As the author of a weekly column that is read by nearly a dozen people, I am often approached by readers with ideas for subject matter.

“Dear Mike LaFlamme,” such a person might write. “I stumbled on your latest column while wrapping a dead fish, and I don’t think you’re entirely terrible. In fact, I think you should write a column about my neighbor who has a very impressive collection of corn pads.”

That these people are willing to share perfectly good ideas such as this touches me to no end. And most of you know by now that no subject is too inane or meaningless for me to write about at length. In fact, I think I’ll put something together on corn pads next week.

Sadly, I’m not always able to tackle the big-concept ideas that are offered to me. For instance, one person suggested I write a piece on the man, woman or gnome who stands at the corner of Lisbon Street and East Avenue dressed like the Statue of Liberty.

At its face, it’s a brilliant idea. I’m sure there’s a great story there. The problem is, Lisbon and East is a very busy area, and it’s hard to find a parking spot. Not to mention that it’s been very cold outside. And there’s this phobia I have about people parading around as statues that goes back to a horrible experience at an Independence Day parade. I don’t like to talk about it.

Most of the suggestions I’ll run with, typically because the column is due in an hour, and I haven’t come up with diddly on my own.

One guy hounded me for months to write a column about how telephone poles tend to lean this way or that in Lewiston. It’s true. They do. The poles around here look like they’ve been out drinking.

I wrote a column about it essentially so the man would stop visiting me at my house in the hours after midnight to address the story idea. Half the readers thought it was amusing, the other half thought that day’s paper wasn’t good enough to wrap a dead fish.

The same guy insisted I should write about the lone-shoe phenomenon. You know the one. You always see one shoe sitting in the middle of the road or a parking lot. You never see two. I’m still waiting to hear back from the quantum physicists I approached for an explanation. I’m certain it involves the bending of space-time and cosmic strings.

Anyway, I wrote about the lost soles, and the reaction was immediate. Half the readers thought it was a brilliant look at a prosaic matter. The other half had stopped reading my drivel entirely and went back to “Nancy” in the funny pages.

Which is my point. A lot of what I write is drivel. I have good intentions most of the time. I start out with a highbrow concept, and I mean to write something somber about it. Then I have a funny thought, and it hauls me away like a big dog dragging an underweight dog walker. The last of my readers become disgusted, and they write, call or visit.

“Look, Mike,” one such angry person might say. “You’ve wasted enough of our time with this garbage. Why don’t you take your freak show to the carnival, where it belongs?”

Which is why I have a blog now.

For those of you who don’t yet know what a blog is, it is a place on the Internet filled with black smog. It is also a place on the Internet filled with acid-trip meanderings from people like myself who spend way too much time inhaling black smog.

No, really. Street Talk, the blog, is a perfect place for those concepts too insipid even for the biweekly column. And the beautiful thing about it is, people can write back with equally insipid thoughts.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I’ve already reached the height of banality with Street Talk, the newspaper edition. Well, you’re wrong, Alice. In the blog, my faithful companions and I have discussed such lowly topics as outhouse mishaps, sea monkeys, gross stuff sneaked into pizza sauce, alcoholic beverages with funny names, dogs that hump your leg, screeching weasels, and the joy and mystery of Spam, the luncheon meat.

No Mensa club are we. And yet we can fill long afternoons with this kind of banter when we should be working to support our families. We ridicule each other relentlessly, call each other names, occasionally get into scraps and generally trash the place. The blog is the dark side of Street Talk. And yet, it is a place filled with love.

Or something. I suggest you wander by. There is no cover charge, and any bonehead opinion is welcome. It’s a place not very different from your neighborhood bar. The one you are currently banned from for that thing you did in the bathroom.

I know what you’re thinking: that this is another fine example of how I waste expensive newsprint with remarkably pointless raving. I look forward to your criticism. I only ask that you get it right.

My name is not Mike, it’s Matt.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter. Visit his smoggy blog at www.sunjournal.com.