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==============================================================================
THE HUMOR OF M.L. VERB
Correspondent for The National Satirist, of Compuserve Information Service
Presesnted and correlated by Jason Scott
==============================================================================

OUR NEW APPLIANCES
By M.L. Verb

In keeping with the spirits of both the Summit meetings and Christmas, we
decided in our family to bury the hatchet for awhile and treat ourselves to a
new set of space-age under-the-counter appliances.

It's important to realize that these were not acquired by devious means.  Not
that kind of under-the-counter.  Rather, we were tired of fighting one another
for counter space.

"I gotta make some toast--I'm starving!"

"Not until I've finished making my coffee, you won't!"

"Hey!  I need to use the food processor to grind my granola."

"No you don't!  I need to use the can opener right NOW!"

It was an awful scene around meal times in our home.	Our kitchen looked like a
snake pit--hundreds of three-foot cords vying for two electric outlets.  We had
to modernize and we knew it.

So we ditched all of our over-the-counter small appliances in favor of the new
wave of American goods which snugly fit underneath the kitchen cabinets.  We
went to the discount store and bought one of everything, had an electrician
hard-wire them into our circuits and stood there in the kitchen expecting peace
and love.

Every one of our new appliances matches the others.  Each also has its own
timer so it can start a new day in our lives before we do.

We smugly went to bed expecting to be awakened by the delicious odor of brewing
coffee, ground granola, sharp knives and opened cans.

Now our evenings are times of battle:  "Get outta my way!  I need to program
the coffeemaker."

"No way, Jose!  I have to get into the cabinet above it so I can pre-mix my
granola!"

"Hey!  Why is the under-the-counter knife sharpener in the dishwasher?  I
wanted to slice bread for tomorrow morning."

"Dummy!  It's in the dishwasher because everyone rushed out of here without
running the dishwasher yesterday."

"I wanna make cookies but someone sabotaged the under-the-counter cordless
mixer!"

On some afternoons, our counter tops are clean.

==============================================================================

INCONVENIENT GIFTS
By M.L. Verb

Stores are crowded.  The annual look of frustrated panic has painted itself on
the faces of shoppers as they look for ways to avoid feeling either guilty or
cheap on Christmas morning.

In too many cases they're buying shirts for men whose closets are full of
perfertly good shirts.  They're buying sweaters for women whose collection of
them is an embarrassment of riches.  They're picking up the latest toys for
children who rarely pick up and put away the ones they have now.

There's something empty about what most of us give not only to friends and
family members but also to people in need we don't know.  We give clothes and
appliances, games and dolls, trinkets and books, jewelry and perfume.  But we
hardly ever give what people need a lot more--we hardly ever give ourselves.

Think of the way we respond to charities.  We mail in checks, drop spare change
in kettles, deduct a set amount from our paychecks, call in our pledges, slip a
dollar or two to the door-to-door collectors.  It's money the charities need,
no doubt of that.  But the process is so sterile.  It allows us to give without
investing much of our time, our lives.

Think what it might mean to someone else if you really did give yourself.

Think of giving a gift certificate for, say, 10 hours of your time to that nice
elderly widow across the street who has trouble changing her front porch light
bulbs and getting on her storm windows.

Or suppose you gave your children a big stack of certificates, each
exchangeable for 15 minutes of your uninterrupted time.  Even if they didn't
all get used up think what such a gift would say to your kids.

Or why not give your kid brother or sister certificates worth instruction time
on the computer?

Or how about giving your wife or husband a weekend or two away with just you.
It might cost more than a shirt or sweater, but clothes wear out a lot more
quickly than memories.

Instead of (or better yet, along with) sending a check to your favorite
charities, call them up and find out if they can use a few hours of your time.
Then give it.

If your synagogue or church or mosque is like mine, it needs more than your
money.	It is crying for you to do things.  Find out what and give a little of
yourself.

The same is true of your children's school.  Call up and ask to be used.  Say
that between now and the end of the school year you will help out a certain
number of hours.

Got a friend in the hospital?  By all means send cards and flowers.  But
remember that cards and flowers can't carry on conversations, can't touch a
hand, can't smile, can't really listen.  Go yourself.

Is giving of yourself easy to do?  No.  It's inconvenient.  It's expensive.
Sometimes it's awkward, embarrassing.

But it has an advantage that giving material gifts can't match:  It
serendipitously but inevitably repays the giver far beyond the value of the
gift.

==============================================================================

DO YOU LOVE ME, ADAM?
By M.L.  Verb

In the month of Valentine's Day, it's hard to imagine anything that hasn't been
said already about love, beginning with Adam and Eve.

Adam and Eve were the lucky ones in love.  They weren't burdened by countless
ideas about what, if anything, love is.  They didn't have to listen to
June-moon-spoon-buffoon love songs unless they made them up themselves.  They
didn't have to agonize over whether to buy tender, humorous or insulting
Valentine's Day cards for each other.

What Mark Twain once observed about Adam and Eve is true enough--that among
their principal advantages is they escaped teething.  But an even bigger
advantage, if you ask me is that they got to discover love without help from
Miss Manners, Dr.  Ruth or Leo Buscaglia.

I've always imagined the world's first couple playing with love the way a puppy
plays with the first cat he's ever seen.  He sniffs it, yips at it, jumps
around it and tries to nuzzle it.  He wants to be close to it.	And for awhile
that works.  But when he tries to keep it, to make it his own, to limit its
freedom in some fundamental way, it scratches his nose and leaves him howling.

Over the centuries humans have discovered a great deal about love.  In nearly
every book of famous quotations the biggest section is on love.  They include
Philip Barry's description of two people in love as "two minds without a single
thought" and Napoleon Bonaparte's observation that "the only victory over love
is flight."

But it turns out that all the books, songs, advice and posters are of almost no
help in teaching us about love.  In love each of us eventually is our own Adam
or our own Eve.  For nothing anyone says to you about love BEFORE you have
loved makes any sense and nothing anyone says to you about love while you are
IN love makes any difference.

Yes, we can read, say, St.  Paul's unmatched words about love in the 13th
chapter of his first epistle to the fledgling church at Corinth, and we can
sense that this man knows what he's talking about.

Or we can hear beautiful love songs and read Shakespeare's love sonnets, and
conclude that even though we can't see it or touch it, love really exists and
it would be to have it.

