Video TOWN.

And then there's that.

First, and actually somewhat important: Chicago leads the nation in the decline of violent crime that has resulted in a 40 year low nationwide, reports the Chicago Tribune. I find this remarkably odd, as going to the Chicago Tribune front page nearly invariably results in hearing about at least one horrific crime(tm) in which, I don't know, some 16-year-old has decided that he was done being broke, and would rather spend his time being tried as an adult for the beating death of a 60 year old pizza delivery man who had the misfortune of being lured (by lured, I presume they mean "called") to a vacant house or the petty theft of about $200 that occured at the pizza delivery guy's funeral, which is more tasteless than actually horrific. The kid is being tried as an adult (which is its own set of controversies, which I won't get into here). The defense is claiming that DeAndre Baber, the kid, is being framed.

Harriet Miers continues to trudge on in her inevitable appointment to the Supreme Court despite never having any actual judicial experience, which President Bush attempts to put forward in a posotive light in a recent Bushism. It appears that she wrote that she would "promote the pro-life cause" and support an abortion ban. From a standpoint of looking at it only as a hot-button issue, this more or less solidifies her position on this one topic, which will certainly (at least now) be central in the decision to approve. While Roberts never indicated how he would rule on the subject, the 1989 memo more or less spells out how Miers would, which could be crucial, considering the place Miers is taking on the court.

Want to go to the World Series? Sorry. Not going to happen, at least if you're trying to go to one of the Chicago games and have less than $1000 to spend. Tickets to Chicago games sold out in 18 minutes, with most fans blocked out (or encountering error messages from Ticketmaster), with a large portion of the tickets going directly to brokers, who immediately jacked prices as high as $8,000+ for a single ticket, requiring the purchase of a four ticket package at the time of this post. Everyone's understandably upset, and life goes on.

Blockbuster (or at least the ones in the Chicago area, and reportedly elsewhere) are having some trouble with Universal, which resulted in me having to set up an account at a local store that rents videos for reasonable prices in order to see Land of the Dead. It's good in that it at least got me to go somewhere else for my rentals that would charge less, plus I'm more or less positive that the proprietors of Video Town on Thorndale don't take the time to edit their movies. As far as the movie goes...the political commentary does get a tad heavy handed for a Romero film at times, and Dawn of the Dead (the original) is still the best in the series in my opinion, but it was quite good, as zombie movies go. Were I you, I'd buy it. But then, if I were you, then you would enjoy zombie movies.

I haven't yet seen Batman Begins, as the Video Town place didn't have any copies left (Tuesdays are "every movie for $1, except those on DVDs, which are $2) and I wasn't going to pay $5 for a Blockbuster rental when I still don't have a replacement debit card.