Duluth Reader columnist Paul Ryan showed no signs of fraying Thursday as the deadline arrived for ordering lunch at the newspaper. The newspaper’s bylaws state that if everyone in the office doesn’t agree to a lunch order, the newspaper will be completely shut down until details are agreed upon unanimously.

Publisher Robert Boone has recommended the staff dine on some cold pizza he found on the floor of his sex van. Ryan would instead like to have cheese for lunch. “Cheese”, of course, being the street term for Mexican black tar heroin mixed with Tylenol PM, which is then snorted, leading the user down a dark path of addiction that eventually leads to a very cool Elliott Smith style demise.

The vote stands at 5-1 in favor of sex van pizza, with Ryan the only holdout.

“It’s lunch, for Christ’s sake,” said staff writer Paul Whyte. “This happens every damn day! It’s free pizza! Why does everything have to be A THING with you?”

“I’m in the vast minority! I have rights!” said Ryan, spraying Whyte with a misting of saliva as he ranted. “Compromise is weakness! Weakness is defeat! Defeat means more votes for Sam Cook in columnist of the year voting! I will not lose another election to Sam Cook!”

“Yes you will,” said Boone. “Can’t we just get some subs from the dumpster behind Erbert & Gerbert’s? Why do you have to be so damn selfish?”

“Selfish is en vogue!” said Ryan, apparently mistaking the expression “in vogue” for a Spanish phrase or 1990s R&B group. “If I can’t get exactly what I want, then the entire world should come to a complete halt until I’m happy!”

It’s unknown why the entire newspaper must be shut down when the staff disagrees on lunch, especially when it happens so often. In polls, the readership of the paper agrees that such a rule is idiotic and dangerous, not to mention completely ineffective in resolving disputes since it’s often used as a weapon. It’s also unknown why a simple majority isn’t good enough for the lunch decision, since we live in a democracy where the majority is supposed to rule.

It’s likely that Ryan, who grew up in a world where he once received a trophy for placing fourth in a seven team youth baseball tournament, is too coddled and shallow to realize his beliefs and opinions are not the center of the entire universe. So he lives in a rose-colored fog of his own narcissism, valuing his fragile ego above the betterment of the community that he was, ironically, tasked with serving.

Since compromise is impossible, business at the newspaper will likely progress by tricking Ryan into thinking his defeat is some sort of moral victory that makes him superior to everyone else. Possibilities include returning the lunch order to a vote with black tar heroin as an optional side dish, a delay of the lunch vote until tomorrow since it’s already 4pm, or a politically thorny proposal that would replace napkins with toilet paper, thereby freeing up more money for an actual lunch that is ordered from a business rather than found in a dumpster or stolen from grade school children.

Ryan has voted black tar heroin as a lunch choice over 50 times in the past year. Each time, the dispute was only resolved by firing Ryan and then hiring him back after lunch was finished. But Boone is refusing to invoke such stopgap efforts this time.

“If he wants to call my bluff, then so be it,” said Boone. “I’ll just read Sam Cook’s column during the shutdown. He’s a better writer anyway. He’s also more handsome and a better dancer.”

The last time the Reader had a shutdown was in 1996, when famed author Stephen King was on staff. King was angry that Boone wouldn’t print all 1,472 pages of his short story “The Stand” in the paper, and declined to let the newspaper function until Boone agreed to order and eat “a bag of dicks” for lunch that day. After 14 days, a compromise was reached in which Boone ate a vaguely phallic rutabaga.

Many residents find it odd that Reader staff members would argue over lunch.

“Really? The Reader columnists?” said Mandy Svordsky of Cloquet. “Those unpaid dirtbags are like homeless people. They’ll eat anything you place in front of them. Dog food, expired dairy products, piles of human hair. Anything. Both sides must have found equally intriguing bits of roadkill.”

The deadline for shutdown of the Reader is midnight of October 3. If a compromise isn’t reached, Ryan’s shutdown could cause the newspaper’s dozens of readers to find TV schedules and personal ads for transvestites elsewhere.

“We’re going to try our best to get this thing resolved,” said Whyte. “The thing about babies is most of the time they just want attention. So we’ll let Paul have a few weeks of everyone focusing on him, and once his tears have dried and he feels like a big important man again, we’ll move forward with the sensible lunch we proposed and continue doing things of actual value. I hope.”