Michael Sklar's carrot cake takes the cake

When I worked at the Budgeteer News in the mid-1990s, this was my second-favorite photo from the archives. It came fully supplied with the caption, just like the Connie Stevens one did. I'm not sure if it was ever used in the paper, or what the deal is with it, but these days the Internet tells me Michael Sklar is an actor who appeared in a handful of movies and an episode of Laugh In.

Last Transistor Column

I’ve been a newspaper columnist in Duluth for over 15 years, but for most of those years my work has been in the Transistor, which isn’t really a newspaper. (I prefer Slim Goodbuzz’s description of the Tranny as “a tacky little pamphlet” — a phrase he boosted from a Frank Zappa song.)

The rags I wrote for in the beginning consisted of a weekly shopper then known as the Budgeteer Press, a sloppy every-other-week disaster of a publication then known as the Northland Reader, and a weird monthly scandal sheet called the Ripsaw that was quickly transformed into a solid alternative weekly before becoming a magazine and slowly meeting its demise.

Throughout my work in the aforementioned publications I never wrote one of those “Duluth” columns — you know, where the author waxes poetic about Lake Superior, the beauty of the urban wilderness and the charm of living in a big small town. Instead I’ve tried my best to be a weirdo, and I think I’ve succeeded.

When I started this column in 1997, Duluth didn’t generally embrace its weirdoes, which is probably what encouraged me to become one. Now Duluth relishes its weirdoes, so it seems my work here is done.

In recent years I’ve become the number-one bigmouth on the local blog Perfect Duluth Day. I still cut a rant at “the man” every now and then, but by and large I just kiss the Zenith City’s ass. I’m absolutely amazed at how many ways the place has changed for the better. It seems like every day there is some awesome thing happening that I’m missing because I’m engaged in some other awesome thing.

The best I can do to bitch is to point out that the hideous neon blue light around the Holiday Stationstore sign on I-35 in the West End is a public nuisance far greater than the synthetic potheads hanging around outside the Last Place on Earth. Everything else around here is going great by my view, which makes for boring columns.

So it’s time to announce the retirement of “The Next Level.” This is my final piece. I still have plenty of creative energy, but it just doesn’t work in a 450-word box inside a tacky little pamphlet anymore. It’s time for me to knock this off.

I wish to close with a tip of the hat to Transistor Publisher Adam Guggemos, a colleague of mine from the Ripsaw days who admirably soldiers forward, maintaining an ongoing platform for art, music and swearing. I’m proud to have been a part of it and grateful for the opportunity to not write about the lake.

Paul Lundgren is no longer a newspaper columnist, but still strives to be a nice man. You can keep up with his weirdo past and future projects on paullundgren.com.

Big Money

One of my fondest memories of 1997 was the afternoon I went for a cruise along the North Shore of Lake Superior with Ray Szmanda in a rented convertible. People of the Midwest know Ray for his role as “Menards Guy,” a husky, white-haired spokesman with a booming voice who appears in television commercials encouraging everyone to “save big money” at the popular home-repair chain store.

I thought it would be funny to nickname him “Big Money,” and he didn’t seem to mind me calling him that all day long as the wind ripped through our hair along Highway 61. Taking deep swigs of Strawberry Crush from a 2-liter bottle, Big Money jubilantly offered suggestion after suggestion for things we should do along the way.

“Let’s pick up George Kessler and dress him like Gilligan! He can be my little buddy!”

“Let’s get tattoos! Big tattoos! Cover our whole backs!”

Everything he said ended with an exclamation point!

We had barely left Duluth when we saw Kate Pierson of the B-52s hitchhiking with a “Betty’s Pies or bust” sign. I hit the brakes hard and Big Money chocked on his soda. Kate confidently strode up to the car. “You are a chocolate lover if I ever saw one,” she said while pointing an accusatory finger in my direction. “And you,” she continued, turning her attention to my puffy companion, “are nothin’ but pumpkin.”

I figured I could play this game, too, so I quickly and matter-of-factly said “apple” without so much as looking her in the eye. “Definitely apple for you.”

Big Money buried his face in his shirt, wiping soda pop from his chin, then shook his head. “No no no no no!” he shouted at me, then turned to Kate. “Sorry ma’am! The boy wouldn’t know a blueberry girl if she had indigo flesh and bell-shaped flowers popping out of her blouse!”

Kate shrugged her shoulders and dove into the back seat. Her eyes met mine in the rear-view mirror, and she coldly and sarcastically said, “I expect that much from chocolate.”

Back on the road, Big Money and Kate talked about show business, gardening and their favorite book, A Long Fatal Love Chase.Unable to relate to the conversation, I focused on the scenery. Sunlight was glistening on the lake, the fall colors were brilliant and the Volkswagen van that turned into the Betty’s Pies parking lot in front of us had bumper stickers that were perfectly predictable.

That’s when we met Connie, who worked at the Two Harbors Pizza Hut. She offered to take us canoeing and told us long stories of strange nights at the Earthwood Inn Motel & Bar, which she kept referring to as the “Earthworm.” We talked about going there, but decided instead to drive to Thunder Bay, where I managed to wrestle the top down on the car so we could get some sleep in the parking lot of a 24-hour doughnut shop.

I can’t remember large parts of the trip, but in retrospect I would rank this day as the 24th-best of my life.  

Paul Lundgren is a newspaper columnist and a very nice man. His book “The Spowl Ribbon” is available on paullundgren.com.