But until we give ourselves away in love, we really don't know anything about
it.  Merely reading about love is no more an approximation of it than reading a
civics book is an approximation of politics.

Although Adam and Eve lacked historical perspective about love they could use
certain responses not available to us today.  For instance, to Eve's inevitable
question--"Do you love me, Adam?"--we can imagine him looking around the
garden, grinning and replying, "At least you know if I don't it's not because
of another woman."

==============================================================================

SILLY ANALOGIES
By M.L. Verb

The other morning a fellow on the radio was talking about the national debt,
which is what most people on the radio talk about.  That and baseball.	At least
baseball is real.

Anyway, this fellow, whoever he was, was trying to help listeners understand
how big the national debt is.  Which meant trying to explain how much nearly $2
trillion is.  "A lot" apparently wasn't sufficiently detailed for him.

If you bought $2 trillion worth of gasoline, he said, it would be enough to
drive a car to the nearest star.

It was the sort of silly analogy you hear a lot of these days.  In the first
place, my car only holds 12.4 gallons, which won't even get me to Chicago.
Second, even if I could put $2 trillion worth of gas in my car, it would take
several billion dollars worth beyond that because of the inevitable number of
times I'd get lost or be forced to burn up fuel looking for a restroom for one
of my kids.

People are always spouting off these goofy analogies in an attempt to make
things clearer.  But they seldom help.

For instance, I know you've heard that if you spent $1 a second beginning at
the birth of Jesus Christ and continuing until today the total would only be
half of the Fiscal '86 budget of the state of Connecticut (or some such amount.
I could figure this out or look it up but that would be a waste of time and it
wouldn't change the stupidity of the statement anyway.)

Besides the obvious ones, there are many reasons that's a goofy way to explain
how much money a certain amount is.  For instance, the analogy doesn't take
into consideration the probability that the people behind you in line at the
store where you are spending $1 a second at the cash register aren't going to
stand there docilely forever.  They'll pick you up by the scruff of your collar
and pitch you out of the Express Line.  I've seen people in the Express Line,
have looked in to their harsh, accusing eyes.  They are not to be fooled with.
People in Express Lines should be considered armed and dangerous.

Another comparison you often hear goes something like, "For what it costs to
build one wing of an F-18 1/2 fighter jet you could build six hospitals, eight
schools and raise all of Appalachia out of poverty."

I'm no shill for the Pentagon, but that's a wacky thing to say.  And not just
because of the obvious bureaucratic difficulty of moving money from the F-18
1/2 construction budget to the Wipe-Out-Poverty-in-Appalachia budget.

No, a bigger drawback is that the equation changes so quickly that whatever you
say about fighter jet costs is outdated almost before you say it.  That's
because whatever a fighter jet wing costs today, it'll cost lot more an hour
from now and even more by tomorrow morning.  By next year the price of such a
wing might be enough to lift the Third World into the Second World.

The point is not that we shouldn't think critically about a lot of these
things.  We should.  But I always find it hard to swallow when I hear that for
what the American people spend on booze or chewing gum they could end both
teen-age pregnancy and acne.  Or that most baseball players make more than the
Gross National Product of two-thirds of the countries in Africa.

Or that if the cost of producing this article had been donated to charity it
would have fed a family of five for a week.  To which I say:  Not mine, it
wouldn't have.

=============================================================================

THE ARMCHAIR CHRISTMAS SHOPPER
By M.L. Verb

You are welcome to fight the Christmas shopping crowds.  As for me, I've
fortified my easy chair with a fat supply of mail-order catalogs.  Like
shopping by computer, I won't have to leave the house.

If you want, you may look over my shoulder as I thumb through the catalogs on
this stack.  You'll see how easy this is and what marvelous and useful things I
can find for my givees.

Oh, look, a "Pocketbike Racer." It's a go-cart sized motor scooter.  A
one-cylinder engine with a top speed of 30.  Weighs 33 pounds and is 20 inches
high.  "Is not a toy." ".  .  .cannot assume liability for any injuries
resulting from use of this product." $695.  A bargain at half the price.

Maybe what I really need is "Sunken treasure from the Andrea Doria." Wow!  I
can get an Italian lire note "beautifully etched by the sea for a quarter of a
century" stuck between two pieces of clear acrylic.  How can I go wrong for
$299?

The person I give that to, though, will need some way to protect it.	And here's
just the answer--an "awe-inspiring" replica of the Uzi gun.  "Even a
battle-tested Israeli soldier might mistake this new Uzi replica for the real
gun.  Slap the buttplate toe with the heel of your hand, and the metal stock
unfolds.  .  .	Pull back on the trigger.  Four heart-stopping seconds later,
the blast echoes are beginning to fade, spent shells litter the floor, and
you've squeezed off the full 32 rounds.  Firing not bullets, but caps." Who
couldn't use a $239 cap gun, $5 for 100 extra caps?

Here's something less expensive but no less exciting--long underwear in nine
designer colors, including teal, lavender and pink.  $15.  Unisex sizes.

And what better place to wear teal underwear than on a rock-climbing
expedition.  I can order this Chouinard Rescue Pulley ("indispensable for
big-wall hauling") for just $14.75 and KM III Static Rescue Rope (tensile
strength:  12,700 pounds) for 85 cents a foot.	About 30,000 feet ought to do
for any size mountain my friends are likely to meet.

In the back of this seed catalog there's a page of "kitchen helpers" that looks
interesting.  Maybe I'll get this "Snap Bean Frencher" for someone.  It's only
$19.95 (that's--what?--maybe 160 francs).  I suppose I should hunt up a cheap
but saucy little beret to give with it.

I don't seem to see one.  The nearest thing is this Merino sheepskin bicycle
seat cover ("please specify Standard or Narrow").  I would think Standard to
fit the average head as a beret disguise.  $11.

For someone on my list who has a dog, here's a do-it-yourself gun dog training
kit, just $26.50.  Oh, look, it even has a 2-ounce bottle of training scent,
available in pheasant, duck, partridge, quail or dove.	And to help Spot rest up
(Let sleeping dogs tell the truth, I always say) between pheasant scent
lessons, here's a deluxe cedar dog bed with extra cedar shavings, from $27 for
small to $37 for large.	And even an $11 bottle of cedar oil spray to freshen up
the scent "every few months." Hope the cedar scent doesn't confuse him with his
pheasant scents.

