The screaming woman and the cat
Are you like me? Are you tired of seeing this meme everywhere you turn? (If you HAVEN’T seen it, for the love of all things holy, don’t go looking for it.) I think what we need to do to exorcise this particular demon is to come up with our own, more local version of it. Maybe if the woman and the cat are personally familiar, it wouldn’t seem so toxic. I’ve got the cat, you provide the screaming woman. Wait, what am I saying? I’m married. I have a screaming woman on demand. Let the healing begin.

Sabattus tavern to be demolished
Imagine how fun this is going to be for the demo crew? If you’ve ever flung a beer mug at the dart board or overturned a table at your favorite bar, you know how immensely pleasurable it can be. Should be a form of therapy, really. So if you have a chance to use heavy equipment to completely rip that bar right down to the dirt, I reckon you’re going to be the most mentally healthy son-of-a-gun in the world. Just don’t forget to tip your waitress.

Smoking banned in downtown Lewiston
Oh, yeah. That’s going to work out great. I pity the recent Police Academy graduate who gets slapped with the Butt Cop beat. He’ll spend all of his hours wandering around lower Lisbon Street and telling people to snuff out their half-smoked cigarettes, to the point where regulars on his beat will take to calling him Stubby. His fellow cops, a brutal bunch when it comes to hazing, will replace the shield on the poor sap’s uniform with something more apropos. An ash tray, perhaps. All he’ll get for his crime-fighting efforts are ugly nicknames and clothes that smell like cigarette smoke. Nobody writes riveting crime stories about butt snuffers, yo. The best he can hope for is some made-up award from grateful city leaders. The Bronze Butt, they’ll call it. Seriously, is this the kind of career you envisioned during all those years of watching “Starsky & Hutch”?

Burglar leaves wallet behind
It happened in Portland. See, this is the kind of infelicity that would happen to me if I turned to a life of crime. You can be the best break-in guy in the greater Androscoggin area, but the second you make a bonehead mistake like this one, you’re suddenly the laughing stock of your entire profession, not to mention the cell block in which you now reside. Who needs it? Me, I scraped and clawed my way into the world of journalism and then worked my butt off for years to get ahead. Then and only then did I become the laughing stock of my chosen profession. I earned it, bruh.