Murder House

I first became aware of the Murder House in 2006. While walking down Fremont Street I noticed a large sign made from a 4-by-8-foot piece of plywood. It was just up from the curb on the lawn of a deteriorating house that was mostly hidden behind a thick wall of various shrubs and bushes.

The sign was filled with writing, neatly hand-printed by way of thick black-and-blue markers. At the top in black were definitions of the words “paranoia,” “conspiracy,” “extortion” and “coerce.” The bottom half used the color blue, with black returning occasionally to emphasize words and phrases like “fraud” and “Duluth Police Department.” It was clearly the rantings of someone whose mind was slipping.

“I have been coerced and abused still wearing a mark on myself 1 year and six months later plus,” the sign read. “My neighbor spies on me, I have been threatened with death to give up information on perpetual motion or be jailed for a most indefinite time.  Code breaking 9-11-2001 I was told to shut up! What a free country.”

Another sign next to it complained about the “Sump Pump Issue.” A third sign, on the roof, featured a series of triangles, circles and numbers. I stood there and read it all, shook my head and went back about my business.

A few years later I decided to walk down the dead end on the avenue in front of the house. From the other side I could see painted in white on the rooftop shingles a series of solid circles and rectangles, the word “murder” and the dates “3-23-97” and “7-12-2008.”

That’s when it became the “Murder House” to me. When I brought it up to neighbors, I heard all sorts of stories about the paranoid schizophrenic who lived there. A literal murder never took place, but one theory was that the guy felt his rights had been murdered. Someone else told me the schizo’s mother and dog died on those dates, and the paranoid delusion was that they were poisoned.

Eventually, I heard the house had been condemned, and soon after I noticed it had been demolished.

It was only after the house came down that I got to see the man I was already referring to as “Murder House Guy.” I didn’t know if he was homeless or living with a cousin in the neighborhood or what, but I began seeing this scraggly looking character riding his bicycle around with bags full of stuff strapped behind the seat and on the handlebars. I don’t remember who first informed me that Scraggly Bike Guy and Murder House Guy were one of the same.

I began to notice Murder House Guy having long conversations with different people, and as time went on I started spotting him two or three times a week. I made a point to avoid him, not because I thought he was particularly dangerous, but because I knew how often we crossed paths and I didn’t want to have to engage in long conversations with him on a regular basis.

Finally, last month I was walking to the waterfront trail, turned a corner by some bushes, and there he was about 10 feet away from me. I thought it would be rude to not acknowledge him, so I nodded a hello in his direction. Murder House Guy immediately scowled and responded by saying, “Fuck you.” I took it in stride, chuckled, and kept walking. He mocked my chuckle and repeated his warm greeting, “Fuck you.”

Well, that’s it, I thought. I’m on his radar now. He knows who I am and he clearly doesn’t like me. Or maybe that’s just how he says howdy. Either way, I’m not inconspicuous anymore. He probably thinks I’m a government agent conducting close surveillance of him.

That night I set up a trap in my front yard in order to catch a skunk that had set up camp under my front porch. The next morning I had my target securely confined in the makeshift plastic tube I had borrowed from my neighbor, which allowed me to safely blockade my porch with the knowledge that I wasn’t trapping the skunk inside. Of course, I then had the chore of relocating the little critter.

I opened the trap about a mile from my home near a creek at a local park, but the skunk just sat inside and wouldn’t come out. I waited and waited, sitting about 40 feet away inside my conversion van. Eventually, as fait would have it, Murder House Guy came riding his bike up the street.

There he was, the guy whose first words to me just one day prior were a disdainful “fuck you,” slowly and curiously approaching a strange plastic cylinder that contained a no-doubt upset skunk. And there I was, unobserved in my vehicle, watching the scene unfold.

To summarize the situation: If I tried to warn Murder House Guy about the skunk I’d be reintroducing myself into his life and welcoming more verbal abuse. If I let him get sprayed, he’d be sure to notice me and perceive that I set him up, justifying a vendetta. It seemed lose-lose.

I made a snap decision to step out of my van and let him know what was happening. He didn’t seem to recognize me from the day before and responded inquisitively about the situation. I told him all about trapping the skunk and my lack of success so far in releasing it.

“You’re doing it wrong,” he said with a smile. “You’re supposed to dump the skunk out of the trap over the crick so it drowns.”  

Paul Lundgren is a newspaper columnist and a very nice man. His book “The Spowl Ribbon” is available on paullundgren.com.

Connie Stevens enjoyed smoking pot

When I worked at the Budgeteer News in the mid-1990s, this was my favorite photo from the archives. It came fully supplied with the caption. I'm not sure if it was ever used in the paper.

Married

Having been married for a full two months, I have compiled several observations on the topic. Chief among them is that marriage requires commitment. For example, I’ve made the commitments to become fatter, hairier and drunker than ever before. Hey, it’s not like I have to impress anyone now.

There are two responses I get when people find out I got married. Dingbats who live in a fantasy land start gushing with congratulations. Grownups who live in reality roll their eyes and insert an expletive into the question, “Why would you do that?”

The answer is basically this: I have been in a committed relationship for seven years, and after a certain amount of time the word “girlfriend,” starts to sound silly. The woman I intend to spend the rest of my life with should have a title that ranks her higher than someone I played kissy face with in junior high school.

So now I have a wife, and that title also happens to be useful to me as a humorist. “Take my girlfriend … please,” just didn’t have a ring to it.

