COLUMN: Cologne

Facebook thinks I smell. The worst part? I may have just proven them right.

It's unavoidable: if you want to enjoy social media, you have to deal with ads. Facebook doesn't connect the world out of the goodness of its heart. It's a company, and companies have to make money. When you scroll through your social news feed, every third or fourth post is going to be a pitch for some must-have good and/or service. 

Most of the time, I'm perfectly fine with advertising. Look at all the ads on this page right now. Those ads pay my bills. I've never found them cumbersome or an unwanted burden. Some of them might not appeal to me, but some perk my interest. Businesses need to reach their audience, and consumers need to know about products and services. If you think people don't care about ads, I invite you to come down here and man the phones the next time there's a delay in getting grocery coupons out - those days are like Def Con 1 in our office.

But ads on social media bug me a little. Facebook doesn't just serve you sponsors, it serves you sponsors it thinks you NEED. It's called targeted advertising. Do you think it's a coincidence when you post something on social media about baseball and then ads for baseball gear start popping up in your feed? Nope. Every move you make on social media is being monitored by algorithms and tracking software. Each time you post, some little robot somewhere is looking for keywords and trying to determine if you're a match for their product. Sometimes it's awesome. Sometimes it's less awesome.

About two weeks ago, I starting seeing frequent ads on my Facebook feed for a company that makes high-end soaps. Specifically, they make manly soaps for manly men that smell of rugged outdoors and whatever manly dudes are supposed to smell like (presumably motor oil and campfires.) Their ads are always videos starring scantily-clad women advising that the key to a successful relationship is to smell like a forest.

The other day, I stopped on one of the videos to marvel at its ridiculousness. I watched as they "interviewed" a girl enamored with her boyfriend because he used soap that smelled of pine tar. This was obvious because they were being "interviewed" while nude in the shower together. The dialogue consisted of them saying perfectly normal things that perfectly normal couples always say while being interviewed in the shower, such as, "Oh man, mid-lather, this stuff is excellent!" And, of course, "Time for a sniff test, gimme your beard!" 

Then it happened. As I chuckled at the screen, my hand slipped just a little bit, and before I could do a good slo-mo "noooooooo," I accidentally clicked the mouse.

Suddenly, I was on the soap company's website. Worse yet, Facebook saw me do it, and their algorithms did, too. Sure enough, its one week later, and I now can't scroll anywhere on Facebook without someone trying to sell me random forms of musky man-soap -- and worse. As I type this, I'm presently staring at an ad for a product specifically designed to -- hmm, how to say this politely -- freshen one's nether-regions with "an enduring scent of mint and mandarin." 

Many of life's questions have kept me up late at night over the years. None of those questions have ever been (1) "How do I get my naughty bits to smell like minty oranges?" Or (2) "How do I get that scent to ENDURE?" 

Because I clicked on that one fateful link, Facebook now presumes I roam the land reeking like a hot dumpster fire in need of professional scent assistance. The truth is, though, they might be right.

It was Sunday and I was home and bored and in dangerous possession of both high-speed internet and a little bit of fun money. That's when I remembered I was completely out of cologne. I am not a big cologne guy, but I like to keep a bottle or two around for rare occasions when I care more about my personal appearance than the usual level of "well, I can't go to work naked." Over the years, I've owned dozens of stink bottles, from old spicy drugstore fare to highfalutin stuff that costs more than a paycheck. My go-to is usually Drakkar, a scent that's probably uncool these days but harkens back to a younger, goth-ier Shane of yore.

But I was bored and felt like mixing it up, so I decided to do some online shopping. But how to buy cologne online? You can't exactly scratch-n-sniff a computer screen, and I'm not gonna be the guy who catches COVID because he took his mask off to inhale test strips at the perfume counter. Surely there had to be well-written descriptions of colognes somewhere, right? Sure enough, I found helpful summaries right away, such as "this is an alluring scent for a night out, with subtle hints of sandalwood and bergamot." Sounds nice, especially if I knew what sandalwood or bergamot smelled like. I don't even know what bergamot is. I don't even know how to pronounce it.

I ended up relying on a couple reviews and picked a cologne with high ratings and one enthusiastic recommendation that "if you like Drakkar, you'll LOVE this."

Yesterday, it arrived in the mail. I happened to be home for lunch, so I opened the bottle and spritzed precisely TWICE, once on the neck, once on the wrists, and headed back to work feeling like a cool guy.

I may have felt like a cool guy, but I smelled more like an industrial accident at a lavender factory. Those two spritzes were about 1.5 too many. I sat at my desk and realized Parfum du Shane was quickly permeating the entire office. It was making my eyes water. I ran to the bathroom and tried to wash it off, but no dice. The scent and I had merged into an unbreakable lavender monstrosity. I've never been more grateful that my co-workers were wearing masks and keeping social distance. I don't think it had much to do with COVID that day.

Much like the famed Sex Panther in "Anchorman," I'm putting my new cologne under lock and key until I feel the need to ever commit mass lavender-icide. Until then, I might just remain scent-free. Except for south of the border, of course, which will be minty orange fresh. You'll just have to take my word for it. No sniff test required.  

COLUMN: Debate

I wish I remembered more from college. The older I get, the more I feel like I'm forgetting knowledge I once paid a good deal of money to acquire.

When I was younger, I was convinced that I was destined to be the next Casey Kasem, spinning Top 40 hits on-air for years to come. Yet here it is, decades later, and I've yet to make even ONE long-distance dedication. But collegiate Shane was convinced his future was in radio. At Augustana, that meant becoming a Speech Communications major. That's right, I am officially trained to speak.

In all honesty, I probably attended (well, at least sometimes attended) college at the absolute worst time. When I was at Augie, the internet was in its infancy. If I remember correctly, we had one shared computer in a common room of our dorm that was hooked up this new-fangled thing called the World Wide Web. When I bought my first PC out of college, I went overboard and loaded it up with ONE gigabyte of memory. "That's crazy," my friends said to me at the time. "No one could EVER fill an entire gigabyte!" 

I learned a great deal about radio at Augustana -- all of which was made irrelevant five years later with new tech. I'll let you guys in on a secret: radio stations today are pretty much run entirely on autopilot. Disc jockeys aren't jockeying any discs. Many just sit in front of a microphone waiting for a computer screen to display "TALK NOW" and giving them a timer until the next song starts. Sometimes when you hear a DJ on the air, they recorded their voice days earlier. I was once driving to the mall listening to a DJ friend of mine on the radio and then bumped into him at JCPenney's five minutes later.

I, on the other hand, went to school to learn such valuable skills as how to splice a reel-to-reel tape together -- so if see one of those in an antique store somewhere, I'm your guy.

But there was a whole lot more to a speech major than playing around on the radio. I had to take classes on small group communication, interpersonal communication, political communication, communications ethics, etc. I had to read seriously heavy textbooks full of complicated theory and endless discussions on the science of communication and how the way we communicate impacts society, understanding, and even human thought. It was pretty interesting stuff -- most of which I've forgotten completely. 

Every once in a while, though, bits of Comm Theory class come creeping back into my brain -- and nothing draws them out faster than watching debates.

Why we're even having debates at this point is beyond me. If there exists such a thing as an undecided voter by this point, I'd like to meet them. This election has polarized our nation. I don't know anyone who's not either reeeeeeally onboard the Trump train or reeeeeeeeeeally hoping it derails. No one I know is sitting around going, "Well, let's see what they have to say before I make up my mind." Instead, the debates have turned into popcorn viewing, a spectacle for the sake of spectacle.

Marshall McLuhan was a philosopher and media analyst popular in the 1950s-1960s who some thought a crackpot. In actuality, he ended up being a little ahead of his time, having invented the term "global village" and predicting the internet way before it was even a glimmer in Al Gore's eye. He's the guy who pops up in "Annie Hall" with his catchphrase diss, "you know NOTHING of my work." I can't begin to simplify all of McLuhan's theories (mostly because I've forgotten them, never understood them in the first place, and "I know NOTHING of his work,") but he's most famous for his assertion that "the medium is the message" - that WHAT we say isn't half as important as HOW we say it.

A good example of this was the first televised presidential debate: Nixon/Kennedy, 1960. Polls taken after the debate show that folks who listened on the radio overwhelmingly thought Nixon won it. Folks who watched on TV thought Kennedy was the clear victor. Why the disparity? Because Kennedy came to the stage a young man oozing with confidence and plastered with stage makeup. Nixon refused to wear makeup and ended up looking like a sweaty ghoul on camera. For folks watching on TV, it didn't matter what either candidate said. It mattered more how they looked and acted.

That's why the first Trump/Biden debate last week was so infuriating. As polarizing as that performance was, I doubt it changed many minds. In fact, it probably just made us double-down on our candidate of choice. Biden supporters thought Trump's constant interruptions were reprehensible. Trump's fans probably thought it was great fun. No one watching went, "Hey, that plan makes sense, I'll vote for THAT guy." I never heard any plans. I just heard insults and frustration and name-calling for an hour. If you watched it on TV, I'm sure it was entertaining. But try reading a transcript of that debate without losing your mind, I dare you. There was no substance. The medium was the ONLY message.

This column will run long after tonight's debate has ended and been talked to death by analysts, but mark my words. I bet the stories in the news today won't focus on the content of the debate. I'll guarantee the star of the discussion will be a flimsy plexiglass divider [Update: And maybe a fly. And maybe pinkeye.]

I might have a diploma saying it's my specialty, but I'm sick of the talking -- and the arguing and the tweeting and the eleventy-kajillion e-mails I get every day from candidates begging for money. I just want it all to be over. Do I have an outcome I'm rooting for? You bet I do. But mostly I just want it to be over. You know, when you're playing Scrabble and your rack is full of crummy letters, you're allowed to lose a turn, re-draw, and hope for something better. I think we've all lost a turn in 2020. Maybe it's time for some new letters. 

