Dear Dr. Babooner,

The roof on the storage shed out back collapsed this winter from the weight of the snow, and the structure is unusable. The thing has always been an eyesore, and now that it’s damaged a debate has started about its real value. I admit there are benefits. We throw all the sports equipment in there and it helps make everything nice and tidy in our garage.

Our kids and the others in the neighborhood get a lot of use out of the thing, too. They’re always playing one sort of game or another in it or around it. I stopped paying attention but it seems like the door is standing open half the time and some little urchin is crouched in there, ready to pounce on someone. Usually the game has something to do with winning a championship or being a loud, bossy millionaire. Occasionally you hear some shouts floating across the yard about “MONSTER TRUCKS”!

But since the collapse I’ve had to wrap the shed in police tape and tell them to STAY OUT because the roof is unsafe. Long faces all around.

My wife thinks we should tear down the shed and replace it with something even bigger and nicer with expensive bells and whistles so it can be even more fun for the children and their games, but I’m thinking we should let the place fall in on itself like an old barn on an abandoned farmstead. Yes, it would be traumatic for the children to watch that happen, but it would remind them that games are just games and maybe it would instill in them a kind of gravitas that, frankly, they’re lacking. An air of melancholy and resignation about the inevitability of death and decay can be a useful thing for a young person. They’re not all going to be sports stars, you know. Some might become independent filmmakers.

Besides, we’re out of money.

Dr. Babooner, please tell me I’m right about how this dispute should play out. I took the time to write to you, after all, and my wife and the kids never read your column. You won’t gain a thing by siding with them. Give a loyal reader a bit of support, and I promise to keep coming back for advice that makes me feel smart!

Sincerely,
Seeking Validation

I told Seeking Validation that humans are able to develop an air of melancholy and resignation without intentional assistance from anyone else, and it’s mean spirited to try to build gravitas into another life just because you can.

Besides, watching something collapse is a terrible downer

The money question is a serious one, though, and rather than simply accept decay of the backyard shed, perhaps you and your wife and the local children could work together on weekends to repair the roof and improve the structure so it can still be a fun and useful neighborhood attraction. Like Amish people would, but without the horses and hats. It may not be the best solution, but it suits the situation.

And Dr. Babooner can’t be blackmailed with threats of withdrawing your attention. Your attention is a mixed blessing – look at me! The lovely pearls are merely window dressing to cover my own inner pain. Your flip comment about “long faces” hurt in ways I can’t even begin to describe, so don’t get me started on gravitas!

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?

People sometimes politely ask “how’s it going”, meaning, “are you finding any work”?
I always feel like I’m letting them down when I say “not really”, so it’s nice to have something tangible to point to every now and then. I’ve managed to complete a couple of freelance projects, which are now housed at different places online.

The Line, an online magazine, posted this article I wrote about the University of Minnesota’s St. Anthony Falls Laboratory – a highly prestigious research facility on the Mississippi River. I was happy to get this assignment, as I have a lot of admiration for scientists. We media people tend to think we’re pretty important but it’s the careful peer-reviewed work going on in laboratories all over the world that will have real meaning over time, while radio and TV programs, magazine articles and yes, blogs, will fade away very, very quickly.

The first time through, I wrote the article as a straight-ahead bit of reporting with a rather neutral and somewhat distant sounding “voice”. As I re-read my work, it seemed a bit dry. So on a lark I wrote a second version with a more casual, smart alecky, non-scientific style of narration, and submitted them both. Guess which one the editor chose?

There’s a strong chance that no responsible scientist will ever speak to me again.

The other project was a half hour radio profile of one of my favorite local music groups – The Brass Kings. I put this piece together for a fine community station, KFAI. In my previous professional life, (spent under the wing of a large, very polished media organization), whenever I needed recording equipment I merely had to ask and something that was state-of-the-art and in flawless condition would quickly be provided. This time I had to go out and buy a digital audio recorder and teach myself how to use it. As anyone I’ve interviewed can tell you, I’m still learning.