My bride and I found the experience of getting married to be fantastic, but I would not recommend it to anyone else. If you are looking to get married, here are two reasons I think you shouldn’t:

1) You are not as in love as I am. You are desperate and insecure. Someone came along who seems to tolerate you, a few friends and family members have started teasing you that you should get married and you are pathetic enough to start considering it. Get your damn head screwed on straight.

2) Although getting married can be fun, planning a wedding and reception is like planning a space mission. It’s either going to be expensive or a disaster, and it’s likely to be both. If you choose to spend a lot of money you are a sucker, but if you don’t you are in for a lot of headaches. The situation is totally lose-lose.

Try to assign a dollar value to how much fun you can possibly have in a single day. You lose if you spend more than that amount on your wedding. But spending money is the only way to make things happen without dealing with them yourself. Sure, you can get your friends to cook a potluck for you, for example, but that means making your friends do work for you when they already hate you for making them sit through your stupid wedding.

Why don’t you skip having a meal? That would make everything easier, right? Well, you can’t really haul people to a ceremony and then either make them wait around or tell them to go find dinner on their own while you get 6,000 pictures taken before meeting them at the reception. And you have to eat before you spend several hours yelling over loud music and soothing your throat with wine.

I know you have all sorts of objections to the points I’ve made and still think you can have an inexpensive, fun, easy-to-plan wedding and reception. Trust me, you are wrong.

Even if you want to have a quick Justice-of-the-Peace wedding, skip dinner and simply have a straight-up party of a reception, there’s something you need to think about. You should never put all the people you know together in one room.

Allowing friends, family and work colleagues to mingle is a serious mistake. Each of the people in those groups knows approximately one-third of the humiliating episodes of your life and the range of personality flaws you reveal in select company. If you put all of them in a room together you will be completely stripped of whatever false sense of dignity you might have. Proceed with caution. 

Paul Lundgren is a newspaper columnist and a very nice man. His book, “The Spowl Ribbon,” is available online at paullundgren.com.

Very Short Stories (Remastered with Bonus Features)

This week's Next Level column has been digitally remastered. We have attempted to preserve, as closely as possible, the contents of the original work. Because of the high resolution of your computer monitor, limitations of the source document can be revealed. In storing and handling this article you should apply the same care a hemophiliac would employ while carrying a glass jar full of razorblades down a Crisco-soaked stairway to a banana patch. Should this page become soiled by fingerprints, dust, dirt, blood, Malt-O-Meal, Play-Doh or Marilyn Manson, it can be wiped (always in a straight line, from center to edge) with a squeegee or a freshly cut slab of veal. If you follow these suggestions, the Next Level column will provide a lifetime of pure reading enjoyment.


The Disappointment

When he made it home, he kicked off his shoes and went straight to the kitchen. There was a familiar shape under the oven light.

“Mmmm,” he said. “Someone’s baking banana bread.”

He walked over, opened the oven door, inhaled deeply, and leaned in for a closer look.

“Oh,” he said. “Someone’s baking a meatloaf.”


Sunrise at the Campground

Light breaks through the insect screen overhead. Dew runs down the sides of the tent. Birds begin singing and roosters begin crowing. Cigarette smokers begin hacking and spitting.


Kate’s Positive Attitude

Kate: Let’s play hockey.
Paul: We don’t have any equipment.
Kate: I have a hockey stick!
Paul: That’s broken.
Kate: Then we have TWO hockey sticks!


Depth-perception Etiquette

When walking past a stranger, it is considered normal and polite to say hello. From a distance greater than fifty feet, it is not.


Format Change

Jeff had been working with computers all day. It was nearly midnight when he got home. He was so tired, he headed straight to the bedroom, where his wife, Hannah, was already asleep. When he turned on the light, she opened her eyes.

Unfortunately, Jeff forgot he had changed the type style, or font, on his face to Times New Roman. Normally, he kept his face in Helvetica. Not recognizing him, Hannah assumed he was an intruder and screamed.

Jeff was trying to decide whether to explain the situation or change his facial font back to normal when Hannah threw her clock radio at him and his system crashed.


The Unfinished Sentence

The amount of pubic hair in the sink seemed to indicate


Paul Lundgren is a newspaper columnist and a very nice man. His book, “The Spowl Ribbon,” is available online at paullundgren.com.

Attack on America

It’s Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, 10:30 a.m. I’m standing in my kitchen munching on an apple. Suddenly, a huge man who looks like the pro wrestler Razer Ramon comes thundering through the front door announcing that he is an employee of the Water and Gas Dept. and needs to read the meter.

Without asking for identification or taking any security precautions whatsoever, I show him to the basement stairway and resume chomping on my apple. Soon, my basement housemates greet Razer Ramon and he starts talking to them about how the country is at war.

“We’re at war, dude,” I hear him say. “Haven’t you turned on the TV or the radio yet?”

I turn on the television and see a huge cloud of smoke and debris where the World Trade Center once stood. The news anchor explains that two hijacked passenger jets smashed into the towers, causing them to collapse.

Razor Ramon seems to be less shocked about what happened in New York than he is that no one in my house has turned on a television or radio yet. He repeats at least three times, “I can’t believe you haven’t had the TV on yet.”

After a few seconds Razor Ramon and my housemates join me in the living room to watch the news coverage. Ten minutes later, Razor Ramon decides he better get back to work. Shortly after that my housemates break off to go grocery shopping.

