Pollution of America’s Waterways Temporarily Produces Artificial Beauty
The Mill Creek was once so clean that Native Americans who lived near it could eat shellfish from it like bosses. Now, the toxic water way will burn right through rubber shoe soles and probably anything else because it is the human way to ruin everything. It’s kind of depressing to think about how much pollution and how little foresight a species has to have to poison waterways, but you didn’t come here to read that. There’s a bright, or more in line with nature, side of everything if you look at it right. Just one state over from Buckeye Land, some of the good folks of Fort Wayne, Ind. made an oopsie and dumped 200 gallons of dye into the Maumee River, giving this local body of water a very blue tint. The Indiana Department of Environmental Management says the blue dye won’t really hurt anyone or wildlife, can be washed off with a mild soap and will take about three days to flush out. Officials have expressed willingness to show Ohio how to use the same sort of dye to make the Ohio River look blue instead of like one big flowing latrine.
Cowboys Owner/Noted Medical Genius Sees No Link Between NFL and Brain Disease
Nothing ruins Thanksgiving quicker than when the announcers refer to the Dallas Cowboys as “America’s Team” and you say something about how stupid that is because you hate the Cowboys. Next thing you know, some older person starts talking players back in the 1860s and acts like names they list are going to make you find the whole “America’s Team” thing less annoying. Nothing ruins brains like smashing your head into stuff, like NFL players make a living doing, yet despite ample evidence that the trauma which is integral to professional football causes diseases of the brain (and, sometimes, former players shooting themselves in the chest so their brains can be studied after their suicides), Cowboys owner Jerry Jones doesn’t believe there’s a link between the two. Jones recently went so far as to say that it’s “absurd” to suggest that there is, reportedly comparing his skepticism to how he felt when he was younger and someone told him “aspirin is no good.” Though Jones comes off like some denialist tobacco executive with this stance, he is right that medicine is changing in that the Cowboys are planning to close up the incision from Tony Romo’s next collarbone surgery with a zipper rather than stitches so it will be easier to access the area in the future when it gets all mangled because Dallas can’t seem to keep him from getting destroyed every season.
It’s Hard to Understand How Streetcars Work if Your Mayor Is a Hater
Someday, Mayor John Cranley will stop being a stick in the spokes of progress in this city. Unfortunately, that day wasn’t any of the ones that have happened here on Earth up to this point. Overlord Cranley wants the streetcar here in Cincinnati to shut down during seven major events held in the city, because shutting down transit options when people come downtown to visit your city center is a brilliant idea to generate revenue from said transit options. As per usual, opponents of Cranley’s plan to keep his knee in the back of the streetcar — with a little help from a Chamber of Commerce that has so little experience executing large-scale events over the years — look to Portland, Ore., where streetcars and summer festivals live in concert, as do Democratic mayors and the progressive factions of their own parties.
N.C. Governor Attempts to ‘One-Up’ Kasich’s Defunding of Planned Parenthood
John Kasich helped to defund Planned Parenthood in Ohio, making it harder for women to access health care, but that isn’t really even breaking news anymore in today’s fast-moving world. Someone’s always got to outdo the next guy when it comes to being a dick, and that’s where North Carolina’s governor, Pat McCrory, enters the scene. In a nation where rooms full of elementary school kids getting murdered doesn’t result in any law changes, America is still certain to make sure that Americans are allowed to discriminate against non-heterosexual people because that’s what God, Jesus and friends would want us to do. City government in Charlotte, N.C. wanted to keep businesses from discriminating against LGBTQ people, but Gov. McCrory thought that was gross, so he helped get an ordinance passed that repealed Charlotte’s ordinance and somehow also bans laws in the future that might protect people. McCrory’s hate-fueled legislation has already had predictable effects, with many corporations threatening to move out of North Carolina and cancel business trips to the state if they don’t get their heads out of their asses. McCrory plans to move fast before the hate laws get overturned and do his best to get people to stop referring to Charlotte by its nickname, “The Queen City,” because he thinks it “sounds pretty gay.”
God Isn’t the Only Sky Creature Who Has No Love for Most of the Human Race
Researchers where it’s so cold no one should care what goes on there have found recently that Antarctic skua birds have the ability to recognize and behave shittily toward humans they feel have treated them poorly in the past. In a recent series of tests, researchers who messed with the birds’ nests in the name of science were subjected to aggressive behavior, which suggests that the birds can tell the difference between regular annoying people and those who take it a step further by messing with their dwellings. This makes it clear that God isn’t the only sky creature that punishes humans for affronting behaviors and that birds’ methods of doing so is easier to study than God’s practice of making our lives boring yet difficult.
CONTACT ISAAC THORN: letters@citybeat.com
This article appears in Mar 23-30, 2016.