COLUMN: Search & Rescue

Nature and I have a long and well-documented understanding: It stays outside, I stay inside, and we get along great that way. Nature is fine and pretty and I admire it every day when it comes up as the screensaver on my computer. That's as close as I usually like to get to the great outdoors. Getting lost in nature's beauty can be relaxing and life-affirming, provided I'm in a car with air conditioning, a kicking stereo, and the windows rolled up so none of that pesky nature can accidentally get in.

But last week, I broke my peace accord with nature for a few harrowing minutes.

I had just walked in the door from a long workday when the phone rang. The voice on the other end was 95% static, but I was able to make out a few key words:

"Thunder... LOST!... not kidding... sunset... HELP!" And then the phone went dead.

Everyone needs a best friend. I've known mine since we were randomly assigned adjacent dorm rooms in college. I can't even really remember how we started talking, but talk we did. After a hard day of (skipping) classes, I knew I could return to the dorms for hours of laughs and time-wasting. When you're away from home and experiencing real life for the first time, it can be intimidating. To find a kindred soul to share those experiences is fortunate and irreplacable. For more than two decades, he's been my BFF, closest confidant, and the only human being I know tall enough to change the light in my garage without a stepladder.

That phone call was a sea of static, but we've been friends long enough for me to recognize the chopped-up voice on the other end -- and to know when he was legitimately in trouble.

I'm no nature boy, but my best friend is. My idea of relaxing is bad TV and Cheezits. His is a hiking trail, often in the pitch middle of nowhere. On many weekends, my text messages of "I'm bored, wanna grab lunch?" are frequently replied with, "I would but I'm on a hill somewhere in Wisconsin." In all those years, though, none of his hikes have EVER resulted in a phone call like this.

I was flummoxed. What does one do with this information? You can't exactly call 911 and go, "Help, I think my friend is lost... somewhere. I presume the Midwest. Find him please." 

Still, I thought back to all the times I've relied on him for the most ridiculous of assistance. The time he came over at midnight just to help me change the battery in a chirping smoke detector. The time he stayed up all night talking me off the ledge when I got dumped. He's changed more tires on my car than I have. He's made me laugh harder than anyone else on the planet. He's my best friend, and we're always gonna be there for each other.

But at that precise moment, I had no idea where "there" was. Then it hit me. I definitely heard the word "thunder," but there wasn't a cloud in the sky. I knew exactly where he was: Loud Thunder Forest Preserve. My friend was legitimately lost in the woods. Before I knew what I was doing, I was in my car heading towards parts unknown.

But what exactly was I going to do when I got there? I wasn't even sure what was happening. All I had were six words to piece together, and the best I could reckon was, "(Hi, I'm out at Loud) ..Thunder.. (and I'm) ..LOST!.. (and I'm) ..not kidding.. (that monsters come out after) ..sunset.. (and I'm presently being eaten by a Sasquatch, so) ..HELP!"

If there's one human being who knows a thing or two about nature, it's my dad. I fumbled for the phone and called the parental team from the car. This was probably a mistake. Dad wasn't the loudest voice in the conversation.

"DON'T YOU GO OUT THERE," lectured my mother sternly as if she didn't know me, "YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS IN THE WOODS AT NIGHT! LET THE PROFESSIONALS HANDLE THIS!" But who, pray tell, are the professionals in this matter? I wasn't exactly passing any 24-hour Acme Professional Friend Rescue establishments. The only plan I had was to go out there, find his car, and start honking my horn until he wandered out of the woods or a "professional" came by to arrest me for disturbing the peace.

Thankfully, that was when the phone rang again with slightly better reception. Sure enough, he had headed down a trail, somehow lost it, and had no idea where he was. But at least he was able to tell me a couple of landmarks before the phone went dead again. 

So naturally, I arrived at the forest preserve, immediately spotted a recently snapped twig, and tracked the trail over several ravines until locating the victim. I then banged two rocks together and made a campfire before foraging for mushrooms and carving an arrowhead to procure much-needed protein before using the stars to navigate our way to safety and the arduous reintegration with a society that's long forgotten the simple ways of nature folk like us.

Or maybe not. I DID, however, call 911 and talk to a bemused operator who promised to send a deputy. Meanwhile, I was such an expert tracker that I couldn't even find his CAR in the labyrinthian parking lots of Loud Thunder. I did, however, find a park office, who quickly summoned a ranger. It turns out my friend's landmarks were invaluable to someone who WAS capable of surviving in nature longer than fifteen minutes.

"I know exactly where he is," the ranger said. "I'll have him back here in a few."

But just as he turned for his truck, a sheriff's cruiser pulled in with a familiar and relieved face in the back seat. And how, you ask, was a deputy able to rescue my misplaced associate in no time at all? He sat in a parking lot and honked his horn until my friend wandered out. Perhaps I'm better at this search-and-rescue stuff than I thought.

For what it's worth, everyone couldn't have been nicer. "The last time a fella got lost out there," the ranger said to my friend, "we couldn't find him until 2 a.m., and it was a hot night. He was a dehydrated mess. And he wasn't built like you. He was more like -- your friend here."

Thanks, man. I get it. Captain Fatpants to the rescue. 

As we thanked the night's REAL heroes and turned to walk away, someone turned to me and asked, "Oh man, does this mean I'm gonna be in the paper tomorrow?"

"No, absolutely not," I reassured. We were past deadline. I knew it'd be at least 2-3 days.

COLUMN: Owls

When my garage was broken into a couple weeks ago, I wondered if I'd become one of those jumpy people constantly paranoid about safety and security.

The answer? A resounding yes. Whole-heartedly.

As much as I don't want to, I'm now reaching for my security camera feed every time I hear a bump in the night. And while I love my neighborhood, let's also be frank: I live in Rock Island, and there's no shortage of bumps in the night in these parts. Most of them, in fact, are caused by the three cats who graciously allow me to live in their home.

One such bump in the night occurred last week. I was sitting on my couch when a sudden "BA-DUMP" from outside made me instinctively grab my phone and pull up the feeds from the front of my house. I'd like to say it was all quiet on the eastern front. It was, in fact, anything but quiet.

The ba-dump itself turned out to be nothing alarming, unless you were the guy driving the rusty pickup that had just nailed the pothole on my block. It's been steadily growing this summer from a minor inconvenience to what can now only be described as a gaping hell-mouth to Middle Earth.

But I instantly found myself less concerned about the ba-dump of days gone by and more with the sounds my camera was picking up live. As God is my witness, I sat there frozen for thirty seconds listening to what sounded like a tribe of angry monkeys on the roof of my house.

I'm familiar with the assorted night noises of Rock Island. People talking and laughing as they walk to the nearby gas station. Car doors closing. Trains whistling, semis honking, police sirens blaring. It's the lullabye of urban life. But these were NOT urban noises. These were prehistoric noises.

This is one of those times I'm stymied as a writer. I wish I could just play you the recording. The best I can describe, it was something akin to "SKREE! SKREE! WHAA WHAA WHAA OWOOOOOO! WOOOOOOO! AH AH AH OOOOOO!" And whatever it was, it was CLOSE. And it wasn't alone. At least two of these giant killer roof monkeys were chatting with one another. 

Obviously when that pickup hit the pothole, it riled up whatever ancient monstrosity lives down there in the Land of the Lost, and the hellbeast had awakened. Normally, this would be an insane proposition. But in 2020, killer subterranean monsters wouldn't surprise me one bit.

We all know what a nature lover I am -- specifically I love that it's outside and I'm not -- but I was curious nonetheless. I found an app for my phone that promised it could "identify ANY bird call within earshot!" I cautiously opened my front door, stuck my phone outside and pressed record. Sure enough, within seconds, my phone informed me with confidence that I was listening to -- a pigeon.

I learned something that night -- specifically, I learned how easy it is to waste $3.99 on a pointless app. If that noise came from a pigeon, it's a pigeon that's evolved Pokemon-style into Pigeonizard or something. That was no pigeon. So I took the recording and threw it up on Facebook for the hivemind of my friends to analyze. Multiple theories flooded in: Owls. Crows. Owls vs. Crows. Injured turtle doves. Someone even said, "that noise CAN'T be real. Someone's messing with you."

The next day, my neighborhood was quiet. The house was still standing, and I found neither the talon marks of a prehistoric pigeon nor the droppings of a dozen angry monkeys. Defeated, I thought I'd try one last recourse: Dr. Stephen Hager, from Augustana College's Department of Biology. Dr. Hager graciously agreed to listen to the recording and it only took him seconds to make a positive ID.

"Those are definitely barred owls," he told me, "and close by."

I may not be a man of nature, but I've watched my fair share of children's cartoons and I have pulled the string on many a Fisher-Price See 'n Say. Based on this, I can tell you with some authority that owls are supposed to politely go "hoot." They are NOT supposed to go "SKREE! SKREE! WHAA WHAA WAAAAA!" Apparently no one told this to barred owls.

"What you recorded that night was at least two owls caterwauling," Dr. Hager explained, "which is usually associated with paired birds that sing together, presumably to strengthen their bonds of devotion." I'm not positive here, but that might be the professorial way of explaining that my nocturnal friends were about to get freaky-deaky in a considerably more-than-PG-13 kinda way. I may have just heard the owl equivalent of an Al Green record.

"The raucous hoots, gurgles, and shrieks probably also signal to adjacent owls about territory boundaries," said Dr. Hager before casually horrifying me. "Caterwauling can also happen when owls are trying to subdue a large prey item. Any of your neighbors lose a kitty that night?"

OH, NO. Wait -- one... two... and three. Whew. My adorable large prey items are all here and accounted for.

