Good evening; I’m Cobb Webb, and this is April Schauers, with your local Chicago 9:00 news. Our lead story tonight is the NATO protests which brought terror to the streets of Chicago, as throngs of protestors battled Chicago police for almost an hour, on and off. Mostly off.

To reiterate this, we are showing looped footage of police arresting a man, while here’s a group of kids trying unsuccessfully to throw a barricade, which you see police casually grabbing and placing neatly on the ground. And here’s a protestor with blood running down his face, although it appears this was done by another protestor accidentally. A water bottle being thrown…and here’s that video of police arresting a man again…and the barricade. Anyway, while that plays, our own embedded journalist in the street was Holden Eucelace, who bravely stood among the protestors. We have him live, on a rooftop, overlooking the now totally empty intersection of Michigan and Cermak. Holden?

I’m here, Cobb. Yes, today was a tense and sometimes scary day as almost 600 protestors, nearly all of whom were peaceful, marched along Cermak right into a wall of Chicago’s finest. The police told them to go home, which nearly all of them did. However, perhaps a dozen malodorous twenty-somethings tried to engage police in aggressive confrontation, resulting in maybe all twelve of them being arrested one at a time. Here is the same looped footage again; it was difficult to place an estimate on how violent the mood of this crowd was as I was about six miles away at a restaurant at the time, but interviews with some of the protestors revealed a strong sense of unity, in that almost none of them had any idea what NATO is, what its initials even mean, and had little idea that the Chicago Police Department has no affiliation whatsoever with NATO. Back to you, Cobb.

Thanks, Holden, and try to get some rest after that terrifying ordeal. As the same images keep looping over, you will note that Chicagoans of all persuasions sat glued to their television sets as almost sixteen violent protestors were arrested, each within seconds, over the course of 90 minutes, all punctuated by very long periods of absolutely nothing happening. News crews spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on response teams, helicopters, medics, wireless equipment, and relay trucks in the even there was an anticipated out-of-control hysteria by skull-busting Chicago police, but…fortunately…none of this happened, which means that all that time, effort, money, and news crews saying farewells to their spouses resulted in less than four seconds of footage, featuring a guy dressed like Hawkman being pulled the ground and zip-cuffed by the police. April?

Thanks, Cobb, for letting a woman speak on a serious local news story. While the violence was paralyzing Chicago, I spent the afternoon over at Moxie’s Pub in Burbank, Illinois, with a group of Chicagoans—who watched the television and mostly cheered every time, and I quote, one of them goddamned hippies got taken to the asphalt. When I asked patrons of that establishment if they had any regrets, they unanimously expressed deep regret that the Chicago Police Department never used their sonic gun that most residents expected would liquefy the bowels of the protestors. Many, therefore, consider it a total waste of money, and no doubt the Department will have some tough questions to answer from angry Chicago taxpayers. Back to you, Cobb.

Actually, we’re going over to the weather….

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.