It can get pretty frightening out there in the woods with Spot.  I better get a
"Pocket Survival Tool" to send along.  It's only $40 and has everyting, from
pliers to a pen knife blade, metal file, screwdriver and "Awl/Punch." I may
even get one of these for myself.  Just the other day I was trying to reload my
computer and said to myself, "Darn!  I wish I had an "Awl/Punch."

Well, I see I've gotten everyone pretty well taken care of, but am only partly
through this stack of catalogs.  I haven't even shown you the 16-ounce sacks of
Minnesota Wild Rice for $10.95; the $19.95 blaze orange portable tree seat
("just strap it around a tree and sit down"); the $10.95 spiked aerator sandals
("Aerate Your Lawn While You Walk"); the $7.50 Official British Constable's
Whistle ("a Scotland Yard Classic"); the $11.95 touch-operated garden hose
valve that lets your dog get its own drink.

Nor have I got to the $42.95 Combat Sandals ("proven in the jungles of Asia")
or the $4.95 super tough fiber reinforced polycarbonate "CIA 'Letter' Opener"
("Would-be assailants will think twice") or the $7.99 T shirt that says "Kill
'Em All, Let God Sort 'Em Out" or the $79.99 golf putter "made from the pizzle
of a bull" or this $24 "Authentic Bombay pith helmet" or the famous $5.95 "food
umbrella."

Maybe I'll do the smart thing and order one each of those things now so I'm
shopped up through next Christmas.

Or maybe I won't.

==============================================================================

GREAT RECONCILIATIONS
By M.L. Verb

Forgiveness is marvelous to see.  So cleansing, uplifting, cathartic.  So rare,
too, especially in politics.

Politics--especially at the presidential level--is full of examples of
unforgiving attitudes.  For instance, more than 10 years ago I sat in a South
Dakota coffee shop with former Sen.  George McGovern and listened to him grouse
about how Sen.  Tom Eagleton, briefly Mr.  McGovern's 1972 running mate, had
ruined chances for Democrats to win the White House that year.	Even impossible
dreams die still clinging to deception.

There are other examples of twistedness that an unforgiving attitude can create
in politics, but I don't want to dwell on sorrow.  I want to praise an example
of political forgiveness that may set a new standard for enlightenment and
tolerance.

The forgiver is Vice President George Bush.  The forgivee is (it embarrasses me
to say) someone in the newspaper business, the late William Loeb, publisher of
the Manchester, N.H., Union Leader.

The Loeb national reputation was achieved by venomous editorial attacks on any
politician who dared express a position to the left of Friedrich Nietzsche or
Attila the Hun (aka, the Scourge of God).  These vicious Loeb opinions were
widely read only because of the disproportionate importance each four years of
the New Hampshire presidential primary election.

He once attacked kindly President Ford as "Jerry the Jerk." President
Eisenhower, a man almost anyone would love his sister to marry, was dubbed
"Dopey Dwight" by the poison Loeb pen.  He made Ed Muskie cry.  Once he called
Jimmy Carter an "out-and-out leftist coated over and disguised with peanut
oil." He described Eugene McCarthy as a "skunk." Henry Kissinger, in classic
Loeb words, was "a boot-licking supplicant to the communists." He even called
Ronald Reagan, long a darling of conservatives, "Rudderless Ron."

And when George Bush campaigned for the presidency in 1980, Mr.  Loeb called
him "The Hypocrite," said he was "incompetent" and suggested voters reject the
Bush campaign "as if it were the Black Plague itself."

But guess what.  George Bush is bigger than Bill Loeb.  The vice president
refuses to carry a grudge.  George Bush has forgiven Mr.  Loeb.

In an inspiring gesture of magnanimity Mr.  Bush plans to walk the second mile,
give up his cloak, turn his other cheek.	There is a $250-a-plate Washington
salute soon to honor Mr.  Loeb (who died in 1981).  And Mr.	Bush has agreed to
give the keynote "special tribute" to Mr.  Loeb.

But that's not all.  The event is sponsored by an outfit called "Project '88,"
organized by Max Hugel, a former CIA deputy director, and there are lots of
Republicans who say that even though "Project '88" is not committed to any
candidate yet, it's an anti-Bush group that still thinks Mr.  Bush is a closet
liberal.

Great reconciliations of history come to mind.  Richard Nixon, after all, went
o China.  The pope paid tribute to Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation
a year or two back.  Liz Taylor remarried Dick Burton (well, not ALL
forgiveness is forever).  Even Ronald Reagan recently sat down with the head of
the Evil Empire.

But what are those compared with George Bush forgiving a man who once wrote
that his election "would lead to the destruction of this nation"?

It seems too much to hope, but maybe influential Republicans can talk Mr.  Bush
into running for president again himself some day so everyone-- including Bill
Loeb's widow, Nackey Loeb, who writes editorials for the paper today--can have
a chance to vote for a man whose capacity to forgive is so vast and
undiscriminating.

==============================================================================

CAUGHT RED HANDED
By M.L. Verb

In my city yesterday, a man robbed a bank.  (I think it was the only bank
robbery of the day, but don't guarantee it in case someone is later caught for
having embezzled or otherwise stolen a bank's funds.  I don't want to be made
an accessory after the fact or anything.)

Bank robberies aren't big news these days; rather they are relegated to that
category of news which is important enough to report but not sufficient for a
running story.  (That's too bad, in a way.  When I call to mind those long ago
days when bank robbers were lionized in the press; when folk tales were built
around the exploits of these criminals -- like Bonnie and Clyde Barrow -- I get
kind of teary-eyed.)

This particular bank robber, who got away with 'an undisclosed amount of
money'--notice that the amount of money is rarely disclosed anymore in bank
robberies probably because bankers have some kind of betting pool about it or,
perhaps, don't feel it's good public relations -- also got away with a healthy
coating of red dye on his body and on the money.

The news stories weren't clear about how the cannister of red dye happened to
get into the canvas money bag and explode all over the thief and the money, but
it intrigued me.  I wondered if, perhaps, some new technique is afoot among
bankers which thwarts -- don't you love the word 'thwart'?  -- the spending of
stolen money.  I mean, a thief can't paint the town red if everyone knows the
red money he's spending is stolen and they'll get in trouble if they try to
deposit it in the bank.  Right?