I have no issues with owls. What's not to love? They're majestic birds with huge eyes and the ability to spin their heads around like Linda Blair. But when an owl shows up at my door, it should be for one of three reasons:

1. I have been accepted into Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

2. I am about to learn how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.

3. I am about to get a stern lecture on littering.

The United States Forest Service could learn a thing or two from Dr. Hager. Kids might take littering WAY more seriously if Woodsy Owl showed up like, "Hey kids, give a hoot, don't pollute -- OR GOD HELP ME, I WILL EAT YOUR CAT!"

I dunno, nothing phases me in 2020. We're living with an invisible plague, murder hornets, and hurricane winds in Iowa. Adding a few aerial cat-eating predators should be just another drop in the bucket at this point. Still, I prefer my cats safely inedible within the confines of my home. Happily, Dr. Hager tells me the best time to catch barred owls caterwauling is between 3-5 a.m., when I'm tucked away in bed, happy and safe in my -- WAIT, WHAT WAS THAT NOISE??

COLUMN: Bike Thief

Just the other day I was thinking I should pick up a new hobby to while away the hours in our new virus-riddled reality. Well, it didn't take long. I appear to have found that hobby. I just never thought it would be true crime cinematography.

Maybe I don't have to tell you the story. If you were watching TV Sunday night, you might already know it. My sexy masked mug was plastered all over your nightly newscast. We're in the middle of a pandemic, civil unrest plagues our nation, and a good portion of the country is presently either on fire or underwater. But Sunday night's top story? "FAT GUY LOSES BIKE: FILM AT 11." (Or, more accurately, at 6, 10, and 10:30 after the football game.)

It all happened Friday night. I found myself enjoying a rare weekend free of plans, chilling at home watching TV. It was actually kinda nice. I was even thinking about turning in early. Well, at least until the

BANG!

What was that? It was definitely a bang. Not a super loud bang, but a bang nonetheless. I love this town, and my neighborhood has always been relatively safe, but let's be real: random ominous bangs in the distance after dark these days sadly isn't that uncommon. I was sitting on my couch with nothing better to do than investigate. 

Last spring, I upgraded my security system with some additional cameras in front and back of my house. Anytime I fancy, I can watch the happenings outside in real time. I was rewinding the feed to listen for the bang when I noticed the thumbnail pic of my back camera -- and the open garage door.

I'm an easily distracted human being. On the way home from work that night, I'd been giving a first spin to the fantastic new album by the Flaming Lips. I saw the Lips on New Years Eve Y2K, and it was a great show. SO great that, as I was walking out of my garage, I was trying to remember which song they opened that concert with. Was my brain so distracted that I forgot to close my garage door? 

Nope. My garage door wasn't just open. It was off its frame, a fact driven home when the "INTRUDER ALARM" sounded on my phone. The bang I heard wasn't a distant gunshot. It was a burglar kicking in my garage door, and I was watching him rob me in real time.

Now, I realize there are two distinct paths one can take in a situation like this. One would involve me running out the back door and confronting the dude. I chose the safer path of calling 911. I would hope most people would agree with my rationale. 

911 already knew the guy was in my garage -- my security system had already alerted them. The camera outside was flashing red and sounding an alarm. Yet none of this stopped my uninvited houseguest from commencing with Robberython 2020. If someone's desperate or stupid enough to brazenly burgle despite those deterrents, what's to stop him from doing something even MORE desperate or stupid had I marched out there? Not to steal a line from the great Robin Williams, but what would my next move have been? "Stop... or I'll say 'stop' again!"

Instead, I stood there in my kitchen providing play-by-play commentary to 911 as the guy made off with my 10-speed bike and a lawn chair I always hated. Clearly this guy didn't care -- as he runs away on tape, you can see every motion light in the neighborhood turn on as he makes his well-lit escape into the distance. I've never felt more proactively helpless in my life.

The police arrived four minutes later, and I got some great footage of them surrounding my garage with guns drawn. They were helpful and calming, and marveled with me at how ludicrous of a robbery it was -- not only do I have the entire thing on tape, but he even left a perfect muddy shoeprint on my door as a parting gift. Still, I've spent the whole week having a ton of feelings, none of them good. I'm less mad about my stolen stuff than the complete violation of the safety and sanctity of my home. Stuff can be replaced. My sense of well-being is a little tougher to fix. Plus spending the weekend installing a new (and MUCH more fortified) garage door wasn't exactly on my to-do list. 

Let's be honest, I'm not exactly a cycling enthusiast. At best, I took that thing out a handful of times a year. Still, it's the bike I've had since junior high and it's still in great shape. I honestly hope whoever has it appreciates its awesomeness as much as I always did. 

The video of the theft was captivating, so I uploaded it to Facebook for my friends to ooh and ahh over. Within a half hour, I was getting calls from TV reporters wanting to interview me. I think they just wanted cool break-in footage for the news, and I was happy to provide. It's just not quite as cool when it's YOUR garage getting burgled and YOUR bike getting jacked. All I know is I sure looked like a dork on TV.

So breathe easy, pro riders, for it sadly looks like I'll be forced to pull out of next year's Tour De France. In the meantime, if anyone sees a vintage midnight blue 1983 Schwinn Sidewinder rolling around town, give a shout -- especially if the rider's all hunched over in pain. That lawn chair's absolute hell on your back. I would've warned you, Mr. Thief -- but, well, you didn't ask.      

COLUMN: Car Wash

The older I get, the less patience I seem to have. I hate waiting for things, and that hatred's become more and more palpable as my days tick on.

Some people like to shop online. I've never understood the appeal. I suppose it's nice to compare prices and browse things from the comfort of your couch. That part I get. But where's the fun in impulse shopping if you can't get immediate gratification? If I buy something stupid, at least I HAVE that stupid something when I walk out the store. If I buy something stupid ONLINE, all I have is a week's worth of guilt while my stupidity gets boxed up and shipped from Timbuk 2. But even when I shop in person, sometimes just the delay of having to drive back home with a trunk full of stupid-somethings is enough to make my blood boil.

And its not just shopping -- I abhor waiting for ANYTHING. I hate waiting for clothes to dry. I detest going to concerts and having to stand around while a dozen scraggly dudes tune and re-tune guitars. There is no interminable solitude worse than the time between the nurse checking you in and the doctor finally walking into the exam room. Anticipation is a young man's game.

I'm waiting right now, in fact.

As I type this, I'm sitting at a car wash while my ATH (All-Terrain Hyundai) gets a good primping. In a nearby garage bay, a team of four is hard at work wiping and polishing away life's ick from my mobile command center. If all goes well, maybe for a few days I'll be able to pretend I'm not a garbage-producing heathen who routinely drives around with the decaying remains of a dozen fast food bags from lunches of yore. I've decided today is Hyundai Appreciation Day. I'm getting the car washed and detailed, and my next stop is an oil change from a business whose signage insists that customers "STAY IN YOUR CAR!" with an exclamation point that reads more like a threatening command than a consumer benefit. I love going to STAY IN YOUR CAR!

Oil changes and car detailings are necessary (especially when your car's details are as filthy as mine,) but it doesn't make for the speediest of afternoons. Every time they hook me by saying "it'll be about twenty minutes" -- which, when translated from the native Carwashian tongue, actually means "it'll be sixty minutes if you're lucky," and that's BEFORE they actually see the current state of my car, so I'm expecting about a ninety-minute stay here in the lobby.

Except I'm not IN the lobby. I'm outside because the world has cooties. I could be enjoying this, one of the last sunny days of summer, soaking in fresh air and sunny optimism. Instead, I'm already bored, so I'm laboriously typing this column on my teeny tiny iPhone keyboard for something to do, making so many typos my editor would have an aneurysm if this was the final draft I turned in. Still, it's better than patiently sitting around and (shudder) being left to my thoughts. Besides, there's a wasp flying around and I swear I can ignore it if I just keep staring at this screen.

Honestly, there's no reason why impatience should even exist in our modern age. How dare we say "I haaaate waiting!" when most of us have a device in our pockets connecting us to all of the information in all of the world? I've been here for five minutes and I'm already at the brink of terminal boredom. But just from the apps on my phone alone, I could:

* Watch a kabillion different movies and TV shows

* Send a tweet to the Kardashian of my choice

* Watch any number of random idiots lip sync to obnoxious hip-hop songs

* Read any of the 37 books on my Kindle list I haven't gotten to yet

* Crush unlimited amounts of candy

* Order a pizza and have it delivered right here

I have an app that'll tell me where the plane flying overhead is going. I have another I can point towards any bird and it'll tell me what it is. I have an app that will identify the song playing from the car wash speakers right now, which I don't need because it's Hanson's "Mmm Bop" because I am clearly in hell. The only app I DON'T have is one that will help me talk to the pretty girl who just sat down six feet away. She's wearing a shirt that says "COFFEE!" which means she's my kind of people. Sadly, though, I think she's also someone else's kind of people, based on her family-friendly SUV being detailed. And now I want coffee.

To summarize, I think I've figured out life and the answer to everyth-- OH NO, SOME GUY IS TRYING TO TALK TO ME. BACK IN A BIT --

Whew. Okay, I'm back. Also, I'm home. Burying my head in a smartphone stopped me from talking to the pretty girl, but did nothing to stop some random guy from talking to me about his motorcycle for the better part of a half hour. I have nothing against motorcycles. They look fun. But I also know the limitations of my own hand-eye coordination, enough to know I'd be kissing pavement within minutes of climbing aboard one of those two-wheeled deathtraps.

But I smiled and hopefully nodded in all the right places as I learned all about aftermarket pipes and whatever "competition fishtail baffles" are. At one point, I took a huge risk and said, "Wow, you don't see those every day!" Frankly, I had no idea. Maybe you see those daily -- whatever "those" are. He smiled and kept babbling about baffling, so I think I lucked out. I can tell you with some degree of authority that his bike was definitely shiny -- and hey, maybe if I had competiton fishtail baffles, I'd wanna tell strangers, too.

