I know what you’re thinking. You're thinking I’m devoting much of this posting to the case of the students suspended from Medomak Valley High School in Waldoboro for wearing breast-cancer-awareness bracelets that said “I (heart) boobies” just so I can use the word “boobies” a lot.

By the time I noticed the thing growing under my front porch, it was bigger than a basketball. It had sort of a sickly yellow color in daylight, but at night it pulsated with a blue-green glow. A couple of days later, it ate a squirrel. Then, it absorbed most of the neighbor’s kid and one of those Smart Cars. It sometimes sent out strange waves that interfered with satellite TV reception and the navigational systems of passing airplanes. Most alarming, at night, it sent tendrils under the front door, down the hallway and into the liquor cabinet.

Comedian: Where does a guy from Portland sit down?

Sucker: I dunno. Where?

Comedian: On his butt, of course.

Sucker (picking up blunt object): This is gonna hurt you almost as much as that hurt me.

All joking aside (consumer alert: author is lying), there isn’t much humor in the question of where Portlanders will plunk their derrieres when they tire of walking on the city’s new Bayside Trail.

Unless you happen to think artists are funny.

Which I do.

The Portland Sea Dogs left town this week, narrowly avoiding sheriff’s deputies seeking to enforce a court order to cease and desist impersonating a baseball team.

And now, another frantic first-person account of the terrors and deprivations experienced by an actual Mainer during Tropical Storm Irene.