Now, I don't know for sure, but I would think a red thief would be pretty easy
to identify.  You might even say that this thief, when and if he is
apprehended, will have been caught red-handed.

Back to the point of all this, if someone actually did place a red dye bomb in
the canvas bag that they proffered to the bank robber knowing that it would
explode and incriminate him, wouldn't it then be logical to assume that the
American Association of Bank Robbers might attempt to cover lots of innocent
people with red dye so as to confusticate the constabulary?

If you're on my wavelength, you are probably getting a touch paranoid right now
wondering if there will be a red dye war in your city the next time somebody
robs a bank.  Like, you could be innocently walking along a city street or
getting out of your car and find yourself covered in red just because a bunch
of miscreants and criminals need to cover their tracks from a bank robbery
earlier in the day.

Imagine, then, that you happen to be one of the few people who were blasted
with red dye who gets caught by the cops.  How are you going to explain that
your pinstriped business suit is splotched with the same red that your face,
shirt and hands are?  Trouble, I say.

If you aren't apprehended right away, what are you going to do?  I heard that
the red dye is indelible and takes about a month to wear off.  Imagine telling
your boss that you can't come to work for a month because you were caught in
the middle of a red dye war!

Funny thing, it has been a couple of days and the bank heister who started all
of this hasn't been caught.

I frankly don't know whether I should stay home to keep from being dyed red, or
take my chances on being arrested as a bank robber.

What do you think?

==============================================================================

RENTAL CARS
By M.L. Verb

Due to an accident, the cause of which was the haste of a young man to turn
left in front of my wife's oncoming small car, we have been renting cars for
about a month now.

Since the insurance company will reimburse us for our rental expense (right
after our credit rating is ruined from overusing our credit cards), and since
we will soon be in the market for another car, we have been changing cars every
five days--testing out different makes and models as well as different rental
car agencies.

First I want to say something about rental car agencies.  Like the autos they
rent, there are high quality agencies and low-ball ones.  We tried one such
low-ball rental agency (suggested, of course, by the insurance company),
Wham-Bam Rent-a-Car, for a few days before we became tired of driving an
incredible hulk around town.  Wham-Bam tows the rental car to you, takes your
money in advance and, at pick up time, comes around and tows the car away.
(From the looks of Wham-Bam's local personnel, they no doubt do reposessions on
the side.)

Wham-Bam's tactics are clear:  they're into maximum profit and minimum overhead
along with very minimal service to the renter.  Doubtless, Wham-Bam's real
customers are insurance companies out to whittle down the cost of rental
reimbursements that they sit on shamelessly for months.

So, our lesson on low-ballers learned, we went to a highly regarded auto
leasing company and picked up a driving machine (or rolling living room).  We
found out, to our amazement, that such companies will rent cars for the same
insurance rates as do low-ballers like Wham-Bam--IF you're clever about asking
for the right rate.

Here's how that goes:  <dial, dial>

THEM:  "Happy Holidays from Creature Comfort Rent-a-Car!" US:  "We need a
rental car for a week or so."

THEM:  "Fine!  That'll be $44.95 a day plus 85 cents a mile." US:  "But the tow
truck driver gave us your card!  He said you were reasonable!  That price is
NOT reasonable.  Taxis are cheaper."

THEM:  "Oh!  We'll give you the 'Tow-referral rate.' That's 17 bucks a day plus
a hundred free miles." US:  "Okay, fine."

<later> <dial, dial>

THEM:  "Season's Greetings from Creature Comfort Cars!" US:  "Look, I just
talked to the insurance company and they only reimburse fifteen dollars a day
and no mileage.  I need to bring the car back."

THEM:  "Fine.  See you soon!" So, we return the car and, while completing the
rental charges, start talking with the desk manager...	WE:  "Too bad your rate
isn't covered by the insurance company.  I really liked the car."

THEY:  "Oh!  Are you being reimbursed by the insurance company?" WE:  "Yeah, do
you think we're doing this for fun?"

THEY:  "Well, our 'Insurance reimbursement rate' is $15 a day plus unlimited
mileage." WE:  "You are kidding." THEY:  "Nope."

WE:  "Well, give me the car back, then!" THEY:  "We can't give you that car.
It's already booked.  But we'll give you a comparable model."

But, it turns out the key word to define is what 'comparable' means.  We ended
up with a car close in description to Wham-Bam's.  So, we tried yet another
rental agency.

And another.

We can hardly wait to get our own car back, even though it's not as luxurious
as some we have rented.  But, if ever we should have another accident, we'll
know the ropes at the outset.  You ought better believe we'll wait a day or two
until the right rental unit 'comes back' and avoid what you just experienced
with us.

==============================================================================

WOULD YOU BUY A USED ROLLS FROM THIS BHAGWAN?
By M.L. Verb

It's not often that we are treated to the spectacle of a religion's founder
declaring that religion dead.  Political movements, occasionally.  Fashion
trends, of course.  But religions are supposed to last for eternity or until
eternity ends, whichever comes first.

So the recent announcement by Guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, once of India but
now of Oregon, that Rajneeshism is defunct has produced the same sort of
magnetic curiousity we associate with news of bearded carnival ladies or gaudy
public suicides.

The opportunity this demise provides for public enlightenment is especially
attractive because Rajneeshism apparently snuffed itself out for reasons other
than its being difficult for Western tongues to pronounce.

Guru Rajneesh has not had an easy go of it since folding his commune in Poona,
India, in 1981 and setting up camp in the immediately overwhelmed tiny town of
Antelope, Ore., now called Rajneeshpuram.  The influx of red-bedecked disciples
upset the locals, who grew almost instantly tired of red.

The Bhagwan (it means the "blessed" or "enlightened" one, for reasons no
longer, if ever, clear) had legal trouble, too, having to do with such
unspiritual matters as divorce and whether Rajneeshpuram even existed legally.
More recently, of course, the trouble has been a wholesale defection of his
inner circle, police investigations, wire tapping, attempted murder, absconding
with funds and plenty of other whatnot.