Honestly, though, it was kind of a hoot. Life in pandemic-ville is mighty lonely, and waiting around by yourself sucks. Talking to strangers about things I barely understand turned out to be an ideal way to shorten the wait. After all, talking to strangers about things I barely understand is mostly what I do in this column every week.

Ain't life grand? (Don't make me wait for an answer.)

COLUMN: Ugh.

Dear 2020, I'm out of patience. It isn't funny anymore. Stop it. Just stop it.

They say every man's got his breaking point. I may have finally hit mine.

I think we've all pretty much had it up here with this pandemic party, this unrest, and this year.

When things first started going south, I was as just as flummoxed as anyone. But if I'm being honest, being forced to quarantine and spend a few weeks at home wasn't much of a stretch for me. Growing up an only child backed with years of sedentary living was just the life experience I needed to soldier through the spring. 

"Oh no, you mean I have to sit around at home by myself with nothing to do but watch endless amounts of TV, listen to whatever music I fancy, and play video games all the live-long day? CURSE MY HORRIBLE LUCK!"

Okay, so maybe it wasn't a total picnic -- mostly because picnics involve leaving the house -- but for the most part, I was quite capable of entertaining myself.

But I was one of the lucky ones. The pandemic has hurt us, badly. Small businesses are struggling to survive without much in the way of assistance. I have many friends in the performing arts community -- actors, musicians, DJs, and club owners -- whose lives have been upended by this fiasco of a year. 200,000 more people have died in the US in 2020 than in 2019, and that's just staggeringly awful.

At the same time, troubling acts of violence and racism have led to civil unrest and a social upheaval the likes of which I've never seen in my life. People are taking to the streets to protest while others take to the streets to protest the protestors. You'd think events like this would lead to REAL dialogue and REAL change. Instead it's led to businesses being burned to the ground, suburbanites packing heat, and teenagers thinking they're action heroes.

Meanwhile, the internet has pretty much just gone insane. I bet the people who invented the world wide web (and I'm not talking about you, Al Gore) were really proud of their accomplishment. I reckon they triumphantly sat back thinking the world finally had open doors to global community, connection, and communication. I bet none of them thought those doors would open and a dude would stroll through accusing Tom Hanks and Oprah Winfrey of harvesting the blood of missing children in a Satanic plot to live forever -- or that enough people would believe him to make it newsworthy.

2020 has split our country even further in two, and turned everything -- and I mean everything -- into a political fight. Did we ever think we'd live in a world where telling someone their life matters becomes a political talking point? Or when a doctor says you should wear a mask to avoid spreading germs and you instead want to debate him about your constitutional right to be infectious? Or when any reporter says anything and is greeted by half the country calling them "fake"? 

And then there's this past weekend, when I made a rare venture into the toxic haze of public life to DJ at a club in the District -- and ended up having a front row seat to a show no one on Earth should ever have to see. An act of ignorant violence that night claimed at least one life, changed many others, and struck a blow that our nightlife community may never recover from. They say "thoughts and prayers" aren't worth much these days, but everyone affected by this senseless act has mine. Not that I've got many coherent thoughts to give -- I've barely slept since Friday.

I'm almost out of room and we haven't even touched on Iowa hurricanes, murder hornets, Kanye running for President, Chadwick Boseman dying, or the taco place tonight that gave me a DIET Coke by mistake that I didn't discover until this very moment (UGH!) Honestly, though, I'm running out of optimism. Now we can't even watch a TV show without an ad where some ominous voice tells you how so-and-so is going to ruin the country if we vote for them. No matter which way the upcoming election goes, I'm afraid angry people may take to the streets.

Once upon a time, I dismissed political strife and social conflict. "We're America," I'd reassure myself. "We're awesome and we're gonna figure it all out." I'm honestly not so sure anymore, and that's scary. We need light. We need hope. We need compassion. I used to roll my eyes at namby-pamby stuff like Hands Across America, but maybe that's what we need right now (well, except holding hands with strangers right now could theoretically kill you.)

We need to remember what truly makes America great. Hint: It's not guns. It's not having the freedom to yell at some poor restaurant manager for asking that you wear a mask. It's not a Facebook post or a 3 a.m. tweet. It's people. It's us. It's everyone working together for the common good. It's about talking, and sometimes even disagreeing, with other people without it devolving into name-calling or shade-throwing. It's about taking off hats that say "Make America Great Again" and actually doing it.

I'm no activist. I'm way better equipped to lay here on my couch and poke fun at the world. But it's tough to poke fun at a world that's rapidly becoming no fun whatsoever. So if somebody could please fix everything, that'd be swell. As for me? I'm going to enjoy my (ugh) diet soda, pet as many cats as I can, maybe watch an episode or two of Sesame Street, and try to find my optimism again. I'll have a better chance of seeing it once the sun comes out tomorrow. I have it on good authority it's only a day away.

COLUMN: Microwave Mask

I have reached an age where I am absolutely, positively, inarguably an adult. Frankly, I still don't believe it.

The facts, however, are not on my side. As much as I try to ignore them, there are hairs growing from my head that are NOT brown in color. I'm getting junk mail from the AARP. My weekends were once spent DJing to dancefloors full of my friends. These days, I'm more likely DJing to dancefloors full of the CHILDREN of my friends. Some of my classmates are (shudder) grandparents. This is scary stuff.

There's no denying my adult status. I suppose this is an impressive achievement, seeing as how I've made it this far without having ANY earthly clue what I'm doing. Let's be real: I'm almost fifty years old and still wear Velcro because I can't keep my shoes tied for longer than a half hour. I'm THAT cool.

But for a while now, I've been starting to feel downright mature. I've been adulting pretty hard lately. I've almost got my credit cards paid off. I've prepared meals consisting of more ingredients than peanut butter and/or jelly. 2020 might be terrible, but at the very least it's led me to curb my spending habits somewhat. After all, it's tough to impulse buy when you're too afraid to step into a store.

But just when I thought I had this adult stuff figured out, last week confirmed it's still a wonder I can even dress myself in the mornings. (And let's be honest, yesterday I looked down and realized I was wearing one blue sock and one black sock. My dressage skills are still iffy at best.)

Last Friday night started out okay. I'd arrived home from work, made dinner, thrown in a load of laundry, and was preparing to head out for another exciting evening of DJing to kids half my age. 

As you know if you read my column on the regular, I am very much pro-mask. 

Wait, let me take that back. I'm not pro-mask. I don't sit around going, "YAY! WE'RE SO LUCKY TO WEAR MASKS EVERYWHERE WE GO! IT'S SUPER FUN!"

Masks aren't fun. They're not enjoyable to wear. I'm not pro-mask. I am, however, pro-science. I'm not going to engage in the nation's endless argument on the efficacy of masks. Let's just say I've seen enough empirical evidence to agree with most major medical organizations that masks help people stay safe. My mind's made up just as yours likely is, whichever side of the cootie-riddled fence you're on.

There's no way I'm setting foot inside a nightclub without masking up, so with fifteen minutes to spare, Responsible Mature Adult Shane went down to the basement to grab a clean mask out of the dryer. There was just one problem. It turned out Responsible Mature Adult Shane had transferred the laundry to the dryer and then, apparently, completely checked out. Maybe I saw a squirrel. I don't know what on Earth distracted me, but somehow I had forgotten to push the start button on the dryer. Every mask I owned was in a soggy pile.

But that's no insurmountable obstacle for Adult Shane. No, sir. Adult Shane is a creative problem-solver. With all the confidence and know-how of my 49 years of wisdom, I grabbed a soggy mask, headed upstairs, looked around to make sure no one in my empty house was watching, and tossed it in the microwave.

On paper, this still seems like a solid plan. When water heats, it turns to steam and evaporates. That's all a dryer really does, right? It just blows some hot air around and evaporates the moisture in the clothes. A microwave should just speed up the process, no? I figured two minutes of nuking would be enough to get things steamy, so I left the microwave to its pleasant hum and ran into the bedroom to change for the gig. But when I stepped OUT of the bedroom, the hum coming from the microwave had turned somewhat less pleasant.

That's because the microwave was on fire. I had forgotten one important thing about my soggy little mask: it had one of those bendy whatzits to keep snug around your nose. And that little bendy whatzit was, I quickly learned, a copper wire. Copper is an especially good conductor and an especially bad thing to microwave should one NOT want to burn down one's kitchen.

I opened the microwave to put out the fire, which sent a ball of charred smoke directly into my smoke detector, setting it off. The detectors in my house are monitored by my home security system, which suddenly sprang to life and informed me via prerecorded message that it was sending the fire department to my house. So there I was, standing in my kitchen, trying to scoop up a flaming mask with a plastic spatula while the smoke detector blared, the security system was helpfully flashing a strobe light, and I was trying to explain to a 911 operator that emergency services were far less needed than a life coach at that precise moment.

Oh, and did I mention I was NAKED? Like, COMPLETELY naked? I was just starting to change when I heard the microwave go wonky, so I ran to the kitchen 100% sans clothing. As it turns out, Adult Shane might be capable of dressing himself in the morning, but at night all bets are clearly off.

I did manage to avoid both burning down the house and/or ending up on a docket for indecent exposure, so I'm taking that as a win. My microwave appears to still be functional; the mask considerably less so. Not only is half of it smoldering ash, but my little experiment also managed to fuse a rogue piece of macaroni directly into the fabric. It's now an art piece I'm tempted to never throw away.

So adulting is still a work in progress. But were it not for constant failure, I wouldn't be able to provide helpful bachelor tips, such as: If you forget to turn your clothes dryer on, do NOT microwave your masks. Trust me, results may vary. 

