The Electron Pencil

HUMAN GENIUS ON DISPLAY IN BLOOMINGTON

Did I dream this or what?

No, no, it must have happened. I’ve got coffee splotches all down my T-shirt to prove it.

The morning news announcer (not, sadly, Annie Corrigan whose wake-up voice I miss terribly) reported on an arrest for an incident in a Bloomington day day center yesterday.

Now let’s see, where is that story? I pore through the WFIU and H-T websites. Nothing. Maybe I did dream it. But why did I blow a huge gulp of morning java out my snoot?

Anyway, here’s what I remember. A man was caught on security video camera roaming through the day care center in the middle of the night.

Okay, a break in, right? But you gotta ask, what’s in a day care center that a savvy crook would want to steal?

I don’t figure they keep loads of cash at the place. Nor would there be supplies of good drugs like, oh, I don’t know, hydrocodone. Good, that is, for guys who make their daily bread breaking into places in the middle of the night.

No, not drugs

So what did the man want in the day care center?

Let’s go to the tape. He was walking around the place, the announcer informed me, in a child’s pink swimsuit.

It was at that nanosecond that the coffee was expelled through my nasal passages.

Like I say, it couldn’t have been a dream — I’ve got the T-shirt splotches to prove it.

Of all the areas of human endeavor, there is none which engenders creativity like sex. Not particle physics. Not microbiology. Not applied chemistry. Not even war.

Military Creativity

Nope. None of them produce innovators the way the sexual urge does. My long-ago roommate Ray Pride, the Chicago photographer and film critic, explained to me way back in the early days of the commercial interwebs why the net would spread like wildfire. Any technology, he said, that facilitates masturbation will be enormously successful.

Fair enough. How else to explain the fact that a significant number of the Earth’s people know who Paris Hilton is?

Admit it — You Know Who This Person Is

Our sad friend caught traipsing through the day care center didn’t even need high technology to aid him in his presumptive self-gratification.

All he needed was a teensy-weensy bathing suit.

Dang! I just blew another coffee gulp out my nose! Hold on a sec while I clean off my computer screen. There.

Imagine how strong the urge must have been for the man to risk his freedom, his reputation, and, quite possibly, even his health and life to commit the crime of breaking and entering solely so he could, well, get off!

Many of you might conclude the man is a loon. I won’t argue with you. On the other hand, he’s got the capacity for genius. All great artists, it is said, possess the seeds of insanity.

Mad Genius

Our swimsuit-clad traipser had to plan this caper with all the due diligence of a general plotting an invasion. He had to identify his target, determine how to get in, and do it all secretly so the enemy — the cops or some nosy neighbors — wouldn’t espy him en route.

As in any military operation, his was fraught with risk. But his urge for kink overwhelmed whatever diffidence he may have had. Like Ike on D-Day, he said, Let’s go!

When confronted with the video tape, the alleged traipser spilled his guts, according to the WFIU report. Yeah, that’s me, he told the cops. He did deny, though, that he stole (borrowed?) the swimsuit. It was his own. Nice of him.

Now, no matter how this case is ever adjudicated, this man will forever be known as the guy who broke into a day care center in the middle of the night to wear a child’s swimsuit.

Hell, he could win the Nobel Prize in Medicine one day and the incident will appear in paragraph two of New York Times story about it.

This man who had the cagliones to do what he did now might not be able to show his face in the Kroger for the rest of his life.

All for a for a few minutes of self-gratification.

And the most publicized act of his life thus far has caused at least one observer to blow coffee out his nose twice in a morning.

The poor sap.

This is the only story I’ll tackle today. What could top this?

TOMBCOMING 2011

So, our beloved Hoosiers lost yet another game yesterday. Football, that is. Nothing new in that.

Only the team that established itself as superior to our hometown heroes is, um, uh, Northwestern.

Northwestern?

Yup. 59-38. On homecoming Saturday.

Irish Pat, an IU season ticket holder tells me Memorial Stadium was only two-thirds filled. More like Memorial Mauseleum, I’d say.

The Homecoming Throng

Looks like the only point of the season now is to determine which team is more execrable — the Hoosiers or the Indy Colts.

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HIGHER EDUCATION

My bus driver on the No. 6 route was in a particularly chatty mood Friday afternoon. Even though I like to sit toward the rear of the bus, he kept up a running conversation with me until the Bradford Place students boarded. It was a rather one sided chat.

“I can’t get over these kids,” he said. “With all these missing girls and all these sexual assaults going on, they’re doing that run without their clothes on.”