I’m transfixed, and stay on the couch watching the live broadcast and repeated crash and collapse videos. I’ve seen enough death on the news to be somewhat desensitized to it, but this is different. It’s death on a grand scale, through bizarre tactics, with remarkable and chilling results.

As much as I want to take what’s happening seriously, though, the various TV stations keep attempting to over-dramatize what’s happening (as if it isn’t dramatic enough on its own) by coming up with awesome titles. “Attack on America” is the first one I notice. Then I turn the station to see “Day of Terror” — which takes the word tacky to a new extreme.

As the clock creeps past noon, I decide to report to work at the local weekly newspaper, where I’m being phased out of employment. As I walk down Superior Street, everything looks normal in Duluth, but it feels really weird. Everyone is watching each other for clues about how we are supposed to behave. The assumption at this point is that everyone knows what has happened, and the world is supposed to have changed, even though nothing has really changed in Duluth. It’s a normal day, except for the news.

At the Ripsaw office, the television is on for the first time I can remember. I go into the lounge area every 10 minutes, watch a few replays, sigh, shake my head and go back to work. Everyone else does the same thing.

It’s Election Day, so when I leave work I have two hours to vote in the City Council races before I’m due at a dinner party. Because I have recently moved to a new precinct, I have to find a registered voter in my neighborhood to vouch for me at the polling place. None of my housemates are home, so I end up going door to door, wondering if people will be suspicious of me under the circumstances. Eventually I find a guy who is willing to go vote with me if I’ll wait until he finishes dinner.

I end up arriving late to my scheduled dinner party, where a guest is informing everyone that her brother works in the World Trade Center. She woke up this morning to her sister screaming at her through the telephone about what might have happened. Later in the day they were told their brother was not at work and is alive and well.

Despite the good news, this dinner guest is obviously still shaken by the day’s turn of events. She expresses relief about her brother’s safety, but she is noticeably hurt that many of her brother’s coworkers — one of which is his best friend — are probably dead. Within two minutes, the dinner conversation changes to a new subject and the whole table is loudly laughing and joking as if no one died today.

Paul Lundgren is a newspaper columnist and a very nice man. His book, “The Spowl Ribbon,” is available online at paullundgren.com.

Speech to the Denfeld Class of 1991

Here we are at Mr. D’s Bar & Grill for our 20-year high-school reunion. I’d like to say right off the bat that this place has never stopped playing music from our generation, but go ahead and lose your mind when Tone Loc’s “Wild Thing” comes on the sound system, as if it’s a really special moment that’s taking you back to the old days for the first time since our 10-year reunion.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could possibly escape the music from our high school days at some point, maybe just for a month or so, to allow us the opportunity to legitimately get nostalgic about it at our reunions?

It seems that making fun of our era has actually become its own cliché. Protruding bangs and curly mullets! M.C. Hammer! White Lion! Zubaz! Winger! Pinning pants at the ankles! Church Lady! Vanilla-freaking-Ice! Our high-school years are indisputably cheesy when we focus on popular culture, because popular culture is always cheesy, whether it’s sock hops and poodle skirts, disco and bell bottoms, or sexting and Justin Bieber. Those are not the things that bind a class together.

Having been sequestered in the same building for a handful of formative years is what makes us brothers and sisters. We certainly didn’t all get along and love each other unconditionally — that’s for sure — but a great number of friendships were forged around that clock tower, and that’s what we celebrate tonight. Professing Denfeld exceptionalism and calling upon our “Hunter Pride” are not really necessary.

On a side note concerning the bonds of our shared experience, it’s interesting to consider that some of our classmates actually managed to marry each other. Though most of us had to move on to find long-term requited love — or are perhaps still searching — it’s nice to know some of our Denfeld family’s incestuous romances continue to this day, producing inbred children who will soon have their own chances at finding high school sweethearts. Hopefully they’ll be sparking on each other to a better song than Motley Crüe’s “Without You.”

High school is but a microcosm of our lives, of course, and I have little doubt that all of us have at some point been on both ends of the bullying that occurs as we joust for status throughout our existence. When reunions roll around it can bring up yearnings for atonement. Let us forgive our 20-year-old trespasses. You shouldn’t have called me a dork, and I shouldn’t have dropped a spitball down the back of your pants. I’m glad we can move on now.

Five of our classmates are deceased, and as the old joke goes, some of you aren’t feeling so hot yourselves. I’m relieved to say I feel fantastic at age 38, and if any of you are taking what you have for granted, I have a pair of slippers for you. They’re Doug Bragg’s slippers.

Doug died from leukemia 17 years ago, and his slippers have been making the rounds ever since. I’ve had them for about two years now. When something silly starts to upset me, I put them on. About three seconds of that straightens me out.

Though I am sentimentally attached to Doug’s slippers, I’ll pass them on to you in a minute if you’d like them. You are part of the family, after all.

Paul Lundgren is a newspaper columnist and a very nice man. His book, "The Spowl Ribbon," is available online at paullundgren.com.

Trespassing

One summer night in 1992, when I was 19 years old, I came home from doing something forgettable and found three of my friends waiting for me in the parking lot. They said I should grab a flashlight and come with them on an adventure.

We drove across town to a building on East Fifth Street, tucked in a residential area. It was called Old Main, centerpiece of the old Duluth Normal School campus, which later expanded to become the University of Minnesota Duluth.

I was well aware of UMD, but I didn’t know about Old Main, which was built in 1901 and closed in 1985. It consisted of classrooms, administrative offices, a library and an auditorium. Two neighboring buildings were still in use by the university as office and research space, but Old Main was dark and boarded up.

