Maineiacs are staying
And that is a decidedly good thing. It keeps their legions of frothing fans from spilling into the streets to pull each other’s jerseys over their heads in bare knuckle fights. And for at least another season, it ensures that the Colisee will not be transformed into another Rite-Aid. Because you know the Rite-Aid people are relentless in their ambition to place one of their stores on every single block in the city, even if that means putting one store directly across the street from another. The Rite-Aid people must be just drooling over the idea of jumping into a spot the size of an ice arena. Imagine all the discount Christmas decorations they could cram there in June. And shoplifters caught kifing stuff would have their fingers snapped off by Lewy the security guard.
Now that I think of it, maybe Rite-Aid should slap together a hockey team so they can take the Maineiacs on in a sudden-death showdown, with the Colisee as the prize.
 
 The poop
Apparently in Portland, the vanishing of snow means the emergence of months-old dog poop. I’ve heard from as many as one person there who reports that walking the Portland streets is like walking thought a mine field, with dog excrement instead of explosives. In Lewiston, our population of poop (poopulation?) is generally confined to Kennedy Park where mounds of it outnumber sleeping old people. It’s really too bad, because I could fill entire columns with updated listings on new dog poop sightings around the city and in doing so, provide just the kind of crap you people have come to expect from me.
 
Bite me
It just figures, really. I traveled 2,000 miles to the Southwest in search of a scorpion and didn’t find a single one. I searched the desert high and low, in daylight and in darkness. I tempted the scorpion fate by plunging my feet blindly into footwear and walking barefoot everywhere I went. If there was any sort of scorpion mating call, I would have cried, screamed or moaned it across the Arizona landscape in an attempt to lure one of the critters. But no. The only scorpions I saw were the trinkets sold to tourists in roadside souvenir shops – long dead bugs encased in glass or hung from key chains.
Until I got back home, that is, and learned that one of the creatures was living in downtown Lewiston. The sinister scorpion and I were like a couple of those freaks on Trading Spaces. While I was poking my fingers into prickly pear and saguaro, he was hanging out in the hood, probably using my computer and eating everything in my fridge. That doesn’t just bite, little fella. It stings.
 
And they say newspapers are in trouble
On Tuesday, a local woman called police to report a strange thing: when she got up in the morning, all of her doors were closed and locked and yet the Sun Journal — normally left on her doorstep — was inside the house. Apparently, David Copperfield is working for us now.
What do you think is the talk of the town? E-mail suggested topics for this column and comments for publication to mlaflamme@sunjournal.com.