Early in my reporting career, I covered a car wreck that shut down traffic completely in the southbound lane of Interstate 39 west of Portage. I worked as the primary writer on the deadly pileup, and my intrepid colleague Jen McCoy shot the scene. As we stood in the median talking to a state trooper, tires screamed, followed by a jarring crash, as a northbound gawker slammed headlong into a stopped car in front of him not 30 feet from us.

Several pieces of debris rained down around us or whizzed overhead, but, thankfully, none of us were hurt.

Another time, as I approached the scene of a standoff between police and an armed man, I called out to an assault rifle-toting officer who appeared to be standing alongside his car. He responded by spinning on me, gesturing at a nearby building, and yelling, “Get behind something! Do you want to get shot? There’s a guy with a gun in that window!”

On yet another occasion, as I tried to get a look at a potentially toxic chemical plant fire in an unfamiliar town, I drove around an unmanned barricade and entered the evacuation zone. I knew the winds had changed, blowing the (what turned out to be nontoxic) smoke and fumes away from the hill that gave me a bird’s eye view of the scene.

Truth be told, the dangerous places I sometimes end up are among my favorite parts of the job. But in none of the above-mentioned scenarios was I ever half as uncomfortable, or even fearful, as I was during my assignment on Friday, when the call of duty took me into West Towne Mall during the Black Friday shopping rush.

Personally, I take no pleasure from the act of shopping. It’s a chore that needs to be done on occasion, and as such, I tend to be pointed and efficient with my forays into America’s temples of consumerism. I go in with a fairly specific idea what it is I need and how much I’m willing to shell out for it, and I spend little to no time “browsing.”

But even with my finely-honed sense of professional empathy, I cannot for the life of me imagine what could possess a human being to wake up hours before sunrise, huddle in lines amid the frosty, scarf-clad masses and then rush headlong into a feeding frenzy of culture-driven consumption.

Let’s face it — people have been trampled and even killed in shopping stampedes. One shopper told me Friday it was common for tussles to break out over premium commodities at bargain prices. She described in great detail how, earlier that morning, she and another woman had locked eyes as they homed in on the last of a particular sweater, then broke into dead sprints to get it first. My shopper told me if they had both gotten to the garment at the same time, she was prepared to throw elbows to get it.

With a choice between thousands of people like that or a police standoff, I’ll take the flying bullets any day.

Not to be dissuaded from getting to the bottom of a story, I subtly prodded the Black Friday shoppers I encountered as to what drove them out of their beds to spend eight hours or more filling their cars’ trunks and emptying their wallets. For some, the thrill of the hunt drives them to these irrational behaviors. Others swear the caffeine-fueled stress and exertion are worth it in terms of the money they save.

Several even explained Black Friday to me as a bonding experience to be savored as a family!

This last was perhaps the most disconcerting to me, especially as someone coming off an enjoyable family bonding experience of my own. I spent Thanksgiving Day with both my parents, both my sisters, all my living grandparents and a cousin. After a turbulent year that just keeps getting more interesting, it was a relief simply to be together with the people I love.

That we were able to eat, drink and make a respectable degree of merriment was as spectacular to me as it was special. I couldn’t have been more content than I was as we laid about the living room after dinner, soaking in the warmth from the fire place and catching up on what felt like a year’s lost conversations.

If someone’s able to replicate that kind of feeling as they grapple for goods in the midst of pandemonium, more power to them. But for me, a bonding experience is cheapened significantly when it can’t occur in the absence of cash or a line of credit.

In some eyes, this might make me a bad American. Indeed, economic analysts and industry leaders are already whinging that, while 23 million more Americans spent money in stores or online over the four-day weekend, average spending fell by 30 bucks.

Apparently, the fact that consumer spending on Black Friday was still 0.5% higher than last year isn’t good enough for these people. After all, it jumped 3% in 2008 and 8.3% in 2007! Don’t we realize that we’re in a recession, and it’s up to us to spend ourselves into oblivion so retailers can continue to meet their inflated projections?

Maybe my priorities are out of whack, but I’d just as soon cut back on my holiday spending so I don’t have to carry a balance on my credit card and can continue doubling or tripling my student loan payments. And if more people are beginning to think like me as a result of this recession, then maybe we’re all better off in the long run.

The next time you encounter one of Madison’s finest out on the street (or get hauled off by one at the Mifflin Street Block Party), do yourself a favor. Ask the officer what he or she did in his or her past life.