To take his mind off such earthly inconveniences he would go for tranquilizing
afternoon rides in one of his many Rolls-Royces and bathe in the adoring praise
of his smitten followers.  I have seen film footage of this ritual.  It reveals
the almost infinite capacity of people to grovel.

It's not easy for an outsider like me to understand or give a detailed, fair
account of the beliefs, if any, of Rajneeshism.  Without going there to study
the matter myself, I am forced by the press of time to rely at least in part on
the media.  And I conclude that the media are grossly biased in reporting on
Rajneeshism, for the available clippings are full of quotes from the Bhagwan
and his groupies that make the man out to be a perfect fool, a buffoon of
almost unmatched magnificence.

For instance:


	
He supposedly tells his disciples:  "Do whatever you feel like doing."




	
One of his followers once described how, after coming to know him, she


learned "it is better not to think than to go around hating yourself because
you are thinking too much."


	
The Rajneesh Medical Corp.  is reported to have advised in a late 1984


edition of the "Rajneesh Times", "If you are smart, you will stop kissing."


	
After a self-imposed silence of several years, reports said the guru this


summer urged Americans to "Stop giving praise to that criminal Mother Teresa,
who is only increasing the poverty by saving the orphans."


	
"Anybody who is intelligent will be polygamous," he is reported to have said


in almost the same breath as his denunciation of Mother Teresa.  "You can't go
on eating Italian food forever.  Once in a while you want to try a Chinese
restaurant.  Marriage is a lifelong bondage.''

Is it possible for one man, given but one lifetime, to be the source of so much
addled thinking?  It's hard to imagene.

Which is why I say it's hard to gain a sympathetic understanding of the man
based on such quotes.  They have the ring not of verisimilitude but of having
been composed by the pressured writing staff of NBC's "Saturday Night Live." It
is as if the Monty Python version of Jesus Christ's Sermon on the Mount
("Blessed are the cheesemakers," etc.) has reincarnated its full-tilt boogie
sacrilege in the mouth of the great guru of Oregon and Points East.

Still, if these media accounts are evenly remotely accurate, the cause of
Rajneeshism's death is clear:  It self-destructed because it relied for its
insight and power on human wisdom.  And human wisdom -- especially when its aim
is to store up treasures on Earth -- is always poverty stricken.

==============================================================================

ROMANCE NOVEL NO. 209
By Fauna L. Tabbycat

Pat was a pert five-foot three-inch brunette with a knack for brassy banter and
a willing smile that could brighten twilight into day without a crease.

But she was so lonely.

Jim was a placid plainsman with a plaintive drawl that belied his firm
convictons -- and a gut tough enough to bend a blade back on its kerf.

He was lonely, too.

The trouble with Pat and Jim, so perfectly matched, was a simple matter of time
and place:  She was a generation younger than Jim; he lived thousands of miles
from Pat.

She was poor; he was rich.

He was svelte; she, dumpy.

She belonged to Mensa; he could hardly read his own signature.

They didn't know each other or, had they known of one another, want to.

Their destinies were not on a collision course.

What a shame -- their love affair would have made a great story.

==============================================================================

RUDENESS-TO-REAGAN AWARDS
Take a Lesson From Avis, Sam

ABC's Sam Donaldson has come in second to House Speaker Tip O'Neill in a list
of the 10 most ill-mannered Americans.  (How my mother-in-law missed being
included amazes me, but that is a matter for another day.) The Speaker got top
marks for his rudeness to President Reagan during those televised speeches when
viewers can see O'Neill and Vice President Bush behind the President.
Etiquette writer Marjabelle Stewart, who compiled the list, claims that
O'Neill's paper-rattling and yawns are prize winning examples of uncouth
behavior, while White House correspondent Donaldson's shouts and baited
questions during news conferences are only second-rate.

Donaldson is rumored to be taking the defeat pretty hard.

For help, he turned first to his greatest admirer.

DONALDSON:  Mirror, mirror!  On the wall.  Who's the couth-less of them all?

MIRROR:  Sorry, Sam.  You're a pussycat compared to O'Neill.  I mean, he tells
jokes to the Veep while Ronnie's talking.  You can't top that act.

Realizing he needed professional help, Donaldson hired a rudeness consultant.

CONSULTANT:  You've just got to try harder.  It worked for Avis!

DONALDSON:  Maybe if I sneered a bit more?

CONSULTANT:  You've maxed out on sneer, Sammy.  People can barely understand
you now through those twisted smiles.

DONALDSON:  What then?

CONSULTANT:  Had you thought about some spicier comebacks to Reagan's answers?
"Following up on that, sir ..." isn't much of a riposte?

DONALDSON:  Waddaya have in mind?

CONSULTANT:  How 'bout "Bullshit, Ronnie."

DONALDSON:  Not bad.

CONSULTANT:  And you're missing a lot of opportunities there at the helicopter
pad, too, when the President leaves for Camp David.  If he leaves with the
First Lady, shout out "Going off for a nooner, Mr.  President." And if he
leaves alone, yell "A little on the side this trip, sir?" You'll be on top of
that list in no time.

DONALDSON:  <Gratefully> You've really earned your money.

The word is out in Washington that Speaker O'Neill is prepared to fend off any
bids that Donaldson makes for top slot on the rudeness list.  During the next
Presidential speech from the House chamber, look for O'Neill wiggling a couple
of fingers behind Reagan's head like rabbit ears.

==============================================================================

RUMOR ROOM ON LOCATION
(In the Rumor Mill)

<The almost deafening roar from the main blade of a busy sawmill threatens to
drive your senses into overload as you descend the rickety ladder into.....
THE RUMOR MILL!> Hi!  My code name is Boffo and I'm pleased you could take this
trip into my little Rumor Mill!  That'll be twenty bucks.  <he riffles through
your cash> Thank you.  Now, let's start with a tour of the manufacture of
computer industry rumors, okay?

<Boffo leads you down yet another rickety rank of rungs; the incessant whine of
the blade grows yet a little dimmer.>

Here we are!  <You're gazing into a cavernous room in which every figure seems
peripheral and furtive.> It's a little distracting until you get used to it,
but this is where all the high-tech rumors are born and disseminated!

<A paper airplane sails across your line of sight; your head twitches slightly
as you flinch involuntarily when a trial balloon looms off to your right.>

I know how you must feel.  This place is a traffic jam of trial balloons, red
herrings, whisper campaigns, leaks and boardroom ennui.  Never mind all that --
it's just window dressing!  You want to see a rumor in-the-making?

