Worried about The Man discovering your vintage porn and hookah collections? If you're a renter in Twinsburg, you might want to rent a storage unit. Twinsburg Council is currently hashing out the details of two ordinances that would require the building commissioner to inspect every three years, inside and out, and issue occupancy permits for all of the city's rental units. Where you gonna hide your little crank factory now?

Building Commissioner Russell Rodic says rental units are the only structures in the city that haven't gotten much attention through the years. Several 'burbs, from Maple Heights to Beachwood, have enacted similar requirements in recent years. In a way, Rodic says, rental properties are more business than home, with owners making money but not necessarily offering much in the way of product.

"I'm taken aback at some of the safety issues that are neglected," he says. "As tenants or landlords, a lot of times it doesn't seem like they're able to fix these things unless they're monitored. But hopefully this can educate landlords and tenants about the code. If they're learning this stuff, maybe they'll put more toward their buildings."

There's a double-standard afoot, though: Owner-occupied properties are inspected only at point of sale, and via exterior perusal. So some wonder why it's renters who have to open their doors regularly when the homeowner down the road gets to keep the Petroleum Hall of Fame in his garage under wraps.

One ordinance would allow the city to ask a judge for a search warrant if a landlord or tenant are especially reluctant, and a confidentiality clause will keep all the deliberations off the public record. Jeff Gamso, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, says any discerning judge should have the constitution to say no. Sure, the city has an interest in cleaning up its housing stock, Gamso says, "but just the fact that I don't own my own home isn't a basis for the government to wander through it."

Interesting opinion, Mr. Gamso. Mind if we take a look inside? — Dan Harkins

REMEMBER THE LUCASVILLE FIVE

In April 1993, one of the bloodiest prison riots in Ohio history broke out at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. Five men were sentenced to death for their alleged roles as instigators. Fifteen years later, these men remain on death row. But ACLU branches across Ohio, along with a cadre of citizen activists, are fighting to overturn convictions they say were based on questionable jailhouse snitch testimony. This small but growing movement for the "Lucasville Five" is gaining momentum.

A few months ago, the Cleveland ACLU formalized its work on the Lucasville Five case. The organization hired a part-time organizer and named its efforts the Lucasville Justice Project, a complement to the Lucasville Five Defense Committee that is made up of local organizers and defendants' family members.

The ACLU is now circulating an online petition which will be presented to Gov. Ted Strickland as a request to investigate the Lucasville prison uprising and the ensuing prosecution. Two hundred signatures have been collected so far, from all across the globe. The goal is 1,000. (The online petition can be found here.)

A book on the subject, Lucasville: The Untold Story of a Prison Uprising, was published in 2004, by Staughton Lynd, a local attorney who also consults with the ACLU on the case. Lynd's book was adapted into a play a few years ago by dramatist Gary Anderson. Last spring, the two took their agitprop theater of sorts on tour across Ohio.

Later this summer, Lynd and Anderson will have an even bigger stage for their production - in New York. The play has been selected to be in the 2008 Fringe Festival, an arts showcase that brings together some of the best emerging theater companies and performance artists in the world. For more information, go to fringenyc.org. — Charu Gupta

SEWING SEEDS

We'd be remiss in several ways if we didn't take note of the giving circle Cleveland Colectivo's recent round of grants. Among them are Big Deal: The Giant Supply Depot, a tutoring and literacy center being planned by Free Times writer Dan Harkins. The concept is based on a model developed by writer Dave Eggers. Similar projects have been established in cities around the US.

Other grantees include A Piece of Cleveland, a start-up business that recycles lumber from old homes into new home and office furnishings; Padres Unidos, an independent parent advocacy group with programming to increase parental involvement in Cleveland schools; the grassroots public art collaborative Summer in the City; the parental support group Mom & Baby Happy Hour; the urban youth job training program the Landscape Apprentice Project; the Ohio City Bike Co-Op, to improve bicycle valet services at public events; Little Frogs in Bigger Ponds, a project of the Joyful Noise Neighborhood Music School that will send six youths to summer music and drama camps at major art institutions in the Cleveland area; Centering Pregnancy: Empowering Mothers at High Social Risk, to provide additional educational materials for participants; and Basics, a grassroots effort to distribute clean undergarments to formerly incarcerated women in the process of re-entry.

Congratulations not only to the winners, but to the members of the Cleveland Collectivo, whose "small grants for big ideas" have been bolstering Cleveland neighborhoods for three years now. — Michael Gill

ASK A BASTARD

Dear Bastard: I couldn't care less about sports. But in my office, all people seem to want to talk about is the Cavs, the Indians, the Browns (those are the Cleveland teams, right?). I just started this job and don't want to alienate myself, but I also hate acting like I'm someone I'm not.

Dear Chief Boohoo: Um, how long have you been in Cleveland, and how have you survived here with this apparent fear of sports fans? I didn't think I could care about anything less than the fortunes of Cleveland's sports teams, but then your "problem" came along and redefined the depths of apathy for me. Look, I can't stand how it's always assumed that everyone gives a fuck about team sports - I'm really engaged in music, but I wouldn't ever just assume that any given stranger on the bus gave a shit about Bernard Hermann's film scores or whatever, so sports fans' near-solipsistic presupposition that everyone cares about their stats and trivia annoys me deeply. But grow a pair, for fuck's sake. There's nothing wrong with being the co-worker who doesn't like sports, but there's plenty wrong with cowering from that. You have to work with these people, which requires some assimilation, but not the complete burial of your character and interests. At the end of the work day, they'll go to a sports bar, you'll go wherever spineless conformist pussies who don't like sports go. Everyone's happy.

Dear Bastard: My mother, who's in her 60s, dresses her chihuahua and generally treats it like a baby. This drives me insane, to the point that I don't want to visit her. I admit that I don't fully understand my visceral reaction to this, but there's no denying it, nor is she about to stop putting hats and booties on Toodles. What should I do?

Dear Sibling of Toodles: I absolutely despise how "get over it" has become the reflexive, go-to dickhead-American answer to anyone with a complaint, so understand the utter gravity it is with which I tell you that unless you want to have no relationship with your mom, you absolutely must get over this. You're not going to change the personality or habits of someone in her 60s. For decades I've burst blood vessels and ground teeth down to nubs correcting my now-octogenarian mom's habit of pronouncing "library" as "lye berry." It still drives me up the fucking wall, but it's just not worth expressing, or even addressing. Your mother is one of those god damn crazy ladies who pampers a dog. Which means that you yourself are HALF god damn crazy lady who pampers a dog. It's in your blood. Accept it. Embrace it. Find a way to consider it adorable or at least tolerable. There's no way you're going to win this thing, so start learning to suck it up, and bear in mind that if you poison the dog, she'll only get another one.

CORRECTION

A man interviewed for the May 14 cover story "Fishin' Impossible" disputed part of a quote attributed to him. Joel, of Port Clinton Fisheries, says that he has never used an obscenity in his life. Free Times regrets the error.