The really important headlines of the day

Lileks reports that the StarTrib is stopping his column, and instead wants him to write local stories.

DaveBarry comments: "...the Minneapolis-St.Paul Star-Tribune, has decided to kill his column and have him write straight local news stories. This is like the Miami Heat deciding to relieve Dwyane Wade of his basketball-playing obligations so he can keep stats."

If you don't know Lileks, you should. Perhaps I should rephrase that. If you are sane, you probably don't know about Lileks. But if you are a normal human being, Lilek's combination of nostalgia and topical is just the thing to brighten your day. Here's his website with links to his daily bleat, his matchbook collection, his photograph collection, and various other oddities that defy description...and all G rated to boot.

Now that I no longer live in Minnesota, I tend to read his bleat more than his newspaper column: Here's an example where Lileks discusses Wally Schirra, Rudy, 24, and Lurch's panoramas... in the same article...

His Daily Quirk in the StarTrib has a similar museful quality. Here's excerpts from his discussion of summer classes for children..and why parents love them:
The brochures might as well be frank:

"Fun With Art 101." Using crayons and paint, children will draw rainbows over and over again while you spend the morning running errands with just the little one instead of all three in the back seat, hitting each other with lightsabers and WILL YOU STOP IT? THANK YOU.

"Theater: Designing costumes." Three teenagers from the high-school drama class, using the techniques of European theatrical traditions, take the kids off your hands for three consecutive afternoons.

"Harry Potter and the Whatever of Whatever." Our trained staff will distract your children for half a day with words like "Muggle" and "Voldemort" so you can weed the garden.

Now, if I could write like that, I'd retire to a tropical island and become a lady of leisure...whoops been there done that. But you get the idea. It's not a dour intellectual discussion worthy of a GREAT NEWSPAPER...and to make it worse, about 0.1% of his writings betray a....conservative bias. Tch tch. Can't have that.

There must be an explanation of the StarTrib's decision, and I found it HERE: Altogether now: It's the senility stupid...and the cure? Well, these scientists say physical and mental exercize is one way to prevent senility. So send them a copy of Mommy Knows Worst, and then go to this link and try not to smile.

And if you are at work and someone says you're wasting time, tell them you are taking your daily antisenility lesson.