Jeff, the leader of our expedition, brought us to the west side of Old Main and pointed at an open window on the second floor.

“That’s where we get in,” he said. “All we have to do is climb up this fire escape and shinny along that ledge.”

The windows on the upper floors weren’t boarded, so some of the rooms were dimly lit by the streetlights outside. We mostly kept our flashlights off to avoid drawing attention to ourselves, but when we came to darker rooms we used them.

It’s a little nerve-wracking to wander into an unfamiliar building at night, but we weren’t overly frightened. When we entered one room and flushed some pigeons, however, there was a split second we all thought death was upon us.

Eventually, we found the way to the attic. Although we weren’t afraid of most of the building, we couldn’t bring ourselves to go up there. It might have been the amount of pigeon dung, it might have been that gaining access was tricky, or it might have been the notion that attics are extra spooky. It was probably all three.

We left the building with no injuries and no police attention. A few days later, we decided to return in broad daylight and go up into the attic. It was a large space and proved to be the highlight of the Old Main experience. We found a box of enrollment cards up there from the early 1900s. Had we found it at night, ghosts would have stolen our souls for sure.

Jeff discovered the building’s telephone system was still wired up, so we came back again with a boombox and connected it. Then we made a mix tape of creepy sound effects and invited some girls to come into the building with us at midnight on Halloween.

Our plan worked at first. We managed to get the girls into the building, and Jeff was able to sneak away from the group to activate the sound system, but the music ended up making it obvious that we were trying to scare the girls, which made the whole experience entirely not scary for anyone.

Halloween 1992 was the last time we were inside Old Main. A developer announced plans to convert the building into apartments shortly after, but on February 23, 1993, a fire gutted it. A different group of young people had gained entry, and one set fire to a seat in the auditorium.

The remains of Old Main were mostly demolished and removed, with some of the bricks sold as a fundraiser, but the red sandstone arches are still there … memories of sweet, glorious trespassing.

Paul Lundgren is a newspaper columnist and a very nice man. This story is excerpted from a longer version on Perfect Duluth Day, which contains photos, more info about the building, and comments from other hooligans who entered the building.

Things She Said, Part Two

Cammie said she has mice in her basement. She told me she catches them in sticky traps and takes them to more upscale neighborhoods to set them free.

"I want them to have better lives," she said.

* * *

Christine said she has mixed feelings about guys who drive pickup trucks.

"On icy winter days, when they race past my car at dangerous speeds, it pisses me off," she said. "They think they're so high and mighty up there, with their four-wheel drive, extended cab, gas-guzzling beast splashing slush up onto my windshield.

"But when I get stuck in a ditch and a guy with a pickup shows up with a tow chain and voluntarily crawls around in the dirt to hook up my car and pull me out for free, he gives all the pickup truck guys a good name."

* * *

Stephanie said a lot of bizarre things in her sleep. Suddenly she'd sit up and look at me with disgust, then blurt out something confusing.

"Why are you green?" she asked one night. "Are you full of crayons?"

* * *

Billie Jo said her dog took off after a rabbit one morning and chased it around the yard. In a state of panic, the rabbit tried to smash through one of the two-inch-square holes in the chain-link fence to escape.

"Being thicker than two inches, the rabbit got stuck in the fence," she said. "Its little head and front legs made it through, but its hind legs and ass were trapped inside the yard. Morgan was so stunned by this she didn’t even bite the rabbit and rip it apart like usual. She just stood there and sniffed its butt. The poor rabbit kept trying to run, but it was like it was on a treadmill -- those little legs kept chugging along, but that rabbit wasn’t going anywhere."

Billie Jo spent 15 minutes trying to figure out how to free the rabbit from the fence.

"I didn't know whether I should just squeeze his little hind legs and shove him through or what. Eventually I grabbed some wire snips and cut the fence. The poor thing hobbled away and probably got mauled by something else before noon."

Paul Lundgren is a newspaper columnist and a very nice man. His book, "The Spowl Ribbon," is available at the Electric Fetus and online at paullundgren.com.

Things She Said

She said, "Hi, my name is Angel. I smell like the Thanksgiving dinner you haven't eaten all summer long." That was a weird way for a stripper to start a conversation.

Perhaps a man might expect to meet a woman at Centerfold's Cabaret who smells like green-bean hotdish, but that wasn't the case with Angel. She had just returned from the alley, where she held the hair of another stripper, Ashley, who was puking into a garbage can.

"Is anyone ready for a lapdance?" she asked.

"You are," my friend Chris said to her.

* * *

Joyce said she's been good friends with Eli for many years. "Back when he was chief of police, he gave me a great piece of advice. He told me if I ever had to shoot an intruder I should aim to kill. That way there would only be one side to the story."

* * *

Connie said every time her family had a party there was a cake, and her grandmother always took a picture of it. "After she died we had to go through all her photographs and divvy them up," Connie said. "No one wanted the cake pictures, but we all thought we'd like to have pictures of Grandma taking pictures of cakes."

When Connie graduated from college the cake at her party came from the grocery store in a box. A sticker with the order printed on it in fuzzy dot matrix read, “full sheet decorated buttercream cake.” Her younger brother took one look at it and called it “shit-decorated buttcream cake” for the rest of the day. Connie said her grandmother didn’t like that.