You might raise the cop’s eyebrow, particularly if the officer assumes you’re referring to some sort of Buddhist thing, but more than likely you’ll be pleasantly surprised and a little taken aback. Depending on the officer you’re asking, the answers could run the gamut from basketball player to blackjack dealer, teacher to lawyer, or business owner to bus driver. One thing’s for certain — since Sergeant Mike Koval took over recruiting for the Madison Police, the department has an impressive number of officers who never expected they’d be wearing a badge for a living.

I was pleased to see in today’s State Journal an article by cops reporter Sandy Cullen detailing the diverse assortment of backgrounds many of our boys and gals in blue come from. It’s part of the department’s effort to reinvent policing, as they will tell you, and it makes sense.

The need for police is an unfortunate reality in society. It’s tough to argue against it. The question then becomes, who should a city entrust with the abilities to carry a gun and Taser in public, give orders in emergencies and cuff anyone to drag down to the station? Are we better served by a police force that grew up with dreams of kicking in doors and knocking out teeth, or squads of enforcers who use problem-solving and effective communication as their primary weapons, while keeping a can of whoop-ass in their back pocket as a fallback?

Surprisingly, Madison’s technique is as unique as it is.

I had the pleasure of being introduced to Sergeant Koval about a year back by Public Information Officer Joel Despain, and he’s since proved to be a valuable font of information and the source of a few good chuckles. When we met, it was to talk about the city’s latest class of recruits. I was taken aback by the strange brew of backgrounds they brought to the table, but he explained that diversity is part of the department’s strength.

The logic makes sense. You can teach any trained ape to fire a gun and swing a a billy-club, but Koval told me the traits they’re interested in are level-headedness, intuition and a legitimate desire to help people. Coupled with the department’s incentivized plan to continue officers’ education, it almost hearkens back to the warrior-scholars of old.

Could it be that Koval isn’t building a police force, but a Jedi order?

After the interview I’d come for, our conversation turned to area high school basketball (which I confess, Koval — a local boy — has a better grasp on, in spite of the fact that I was doing color commentary on some games at the time), and then he tried to recruit me.

“Excuse me,” I spluttered like a female bar patron who’s just been told her dress would look better on some frat boy’s floor. If you had made a numbered list of things I was expecting when I walked into Koval’s office, a job pitch would have ranked somewhere in the neighborhood of ten-thousandth.

“You should apply to be a Madison Police Officer,” Koval repeated. “You know, I used to be a reporter, but here I am now.”

Guy could sell ice to the Inuit. If I hadn’t had another pressing appointment, he might have had me in a half hour’s time. The notion still crosses my mind, from time to time, though it’s usually followed in short order by a temporarily crippling bout of maniacal laughter.

As persuasive and vivacious as Sergeant Koval is, it’s no surprise the Madison Police Department gets more than a thousand applications for a dozen or so openings every year. I don’t envy him the task of sorting through those resumes, but in the end, it’s the city that’s benefiting from his dedication and his open-mindedness. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised to see him invited by some institution or another to spread his school of thought to other cities in years to come.

I’d wager a significant portion of my meager paycheck that Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz gets a lot of dumb letters, and I’m talking about a breed of dumb that goes beyond simply misspelling his humdinger of a last name. I’m talking about the kind of dumb that inspires one to carry a gerbil-wheel with one before the entire city council, with more than 50 people waiting in line behind you to address the body, and talk about “nibbling on nuts.” (You have to page down to around 5:50 in Kristin’s notes to catch this Will Sandstrom classic — though I guess his tirade is more a case of “stark raving mad” than “dumb”).

Anyway, if most of us got the kind of letters he does on a regular basis, I imagine we would get into the habit of just chucking most of them in the trash. But not Cieslewicz, apparently. In his latest blog post, his honor the Mayor lampoons the most frequent occupants of his inbox, complaints about Madison’s parking enforcement.

“I am just writing to inform you of the world’s worst injustice which took place in your gulag of a city not too long ago. As a result of this travesty, I have plans to bring Madison to its knees. Let me explain. (Here there are typically three pages of single spaced detail on the person’s every move for the two hours preceding and following the moment of ticketing.)

As you can clearly see from my brief recounting of events, I was wrongly fined by your overzealous officers. If my ticket is not dismissed immediately along with an apology copied to the media, my employer and my mother, I will destroy Madison’s economy by never returning to your city to spend so much as a dime. Moreover, I will tell all my friends here in Toledo and in the greater Toledo area never to set foot in your fascist city…”

I couldn’t help but throw my head back and laugh upon reading this, for several reasons. Firstly, the Mayor once told me he has staffers who check his blog posts prior to their posting and weed out some of the more undiplomatic ones — but admits that, “every once in a while I sneak one past the censors.”