Not Naked But Close Enough (IDS Photo)

He was referring, of course, to the Nearly Naked Mile charity run, the homecoming week kickoff event Monday night.

“Yeah,” he said, “I worked that night. After the run was over I pulled up to the stop and these three young girls are waiting there, right? They got their arms folded across their chests and they’re shivering. They’re next to naked as jaybirds, you know? They get on and I said, ‘Can I see your IDs?’

“They look at me like I’m crazy. One of ’em spreads out her arms and says, ‘This is all I’ve got on. Where am I supposed to keep an ID?’

“I said, ‘Sorry. No ID, no ride.’

Man, I thought, that’s cold. “So what happened?” I asked.

“They got off!”

“Well,” I said. The run, in case you didn’t know, concluded sometime around midnight. I added, “Hmm.” All the while, the driver’s looking at me in his rearview mirror, no doubt anticipating I’d offer hearty congratulations for his slavish adherence to The Rules, The Rules, The Rules. Finally I said, “That’s something.”

He nodded emphatically as if I’d promised to nominate him for a civic award. “They go to college but they don’t learn much, do they?” he concluded.

I suppose not. I suppose, though, they now know not to be college sophomores wearing skimpy bikinis to raise dough for charity and have no place to keep their IDs ever again.

They also know there’s at least one Bloomington Transit driver who is both acutely aware of missing girls and sexual assaults but finds it acceptable to force three barely clad teenagers to walk the streets in the middle of the night.

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A TALE OF MAN AND BOY, ALONE TOGETHER

Linda Brady is rightfully proud of Monroe County’s program to keep the area’s registered sex offenders occupied while the kiddies are going door-to-door begging for candy.

For the last ten years, those on the registry have had to report to a county facility for a mandatory get-together. Brady, the county’s Chief Probation Officer, told me last year at this time the meeting not only protects the kiddies but the chaps on the registry as well. This way, she explained, if anything untoward happens to any kid while trick or treating in a neighborhood, the local sex offender has an airtight alibi.

Fair enough.

The old gang’ll get together Monday from 5:30pm through 8:30pm, prime Halloween doorbell-ringing hours. Like last year, the registered sex offenders will watch a movie.

Brady and the Monroe County Circuit Court Probation Department have not released the name of this year’s movie. Last year, while interviewing Brady for a story about the mandatory meeting, I learned the movie would be “Up.”

“Now Fellas, Don’t Look At This As A Training Film, OK?”

You remember “Up,” don’t you? Came out in 2009 from the Pixar/Disney CGI factory. Was the first animated feature ever to open the Cannes Film Festival. Nominated for a Best Picture Oscar®. Won Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Score.

A pleasant way to kill a couple of hours, right?

Only “Up” was the story of a curmudgeonly old goat and a chubby kid in a Boy Scout-like uniform taking a trip together in the old bird’s home that’s carried aloft by thousands of helium balloons. The trip takes some weeks and the two eventually land in South America. No mention is made of the the chubby lad’s parents who, one would assume, are back home worried sick about their missing son.

By the way, among other adventures in South America, the old goat and the chubby kid cause a man to fall to his death down the world’s tallest waterfall.

A regular riot, huh? The homicide is bad enough — but the idea of a curmudgeonly old goat and scout-uniformed chubby kid spending weeks together in an airborne home, far from the prying eyes of parents and authorities seems a tad, oh, inappropriate for screening for a bunch of sex offenders, no?

As I say, the county’s Probation Department hasn’t released the name of this year’s film. I hope it isn’t “Lolita.”

And Kubrik’s Version Wasn’t Half As Discomforting As Adrian Lyne’s

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BIG RED GETTING BIGGER

Bloomington’s own monolithic booze dealer is making moves to become the only game in town.

Big Red Liquors has applied to the county to take over the liquor license of Bloomington Liquors on the far north side and Hoosier Liquors on the northwest side, according to the Herald Times (login required).

With 14 locations already in Bloomington as well as outposts in Bedford, French Lick, Martinsville, and Terre Haute, Big Red rules South Central Indiana.

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JOBS FOR AMERICA

The late geek genius Steve Jobs had the foresight before his death to authorize biographer extraordinaire Walter Isaacson to get cracking on his own life story.

Isaacson already has penned bios on Einstein, Ben Franklin, and Henry Kissinger.

