Sometimes it's worth taking a peek at our neighbor to the east, Wisconsin. This is probably just bias confirmation, but nonetheless, news there often seems to be a bit ... stranger ... than news elsewhere. For instance, our celebration of agriculture, the State Fair, has food on a stick, seed art and butter sculptures. In Wisconsin, at their Farm Technology Days, they put nervous children on the back of sheep and applaud as they get thrown off. Nikki Tundel of Minnesota Public Radio has the video.

Wisconsin is also home to a tale of graverobbing and necrophilia. Yes, a recent one. We won't go into the details, which are more depressing than ghastly, but if you're curious, City Pages rounds up recent news stories about the crime.

Now, we did have a vampire running for governor, and we had a fellow running for Minneapolis mayor who worshipped Laura Ingalls Wilder and, of course, we once had a professional wrestler as our chief executive who said he wanted to be reborn as a brassiere and extolled the virtues of hunting man. So we'll concede that Minnesota might be a bit weirder than Wisconsin as politics go. We'd still like to point out the case of Ieshuh Griffin, who is running as an independent candidate for the Wisconsin legislature, and who has taken a rather daring slogan for her campaign: "NOT the 'whiteman's bitch' " — the Milwaukee Drum has an example of her self-produced campaign flier, as well as a selection of outraged charges of reverse racism in the comments section. Don't feel you need to read them; we at the Glean do so so that you don't have to.

As FOX is reporting, Griffin wanted her slogan "posted under her name on the ballot for state representative, in the place where the candidate's political party would usually be listed." The state's Government Accountability Board balked, and now she's suing. Now, every town has its cranks running for political office; it will be curious to see how much press this one gets, and by whom. As Rachel Maddow eloquently demonstrated on her show, there has been a great deal of this sort of storytelling in the news lately, especially stories of especially angry African-Americans, and especially on FOX, and, according to Maddow, it's helping to poison dialogue about race in this country into a shouting match about who is the most racist. As goes Wisconsin, so goes America.

We live in tense, angry and, unfortunately, occasionally violent times, that much is sure. Andy Birkey of Minnesota Independent reports the following: "Violent crimes motivated by anti-LGBT sentiment climbed 64 percent in 2009, and 93 percent of victims required some sort of medical attention." This is according to a report by OutFront Minnesota and the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP). "Most disturbing for LGBT advocates was a 138 percent increase in crimes against LGBT people under age 18," Birkey adds.

It's more bias confirmation, but once you start seeing the world through rage-colored lenses, everybody seems to be attacking everybody else. A teenage girl in Zimmerman attacked another female with brass knuckles, as reported by KARE11's Leif Knutson, and who uses brass knuckles anymore? The police in Eagan are hunting for two poodles that bit a man on a walking path, according to the Pioneer Press. The attackers being poodles, the man didn't even realize he had been bitten, but still — poodle attacks?

There has undeniably been a lot of gun violence lately — 29 homicides in Minneapolis this year — and Abby Simons of the Star Tribune has details on a plan to address it. The plan has a rather impressive name; specifically, Project Minneapolis Exile. It's the local iteration of a program that's been successful elsewhere at curbing gun violence, primarily by vigorous prosecution of felons with handguns, who are primarily responsible for the uptick in violence. U.S. Attorney B. Todd Jones characterizes the felons in this way: "[T]here's some hard-core folks out there that really, quite frankly, don't care about public safety in our community. And they are the folks, the worst of the worst, the people who know and don't care."

In arts: At least two area artistic directors for theaters now have impersonators on Twitter. The pretend version of the Jungle Theater's Bain Boehlke is apparently a bit daffy, if this tweet is any indication: "Just found the box full of lobsters from 'Lobster Alice!' Now to come up with voices for all of them ..." Not that the Guthrie Theater's Joe Dowling, or at least the fabricated version of him, is any less bonkers: "2:30 at the Guthrie. You know what that means: CHEETO FIGHT!!" It's not clear if the real Boehlke is aware of his impostor, but Guthrie publicist Lee Henderson spotted the fake Joe Dowling, then calling himself the Real Joe Dowling, almost at once. "Funny joke, now remove this fake account before the Twitter whale gives you the boot," Henderson scolded. He quickly received a response: "Mind yourself, Lee. You work for me." They seem to have reached some sort of accord, however, as RealJoeDowling is now called FunJoeDowling. You know you've really arrived when somebody is impersonating you on Twitter.

In sports: WCCO reports that a Rochester woman caught a huge sturgeon; it may well have topped 100 pounds, which would have made it a record breaker. However, unsure if it was legal to keep a fish that big, she released it back into the lake.

A hundred years from now, when tales are told of a monster in Lake of the Woods, topping in at 500 pounds, eating canoes and poodles in one gulp, with a great ghastly scar on it's mouth as though it had once had a hook in it, let's hope they discover this story, and know what happened.