1974, and I believe that in the spirit of mean-spirited finger-pointing that has made me what I am today, we should determine who our mayor was in that immemorial year, and punish him or her severely. As President Poe said,  sink him in a dank tarn of ushers.

I realize that it may not be possible to find out who the mayor was in 1974, what with all those records being destroyed when they tore down the bus station , but I believe it is in the best interest of posterity that we try. To quote my revered ancestor, Paul Revere, if not who, why? If not them, wherefore?

And I yield the remainder of my time to the King of Norway.

Free at last, free at last ...

It is now permissible for Ann Arbor residents to -- try to restrain your excitement -- scrape food off your plate straight into your composting cart!

A spokesperson for the NAAPL (National Association for the Advancement of Procyon lotor) expressed optimism.

"There's a tremendous opportunity there to reduce the amount of materials we're putting in the landfill ..." he told reporters.

DuChamp Rides Again

Sunday morning, sun shining, still and cold; a toilet seat abandoned at a BP station.  Political comment or simple incompetence: you decide.




By early afternoon, it was gone.  McConnell says he's going to work it into his next book, somehow. I know we'll all be looking forward to that.

A pity, really

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Update 2013 06 11: The artillery bombardment has demolished the whole south set of buildings now, leaving the northern block still standing. The sappers are pushing forward their approach trenches steadily, with an eye to running a mine under the remaining curtain wall. Trebuchets had been flinging dead woodchucks into the citadel for several days, but this tactic was suspended when deserters from the garrison revealed that they'd been making a tasty stew of 'em. The Duke of Alba was unavailable for comment, but AnnArbor.com reported rumors that Don John of Austria (that bastard!) was coming up the Huron with a fleet of war galleys and canoes.

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Now that the demolition of the Georgetown Mall is finally underway, I'll have nothing to whine about (unless, of course, they run out of money and have to quit partway through, leaving a vast mound of rubble; but that won't happen, will it?).

Instead, I'll have to wait until it's down and has been sitting there for months without any apparent progress on building the pipe dream mixed use development that has been pitched to Council. How do I know this will be the case? Well, the word on the street is that the developer had so much trouble even getting funding in place to tear the old stuff down, his chances of getting money to build new stuff are ... let's just say, poor. Yeah, that's a good word for it. Poor.

Anyway, here are some photos I took this morning. Demolition is at least colorful if not especially aesthetic.

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Update: Ed from Vacuum sent me this link about the Georgetown Developer's other fiasco.

Ironically enough ...

Our old pal, Ed Vielmetti, ongoing champion of all things Internet, appears in print this month, in the AA Observer. Patrick Dunn leads off an article on blogs and blogging with a Profile of Ed and the
Vacuum blog he writes.

Local news

As is their wont, various media continue to compile their best and worst lists of things. (I wonder, actually, if anyone's thought of compiling a list of the best and worst lists of the best and worst things?)

Anyway, Detroit has recently been named the fourth worst managed city in the country, behind Stockton, California; Miami; and San Bernardino, California. The article, which I did not bother to read in detail because it's too damned depressing, was a touch vague about the criteria they used, and I think they did Detroit a great injustice, knocking them back down to fourth place. All the hard work that's been done in the last 15 years to turn it into the worst managed city, bar none, deserves greater recognition than this.

Needless to say, Ann Arbor doesn't even make the list. But it's not to say we don't try. Paula Gardner, of Ann Arbor.com, even dared to use the "CC" words in this article. No, ye of short memory, I don't mean cubic centimeters, I mean convention center! Here we go again.

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Update: Snyder is about to name an Emergency Manager for Detroit.

Ann Arbor's Traffic Problems are Solved!

Simply restrict driving -- especially of AATA buses -- to this emerging demographic, and all will be well.

(By the way, "L plates" is UK and Commonwealth-speak for Learner Permits.)

(And of course, see here for Elliot Erwitt's take on the same topic.)

A shameless plug for some hack's new book

Some guy in Ann Arbor has written a book, and because he did us a favor or two a while back, he thought he could lean on us for a bit of free publicity. Turns out, he was right. He could.

As John Cleese, I think it was, said, I can highly recommend this book to people who quite like this sort of thing.