* * *

Chelsey said the various rocks of the world have different psychological affects on people -- particularly agates, which are an aphrodisiac. "That's why people around Lake Superior are always thinking about sex," she said. "There are all these agates driving us crazy. It makes it hard to think about anything else."

She presented this bit of information as if she read it in a scientific journal. At first I considered searching the Internet or going to the library to see if I could find data to support or refute the claim. Then I decided it didn’t matter either way. Knowing the truth wouldn’t change my life at all.

Paul Lundgren is a newspaper columnist and a very nice man. His book, "The Spowl Ribbon," is available at the Electric Fetus and online at paullundgren.com.

Abduction

Todd Franik pleaded guilty last week to abducting a West Duluth girl. The incident happened three months ago, within a block of my home. I was working at my desk when Franik grabbed the girl and shoved her into the trunk of his car.

If I had looked out the window at the right moment, I might have witnessed the abduction or perhaps even prevented it. Whenever Franik's case pops up in the news, I think about the extremely peripheral role I've played in his life.

Franik is four years older than me, and we lived less than three miles apart as kids. I have no memories of him, but the odds are pretty good that we crossed paths numerous times. We certainly had some of the same influences.

My fiancé's uncle remembers Franik attempting to steal his cap when they were kids. "I went after him and punched him in the face," he recalls. Uncle Lennie must not have punched Franik hard enough to make the lesson stick.

Franik took more from me than a cap. He abducted one of my neighbors. I never got the chance to punch him in the face for it, but I don't let that bother me much.

What bothers me is that I really don't have any attachment to the kids in my neighborhood. I don't know the names of any of them — not Franik's victim, not any of her friends, not one single kid out of the dozens I see playing outside.

When I was a kid, I knew the names of all the adults on my block, and they knew mine. That didn't protect me from potential abductors, but at least I felt like grownups were moderately interested in my life.

Now, I'm the adult, and one of my neighbors is taken to the edge of town against her will, sexually assaulted, and left bound and gagged in the woods. My reaction is to become temporarily interested in her welfare, then quickly go back to paying no attention.

I doubt any of the neighborhood kids know my name, but I'm sure they're aware of me. I'm the guy with the mean dog. That's not who I want to be, but it's what circumstances turned me into. Who am I to go against circumstances?

Paul Lundgren is a newspaper columnist and a very nice man. His book, The Spowl Ribbon, is available at the Electric Fetus and online at paullundgren.com.

Suicide Note

If you find me dead, it wasn't suicide. This is the opposite of a suicide note. I'm making a public announcement that I’m basically happy and have no plans of taking my own life any time soon.

Sure, I might seem down at times. Like anyone, I wish I had more in life. I'd like more money, more free time and a garage door that actually closes. But I do have a lot in this world — a steady income, people who love me, my health — so I can't really complain.

If anything tragic should happen to me, the potential of foul play having been involved should be thoroughly investigated. I'm not saying that I have more reason to fear for my safety than anyone else, but one can never be sure about these things.

Keep in mind that accidents do happen. Sometimes I like to go for long walks and I usually wind up on the edge of a cliff at some point, which has resulted in a few close calls over the years. It gets slippery on the top of Casket Quarry in winter, for example.

If you said something unkind to me recently, don't feel bad about it. I can honestly say I'm not holding any grudges. It would be a shame if I were to accidentally plunge to my death and leave you thinking you were responsible in some way.

If circumstances change, and I decide to kill myself, I'll be sure to compose another note clearly outlining my rationale. So remember, if there's no note accompanying my remains, I guarantee an accident or homicide has occurred.

I am a writer, after all. How could I just stick my head in a gas oven without saying goodbye to this cruel world in roughly 400 words? Such an assignment would certainly put the "dead" in deadline, that’s for sure.

Of course, I'd probably get writer's block and have to keep living for years and years, agonizing over draft upon draft of my final composition, until I'd finally succumb to that most dreaded of all fates — natural causes.

Paul Lundgren is a newspaper columnist and a very nice man. His book, The Spowl Ribbon, is available at paullundgren.com.

Back to School

This is not your ordinary back-to-school article, boys and girls. This is practical advice from a class clown who went on to graduate from a middle-of-the-road university, almost with honors. So pay attention, my horny little pizza-faced friends.

First and foremost: There is a common misconception that the best time to misbehave is at the end of the school year. The theory, apparently, is that if you follow the rules at the beginning of the year, you can expect some slack if you screw up in the spring. Nothing could be further from the truth.

If you behave well at the beginning of the year, you raise the faculty's expectations of you and provide evidence that you know right from wrong. Also, you risk having a whole year of work pulled out from under you by zero-tolerance policies. You don't want to become another horror-story-kid who didn't get to graduate because of indulging in senior skip day or flunked a final.

Clearly, if you confine your most serious rule breaking to the beginning of the school year you'll have much less to lose, particularly if you attend a public school. Remember, the school district gets money from the state based on the number of students enrolled. It is simply not cost-effective to expel you at the beginning of the year.

A few other random bits of advice:

• Your teachers will think twice about busting you for cheating on a test if you go so far as to have the answers tattooed on your forearm.

• Keep in mind that, though it is illegal for anyone under the age of 21 to buy beer, it is perfectly legal for anyone to buy barley, hops and yeast. Also, the easiest day to get into bars with someone else's I.D. is Halloween. Plan ahead.