<Boffo leads you through the fog through a massive set of steel doors into a
cramped office with a clean desk and a red telephone with "Jobs" scrawled in
magic marker on the handset.>

We have a special place in our hearts for this guy Jobs.  He started it all a
few years back by himself leaking important rumors about his former company.

<Boffo stifles a merry belly laugh> What a crutch!

<Ring!  Ring!>

<Boffo snaps up the phone and listens, eyes widening, to a voice on the line.>

Thanks!  <Click.> Here's one for your twenty bucks:  Big Blue is going to
re-release the PCjr with Unix to sink MS-DOS and torch Ma's combo sally!

<Ring!  Ring!> <Boffo again yanks the handset to his red left ear.>

Huh?  Uh-huh.  Hmmmm.  Okay.	Thanks.  <Click.>

Okay, since you're here, I'll tell you another one for free:  Apple's about to
announce the McDLT -- a hybrid McIntosh with a cool-touch screen and even
hotter capes that'll -- <suddenly a loud buzzer staccatoes; a low, wailing
siren starts to doppler toward you>

OMIGOSH!  <Boffo heads pall-mall toward the now-closing steel doors> Let's get
outa here!

<Panting, chugging, you run desperately behind Boffo, avoiding few of the
dangling cobwebs that never seem to touch Boffo, you finally run smack-dab into
his back, nearly knocking him over.  A cool envelope of unconsciousness enfolds
you...>

<A flickering light, far away>

Wake up!  C'mon, buddy, wake UP!  <Boffo's ragtag visage slowly comes into
focus> Tour's over!  Time for you to move along!  See ya' next time, okay?

===============================================================================

ROOM TO BROOD?
By M.L. Verb

When I read the other day about the horrid end of Dale Burr, the Iowa farmer
who--in a detonation of depressed rage--killed three people and then committed
suicide, I thought of all the farmers who have stared failure in the face and
not blinked.  And not just farmers today, but throughout this country's
history.

We cannot know--really know--what snapped in Dale Burr's bedeviled head.  We
can only acknowledge the plumbless sadness of it and then marvel and how other
farmers have survived what we city dwellers are prone to think of as an idyllic
life.

I want to share with you insights from two sources into what farmers
historically have withstood.  The first is from writings of an old Grandview,
Mo., farmer, Harry S.  Truman.	The second is from some thoughts once shared
with me in a taped oral history by my father, who grew up on a farm and spent
much of his life as a farm adviser, or county extension agent, in Illinois.

At the Truman Library in Independence, Mo., there's a 1910 photograph of Harry
Truman riding a cultivator.  Except for the two strong horses pulling the thing
he is pictured all alone in a vast field.

Here is what Mr.  Truman once wrote about that experience:  "Riding one of
these plows all day, day after day, gives one time to think.  I've settled all
the ills of mankind in one way and another while riding along.	.  ."

Farmers today generally don't sit behind slow animals as they trace their
hopeful latticework across the fields, but they do have lots of time alone with
their thoughts.  Some farmers are comfortable with that, enjoy it, could not do
without it.  But others sometimes find the solitude traps them into brooding,
and brooding can trap them into despair.

In my father's oral history, he speaks of brooding.

About two years after my father's younger brother (the fourth child) was born,
a girl was born in the farm house.

"I remember that I was about 12 or 14 years of age.  I was out doing the chores
and the doctor was there.  When I came in it was hushed whispers and so on, and
my dad took me in and showed me the baby on the bed, and he said she didn't
live.

"So it must have been somewhat of a shock to me because I went out of the house
and I walked for about an hour around the farm and didn't say anything to
anybody."

On farms there is room to brood.  But always when the brooding is finished,
there is work to be done.

"When I came back," my father says, "my dad and my Aunt Fanny were there and he
had gone to town and got a little paper mache casket and they put the baby in
it.	They set the casket on the back seat of our 1922 Chevrolet and went down to
the cemetery southeast of San Jose and buried her there."

And life went on.

It is evident reading about Dale Burr that he brooded about finances.  He was
deeply in debt.  Although it is true that many farmers today are in desperate
financial shape, it is also true that farmers have at various times in American
history faced hardscrabble times that called for resourcefulness and ingenuity.

In Harry Truman's early letters to his girlfriend, Bess Wallace, we find him
often griping (and even joking) about how little money his family is making
farming.

My father's oral history, too, is peppered with examples of threadbareness.  At
one point he talks about what his family burned in the family stove-- mostly
corn cobs and other things from around the yard.

"In 1932 and '33," he says, "we burned a lot of actual corn, too, because corn
was 10 cents a bushel and that didn't produce very much money to buy coal
with."

In the late 1920s, my grandparents cashed out a life insurance policy and used
the $800 from it to start my father in college.  But "my mother started to send
me notes of warning in 1929 that things weren't going too good at home and we
had to retrench in some manner or other.  I do know that my father never paid
any--or very much--on the big new home that he built, supposedly from World War
I profits, in 1921.  But we didn't pay off very much of that until after the
Depression came along and we couldn't stand the interest payments, so he
somehow or other screwed down all the hatches and we paid off the mortgage on
that home in the '30s, which was no easy job."

My father says he doesn't really know how close his father "came to losing the
farm.  I didn't get in on all the gory details of that kind.  I think he had
some luck, among other things.  He was a good manager, of course.  But I
remember going with him to a land auction once.  He bid $500 an acre on a
160-acre farm, and somebody else bid $501 and bought it.  And as he told about
it many times, he shook all the way home.  The man who bought it owned the 160
acres next to it, and lost both of the farms.

"The secret was not to be in debt in those days.

"I remember one Sunday afternoon he was going through some old (loan) notes
that he got from his farm in North Dakota, notes he had taken instead of cash
rent, and he offered several of them to me for a quarter."

To my father, though, his mother was the real hero in getting the family
through:  "She was a real saver.  She put patches on patches.  I remember she
would sit up until midnight patching corn shucking gloves for dad and me,
gloves that other people would throw away."

Suicide is perhaps the most intensely personal--and, thus, inscrutable--of any
human act.  So although ultimately we cannot say much with certainty about the
reasons for Dale Burr's grim acts of destruction, we would do well to remember
and give thanks for all the heroic, resourceful farmers who may bend under the
weight of their cares but do not break.

