There's a new man on top of the bull's-eye. After more than 40 years with Target, including 14 as chairman and CEO, Bob Ulrich is handing the reins of the nation's second-largest retailer to his longtime sidekick Gregg Steinhafel.

The Marijuana Policy Project is airing two television ads imploring Governor Tim Pawlenty to back down from his vow to veto a bill legalizing medical marijuana.

The first spot began running earlier in the month on cable channels. The second one--featuring a Ely resident whose neck surgery and resulting nerve pain have rendered him nearly bedridden--began running yesterday.

"I'm a registered Republican and born-again Christian," he says. "This doesn't have anything to do with culture wars. It's all about people in pain... please don't veto the medical marijuana bill, Governor Pawlenty."

Critics of the bill have framed it as a Trojan horse, maintaining that if we stop fining and jailing sick people who inhale cannabis smoke, we might one day cease fining and jailing healthy people who do the same. This "sends the wrong message," to quote an oft-repeated talking point.

Regardless of the bill's fate, medical morphine will remain legal.

[Peep the ads after the jump.]

Yesterday, we reported that Thomas Mengler, dean of St. Thomas' law school, barred students from volunteering at Planned Parenthood for school credit. His actions prompted 80 St. Thomas law students to sign an open letter to him decrying the decision.

In response, a rival faction of students is circulating a pro-dean letter through the school's Christian Legal Society. Among other things, these students encourage their classmates to support the dean "in order to demonstrate that, even though we might respectfully disagree with his decisions from time to time, we support him nonetheless, since he knows, better than anyone else, what is in UST Law’s best interests."

Read the full letter after the jump.

When Nate Patrin heard Grand Theft Auto IV was coming out, he knew he'd spend every waking hour playing the hell out of it. Hence, the plan.

Nate would spend 24 hours getting every other game he'd wanted to play out of his system. He'd play 24 different games overnight, with no sleep at all. This would leave him free to play GTA free of regret. It would lead to bizarre experiences like playing Resident Evil at 2 a.m. and Professor Layton and the Curious Village at 3 a.m. All the while, he'd liveblog it.

Which he's in the process of right now at Joystick Division.

Part game review orgy, part psychedelic travelogue, the posts are jaw-droppingly entertaining. Nate's writing more words than anyone has a right to expect, and his reviews of each game are extensive -- though that might change as his brain melts into quivering Jell-o. The liveblog is broken down into three posts, one for each eight-hour period, and every post is updated constantly during the process. Don't miss the crazy videos for Audiosurf down at the bottom of part one. I watched the Stereolab one and feel like I stayed up all night. Trust me, read the first one all the way through.

Here's the preview, part one and part two, with part three to be posted soon.

I'm heading over to Nate's place with a video camera to document his crack at Rock Band in hour 20 or so. Hopefully, his fingers still work at that time. Whether they do or they don't, the video's ending up here.

(In between all the lunacy, Gary Hodges found time to post some GTA IV special edition photos.)

Ever since our story on the legal psychedelic Salvia divinorum went to print three weeks ago, my inbox has been inundated with emails asking where I bought the stuff, what situations to do it in, etc.

“I was wondering where I can get the Purple Sticky or maybe just buy what is left of yours,” reads the most recent one. “Roger Waters is in Dallas next week and I am flying home for the show, might just be the thing for the show… With gas the price it is I cannot afford to drive to every head shop around and some are not even on the net."

It was a dark day.

I was broke. Desperate to make bills so my roommates wouldn't kick me out of our shared house, I turned to my regular capital-generating strategy -- donating plasma. But Alpha Plasma Services turned me away because I'd already hit up the vampires earlier that week, and you're only allowed to donate once every seven days.

The day before I'd been kicked out of a newly-formed punk band because my pal Gabe had found Pink Floyd records in my collection. And that's not punk rock, now, is it?

No band? No money? Only one item of value in my possession? There was only one choice: I had to sell my Epiphone Jack Casady model bass. So this sad panda accepted a ride from his roomie Jackie (being too busted to own a car, but not too proud for charity) and headed downtown to the pawn shop.

Our biggest Best Of the Twin Cities issue yet is live online, and will be making its way around town in perfect-bound format all day.

But why wait to see where the hottest spots in Minneapolis and St. Paul are, when you can check out an interactive map?

In 2006, anti-abortion group Vote Yes For Life attempted to essentially ban abortion in South Dakota. They put the ban to the voters, who rejected the measure 55 percent to 44 percent. Vote Yes remained undeterred and has accrued enough signatures to return the issue to the voting booth again this year. And in a strange political and ideological marriage, Vote Yes and Planned Parenthood agree on one thing for this year's showdown: Activists should leave their dead baby pictures at home.

It's not that every day is Halloween for the Twin Cities Costumers' Guild. It's that every day might be a stroll through Victorian England, or a jaunt through futuristic spacescapes, or -- you name it.

The nascent group (they've been around about six months) includes 15-20 avid costumers from around the Twin Cities, and this weekend they held their first big event, a costumed dance, at the Oddfellows Hall in St. Paul.

See the slideshow with more photos by James Tran.

Tons more, including pictorial remembrance of Paul Demko, after the jump.

Today's Friday, and though it's early in the morning, I can already tell that I'm gonna need a drink later on. Thus, we launch a new "Drink of the Week" feature on the food blog. Every Friday we'll alert you to a new off-beat drink, a beverage deal that can't be beat, or whatever strikes our libation fancy.