• While we're on the subject of alcohol: If your friends are pressuring you into heavy drinking — beer bongs and whatnot — and start calling you a wimp, there is a solid way to fight back. Invite them over for what you promise will be a wild party. Tell them you are making a wopatusi, or "wop," which is a punch made of fruit and vodka. When your friends show up, lead them to the bathroom, and show them that you have prepared the wop in your toilet. When they refuse to drink, tell them they are lightweights who don't know how to party.

Paul Lundgren is a newspaper columnist and a very nice man. His fascinating book, The Spowl Ribbon, is available at the Duluth Electric Fetus and online at paullundgren.com.

Wrong Target

Dear guy who was snooping around outside my house last week,

Are you serious? You're thinking about breaking into my house? Obviously you aren't very far along with your research. For starters, why don't you just look at my house? Don't you think you can do better?

You should be able to determine from across the street in broad daylight that anyone who lives in a house like mine has less than $100 cash on hand and absolutely zero diamonds or precious emeralds.

If you're so poor that my spare money sounds attractive, perhaps I should inform you that I keep it in one of those giant Schmidt beer-bottle coin banks. Have fun making a speedy getaway with that.

Perhaps you haven't noticed the "Beware of dog," sign on my fence. I know, that isn't always a cause for concern, but in this case it is. I guarantee that if you enter my house a 96-pound Doberman will eat your face.

Allow me to offer you some helpful advice, since I have a college education and am not presently under the influence of methamphetamines. Breaking and entering is a dangerous and serious crime. If you're going to take the risk, give yourself a chance for a big score. In other words: Go steal from the rich, you moron.

Those people who live in big castles outside normal neighborhoods like mine have a lot of nice things you can make off with, and there are fewer neighbors nearby to catch you in the act.

Wealthy people go on long vacations, allowing you to take your time and do the job right. Many of their houses have driveways that allow you to pull right up to giant double doors for easy loading.

Even if I had an awesome widescreen digital TV -- which I obviously don't -- getting it through my narrow hallways and doors would require solving the kind of complicated geometric equations that led you to drop out of school and go into thievery in the first place.

So, the next time you put on that hooded sweatshirt of yours and go lurking in the night, use some common sense. Find a nice suburb or lake property to target. Leave your neighbors alone. Pawning compact discs is just not lucrative in today's market.

Paul Lundgren is a newspaper columnist and a very nice man. His e-mail address is paul [at] geekprom.com.

Vulgar Graffiti

The most common word in graffiti is "fuck." It often appears by itself — a single word left for others to ponder for decades or else paint over. It is probably meant to express general dissatisfaction with life. An expanded version of the sentiment might read: "I wish to say 'fuck you' to every random person who passes here. Such is my anger with the state of affairs in this world and the specific circumstances I deal with in my personal life. Though most people are not necessarily responsible for the things that upset me, I nonetheless hold everyone in contempt."

It is also not uncommon to see the word "shit" spray painted as a one-word message, which leads me to believe the act of graffiti is more about exercising the ability to be profane in a public and semi-permanent way than about getting across an idea. At least, I hope so. It seems unlikely that graffiti artists write "fuck" and "shit" as instructions to encourage public fornication and defecation. If they did, they could be much clearer by writing, for example, "shit here."

It's quite common to share ones appreciation for hard rock music through spray paint. Black Sabbath and Slayer seem to be the most popular. Rap and hip-hop are also associated with graffiti, but pop music seems to be virtually unrepresented. One would be hard pressed to find the names Gloria Estefan or Toby Keith spray-painted anywhere.

Although spray paint was around in the 1950s, it seems like honoring musicians through graffiti must have started in the late '60s, since the appropriate music styles were not available before then. It's hard to imagine "Carl Perkins rulez" or "Nat King Cole kicks muthafucking ass" on the side of a warehouse.

Song lyrics also show up in graffiti from time to time, like: "Break on through to the other side." Psychedelic sentiment seems to be the most popular. There are plenty of people who express their love for someone through graffiti, but it usually takes the form of a direct declaration — "Matt loves Cammie" or "M.P. + C.S." — rather than lyric quotations like, "Lady, I'm your knight in shining armor, and I love you."

More often than lyrics, vandals use a direct message to express their appreciation for rebellion, simply painting the words "smoke dope" or "get high." Other times it's just a simple note to let you know that "Brad smoked weed here: 3-21-99." This graffiti would be more useful if it were written in the future tense.

Dates are also used to commemorate sexual acts, usually fellatio. It's common to use the letters "B.J." to denote "blow job." Considering that it must be difficult to negotiate oral sex under bridges or on the sides of cliffs, it is perhaps an event worthy of marking the area with "B.J. 3-14-2010" when it happens, but I tend to think this type of graffiti more often reflects wishful thinking than reality.

Perhaps these people should start painting their bedroom walls with dates, like notches on a bedpost. There would be no fear of being caught by police, so they could be specific, without the need to abbreviate: "Mary Dittburner bent me over the dresser and pegged me with a dually inserted boomerang, Election Day 2008."

Paul Lundgren is a newspaper columnist and a very nice man. His e-mail address is mail@paullundgren.com.

Should Oberstar bother with debates?

Democratic Congressman James Oberstar is up for reelection again. He's been representing Minnesota's Eighth District since 1974. That's 18 terms, going on 19. In 2008 he won with 78 percent of the vote and declined all invitations to debate his opponent.

Allow me to repeat, in case the part of your brain that processes civic pride missed the key part of that opening paragraph: Oberstar was overwhelmingly reelected to the U.S. Freaking Congress, even though he refused to attend a single debate.

