week and weary...

the oldest person in the world died this week.

The world's oldest person, a Japanese woman on the southern island of Okinawa, has died a week before her 115th birthday, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.

Kama Chinen, who witnessed three centuries, was born on May 10, 1895.

i don't think it was "her time to go," necessarily. i think she was just pissed off and wasn't going to take it any more.

after several decades to think about it, she might've been increasingly annoyed that yet another generation of kids was growing up with no respect for tradition. she might have been in high dudgeon that an unruly teenager would run onto the field during a baseball game. even so, surely she was shocked to learn that the penalty for running around the outfield during the all-important phillies-cardinals game is to be hit with a few thousand volts of electricity.

did you know that hundreds of people have died after being tazed? it's true! so it's entirely possible that the penalty for teenage foolishness at a ballgame might've been death. gee, baseball's a tough sport, isn't it?

speaking of capital punishment, sort of, cops in oakland blew away bambi this week.

"...under orders to "dispatch the deer," officers shot it seven times before it died. Animal control officers were also on the scene.

Officials said the deer was gunned down because 'it was acting disoriented in an urban environment.'"

kama chinen might've been disturbed to learn that the penalty for being confused in an urban environment is death. if that's the standard these days, the vast majority of city dwellers will not only not live to be 115---many of them won't last the week.

as someone said, if you were lost in the woods, you might be acting disoriented as well. good thing bambi and his friends aren't packing heat, then, huh?

do you think kama chinen remembered hurricane katrina and FEMA director michael brown? was she cursed, like the rest of us, by an indelible memory of the half-wit president saying, "brownie, you're doing a heck of a job"?

(if by that he meant brownie was doing a heck of a job killing people, as if he were holding their heads underwater himself, then yes, brownie did one hell of a job.)

that memory alone might've been enough to push kama chinen past her breaking point. but no, there was more. brownie wasn't done killing crowds with his laseriffic perspicacity. squinting conspiratorially on fox news this week, he said the obama administration may have welcomed the damage from the river of oil (still) pouring into the gulf of mexico. because...secretly, the administration didn't support the oil companies, and wanted to shut down offshore drilling altogether.

j'accuse!!

brownie, it should be noted, is an incoherent boob whose next intelligent syllable will be his first. the fact that he's expert at arriving on the scene of a bad situation and making it much worse makes him the perfect sort to feature prominently on fox news.

how grateful are the people of nashville that brownie wasn't first on the scene of their current disaster?

Amidst the news of a car bomb attempt in New York City and the oil slick inching towards the Gulf Coast, the flood that has devastated Nashville, TN and the surrounding areas got lost.

National news outlets are reporting the story, but the damage is far, far worse than viewers are hearing.

as bad as it is, it could be worse. the brown reaper could be there wading through the streets, swinging his scythe from the grand ol' opry to dollywood. waving a "mission accomplished" banner as flood-drenched, half-drowned residents flee in panic, leaving the city a shell of its former grandeur, to be replaced by an ersatz, disneyfied replica for the tourists who go home and say, "new orleans has really bounced back, we had a great time there!"

did i say new orleans? i meant nashville. obviously.

the list of the week's pernicious events goes on and on. and on. any of them could've been the last straw for someone frail and diminutive and exhausted by humanity's changeless idiocity. let's face it, when you're 115 years old, it probably doesn't take much to rush you up to the end of the diving board...and just a little bit beyond.

the way things are going, if this week hadn't gotten little kama chinen, the next one shirley would've.