===============================================================================

SHAME ON (SOME OF) US
By M.L. Verb

Taking stock this Thanksgiving time:

In a time of world hunger, we complain about bumper crops.

In a time of war scattered about the world, we complain about pain-in-the-
conscience peacemakers.

With millions of people out of work, we complain about having to get out of bed
and go to our jobs.

When most of the world walks or rides on animals, we are griped because our car
needs new plugs and points.

When the world's prisons contain many people who've done nothing more than
criticize their government, we can't remember who our congressman is.

In a world full of one-party political systems, it's too much trouble for us to
vote.

Although millions of people haven't so much as a thatched roof over their heads
at night, we curse at having to hire a house painter.

In a world full of illiterate people who would love to learn how to read, we
try to ban books.

Although there are people in the world not allowed to worship, we prefer just
to sleep late on the sabbath.

In an undernourished world, we are obsessed with losing weight.  Although much
of the world has never heard a symphony, we make excuses to avoid the boredoms
of culture.

In a world full of people desperate for rain to water the land, we complain
when the hot water for our morning shower is temporarily gone.

In a time of sobering realities, we are drunk.

Although millions of people are lonely, we buy entertainment centers for our
homes.

As our children hunger for love and a hug, we hire babysitters.

With much of the world's people wretchedly clothed, we pay extra just to wear
the name of some fashion designer on our pockets.

When it comes time to ask the blessing before eating the traditional
Thanksgiving meal, we pray silently that the food won't get cold in the
process.

In a time when we are told to feel good about ourselves, we complain because a
smart-aleck writer makes us--not to mention himself--feel guilty.

==============================================================================

SAVING FACE
By M.L. Verb

In the agate footnotes of journalism textbooks it is written that before male
newspaper columnists are allowed to retire they must write at least one beard
column.

I have no immediate intention of retiring, what with 20-plus years left on my
mortgage, but this is one time I'm not waiting until deadline to meet my
obligation.  This is my beard column, which--if it imitates my beard--will be a
sorry affair worthy only to be cut down in its infancy.

Throughout our office one can find a dense growth of beards, ranging from the
elegant to the poverty stricken, from the simply sad to the adamantly arrogant.
And others always are struggling through birthing pains.  Some men would look
nude and emaciated without their beards.  Others look ridiculous with them.

I tend to look emaciated and ridiculous whether or not I shave.  It's one of
the reasons I had resisted the temptation to grow a beard for more than 40
years (the first 17 years or so were the easiest).  But recently--for reasons
not clear to anyone, especially me--I was put under rather strong pressure to
reform and hide my face under hair.

Even my regular bus driver, himself the owner of a sporty new beard, has been
after me to quit shaving.  The final argument came in the person of my bald
father-in-law, a conservative Republican who came to visit us recently and
stepped off the plane wearing definitely, if indecisively, a beard.

Weak willed and on vacation, I caved in.  I put away my electric shaver on
Christmas Eve, a Tuesday.  By late Thursday it was evident even to casual
observers that something organic was dancing on my face.  By Friday the
question of color had pretty well answered itself:  It would be, like the hair
on my head, salt-and-pepper, carrying countless small gray memorials to my
mortality.

Although several of the females who live in my house voiced favor for the newly
emerging look of my face, the youngest one began to speak of me in the third
person as him.'' I had started to change.  I had begun to become my beard.

Saturday provided more evidence of my inevitable demise.  It was clear there
would be not just a sprinkle here and there of gray but perhaps noticeable
patches of white.

On Sunday morning my face was resurrected.  I allowed my photograph to be taken
for the official family film record and then I retired to the upstairs bathroom
to restore order to a face with which I had made my accommodation, a face that,
however lacking in grace and craft, at least was not given to running amok with
uncontrollable change.

I cannot say much in favor of the hairless face I have grown over the years,
except that it carries few surprises for me.  In the long, slow years of
usefulness and decline that it has entered it seemed unwarranted evidence of
psychological disgust or at least uncertainly to make it dress up as someone
else.

And yet the experience has reassured me that if my face ever needs to be
disciplined for, say, failing to pay attention to its job description, I have
the power to transform it beyond recognition.  And having now proved that to
myself, it pleases me to remind my face of it in a gentle but firm way on
occasional mornings.

==============================================================================

SHAME, KHADAFY!  NAUGHTY!

President Reagan invoked economic sanctions on Libya last week because of its
reputation for harboring terrorist camps and antipathy to civilized
intercourse.

While giving his prepared statement, Mr. Reagan proved he can still act;  he
scared the daylights out of many Americans as he led up to his announcement of
economic sanctions--instead of which our ears were prepared to hear a solemn
declaration of war.

But what of it?  The press quickly seized upon the fact that economic sanctions
by the U.S. alone will hardly cause Khadafy to break his stride toward utter
chaos in the Mediterranean basin.

What's a poor president to do?

Mention has been made of assassination.  The CIA, no doubt, is ready to take a
healthy swing at Khadafy, given authorization.	Given no authorization, the CIA
has probably bungled several attempts already.

Mention has also been made of rallying our European allies--which should more
correctly be stated, 'European acquaintances,' given the European community's
record of alliance with U.S. actions since WWII--to invoke similar economic
sanctions.  Were it possible, such a course would definitely damage Libya;
unfortunately, possible it is not.

Subversion of Khadafy's regime might be a good ploy.  Probably, though, the
patsies in the State Department have spent seven sleepless nights coming up
with reasons why subversion would occlude the chances of a rapprochement with
the Soviets.

We, from our vinyl armchairs so solidly rooted to the carpet in front of our
television sets, recommend a completely different approach to the problem of
Libya.	(It is the same approach as our solution to the problem of the Soviet
Union, by the way, in case it sounds familiar.)

What?

Oh, we think Khadafy's Libya should be disarmed, dispirited and put into a
state of disarray by means of socio-cultural weapons, of which we have an
incredible arsenal, easily deployed.

We should defame Khadafy with videotapes of aerobic workouts, Rambo films, new
sofa sleepers, walk around stereos, under the counter coffee makers, golden
oldies and broadcasts of "The Cosby Show."

