A View of the Devil

Mornings are evil. They start too early and always right at the moment where sleep is getting really good.

I try and delay the start of my mornings by playing the snooze alarm game, but it's a futile effort. Plus my kitten Muffin is determined to wake me up at the crack of dawn. Once I'm up mind you, he wants nothing to do with me. The fun for him is trying to wake me up.

Muffin and the alarm clock are the tools of the Devil.

So I'm up this morning earlier than I want to be, getting dressed and watching my furry little spawn of Satan play with a pop bottle top when I hear the weekly exercise segment wrap up on the morning news show I watch as I get ready for work. A much too perky reporter whose name reminds me of hair spray spent about three minutes flinging around some sort of torture device called a kettlebell, gleeful about how it stretched her obliques. The segment is followed by a commercial for Dunkin Donuts.

Who else but Satan would follow up an exercise segment with an appeal for you to consume sugary fried dough?

I kept getting dressed, still cranky about it being morning, still cranky about my crazy early riser cat, and now cranky because I didn't have donut. Then the next story confirmed my suspicions - the Devil is taking over. As a matter of fact, the eyes of Devil are watching over Detroit's freeways.

If you click on the eyes, you can see footage of the Devil!

Behold the eyes of EVIL. They are creeping out the Motor City's drivers. A local minister is threatening to start a petition drive to get MGM to take down the billboards. One of our City Council members, Alberta Tinsley-Talabi, is also ready to take on this crusade to save Detroit from this EVIL, declaring them "sinister."

I wonder if these "sinister" billboards with the demon eyes are what made Ms. Tinsley-Talabi flip her vote on a deal to transfer Cobo Hall to a regional authority. This deal would have taken a long standing financial liability off Detroit's books, led to a much needed renovation of the downtown Detroit convention center, generated much needed revenue for the region, helped ensure that the annual North American International Auto Show would remain in Detroit, and helped foster much needed goodwill and cooperation between Detroit and the rest of southeastern Michigan. Instead of backing the deal as she originally did, Ms. Tinsley-Talabi fell in with fellow City Council hell raisers Barbara-Rose Collins, Martha Reeves, JoAnn Watson and the Motor City's own personal Devil, Monica Conyers in killing the deal. The reason? They wanted to protect Cobo from the "white devils" who want to take over Detroit.

Throwing away three years of hard work trying to develop the region in the stroke of a pen? If that's not pure hell, then I don't know what is. Making the city look like a national joke? Again? Over a yellow eyed billboard? That's so insane it's demonic.

Here's hoping our current mayor will veto the council's actions, sending their backwards thinking back to the hell to which it belongs. Some folks fear the Devil. Here in Detroit, we have at least five devils to fear. That's pure evil.

More later, after I say to hell with the kettlebell and get me a cruller from Dunkin' Donuts. Outside of Detroit of course, because while America runs on Dunkin', Detroiter have to run across Eight Mile - there are no Dunkin' Donuts stores in the city. What kind of hell is that?