Inexplicable: Hot Women Thought He Was Attractive AND He Won The Nobel Peace Prize

The Jobs job, entitled Steve Jobs (natch), paints the Caliph of Cupertino as the world’s most succesful ex-hippie.

Isaacson seems drawn to messianic-like figures who changed history. Who’s next? Here are a few suggestions: Bobby Kennedy, Oprah Winfrey, and Roger Ailes.

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Five. Point. Two. Tons.

I’m still reeling from the news of the biggest pot bust in Indianapolis history last week. The Feds, with the help of a slew of local cop shops, seized the swag along with $4.3 million in cash at an Indy warehouse. Authorities say the wholesale value of the green was $5 million.

I pulled out my handy calculator and came up with a street value of $66.5 million. Sheesh!

Say what you will about this holy land’s drug laws, faulty info still holds sway. For instance, in the Indy Star’s story on the operation, the reporter writes: “On October 17, police took a drug-sniffing dog to the door of the warehouse, and it indicated it smelled narcotics.”

Um, sorry kids, marijuana is not a narcotic.

In any case, expect Kroger, Marsh, et al to suffer a significant drop in the sales of Doritos Cool Ranch® Flavored Tortilla Chips.

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THE POISON PEN LETTER

So, somebody lopped the head off a Lauren Spierer sign on the south side of town. And then somebody sent an anonymous letter to the grieving parents saying, essentially, enough with the signs.

You knew it was going to happen sooner or later.

The blowback. The fallout. The shoulder shrug and the roll of the eyes. Lauren Spierer has become old news and, like an interminable presidential campaign, it has become — to some — annoying.

The Lauren Spierer disappearance began raising intriguing questions almost from the day it became the biggest story to hit Bloomington since “Breaking Away” was filmed here.

Scarcely a week after the story broke, a Facebook contretemps broke out over the attention being paid to the pretty, blonde, daughter of wealth. Well, if not wealth ala Bill Gates, then really comfortable, vacation-in-Europe wealth. The kind of wealth that, say, Crystal Grubb did not possess.

The Herald Times reported Friday (login required) on the anonymous letter. According to Charlene Spierer, the letter’s author asked, “… [D]on’t you think it’s time to do the right thing by Bloomington and stop littering our town with your posters?”

Man, that’s cold.

I say that even though I have rolled my eyes any number of times upon seeing the several dozenth Lauren sign during a 15 minute drive around the city.

The way I figure it, my annoyance isn’t worth sending a mean-spirited, knife-in-the-gut letter to the kid’s parents.

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HOLY FOOTBALL

The Loved One and I attended a backyard bonfire party last night. The beer and whiskey were flowing freely. The fire was hot. So were a few of the attendees. The fiasco that is Indiana football 2011 came up. One guest said to another, her voiced tinged with righteous shock, “The coach has gotten rid of all the chaplains!”

The second guest shook his head sadly.

I said, “What chaplains?”

IU Football Doesn’t Have A Prayer

Several voices were raised, competing to educate me. Seems the old IU football coaches used to allow any number of chaplains to roam the practice field and the sidelines, ministering to the spiritual needs of young men whose tacit purpose is to snap the bones and mangle the ligaments of the opposition.

It must be said the guest list at the bash was comprised primarily of folks who attend the same Catholic church, St. Paul’s. At this party, at least, the latest savior of IU football was no friend of theirs.

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ROCK THE VOTE

The Herald Times reports (login required) former reality TV show participant Rupert Boneham has announced he will seek the Libertarian Party nomination for governor in next years election. Which begs the question — does a celebrity whose life’s work is unrelated to politics or statesmanship have an edge over professional vote-seekers? Well, duh, look at Arnold Schwartzenegger.

So, let’s say John Mellencamp had decided to run for mayor of Bloomington (I know, I know, he’d have had to move within the city limits — but let’s just have a little fun). You know, incumbent Mark Kruzan is running unopposed.

Had Mellencamp jumped through all the election board hoops and gotten himself on the ballot, would his name alone have been enough to vault him over our very own mayor-for-life?

Let’s face it, had one Robert Montgomery Knight decided to throw his hat in the ring circa 1978, he’d be a shoo-in — even if he did wear ridiculous sports jackets.

The General As Mayor?

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THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN

Helen Harrell, Carol Fischer, and the gang over at bloomingtoOUT on WFHB radio offered up another winner this past week. Wednesday, Harrell’s regular “QueerHerstory” segment on the hour-long program devoted to LGBTQ issues looked into the life of sultry movie vamp Marlene Dietrich. Catch it.

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