What do you do when you hit on a girl in a bar and she's not interested?

One possibility would be to get stinking drunk, then later, find her and her male companion and run them over with your car.

At this point, we can't be sure that this is what happened, but the circumstantial evidence suggests that this may have been the nature of Kandyce Stoffel's tragic death Monday in Minneapolis. Kandyce was a student at UMN, about to graduate, and the driver, John Robert Peterson, a high school tennis coach. One other person was hurt in the incident.

The only reason I even know about this is because I've been doing something unusual (for me ... these days) ... tracking the local news. I'm doing that because it is election season, but what I'm seeing is a reminder that the world is a strange place, and in my humble opinion, certain things get stranger as you get closer to Minnesota.

When I first moved here, all I knew about the state was what I saw in the movie Fargo. I did not expect Minnesota to be that Coen Brotheresque, but it turns out it very much can be. One of the first notable news stories that occurred when I first moved here was the discovery of five or six bodies in a grain silo in Minneapolis. Murdered. I don't remember why, but there was some sort of gangland connection.

Besides the Kandyce Stoffel killing, which may or may not have been an "accident" (but either way is quite tragic) we have the current story of the rich eCapitalist and his three sons from "soutwest Minneapolis" down in the mountains in their airplane. Also very, very tragic. But I can't help but to have my reaction to it all colored by the subtitle of the family's website, "Four cars, three kids, two houses" and the fact that they refer to themselves as living in "southwest Minneapolis" There is no such place. It's South Minneapolis (there is only a South, North, Northeast, and Southeast, and Downtown. No "southwest.") that is a term used by the wealthy white yuppies that live on the western side of South, who prefer to distance themselves from the rest of the area which is not as rich and not as white. (But better. Much much better.) So I feel bad for the family that seems to have crashed to death in Wyoming in their flying boy toy, but I think I might not like them too much if I met them. Not that I don't like rich people. Some of my best friends are rich people, but generally, my friends have a sense of perspective and know about exclusionary language and stuff.

Then there's this: "Wisconsin man to judge: 'I'd throw the book at me'" Wisconsin is just as strange as Minnesota (I know because I lived there for a year) but in it's own, special way. This is about a man who did some very very bad things and that is what he said to the judge. He had a disagreement with one of his buddies so he stabbed him to death. Throw the book at him, indeed.

Meanwhile, down in Fairmont, there was a house fire and some dick shot a private citizen and a cop, both of whom having come to the scene to help. The shooter's body was later found, all dead and stuff, near the scene. Gun control anyone?

If you are local to the Twin Cities, you may know about the Intersection from Hell (because of it's long, very very long, red light) at 10 and 96 up in Mound (or somewhere). Yesterday, it became the Intersection of Mayhem and Destruction when some moron driving a Hundai though he could take on a tanker truck. The tanker truck rolled. The driver of the semi got out of his truck to check on the driver of the car, and was promptly run over by some soccer mom in a minivan. He is now in critical condition.

Even this is strangely local. Or locally strange. Or, as they say, just "loco." Sunday, the Vikings beat the Packers by four points. Unfortunately, six or seven of the Vikings' points were stolen from them by the obviously paid off officiating staff who took a perfectly normal run of the mill touchdown and decided to not call it a touch down. (I wonder how much an NFL ref gets paid for this?) Brad Childress made major noise about it, complaining that the officiating sucked (which it did). Because he complained, he was fined $35,000.00. Unbelievable. But wait, there's more. He did meet with the NFL officials, and the NFL officials admitted not only that this touchdown was legit and should not have been overturned, but another play by Green Bay, a touchdown, really wasn't. So, Brad Childress made this revelation public, and now the NFL is mad at him for that. I think I've had about enough of football. I may lay off watching the game until they fire a bunch of these crooked, bribe taking refs. And MLB too. THEY"RE ALL BuMS!!!1!!

We have lots of corruption here and nearly perfect denial that the average Minnesotan is in fact a crook. We even have voter fraud.

And strangest of all, we have Michele Bachmann, who doesn't even know the proper way to spell her name, and who is now planning to "...host classes on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights for fellow House members when she returns to Washington." OMG.

One of our local suburbs is up in arms because race/class/poverty leveling in school districting is being implemented. Some white kids are going to have to go to school with some black kids. Yes, folks, we have racism too.

That's what I get for reading the local news.