COLUMN: Derecho, Pt. 2

Right now, someone somewhere is likely paying good money to hang out in a quiet place. Entire business models exist around the concept. You can go relax at a tranquil spa. You can take a vacation to a completely isolated getaway. You can float in one of those sensory deprivation tanks. Experiencing pure calm and serenity is said to improve your cardiovascular health, reduce stress and tension, and even increase creativity and cognitive function.

Like many of you, I got to experience a full evening of absolute calm and serenity at the hands of our surprise derecho last week -- and I've got to say, I'm not a fan. Serenity is definitely overrated. I am now officially 100% pro-noise.

As I detailed in last week's column, I was home on my lunch hour when our derecho friend (I call him Derek) popped round for a quick visit to steal our power, trees, crops, and even a couple of wayward trampolenes. Later that night, once my alley was sufficiently cleared of debris, I ventured out assuming I could find limitless food options once I reached a neighborhood with power.

That neighborhood ended up being the I-80 truck plaza in Walcott, where I -- along with a measurable percentage of the Quad Cities -- waited in line for almost a full hour for a meal from some VERY stressed-out fast food employees doing God's work that night. Normally, when one leaves Walcott and heads east, you're greeted by the warm glow of the approaching QC metro. But THAT night, darkness was king.

After narrowly avoiding about 18.2 traffic collisions, I eventually made it back to my pitch black house and struggled to find the only two candles I own. They are NOT especially functional, but that's because their function is to smell like cinnamon rolls, NOT provide light to a powerless home. Not that it mattered, because I only kept them lit for about five minutes. It turns out the OTHER occupants of my home must have skipped cat school on the day they taught the "fire is bad" lesson. No sooner had I set the lit candles on the table than two of my furry friends attempted to run headfirst directly into the flames. 

For the safety of felines and human alike, I extinguished the candles and sat on the couch in total darkness going, "Now what?" I didn't even know where my phone was. "HEY SIRI," I yelled to the open air, "TURN ON FLASHLIGHT!" Somewhere on the table in front of me, I heard my phone croak, "I'm sorry, network not found." I wasn't just without power, cable, and internet -- I was without phone service, too. I was 100% cut off from society. You know, like the pioneers. The only thing I could think to do was document my harrowing journey through isolation for future generations to learn from. Just as Laura Ingalls Wilder once did, I picked up my iPhone, opened Notepad, and began a diary of my tribulations.

10:05 p.m. This is kinda fun. Peaceful. Relaxing.

10:15 p.m. This sucks. I'm bored.

10:20 p.m. What was that noise?

10:22 p.m. What was THAT noise?

10:25 p.m. In the back of my mind, I vaguely recall having existed from 1971 until June of 2007 without a pocket device connected to all of the world's information, but I'm not sure how I did it. I could have urgent e-mails to reply to. There could be people on Facebook this very second wanting to be MY friend. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO SLEEP NOT KNOWING WHAT KYLIE JENNER ATE FOR DINNER OR WHAT SHOES SHE'S WEARING?

10:35 p.m. Okay, maybe I can live without 24/7 access to the Kardashian clan, but let's be honest: it's scary to NOT be able to keep tabs on Trump's Twitter account. Whether you love or hate the guy, we need social media to keep up with him. I reckon there's a 20% chance he's named Ted Nugent as Postmaster General by now.

10:50 p.m. When I moved into this place, I thought it was crazy quiet. Nope. THIS is crazy quiet. Even as its most silent moments, there's usually still the hum of the fridge, the a/c, the air filter, and whatever I'm watching on Netflix.

10:51 p.m. I miss Netflix.

11:14 p.m. There is a horrible monster somewhere in this house making a terrifying noise. Tell my mom I love her.

11:18 p.m. Correction. There is a snoring cat somewhere in this house making a terrifying noise. Mom still has my love.

11:24 p.m. There is nothing more horrifying in a dark and silent house than the sudden sound of laughter NOT coming from me. I figure either (a) a couple people are walking down the sidewalk outside, or (b) the Children of the Corn are here seeking retribution for their homeland getting blown over.

11:26 p.m. The laughter has subsided. Either they've walked on or taken notice of my neighbor's tiny corn patch in her garden.       

11:28 p.m. Tiny corn sounds good. I wish I had a can opener that didn't take electricity.

11:35 p.m. I wish I had anything in my life that didn't take electricity. 

11:40 p.m. Wait, where's my ukulele?

I didn't bother transcribing what followed. I only know how to strum three chords, and I couldn't make out their faces well enough to see whether or not the cats enjoyed my one-man ukulele salute to the Ramones. Somewhere around trying to remember the words to "Beat on the Brat," I fell asleep on the couch.

Thankfully, when I woke up, I had power and phone service. Cable and internet returned the next day, then went away again, and then came back for what I'm hoping is keepsies. I was one of the lucky ones. I know some people who didn't get power back until a day or two ago. Had that been me, I'm pretty sure my house would have descended into tribal feudalism, and I'm pretty sure the cats would have won.

Some people say that moments of calm and tranquility lead to a sense of self-empowerment. It turns out I don't need self-empowerment as much as I need house-empowerment. That next night, I fell asleep with the lights on, the TV blazing, and My Bloody Valentine pumping out of the stereo.

I slept like a baby.      

COLUMN: Derecho, Pt. 1

Someone asked me an interesting question the other day: If you could drop one word or phrase right now from the common vernacular, what would it be?

2020 has given us so many choices. I'm sick of "pandemic." I hate "cancel culture." I've had it up to here with "quarantine," but I'm cool keeping it just to see all the fun ways people misspell it. Until now, my least favorite phrase of 2020 was "social distancing." Just like "conscious uncoupling" is a ludicrous way to say you're getting divorced, "social distancing" is just an awkwardly polite way of saying "STAY AWAY FROM ME, PLAGUE RAT!"

But now I've got a NEW least favorite word of 2020: derecho.

Let's just call it what it was: a sideways tornado. Or a Midwest hurricane. Maybe a tornadicane? No matter what you call it, it sucked. Specifically, it sucked branches off trees, siding off homes, trampolenes off backyards, and power and cable and internet away from pretty much everyone. Thanks to our uninvited derecho drop-in Monday, this has NOT been an ideal week. I suppose it could've been worse. The way 2020's been going, we should probably be thankful it wasn't a sharkderecho.

Those winds were probably strong enough to fling a wayward shark or two. That was a mighty impressive storm. I've always yearned to see a tornado, just once, with my own eyes. After this week, I find myself slightly less excited by the prospect. This was close enough.

I knew it was coming. I was on Facebook (DOING WORK STUFF, I SWEAR) when friends of mine from Des Moines posted they'd just lived through the worst storm of their lives. An hour later, my friends in Iowa City were saying the same thing. Uh oh. I knew which way the wind was blowing -- literally. As the severe thunderstorm warning was issued for the Quads, it was right when I normally leave for lunch. This was a dilemma. Do I ride out the storm in the relative safety of the newspaper office? Or would I be better off racing home before it hit?

I opted for the latter, preferring my car to be in a garage instead of our parking lot. Crossing into Illinois and looking west, I could see the beast coming. Storm sirens were raging by the time I pulled into the garage. I entered my house to a chorus of concerned meows from my feline home security team -- who, despite never leaving the house in their lives, strangely know more about weather than any of us ever will. "Ha," I thought to myself, "maybe I'll get stuck at home and score an afternoon off! Win!"

Smart people would have immediately gone to the basement (where the smart cats already were.) This idiot columnist instead opted to stand in front of the back door watching it roll in. But it was okay -- after all, I'm a professional. One year ago, I spent an hour in a Henry County basement training to become a certified National Weather Service storm spotter. It was time to put my vast expertise to use.

Well, I sure spotted it, alright. My first clue was when the storm door suddenly flew open and almost shattered into a million pieces. My second clue was when about one-tenth of the tree in my backyard came crashing down, raining a barrage of walnuts onto my head. 

"GOLLY GEE!" I exclaimed. (AND THAT'S MY STORY AND I'M STICKING TO IT BECAUSE THIS IS A FAMILY NEWSPAPER AND BESIDES, I MAY HAVE A SLIGHT WALNUT CONCUSSION.) 

I locked the doors down tight and joined the cats in the basement for twenty minutes of not-unlike-the-end-of-the-world sound effects. I don't have to tell you. If you're reading this, odds are good you're from the area and probably didn't sleep through the derecho yourself. Let's just say it wasn't pleasant.

I was luckier than many. The trees in my yard looked like one of those crash diet "after" pictures, but remained mostly upright. My house appears to be intact. My car was safe in the garage. I even got my wish. Trees had crashed down across both ends of my alley, essentially trapping me at home. As it turns out, though, snow days are considerably less fun when there's no internet, no phone service, no power, and no snow. That's why if you were cruising around Rock Island in the afterstorm, you may have witnessed a rare sight in nature: yours truly performing manual labor, pushing a downed tree out of the way in order to GET to work. What have you done to me, derecho?

That night, I went out in search of food, assuming only a minority of us were in the dark. How naive I was. I drove all the way to John Deere Road before discovering the only place with juice was the Wal-mart corridor, and about 300 other people had already beat me in line. I kept driving all the way to Silvis, assuming I'd find SOMETHING open. Nope. I followed the river back to Rock Island in darkness, crossed over to Davenport and up to Locust and then Kimberly. No power anywhere and I was getting mighty hungry.

Finally, I saw it in the distance: the beautiful, unnatural glow of lights, food, commerce, and t-shirts featuring any number of wolves howling at any number of moons. If the apocalypse ever hits, I'm now quite sure the only things left will be cockroaches, zombies, and the Walcott truck plaza. After an hour wait in the drive-thru lane, I had what I'm pretty sure was the best Quarter Pounder of my life, even if most of the ketchup ended up on my shirt. Who's gonna notice in a pandemic blackout?  

