This is old news, but new to me, and it really freaks me out. A teenager in Cloquet, MN, is on trial for dousing elderly nursing home residents with ice water.

To reiterate: this kid and 2-3 of his firends took pitchers of ice water and poured them on old people’s heads. Like four different times since last summer.

From the St. Paul Pioneer Press:

According to a criminal complaint, the Cloquet teenager told police he found it so funny when he dumped a pitcher of ice water on a 90-year-old nursing home resident in June that he returned and did it twice more, in December and again last month.

Cold water on old people! What will they think of next! This will be hi-larious! OK, I realize you live in Cloquet, Minnesota. There aren’t any good movies playing. You’re bored out of your skull. But can’t you just get stoned in your parents’ basement like all the other small-town teenagers? Set fire to the woods or something? Develop a harmless crush on your second cousin?

From the Star Tribune:

“They got the idea from a movie, and they thought it would be funny,” said detective Jeff Palmer, who questioned the boys. He said the teens, who were about 15 or 16 years old, said they couldn’t remember the name of the movie.

I knew it was Hollywood’s fault . . . Or maybe video games; isn’t drenching the aged with ice water one of the harder levels in Grand Theft Auto Miami?

OK, they can’t remember the name of the movie (because there brain cells are all filled up with being mean); how about you? Anybody remember that movie with the ice-soaking of old folks? Matt?

My camera-phone takes pictures on par with grainy photos of UFOs or the black speck of the Loch Ness Monster, but if you look closely, that is actual weed on the back stairway of our office-building.

The pot smell came back today with a vengeance, and again we tracked it down to the back stairway. We just missed them — the smoke lingered in the air, cigarette butts lay on the floor, and on one step, a spilled bag of weed.

When we came back, our boss told us he’d caught them — five minutes earlier he opened the door to the stairwell and found 3 early-20s types standing around smoking.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“Smoking marijuana,” one guy said. Truer words, my friend. Truer words.

Our boss closed the door and that apparently scared the misguided youths away — scared them enough even to leave behind $12.63 worth of Mary Jane. The ethical question remains: what do you do when you stumble upon some weed in the workplace? (Or “free shit” as one of my coworkers called it?)

Best thing to do, I think, is take it down to the police station and turn it in, as I’m sure they will pursue our truthful pot-smokers with all due diligence.

From today’s Minneapolis/St. Paul Star Tribune — Teenagers admit lighting turtle on fire — twice:

MOORHEAD, Minn. — An 18-year-old has pleaded guilty to animal cruelty for a videotaped incident in which he and two friends lit a turtle on fire and danced around it.

Joel Charles Ross . . . said they did it not once, but twice, and dressed up differently because they wanted to make their video “more funny and exciting.” . . . The video was posted online.

I don’t know if this is more disturbing than CaddyChicks or not. I think it is. Wait . . . hmmm . . . hard to decide.

I don’t know if the kids (read: mentally disturbed 18-year olds) were actually able to post their hi-larious cruelty to animals video on You Tube or maybe on . . . a blog (article just reads “online”, which was also their downfall as it was subsequently e-mailed to a police officer).

I’m sure that evil, turtle-killing youths have existed throughout human history. I think such acts in the past were not usually recorded and distributed.

This caused a spark of memory of other sociopathic children — lo and behold, an archive search turned this up this headline from June 12 (article now locked behind StarTribune.com’s paid archive):

Puppy allegedly killed by 3 boys, ages 6 and 8

Watch out, innocent creatures of the upper midwest, for adolescents with video cameras.