I also had to find a way to edit the work on my home computer using something other than the very expensive and temperamental “industry standard” sound mixing program – Pro Tools. I found one that was available for free – a really useful and effective program from Denmark called Hindenburg. Again, it took some learning with more confusion yet to come, but I think it turned out all right.

You can hear the result here.

I’ve picked up a few tricks and met some very nice folks over the past few months, but it is just beginning to dawn on me how hard people have to work when they are living from project to project. Patience, faith and persistence are three necessities in any freelancer’s toolbox.

What is your most marketable talent?

A new dispatch has arrived from sensation loving, factually impaired journalist Bud Buck, as he attempts to capitalize on the latest headlines.

Midwestern Crime Families Remain Untouched By Federal Probe
By Bud Buck

Yesterday’s FBI roundup of New York and New Jersey crime families has sent shockwaves through national syndicates of biologically related people who engage in illegal activities, but so far the ruthless crime families of the American Midwest are untouched by this latest probe.

“Are we looking over our shoulders?” asks a source who demanded that he remain unidentified, and is definitely not Joey Erickson of Shoreview, Minnesota.

“Sure,” he said, looking over his shoulder. “Always.”

The Erickson crime family is reputed to be a major player in the following areas:

* Cartnapping (The reckless use and subsequent abandonment of grocery story carts outside cart corrals)

* Transfer Laundering (Illegal exchange of unexpired bus transfers to riders who are not the initial recipients of those transfers)

* Yard Waste Embezzlement (Systematic, secret disposal of organics in improper trash containers)

* Library Book Racketeering

The “godfather” of the Erickson syndicate, Duane Erickson, is said to run the book racket using a network of “lieutenants” who approach people at local libraries and offer substantial cash payments to “sublet” the books they have already withdrawn on their personal library cards. Once the “mark” is enlisted in the “program”, the return of these “sublet” books is refused until tributes are paid or illegal activities are conducted. Failure to comply with the mob’s demands can lead to the destruction of previously spotless personal reputations, the accumulation of vast library fines, and even the complete loss of one’s library card.

Anguish and despair are often the lot of those who become enmeshed in the Erickson crime family’s web of deceit, and yet federal and state authorities continue to do nothing while spending their time and precious resources attacking the same old suspects in New York and New Jersey.

When will law enforcement get serious about the true extent of organized crime? Time will tell!

This is Bud Buck!

I think Bud is in love with the whole mob movie genre and would like to be a Godfather, although I personally can’t think of anything that would be less fun than having to follow the rules, take the risks and live with the uncertainty of being a member of a crime “family”. I guess that means I’d be the kind of sniveling wimp who gets bumped off in the first ten minutes.

If you were in a mobster movie, what sort of character would you play?

Here’s a special message from Congressman Loomis Beechly, who represents Minnesota’s 9th District – all the water surface area in the state.

Greetings 9th Districters

There have been several phone calls to my office asking if I voted to repeal the Health Care Bill yesterday. This is disturbing because I thought my office number was unlisted – if people keep calling, how will we get any work done?

Besides, my position on Health Care Reform has been crystal clear all along – I’m ambivalent.

We have no health care facilities located in the 9th district, and until someone decides to build a floating hospital or set up a clinic at the end of their dock, I see no reason to get excited. For the most part, the health care industry is a huge money game anyway, and the players are all on land. If people who live in the 9th district need to see a doctor, it stops being my concern as soon as they cross the shoreline.

Interestingly, during the summer months when many people in other districts want medical attention, they discover the doctor is here in the 9th district, drinking beer on a pontoon and water skiing after dark – things he said they should never ever do when he was in finger wagging mode, back at the office.

So basically I’m for Health Care Reform if it puts more money into the hands of the doctors who like boats. If it enriches the doctors who like to go hiking in the woods or the doctors who are into flying their own airplanes or alpine skiing from helicopters, I’m not interested.