Returning home MUCH later than expected, all I had to do was enjoy peace and quiet. And pitch darkness. And the longest night of my life. More on that next week.

Here's hoping you and yours have remained upright. Let's remove "derecho" from the dictionary before 2020 starts liking the way it sounds.     

COLUMN: Squirrel

Society has long been rife with conspiracy theories -- and there's nothing like a good old-fashioned global pandemic to bring them out in full force. Maybe I just have weird friends, but I can't go five minutes on Facebook without seeing someone claiming the coronavirus is a Democrat hoax to get Biden elected or that masks are just the government's way to subjugate society on the road to fascism. 

I'm pretty sure most conspiracy theories are hogwash, especially these COVID-19 ones. But I swear to you all right here and now there IS a sinister conspiracy afoot -- one that involves an evil collaboration between car washes, major grocery stores, and the most blackhearted masterminds of malice in the world: squirrels.

Once upon a time, I thought squirrels were cute and fuzzy and charming. Then I made the mistake of buying a house with a walnut tree in the backyard. Every year, a small army of squirrels farm that tree 24/7. They're efficient, organized, and their clear purpose in life is to make mine a living hell.

Last Sunday, I went to the grocery store on a food run. While there, I was happy to find a couple big jugs of hand sanitizer perfect for the office. Returning home, I pulled onto the parking slab in my backyard and unloaded the car.

The next morning, I opened my back door to leave for work and nearly screamed. In my rush to put the groceries away, I'd forgotten entirely about my car. I'd meant to park it in the garage when I was through unloading. Instead, I let it sit overnight on the parking slab -- directly underneath the agricultural operations of Squirrels, Inc. In just one night, those cute and fuzzy backyard demons had turned my white car into a walnut-stained abstract art piece. With no time to sort it out, I had to cruise to work in a ride that looked like it lost a twelve-round TKO with a flock of diarrheal pigeons. Lovely.

At least I had my new hand sanitizer and used it throughout the day. Well, at least until 3 p.m. That's when I got a breaking news blast on my phone. The FDA had just released a new list of dangerous and ineffective sanitizers, and sitting atop that list was the very jug of "Be Safe" I'd been liberally dousing my hands in all day. As if on cue, twenty minutes later my right hand broke out in a red and painful rash. Double lovely.

After work, there was nothing I wanted to do except sheepishly drive my Poopmobile to the nearest car wash. But I was on a mission. On most days, I'm a fairly timid person. Normally, I would've just cursed my luck and tossed the bottles of hand poison in the trash. But I wasn't going to let COVID or squirrels or grocery stores get the better of me. Not when my hand was burning and my car was a mobile Jackson Pollock painting. Besides, that hand sanitizer wasn't cheap.

So I got off work, held my head up high (then ducked it WAY low to give a wide berth to the sticky nightmare of my car exterior), and headed indignantly to the grocery store, receipt in my red and itchy hand. I went straight for the line to the customer service desk, which of course was the cue for every unmasked heathen in the place to line up beside me at a distance substantially less than six feet apart. Timid Shane probably would've stood there and risked the plague. Not today. Besides, I had a mask on. I was virtually anonymous. That's probably why I spun angrily on the dude behind me and said, "Hey, could you give a little distance?"

He looked at me as if I were the one openly exhaling cooties, but he backed off. Instead, he put his shopping cart between the two of us, which would have been great had it not been occupied by his maskless and coughing children. For a while, I wondered if I'd be the guy in the next grocery store fight video shared around Youtube. I would've started yelling, but I was too busy holding my breath. 

Eventually, I made it to the counter and informed the clerk about the new FDA warning while asking for my money back.

"It's not our policy to issue refunds."

I blinked.

"Is it your policy to sell hand sanitizer that doesn't work?"

He blinked.     

"It's not our policy to return opened items."

I blinked.

"Is it your policy to sell products that do THIS?" I asked, waving my blotchy hand in front of his face.

Eventually I got my refund. Well, for ONE of the jugs, at least. It turned out the cashier accidentally hadn't charged me for the second one. It's just my luck that the one time I inadvertently managed to cheat the system, it was for a jug of free poison. 

Still, I took the refund for the one jug, although the clerk's probably still wondering why I asked for it in quarters. Ten minutes later, I was furiously plugging change into the machine at the nearest car wash, eager to show those squirrels what's what. Of course, unbeknownst to me, I was shoving money into a car wash bay that was out of order and featured water pressure barely more effective than me spitting on my car, which I couldn't even do because I was still wearing a mask.

Fifteen minutes, I found another car wash and spent three full cycles of quarters getting all the muck off my car, but not before somehow managing to pinch a nerve in the hand holding the spray gun -- the same hand that was already red and blotchy.   

So here I sit, two days later. My hand still hurts and the rash is still there. My refunded treasure now sits scattered around the change collection boxes of every car wash in the greater Rock Island area. The great squirrel / car wash / grocery store conspiracy of 2020 may have won the battle, but NOT the war. And in case my boss is reading, that "sales call" I made earlier to that tree service was DEFINITELY about newspaper advertising. Any discussion of rates to chop down a walnut tree was purely coincidental, I swear.

It wasn't the first time I swore this week.

COLUMN: Council

There's a teeny tiny power-hungry part of me that's always wanted to go into politics.

The only problem is that I'm not especially politically-minded. Or motivated, passionate, or knowledgeable. Granted, none of those challenges seemed to stop our current commander-in-chief from ascending to power, but I'd like to think an effective politician should know a thing or two about, well, politics.

It's probably not for me. I'm busy enough as is. Of course, were I to actually run for office, I'd end up with loads of free time, because I'm pretty sure it's frowned upon to be a candidate while working for the very media that would be reporting on your campaign. Next week's column? "Why I'm Awesome." The week after? "BREAKING NEWS: Shane Continues To Be Awesome!" Yeah, that probably wouldn't fly.

So I'll leave politics to the politicians -- but maybe I can poke my head in every once in a while. Earlier this week, I got a taste of our local political machine -- and it was kinda fun, except when it was kinda terrifying.

For someone with a college degree in Speech Communications, I'm pretty lousy at public speaking. I usually stammer, break into a flopsweat, and make eye contact only with the ground. But last Monday, I somehow found myself behind a podium, microphone pointed at my face, addressing the Rock Island City Council while trying super hard not to have a stroke.

Anyone can do it. You just need to show up, write your name on a sign-up sheet, and the council gives you five minutes to say whatever's on your mind (within reason.) I had six minutes worth of things on my mind, which explains why I talked really fast. 

What was so important as to have risked a full-on public panic attack? Well, this week the city council voted on whether or not to roll back the closing time of bars and nightclubs in the Rock Island District from 3 a.m. to 2 a.m. There's few things I'm passionate about, but that's one of them. If you're a regular reader of my column, you probably know why. 

I normally spend my weekends moonlighting behind a DJ booth in the District. When Mayor Thoms issued an emergency order last month to roll back our closing time to 2 a.m., I saw our crowds drop from 500+ to literally 18 people. I ended up (hopefully temporarily) losing my job, and that's a bummer. My cats do NOT appreciate good mixing the same way a packed crowd in the District does.

The timing could've been a LOT better. I fully realize the absurdity of arguing for clubs to stay open late when we're in the middle of a pandemic. If it were up to me, we wouldn't be open at ALL until COVID gets under control. But this council vote was to make the time change PERMANENT, and there's no need for that. God willing, one day we'll be on the other side of this virus -- and when that day comes, I want you visiting me on the dancefloor. The clubs of the District rely on that late closing time to maintain patrons and profitability. Without it, the District might not survive.

You might hold a different opinion, and that's fine. I'm not here to plead my case. I did enough of that on Monday, and it was mentally exhausting.

Having a front row seat to the inner workings of a city council, though, was enlightening. The District vote was something like the 24th item on their agenda, so I got to bear witness to a whole lotta governing, and it was every bit as action-packed as you'd think. 

I got to hear the Mayor declare July 26th as Americans With Disabilities Day, which was neat. I got to see McManus Orthodontics win the Keep Rock Island Beautiful Award for June, which was well-deserved. I got to see the Mayor issue an official proclamation encouraging adherence to COVID-19 guidelines, which was a prime example of why you should keep me out of politics, because MY official proclamation would be less "encouraging" and more like "WEAR A [EXPLETIVE] MASK OR ITS THE STOCKS FOR YOU, MORON!" Stocks were underrated.

Mostly, it was an evening of motions and seconds and ayes and nays and council members having to refer frequently to Robert's Rules of Order. I'm not sure who Robert is, and I'm too lazy of a journalist to look him up -- but I think it's safe to say he probably wasn't ever the life of any party. Robert literally wrote the book on parliamentary procedure, and he's probably the guy who wouldn't let his family play Monopoly until the entire rules were read aloud and agreed upon by a simple majority of the family quorum. Thanks to Robert and his rules, a simple discussion about abandoned real estate turned into a motion to approve a proposal to develop a program for a future vote... I think.

But all in all, I was wowed by the way our city leaders went about their business with courtesy, respect, and consideration. (By this, I mean no one pelted me with tomatoes while I was speaking.) Honestly, though, it was cool to see in person. Running a town can't be easy, especially in our COVID era where many members were joining remotely with mixed results. One councilmember chimed in with, and I quote, "I'm -- with the other -- establishment of -- is the city ordin -- I am told that." I'm glad I'm not the only one sitting at home these days cursing my iffy internet connection.

Politics might be fun, but probably not for me. I'm too thin-skinned for the political landscape. I want everyone to like me, and when you're in charge of making decisions, you'll invariably displease some people. That takes guts, and I commend our city councils for taking on that job.