This is clearly one of the latter. As much as people as cracked as me may have enjoyed his candor in this case, somewhere someone is reading it and getting offended right now.

But even funnier to me is the striking similarity the mayor’s fictitious letter of complaint bears to one of my more vehement rants of all time relating to a parking ticket I received after mistakenly parking my motorcycle in a partially unoccupied handicapped stall outside city hall.

“Ignorance of the law is no defense against it, I get that. Not seeing the sign is a mistake anyone can make, albeit a one-hundred dollar mistake in the City-of-the-Perpetually-Offended. And if I had in some way inconvenienced someone who had a deserved right to that spot, I would take a deep breath, clutch my manhood in one hand and my wallet in the other and pay the fine without complaining.

But WHO in HELL was I inconveniencing by using up the remaining three feet of that parallel parking spot? When I emerged from that horrid meeting three and a half hours later, the same gray van was parked in front of me, so it’s not like any passing disabled motorist even got the impression the spot was claimed. And what other use was there for the remaining space I took up? After all, I find it highly unlikely a paraplegic motorcyclist was going to come along and park there…“

And it goes on to get more outlandish and ridiculous from there, though the exaggerated hyperbole was intentional.

So yes, it’s easy and even popular to complain about Madison’s parking enforcement — I’m certainly no trailblazer when it comes to my views on parking or traffic tickets. I salute the mayor for unflinchingly dishing the BS right back, but hope he understands that it CAN get tough to make a living that pays very little and often takes one into the “danger zone” of Madison parking downtown.

I’ve literally paid hundreds of dollars into Madison’s city budget through parking tickets — not quite a thousand, but certainly in the ballpark of five hundred. Some of them I deserved, some of them were questionable. Either way, it gets overwhelming, and if no one’s going to name a wing in city hall after me for my generous financial contributions, the least I can do is waste some public official’s time with an incoherent letter.

Of course, if Mayor Cieslewicz dismantled the entire parking enforcement division, he could be rid of the complaint letters altogether. It’s a plan I’d like to implement, and I figure if the mayor gets to take an occasional crack at being a wiseass, I should get a shot at running the city every once in a while.

Wisconsin is an outdoorsman’s paradise, and many outdoorsmen will tell you there’s nothing more majestic, more awe-inspiring, more naturally beautiful than the sight of a big buck in rut, bounding out into the open through the frosty November underbrush.

Bullcrap.

Now I’m as outdoorsy as the next guy. I’ve hiked, camped and ridden all over this beautiful state of ours, and if I had a little more time and money on my hands, I think I’d even be a hunter. I abhor urban sprawl, I idolize Aldo Leopold and it’s my personal belief that there is no more deeply spiritual experience than cutting one’s self off completely from the civilized world, lying on one’s back and staring up at the stars on a cloudless night.

That much said, when it comes to the majesty of bounding deer, I’m afraid I just don’t have the natural wherewithal to appreciate it anymore. Chalk it up to some kind of post-traumatic reaction to the literal dozens of deer I’ve witnessed “bounding” in front of my car–or worse, my motorcycle–late at night on rural country roads, but I have no love for the whitetail deer, nature’s D-minus student athlete.

From an evolutionary standpoint, the whitetail is one of nature’s big winners in Wisconsin. They’re incredibly fast, create babies even faster and have next to no natural predators left in the ecosystem, courtesy of overzealous farmers early in the state’s history. The population is in fact so overabundant, the DNR is weighing whether to double the length of gun-deer season. But it’s certainly not by virtue of its intelligence that the whitetail is as prolific as it is. No species that leaves two percent of its estimated population dead along the roadside in a given year can be said to possess an overabundance of smarts.

While there’s plenty in nature to inspire awe, the only thing about whitetail deer that strikes me dumb any more is their stunning stupidity. Case in point–a seven-point buck that was killed near Viroqua when it tried to headbutt a 640-pound concrete statue of an elk.

Outdoors enthusiasts and Wisconsin drivers alike know that when the fall rut gets heavy in the air, the typical whitetail buck’s peanut-sized brain shuts down completely, leaving it with the basest urges to rush from place to place, screw anything that smells like a doe and, apparently, fight anything that looks remotely like competition. The whole process is eerily reminiscent of bartime at Wando’s.

Now if there’s one thing about nature I detest more than deer, it’s statues of deer and other deerlike creatures. Ever since two of the guys in the band moved out into rural Dunn, I’ve been swerving at least once a week as I come upon the concrete statue of a Moose some wiseass thought would be a good idea to put next to his mailbox along County MM — just a half mile or so down the road from the road’s deer crossing sign.