A simple question

It's 12:30 AM on a Saturday, and it is not the Fourth of July. Who decides to go outside and set off half a dozen or so large fire crackers? And why? Choose one or more of the following reasons:

• I am an inconsiderate prat.
  
• My neighbors are getting too much sleep. I'm doing them a favor, really.
  
• I'm trying to see how quickly the Ann Arbor Police can respond.
  
• I don't agree with Michigan's recently liberalized fireworks law, and consequently I want to influence voters to lobby for more restrictive ordinances.
  
• Those weren't firecrackers. I was shooting at kids to get them off my lawn.
  

Whichever of these reasons (except the last one; we're cool with that) motivate pyrotechnics enthusiasts, they should consider the following: when and where I grew up, we didn't pay for expensive fireworks. We just stepped out the back door and cranked off a few rounds of ammunition. Old habits die hard.

While we're at it ...

2012 07 09: Update
The West Liberty construction is now finished, and the street is open again.

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Posting pictures, that is, here are a couple of screen shots to ponder. First, here's the overall 2012 satanic plot summer construction plan, as reported in A2.com and enhanced by our crack ground-truth team.

Click on it for a bigger version. The yellow lines are streets torn up, closed, or with lane closures -- or planned for this fate. Note, in particular, the damage being inflicted on East/West traffic on Stadium, Liberty, and Miller. These projects are underway now, simultaneously.

Update 2012 06 18: per ground truth conducted this morning, the Huron Parkway devastation is just about over with. There's still some work going on at the Geddes and Fuller intersection, but otherwise, it was clear sailing.

If you look very, very closely at the center of the image, you can see a tiny segment of green. That's the one block of 5th Avenue that was recently completed and reopened to traffic. In case it's too small, here's a bigger picture.


Given that it took two years to complete that one block, anyone with the ability to perform a linear projection should be able to conclude that we will never be able to go across town again. Of course, this would be unscientific, as unscientific as, say, the good legislators of North Carolina, who want to require their state government to use only linear models for climate change. But that's a totally different story, innit?

Oh, and by the way, look how badly the roof of the transit center is skewed! Hasn't anyone noticed by now? I want my money back!

A suggestion WRT the Ann Arbor Marathon

Having not sufficiently contributed to divisiveness and partisanship, not to say clan violence between the Evil Westsiders and the Righteous Sons of Liberty who dwell on the East Side (you can see how far this gone, already,)the city allowed this weekend's Ann Arbor Marathon to be routed along Main Street from the heart of downtown clear out to Briarwood, effectively preventing any traffic from getting anywhere along any east/west route.

Now, my understanding of marathons and other examples of self-abuse healthy exercise is limited, but I do know that they pose a planning problem in that the course has to be 26.something miles long, or -- and this is the key point -- it has to add up to that number, with sufficient repetition. So for next year, if there's still a city here next year, I suggest that the run be set up to utilize another inspired piece of recent traffic engineering, and that it be routed around and around and around the Maple Road traffic circles, south of Miller.

This would inconvenience the least number of residents and taxpayers inconsequential and irrelevant members of the populace, since no one in his or her right mind would voluntarily use that piece of road to operate a motor vehicle. And it would provide entertainment, as the runners became dizzy and staggered off into the surrounding countryside.



As an alternative, the race could be set up on Yost Blvd., over on the East Side, and run around the tiny obstacle traffic-calming device that was thoughtfully constructed there in the not too distant past.

2012 06 19: Update: the Mayor appears to agree.

Gee, Mom ...

"Oh, my, my look at the time - I've got to dress for my bridge club."

"Gee, Mom, isn't that bridge built yet?"

"No, Son, and it won't be until free hands on both sides of the big ditch can push the same button at the same time!"

Firesign Theater, Don't Crush That Dwarf

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Although that bridge (you know which bridge I'm talking about) isn't built yet, Fifth Avenue is. It took two years, five hundred and sixty-eight billion dollars, and the lives of twenty-six hundred underpaid Irish laborers, but the project is finally done. Don't you feel better now?

Editorial note: two of the three statistics related to the Fifth Avenue Project cited above are incorrect and the product of a deranged mind. The person responsible has been sacked.