Prior to Election Day 2008, Oberstar appeared on WDSE-TV's Almanac North program and made a statement that should have been jaw-dropping to anyone who tuned in. Julie Zenner, co-host of the show, asked the congressman why he refused to debate Republican Michael Cummins.

"He claims that he's offered to debate a number of times and that your campaign has refused," Zenner said. "Is that a fair characterization?"

Oberstar responded: "I don't recall. That's a standard gimmick by challengers. (They say) 'I want to have a debate every day.' There's not much to debate with him, frankly. He's a nice fellow. I've met him. I met him up at the Chisholm Fire Days parade. We had a picture taken together with him and his daughters, and he's a very nice fellow. But I don't think there's anything of substance to debate."

Now let's review. First, Oberstar claimed to not remember if Cummins wanted to debate at all. Then, he suggested that Cummins wanted to "have a debate every day."

After declining to participate in any debate, Oberstar actually referred to his opponent's desire to debate as "a gimmick." The public exchange of ideas between political candidates is apparently not something a high-ranking member of the United States Congress should feel obligated to respect in the interest of informing voters, it's just a scheme his opponent used to get attention.

Oberstar also said he didn't think there was "anything of substance to debate," as if there were no issues in contemporary American politics that citizens should have been concerned about.

Has anything changed since then? Will Oberstar give his opponents the time of day in 2010? Will voters even care? Probably not.

Still, a handful of candidates have entered the race. Democrat W.D. Hamm will face Oberstar in the primary election August 10. The winner will go up against Independence Party candidate Timothy Olson, Republican Chip Cravaack and the Constitution Party's Richard Burton in the general election Nov. 2.

Maybe one of those guys will come up with the right gimmick.

Paul Lundgren is a newspaper columnist and a very nice man. His e-mail address is mail@paullundgren.com.

Somnambulism

Honey, something bad happened last night while you were asleep. Calm down, it's nothing major, but I feel like you should know about it. If it happened once, it could happen again, and it could be worse next time.

I had a dream that we were outside on the porch having a barbecue. You were sitting on one of those plastic chairs at the table, and I decided to walk over and put my arm around you. Everything was perfectly normal.

At the same time that I put my arm around you in the dream, however, I also put my arm around you in bed, while we were sleeping. I didn't get my arm up high enough though, so I elbowed you in the forehead.

You slept right through it, so obviously I didn't elbow you very hard. I woke up right away and felt really weird about what happened. I asked you if you were awake and you didn't say anything, so I guess it's no big deal.

I saw a TV news report a long time ago about sleepwalkers that I'll never forget. One old guy put his wife in a chokehold. He was dreaming that he was wrestling a deer. He said in an interview, "I could've broken her neck."

Another guy had a dream he was playing football. He got out of bed and tackled his dresser. I think there was another guy who woke up standing on his dresser, ready to jump off, not quite knowing why.

That's some creepy stuff, honey. I've never done anything like that before, except last night with the elbow. I don't think it will happen again, but maybe you shouldn't sleep so close to me at night.

Have you ever heard of that syndrome where people sleep for days and days at a time? If I have to have a sleeping disorder, that's the one I want. I mean, I'm tired and could use the rest, and it sounds like no one would get hurt.

One time I was camping in Montana and this guy wigged out and started flopping around in his sleeping bag and screaming in the middle of the night. When we told him about it in the morning, he said he was having a dream that he was flopping around in his sleeping bag and screaming on purpose in order to scare us. It worked.

Paul Lundgren is a newspaper columnist and a very nice man. His book, The Spowl Ribbon, is available at the Duluth Electric Fetus and online at paullundgren.com.

Never Learn

There are some lessons in life that we'll just never learn. Over and over, we make the same mistakes, wondering all the while how we manage to repeatedly be so stupid.

Even when we recognize our own poor judgment in time to prevent potential mistakes, we often find a way to rationalize going ahead with foolish behavior, as if we have no self control.

Some mistakes are big mistakes, like driving drunk, having unprotected sex or getting into a knife fight. Although we sometimes get away with those mistakes, there are long-term consequences when we don’t, so there is greater incentive to correct those types of behavior.

The damage caused by small mistakes, however, can exist only briefly -- maybe a matter of minutes or hours. Even though we regret what we’ve done, it's easy to do it again and again, because there is no lasting scar.

Take, for example, burning your mouth. How many times have you done that? Anyone with even a shred of intelligence should have figured out by the age of six that hot soup scorches the human tongue.

Yes, there is immediate gratification in not waiting an extra two minutes for your pizza sauce to cool. But that gratification is quickly lost, along with layers of skin from the roof of your mouth, if you don’t have patience. We all know that. We've all made that mistake before, probably hundreds of times. When are we going to learn?

Another food-related mistake is overeating. Just because there's a lot of food on our plates, and it's delicious, doesn't mean we have to hurt ourselves and ruin the experience. But, for some reason, we do it over and over again. We even look forward to special days like Thanksgiving, when we can gorge ourselves sick.

Maybe there's something deep in our animal mind that remembers hunting and gathering and how food can be scarce, so we stock up whenever possible and cram it down quickly.

That's obviously irrational, though. We've all had a few French fries swiped from our plates, but when was the last time someone came sprinting by and stole your burrito while you waited for it to cool?

Paul Lundgren is a newspaper columnist and a very nice man. Getting sunburned every spring is his favorite little mistake. Buy his book, “The Spowl Ribbon” at the Electric Fetus or online at paullundgren.com.