Talk of the Town Ernie Anderson

The spring sting thing
This rain has been a real drag. Even the bugs are moping about all gloomy like. I haven’t even been chased by my first hornet, wasp or bee yet and that’s a spring tradition I look forward to year after year. You may laugh at my squeamishness, but I haven’t been stung in 20 or more years. True, I do trip over things in my mad flight to get away from the crazed, stinging fiends. I jump out of moving cars, fall off my motorcycle and there was that one time I had to jump into the Lewiston canal, but my flesh hasn’t been pierced in decades so I win!

PubLic apology
A couple weeks ago I wrote about the Sabattus Town Meeting. A good time was had by all, yada yada. I was just about to file the story when I noticed that on TWO occasions in my story, I had left the L out of the word “public,” as in “a public dispute” and “allocating funds for public works.” You see the problem with skipping that L, right? Right? Look closer, dang you, because it’s hilarious.

Reefer madness
I also wrote a loooong story about the food trucks, and in several places, I had to include details about a local cannabis store, using the word “cannabis” about nine times over two sentences. Not once did I spell the word correctly on the first try. Even after fixing it and getting the nod from Sir Spell Check, the word STILL doesn’t look right to me. Probably because I haven’t had enough cannibis.

That would go right to my hips
Also problematic when reporting on the food truck story was that so many of the truck operators wanted to give me free food while we chatted. Those of you who know me well understand that I don’t eat during daylight hours, but when you try explaining that to a stranger, it just comes off sounding weird. I mean, I could lie and declare that I’m dieting, but since a fully loaded burrito weighs more than me, who’s gonna buy it?

Do NOT stop to smell the roses
Sun Journal photographer Andree Kehn had a cool photo in the newspaper the other day of a guy walking his dawg alongside a field of lupines. Call me crazy, but I’ve always found lupines rather sinister looking. They look, to me, like they come from the deepest corners of the galaxy and that maybe their purpose here isn’t to just stand there looking all purple and pretty. Lupines are the kind of plant Jack Finney would write about. One minute you’re leaning down to sniff the pretty flower, the next minute BAM! You’re a pod person. And don’t get me started on the Alliums. Those are definitely some Arthur C. Clarke freaks of nature that are clearly plotting to displace humans and take over the planet. And they’re doing this from my backyard!