I’ve had half a mind to take a sledge hammer to that angina-inducing piece of sadistic roadside craftsmanship, and in the event that I actually drive off the road in a panic one night and total my car, I’ve similar plans involving the art patron’s automobile.

Along a dark, treacherous road is not the place for a statue shaped like a jumping deer. But with this new information that said concrete likeness could be an effective tool in thinning out some of the dumber bucks from the state’s herd, I’m beginning to think a couple thousand of them ought to be distributed throughout the Wisconsin wilderness as a means of population control.

How’s that for a practical use of taxpayer-sponsored art? And as far as controlling the deer population goes, anything’s got to be more popular than the now-defunct Earn-a-Buck program.

As someone who has spent 14 (and counting) of the past 48 hours in city council budget meetings, my psyche has reached an incredibly fragile state. I’m irritable, I’m close to seeing cross-eyed, and I’m pretty sure City Council President Tim Bruer’s voice is going to haunt my eventual, uneasy sleep with echoes of “as Mike Verveer would say, we’ll memorialize it…”

So when Alder after Alder took time, valuable time, on the council floor to admonish the members of the media present that tonight’s vote on the city’s capital budget was not in fact an approval of TIF funding for the proposed Edgewater redevelopment, I took it a little personally.

“Do they think we don’t know how to do our jobs?” I bitched at Kristin Czubkowski from the Cap Times.

I’ve been following this story for the better part of this year. I took the time to interview around a dozen people about it for at least half an hour a piece. I ground out a three-part freelance series on the topic. While it’s an easy mistake for people unfamiliar with the process to make, I know that tonight’s vote only set aside the 16 million dollars that could eventually be approved to loan to the developer, but only if the developer survives an approvals process akin to running the Aggro Crag and then gets a final approval from the city council.

If that process is ever completed, they need to have the money on hand to lend to the developer. That’s what they did tonight.

The high-tension support for and opposition to the project has sparked some heated arguments and caused every member of the council to take endless grief from their constituents. The last thing our city’s leaders want is for misinformation to whip those tensions into an out and out fervor.

“I’m hoping that my friends in the media will do as one of my colleagues suggested and not write the headline, ‘Council Passes Edgewater TIF,’” Alder Bridget Maniaci said, echoing the words of others. “This is not what we’re doing this evening at all…this is a very good first step.”

It’s every member of the media’s job to get the facts straight, so I guess I was a little peeved at the implication that the members of the media assembled in the room, myself among them, weren’t capable of doing our jobs.

It pains me to say it, but I was wrong to be upset. Within an hour of the repeated jabs from our city’s leaders, a television station posted the following on their website, which was almost verbatim what Maniaci asked them not to post:

Now, it’s not that I don’t sympathize. Everyone makes mistakes, and editors and news directors have had plenty of opportunities to bust my chops over the years for dumb errors or simple inaccuracies. Also, it’s a common misperception among the public that reporters are responsible for writing their own headlines. That duty is often passed down to editors at newspapers or copy writers in the case of TV websites, though mistakes can be avoided with a simple post-it note.

And while technically, yes, the city council did “approve funding” that could eventually be used for the “Edgewater project” in tonight’s capital budget, they certainly didn’t “approve funding for (the) Edgewater project.” That approval could foreseeably happen sometime in the next year.

It’s a detail that could have, admittedly, been easy to overlook — if city staff, alders and the Mayor himself hadn’t gone to painstaking, even annoying lengths to point it out ahead of time.

But for this station to flagrantly ignore the city leaders’ appeals borders on galling. Former Alder Brenda Konkel pointed the gaff out to me, and when I showed it to Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, he reacted exactly as we had — he burst out laughing.

Granted, the article points out in the second paragraph that an approval is still needed. But it’s only after the headline trumpets that the Edgewater is a done deal, and the story does little to delineate what a laborious approvals process the redevelopment still faces.

This kind of oversight reflects poorly on the media as a whole, but it’s more dangerous than that. It allows a misperception to persist in the community. It’s this kind of reporting, in my estimation and great exaggeration, that has allowed much of the ill-informed “resistance” to continue to the much-needed yet currently underwhelming health care reform effort taking place in our nation.

And in the interest of fair play, Channel 27’s website blew their coverage of the meeting completely, but I’ve come to expect that from their online product. They’re reporting that the city set aside “tiff” money for the project–”TIFF,” as in the the outdated “tagged image file format” graphic designers know and love, rather than “TIF,” the “tax increment financing” developers strive to get their hands on. That extra F makes a big difference.