As for the District vote? Well, I guess we won -- kinda. The council voted in favor of the 2 a.m. closing time, but it wasn't the supermajority needed to pass. For now, the District can remain open until 3 a.m. So next time you're out in the wee hours and there's NOT a horrible virus plaguing our fragile Earth, come see me. I'll make you dance, even if it's from six feet away. Stay safe, all.

COLUMN: Neowise

(Photo: Dana Taylor)

2020 has been woefully lacking in adventure.

Well, actually I guess every day's been an adventure. Going out in public is an adventure. Sharing an office with 20 people is an adventure. Heck, just turning on the news is an adventure.

But I'm talking about good old spontaneous adventures to new places and new experiences. Many of my best stories start with calling up a friend and saying those magical words, "I'm bored. Wanna hang out?" Over the years, those fateful words have been the start of tales that end with phrases like:

...and that's how we ended up in Beloit, Wisconsin at 4 in the morning.

...and that's how I ended up dancing in a meditation dome with Oscar-winning director David Lynch.

...and that's how we almost got arrested at the Canadian border.

...and that's how I ended up on MTV.

...and that's what turtle jerky tastes like.

All those stories began with an "I'm bored" phone call, usually to my best friend, Jason. Some of the best times in my life have been random spontaneous drives to parts unknown.

But 2020 has put an end to all that. The only "hangout" I've done with my friends this summer has been preceded by the word "Google." I've seen Jason once since February, when we met at Sunset Park to eat dinner from separate corners of a long picnic table. I'm pretty sure I've only filled my car with gas five times this entire year. 2020 is the worst.

But last weekend, I came pretty close to checking off that annual adventure box.

Friday night, I got home from work with several hours to kill before my weekend DJ gig. I ate some food and settled down to waste yet another night in the loving embrace of Netflix. But after five minutes, I shut the TV off defiantly. "NO!" I told myself and likely 1-3 cats within earshot. "2020 doesn't get to win tonight!"

I was sick of my four walls, sick of television, sick of repeating the same life day after day after day. I grabbed a mask and hopped in the car in search of socially distanced adventure.

I'd seen some friends online talking about Neowise, the newly discovered comet that's been gracing our skies just after sunset for the past month. Maybe it was discovered before, but that person was probably too busy learning how to make pottery because Neowise only pays us a visit every 6,766 years. Well, I wasn't waiting until the year 8786 for my next chance to see it.

Neowise shows up just after sunset below the Big Dipper, so I set off on the I-280 loop for a good glimpse of the northwest sky. Unfortunately, when you head off in that direction, the only thing you see to the northwest are trees, hills, and the nuclear glow of the Walcott truckopolis. Frustrated, I kept driving. More hills. More trees. More lights. No comet.

Eventually I found myself pretty far away from the Quad Cities. TOO far away considering I had a DJ gig at midnight and had no real clue where I was. I found myself on a dusty farm road driving along the banks of the Wapsi, cometless and running out of time. I decided I'd turn around at the next intersection and head back dejectedly. That's when I saw him.

There, on the side of the road, in the absolute middle of nowhere on a Friday night, I spotted a guy with a fancy camera on a tripod. Specifically, a camera pointed straight to the northwest sky.

"Are you hunting for the comet?" I rolled down my window and asked.

"Not hunting," he replied. "Found it."

"I came out hoping to catch a glimpse myself," I said.

"Pull in," he offered. "I'll show you what it looks like through a camera lens."

...and that's how I ended up spending an hour watching a comet with a total stranger in the middle of nowhere.

The stranger in question is my new friend, Dana Taylor. He's one of the founders and a former president of the Quad-Cities Astronomical Society, and it was pure luck I happened upon him. Man, I'm glad I did.

Even on a dark country road, Neowise is tough to spot with the naked eye. It mostly looks like a slight haze in the sky that I could only really see with my peripheral vision. But point a camera at it with a 15-second exposure and it's an entirely different story. Neowise is a marvel to behold, with a bright nucleus and an elegant dusty tail. Taylor would leave his camera motionless, controlling the ISO and exposure from a phone app. I stood there for minutes, not even caring that I was serving myself up as a banquet to a legion of mosquitoes. This was epic.

For a time as a kid, I was convinced my life would be devoted to astronomy. Then I found out astronomy was mostly math, and my dreams were crushed. I am not especially gifted with numbers (I had to pull out a calculator earlier just to figure out that 2020+6766=8786.) As an adult, I fear my full appreciation of astronomy consists of the phrase "space is neato." But that night, standing on the side of the road, looking at a rock 64 million miles away flying through space at 144,000 mph? In that moment, I was Carl frikking Sagan glimpsing the heavens.

The next moment, I looked at my phone and realized Carl frikking Sagan had 45 minutes to get to his DJ gig. So I bid my new friend farewell and raced home to make my gig with precisely 4 minutes to spare. By that time, Dana had already sent me some of the best pics he shot that night. As I type this, he's out there right now with an even better camera trying to get some last souvenirs.

The moral of the story? Like the books of our youth, choose your own adventure. Don't let 2020 win. You've only got a couple more days to check out Neowise before it fades from view for an awfully long time. If you think 2020's rough, who knows what 8786 has in store for us.

COLUMN: Jug

To say 2020's been a challenging year would be a bit of an understatement.

Once upon a time, our paper ran happy headlines, I'm almost sure of it. Nowadays, I cringe as I unfold the morning edition, bracing myself for whatever global disaster awaits. Turns out we missed one.

While your attention's been diverted by minor news like a pandemic, civil unrest, and the potential economic collapse of the free world, an even more sinister story has been lurking in the shadows.

I hate to break it to you, but the Quad Cities has a water thief.

Last night, I went grocery shopping. I don't think I've made one successful trip to the supermarket this year without forgetting at least one crucial item I went there to buy. I'm too preoccupied trying not to get breathed on, casting sanctimonious glances at the unmasked, and navigating the one-way arrows.

I'm a firm believer in giving people the benefit of the doubt, but all bets are off in the grocery store. Whenever I pass someone in the aisle, I can't help but wonder, "Hmm, how COVID-y does THIS person look?" It's nothing personal, I swear -- but don't take offense if you see me non-chalantly holding my breath as I give you the widest possible berth. Yesterday I found myself ducking down a side aisle just to avoid a family of unmasked heathens. No big deal, I thought, I'll just wait here pretending to comparison shop for, umm, tampons. I definitely picked the wrong aisle to duck down.

Eventually I made it to the checkout with a cart full of essentials: some TV dinners, butter, pasta sauce, a jug of distilled water, coffee, and some quarantine cookies. It wasn't until later that night, sitting at home on the couch, that it hit me: WHERE'S MY DISTILLED WATER? I definitely had it in the checkout lane, but it sure wasn't in my kitchen. Somehow, some way, it never made it home with me.

The way I see it, there's a few possible explanations:

#1: In the twenty seconds it took me to return my cart to the corral, clearly some nefarious scoundrel disabled my alarm, picked the lock, broke into my car, and absconded with my water. He's probably sitting somewhere now, toasting me with a distilled glass of his plundered booty, jubilant in his 99 cent pillage.

#2: When I got home, it was 7:02 PM. I think I left the store at 6:51. Does it take eleven minutes to get from the store to my house? Or am I missing time? Perhaps I was kidnapped by aliens and taken aboard their mothership where I was studied intently for my intellect and brute machismo -- and, clearly, my water.

#3: Perhaps technology has evolved at such an alarming pace that plastic water jugs have now become sentient. Having just been snatched and taken against his will from his friends, perhaps Juggy noticed my back turned and leapt from the cart in a desperate bid for freedom. Maybe he's made his way out of town by now, learning to live and flourish far from the thirsty mouths of those who would do him harm.

But I'm not going to waste your time with ridiculous theories of aliens or sentient water jugs or, umm, a bagger forgetting to put the water in my cart. No, I'm pretty sure I know what happened. Occam's Razor tells us the best explanation is usually the simplest. But I've been spending a lot of lockdown time on the internet, and the internet tells us the best explanation is usually the most convoluted conspiratorial thing you can dream up.

So here's what I think happened.

As I approached the checkout lane, the cashier must have recognized me as a card-carrying member of the #fakemedia. Too bad I didn't recognize HIM as Dead Body #2 in that fifth season episode of Law Order, because he was no cashier -- he was a crisis actor. As I placed the water jug on the checkout counter, I hadn't noticed the UPC code directly corresponding to the number of false positive COVID tests reported that day. Knowing how dangerous it would be to send that fateful jug home with me, he quickly set the bar code reader to 5G and irradiated the jug with toxic chemtrails. Unfortunately, he hadn't predicted the reaction it would have with the adrenochrome within.

As the jug began to glow, he realized in horror it was projecting the mystical square and compass symbol of Freemasonry onto the Hy-Vee ceiling! He had to act fast lest their Deep State jig would be up. As I was scanning my debit card, he grabbed the jug and vaulted over the checkout counter, pulling out his iPhone 12 to send an unsecured email to the only person who could help. The call came instantly.

"Hillary?" he cautiously asked.

"That's right," the confident yet strangely reptilian voice said.

"I think... he knows."

"Don't panic. Do you have the jug?"

"I do."

"Then we're good. He's already heading home."

"How do you know?"

"The microchip we implanted in his flu shot, duh."

"The fool!" 

"Nothing can stop us now. Care to meet Bill & I for dinner? Pizza's on me."

At least that's how I assume it went down. Frankly, it sounds more realistic than murder hornets, plague squirrels, or Iowa bears. I'm not putting ANYTHING past 2020 at this point.

Update: On my way to work just now, I glanced in the back seat and there sat the missing jug. This is worse than I thought. Clearly, typing this column caught the attention of Mark Zuckerberg & Bill Gates, who promptly reported the security breach to their reptilian Illuminati overlords (Oprah? AOC? Flo from Progressive?) and spared no expense breaking into my garage and putting a replacement jug in my car while I slept. It's a good thing I'm woke, people.

