An itinerant, footloose army of available and willing retirees in their 60s and 70s is marching through the American outback...

The above phrase appears in a NYT article this week, and, based on that alone, you're probably thinking, WOW! Did Gramps finally snap and decide to get together with 1000 friends to take back America from "those damned Orientals?" (His words, not mine.)

Read it again. An itinerant, footloose army of available and willing retirees...is marching through the American outback. Holy shit, that sounds like the premise of a potentially fantastic movie. Maybe it's some sort of Mad Max deal, but in this doomsday the young are the zombies/cannibals/weird S&M gear wearing gas hoarders and only the elderly are left to rebuild!

Or maybe this is an alternate history where the Russians end up joining the Axis powers and attack California while most of the U.S. army is deployed in Europe, leaving only crusty World War I dudes to liberate the American West!!

OR maybe it's just a marauding crew of elderly thieves and rapists, murdering and burning everything in its path! Nothing can stop them! But in a twist it turns out they all have that disease from Jack and, in fact, this apparent army of old folks is actually a CHILD ARMY IN DISGUISE!!! (And none of them can be prosecuted for their crimes because they are all too young according to the relevant statutes!)

I know, I know - each one of those is a sweet, sweet idea.

Too bad the fucking story is just about retired old people volunteering to clean up fire pits and hand out trail maps for free camping time at parks. Way to waste glorious, glorious language, New York Times.