I’m also for Health Care Reform that promotes things like intensive Ice Fishing Treatments, Inner Tube Massage and Jet Ski Therapy. I haven’t seen any of those things in the health care bill that was passed, so I don’t care if it gets repealed or not.

In my opinion, we need a REAL health care measure – something that skips over all this nonsense about co-pays and deductibles and simply requires every American to spend at least one day at the lake every year. Whether they’re calming their stressed out nerves by relaxing or taking part in some kind of beneficial physical activity doesn’t really matter, as long as they’re spending money.

That’s the kind of reform I’m after, and I’ll keep fighting for it here in Washington D.C. until I get it. But don’t hold your breath.
Unless you happen to be trapped under the ice.

Your Faithful Congressman,
The Hon. Loomis Beechly

I know it’s impossibly cold today, so let’s mentally transport to vacation time.
What’s your favorite thing to do at the lake?

Thanks to the prominence of a particular item in the news, I received an urgent message this morning from Beverley Crandall, Animal Medium.

Mr. Connelly, I have heard rumors in the town that behind closed doors, you use strange electrical forces to communicate with dozens of unseen living people simultaneously. I am not one to criticize. Your odd habit of invisible, mystical outreach sounds remarkably like my work with the departed. In fact, I’m hoping you can assist me on a case.

I’ll get right to the point.

When I heard that scientists were seriously discussing the idea of bringing a Wooly Mammoth back into the world through cloning, I rushed to the attic to retrieve a relic left there for me in 1939 by my erratic Uncle Erasmus. I was a mere infant at the time and understood nothing of what was going on, but he pinned a note to my diaper that said ‘When you feel it is time to call him, his remains are in the ivory trunk.” Said to be a jawbone fragment taken from the last living mammoth, the article in question is an extremely powerful artifact. I resolved to bring it to the séance that very night!

When I revealed my plan to the spiritual assemblage, it was agreed that we would pool our supernatural energies immediately for no task was more important than this – to ask the one vital question that was not being asked. With the light dimmed, I uttered the mystical incantations and we held hands as we stood around the shard.

Within moments a frigid breeze swept through the room, followed by the stench of a shaggy coat matted with filth and left to rot for ten thousand years. A low, reverberant grunting filled our ears. It was soft but capable of great power, like bulldozer, cooing to its love.

“Oh great spirit of the last departed Wooly Mammoth,” I called out into the darkness.
“Oh speak to us, great caboose of your kind! Are you prepared to walk the Earth again? For men are at work to bring you back into our world! Speak, oh Mammoth! Tell us, do you wish to return to this land of the living?”

And then a great caterwauling erupted – an ear-splitting, trumpet-like thunderclap, followed by labored breathing, a rapid huffing that was reminiscent of a steam engine laboring up a hill, a massive timber-rattling groan like the toppling of a giant wooden structure, an indignant snort, a throaty cacophony of low burbling and gurgling sounds that made me think of the last drops of water being drained from a massive muddy pool, something that sounded surprisingly like a giggle, and then … silence.

Unfortunately, I realized at that very moment that we had no one in the room who was capable of speaking Woolibulli, the lost language of the extinct giants. In our rush to make contact, not only had we forgotten to get a translator, we had neglected to record the sounds or have them transcribed. My account of what I heard is, at best, approximate.

My first impression was that the response was negative. But again, not being a speaker of the alternately musical and guttural Wollibulli, I cannot be sure that I asked the question properly. I might have said something more like, “Oh Hairy Abutment of Yore, would you like to appear as a guest on ‘Sarah Palin’s Alaska’?”

Mr. Connelly, I hope you will use your mystical connections to parse these signals from beyond – signals sent with great vigor through the veil of time – so that we may finally know if reviving the Wooly Mammoth meets with the approval of the last in line of these long lost, round tusked wonders.

Sincerely,

Beverly Crandall
Animal Medium

What was the Wooly Mammoth saying?