2020 might not be done with us, but at least I won't be thirsty.

COLUMN: Fireworks

I've always had a thing for loud stuff.

When most people get around a piece of screechy industrial machinery in action, they cover their ears. They grimace. They move away. I've always been the idiot standing there elated by the sheer stupid exhiliration of it all. I'll be the guy smiling with a thumbs up going, "ooh, impressive." I love it when a train blows its whistle as I'm driving by. I love the roar of the Blue Angels at an air show. To me, sound is excitement. Sound is power.

I spent most of my twenties as a rave promoter, renting out rickety old halls and warehouses and filling them with kids, DJs, speakers, and thumping dance beats. I've stood in front of speaker stacks taller than me. I've DJed on systems that have shaken fixtures off walls and tested the structural integrity of buildings.

I once paid more money than you need to know to bear witness to My Bloody Valentine, the UK group currently in the Guinness Book of World Records as the loudest band ever recorded. Their shows routinely feature decibels higher than a jet engine, and they hand everyone in the audience earplugs and warnings upon entry. They close their sets with a half-hour barrage of pure feedback fans lovingly refer to as the "Sonic Holocaust." 

I'm also an idiot. I'm well aware of how much damage I've likely done to my hearing over the years, so spare me the lectures and don't do as I did -- well, unless you're looking forward to the relaxing inescapable ringing of tinnitus.

But even as someone with a crazy high tolerance for loud noise, can I say one thing on behalf of myself, my cats, and a vast majority of our local populace?

ENOUGH WITH THE FIREWORKS ALREADY.

As I type this, some of you are on your 14th day of celebrating independence, and it's getting a little old. Every night for going on two weeks now, the minute the sun even thinks about setting, my neighborhood erupts into a barrage of bottle rockets, firecrackers, and show-stopping pyrotechnics -- except the show isn't stopping.

Seven days ago, I was sitting on this very couch trying to write last week's column, when

((((BOOOM!!!!))))

It felt like someone had lit an M80 directly into my spinal column. My windows shook. My elderly cats jumped into the air like kittens. And I dove to the floor like Captain Fatpants, the world's saddest superhero. I truly thought either the world had just ended or half my house had just exploded. But as I lay there in a defensive position awaiting the Four Horsemen, I was instead met with the sound of neighbor kids laughing and high-fiving.

As time marches on, so too does firework technology. Bigger, bolder, louder. But where do you draw the line between an impressive firecracker and a medicore bomb? My guess is you draw that line in chalk around the body of your terrified neighbor who's just stopped, dropped, and rolled off his couch. Thankfully I live to columnize another day.

Look, I get it. Fireworks are cool. They're fun, loud, dangerous, and illegal. That's a tempting allure. I remember one summer, we -- I MEAN, DISTANT FRIENDS OF MINE -- drove to Wisconsin and THOSE FRIENDS may have spent the entire profits of a rave on a carload of fireworks. As I recall MY FRIENDS TELLING ME, it was exciting enough to drive home with a trunk full of bootleg fireworks, let alone launching the things. But MY FRIENDS were so nervous, when the 4th of July came 'round, we -- I MEAN, THEY -- were too scared to light them off in town. THEY ended up driving out to a pasture in the middle of nowhere and were still so jittery THEY spent more time worried about getting caught and cleaning up the mess than actually enjoying their illicit show.

I remember thinking those fireworks were super cool. Trust me, they were super lame compared to the things people have been launching from my neighborhood this week. The night vision videos from my security camera on the 4th make Rock Island look more like stock footage from Desert Storm. Debris was everywhere and the whole Quad Cities looked like a foggy moor, except the fog was toxic smoke. I literally awoke on the 5th to a warning on TV to stay indoors -- the air quality was too dangerous to go outside.

Fireworks are dangerous and exciting. But this is 2020 -- just leaving the house these days is danger enough for me. If you're a thrillseeker, go grocery shopping. Hug a stranger. Walk around without a mask. No, don't do that. Please don't do that. But can't we just have a relaxing holiday weekend where everything is chill and calm, even for just a day or two? As one of my friends said on social media this week, I can't believe constant explosions and emergency vehicle sirens is the aesthetic anybody wants at this point in 2020.

I spent my holiday week engaged in my fun new hobby of making sure my house didn't catch on fire. Others weren't as lucky. I listened to the police scanner that night as fire and ambulance calls rolled in, not to mention countless noise complaints. At one point, I literally heard a cop say he was driving to his own house to complete his paperwork, because "there's too many crazies out here tonight." We should be better than this.

So I tell you what, Quad Cities. Let's make a deal. You stop lighting off mortar shells for a while, and I'll keep My Bloody Valentine to a respectable volume when I'm driving around with the windows down. Deal? Besides, when I'm by myself in a quiet room, I'm pretty sure I'm still listening to the aftereffects of that concert.

COLUMN: Bucks Fizz

I have long been an Anglophile. I love British music with a passion. I can't get enough British TV. English comedians are the funniest, UK radio is the bee's knees, and I'll take a BBC newscast over CNN anytime. If a girl with a British accent tries to speak to me, I can barely keep from squealing. I once worked with a reporter from Ireland (which isn't even part of the UK) and I still wanted to be his very best friend just because he'd at least heard of some of my favorite bands.  

On the very weekend we celebrate our independence from British rule, it's probably poor taste to write about how much British culture rules. But here's the thing -- England has launched an all-out assault on my brain this week, and this is a war they just might be winning.

It started with an innocent movie. This week, Netflix debuted a new Will Ferrell flick that I enjoyed very much. It's the kind of film that critics are bound to hate, but I was all in. Not just because it's full of heart and optimism and silly laughs, but because it's about a topic near and dear to my heart: The annual Eurovision Song Contest.

Truly, there is no greater annual trainwreck, and it's a shame more Americans don't know about it. Every year, the nations of Europe compete in a continentally-televised sing-off to determine which country has written the best song of the year. Songs are judged by representatives of each country along with the viewing public. It is the world's longest-running annual televised contest and draws up to 600 million viewers every year.

And it's terrible.

Not just a LITTLE terrible, either. It's a whole new level of terrible. Every once in a while, Eurovision can find a star. ABBA got their break representing Sweden back in 1974. Celine Dion catapaulted to superstardom when she was hired to perform Switzerland's Eurovision entry in 1988. But for the most part, Eurovision is a nightmare factory of garish costumes, over-the-top antics, and truly terrible music. It's a wonderland of bad taste and poor choices.

Since winning requires the overall consensus of 47 completely different cultures, Eurovision entries tend to be watered-down, homogenized, bubblegum pop trash written for mass appeal. Since the songs are cheeseballs, the performers try to differentiate themselves with zany stunts, cringe-worthy gimmicks, and some of the weirdest attempts at sex appeal you'll ever see. Don't believe me? Google Iceland's Silvia Night or the awesomely named Serbian singer Rambo Amadeus and strap in. 

In Ferrell's "Eurovision" movie, he and Rachel McAdams portray earnest Icelandic singer-songwriters trying to advance to the finals. You might laugh when you see Ferrell in silver makeup and a winged helmet singing an ode to volcano gods, but that's honestly not too far off from the real thing. There's a scene in the movie where Ferrell joins in a crazy medley of ABBA, Madonna, and Cher songs at an afterparty. What Americans might not realize is that the performers in that medley are all actual Eurovision winners. It's a magical mess.

Watching the movie put me in the mood to see the real deal, so I immediately went on Youtube looking for past Eurovision highlights. That's when Britain got its revenge on me for our indepedence.

In 1981, England won Eurovision with their own version of ABBA -- four vocalists assembled for the contest who went by the name Buck's Fizz. Well, technically they still GO by Buck's Fizz. Kind of. More on that later.

Buck's Fizz may have looked like ABBA, but their sound was straight Brady Bunch. They won Eurovision '81 with a song called "Making Your Mind Up" that might be the worst pop song of all poptime. If you were to combine the DNA of My Little Pony, Shirley Temple, and Hello Kitty, the resulting cuteness monstrosity STILL wouldn't be half as insipidly sugar-sweet as "Making Your Mind Up." It even comes with hand-jive choreography and a "scandalous" bit where the two guys rip off the skirts of the two girls -- only to reveal matching mini-skirts underneath.

Here's where I'd normally tell you to go listen for yourself. Trust me, don't. For the past 72 hours, "Making Your Mind Up" has been on auto-repeat in my head. It won't leave no matter what I do. Buck's Fizz is the devil's earworm. Somewhere in my brain, there's a radio station that now only plays ONE request. "Making Your Mind Up" has bored its way into my soul and now there's no other music. It's so obnoxiously catchy that I fear it'll be a part of me forever. Maybe this means it's the best song ever written. Am I the world's #1 Bucks Fizz fan now?

The BEST part? The singers HATE each other. There's a Buck's Fizz documentary on the BBC (and Youtube) that's one of the closest things to real-life Spinal Tap you'll ever see. The foursome turned their win into modest fame -- until a horrible bus crash left one member near death. Then the remaining guy convinced the singer of another terrible band to join, and this new guy tried to take over Bucks Fizz for himself! They fired him, but he formed his OWN Bucks Fizz with the original bus-crash guy! Now there's TWO warring Bucks Fizzes touring the cabaret circuits of England while they fight in court over the right to the name. The other band has to go by "The Fizz," and their career is clearly on the rise since they're booked to play October 4th at Pizza Express Live in Holburn.

Well played, England. You've destroyed my Anglophile dreams and turned me into a Fizzhead. Maybe one day the DJ in my brain will stop requesting "Making Your Mind Up." Until then, if you see me out on the street, wear a mask and stay six feet away, but SING SOMETHING TO ME. ANYTHING. GET THIS SONG OUT OF MY HEAD. Curse you, England. I'm glad we revolted.