Khadafy's regime would buckle in six weeks under such an onslaught of the best
mediocrity America can muster; in ten weeks with average doses of pop culture.

Khadafy can handle assassinations, missiles, fleets sailing nearby and
political threats.  What Khadafy could never handle would be wave upon wave of
Care Bears, music videos, campaigns for anti-plaque toothpaste, chocolate chip
cookies and gourmet ice cream.	He'd surrender under a deluge of commercialism.

It's a course of action we highly recommend.  It is indefensible;  no other
country in the world save Japan and, maybe Taiwan, can compete with the
firepower of American advertising.  Khadafy's people would forget his ugly face
quicker than he could say, "Anti-imperialism."

The only problem with this is what may happen in ten years or so--Libyans might
prove such quick studies in commercialism that we'd have to enact protectionist
measures to keep them from putting Americans out of business.

==============================================================================

FOXHOLE CONVERSIONS
By M.L. Verb

One of the most poignant ways to view the upheaval in the Philippines was
through the eyes of bewildered soldiers.  At some point each one had to decide
whether to continue to fight on behalf of Ferdinand Marcos or to join rebel
military officers supporting Corazon Aquino.

Individual soldiers found their system of military discipline breaking down all
around them.  No longer could they rely on orders to know what to do or how to
behave.  They were facing what eventually each of us faces in some way--a
decision about where they stood, about the direction of their own lives.

As the country dissolved into chaos, soldiers who supposely were members of the
same army were dividing their allegiances and trying to display in public which
side they were on.  The pro-Marcos forces tied multi-colored ribbons on their
bayonets.  The pro-Aquino troops hand-sewed distinctive patches on their
uniforms.

It was an untrustworthy system, of course, as such systems always are in fluid
periods of social disintegration.  It no doubt was easy for soldiers to carry
both identifying marks with them and to wear whichever one would, at the
moment, help them survive.

But the vagaries of this ad-hoc method of loyalty identification did not,
ultimately, prevent soldiers from having to make a choice.  And when it came to
that moment it was too late for them to ask for more time to think it all
through or to ask for more information on which to base a rational judgment.
For the hired guns it was election day.

When the chaos descended on Manila--when freedom finally became not just an
ideal but an irresistable force--the soldiers, who until then had been employed
to keep order for an oppressor, already had to know in their hearts and minds
what they thought about the Marcos regime.  They had to know whether they felt
guilty enough about being part of the means of state violence to change sides.
They had to know whether they felt owned by the Marcos regime and, thus,
responsible to its leader.

TV viewers were treated to scenes in which pro-Marcos troops were ordered to
break up a crowd, for instance, only to have the whole operation end with
befuddled individual soldiers, jeering in their ears, walking away from their
assignment and talking to camera crews.

Soldiers throughout history are sworn to loyalty, are indoctrinated to take
orders, are trained in the benefits of strict discipline, are taught to respect
authority.

Which is why it was so moving to see whether soldiers, in the turbulence of the
moment, were discerning enough to choose whom they would serve.

It must be some comfort to the Aquino government now to know that--at least
once in a while--foxhole conversions are the real thing.

===============================================================================

FOR THE PRICE OF A SONG
By Billiam Coronel

You're writing a love letter to your sweetheart and you want to quote from that
beautiful Tom Petty song you heard on the car radio but you can't remember
exactly how the words go.

What do you do?

Paraphrase the lyrics and hope she isn't a bigger Petty fan than you are?

No.  Instead, you turn to COMPU-SING, a database service housing lyrics to
every song ever written!

Using the service is as easy as typing in the name of the song or recording
artist.  Within seconds, the words will appear onscreen.  "Fine and dandy," you
say, "but what if you're stupid and don't remember either title or artist?"

Well, that's where COMPU-SING really shines!  This database lets you search
through 25 categories, from Topic (love, hope, remorse...), Type (country
western, heavy metal, hymns for saxophones...), or any combination ('list the
words to any heavy metal, country or pop song that contains the phrase, "Be my
baby, or else I'll go fishing a lot," sung by the Kingston Trio between 1965
and 1972').

COMPU-SING can even be used for research into musical trends by using combos of
other query topics, such as Vowel Sounds.  A search of "Oooh," for example,
lists such titles as 'Strangers in the Night' (Doo Be Doo Be Doo), 'I Want to
be Loved by You' (Boop Boop De Doo) by Debbie Reynolds, or 'I am the Walrus'
(Coo Coo Ca Choo) by the Beatles.

[An interesting note:  Could Debbie Reynolds have filed a plagiarism suit
against the Beatles claiming 'Walrus' stole 'Ooohs' from her song?]

Or, maybe you want the words for all songs in which vocalists stutter!  That
query would come up with 'B-B-Bennie and the Jetts' by Elton John, 'SuSuSudio'
by Phil Collins, 'Ch-Ch-Changes' by David Bowie and everything ever done by Mel
Tillis.

COMPU-SING is even working on a way to have your computer play the melody while
you sing along the lyrics with your PC.

First Muzak, now COMPU-SING! The Beatles must be proud.

==============================================================================

THE SOURCE REVEALED
By Billiam Coronel
Of Comedy by Wire

Detectives revealed today that the Source information utility is not really a
group of mainframe computers run by hundreds of employees, as was previously
believed.  In fact, the Source is just a Radio Shack model 4 with a hard disk
controlled by a 16-year-old high schooler in Fort Worth.

"It wasn't really that hard to fool people," claimed Nathan Liblick.  "I got a
hold of some Bulletin Board software and patched it to run slower, making it
appear as if the system were filled with other users.  Actually, only one user
was on the system at any given time.  All those CHAT sessions were really me on
the other end!"

"The news section," he continued, "isn't updated hourly by the Associated Press
or UPI.  I just get the Wall Street Journal every morning and copy it before
going to school.  When I get home, I look at the afternoon paper and copy down
any new stuff.  It's real easy.  Stock quotes?  Oh, I change those around
randomly at different points during the day....Up an eighth, down
two-and-a-half -- whatever I feel like."

Nathan's parents don't seem too concerned about his hobby.  "Boys will be
boys," said Mr.  Liblick.  "His mom and I were intrigued when we noticed
thousands of dollars in checks and Mastercard vouchers coming in the mail every
day, but we don't butt in as long as he keeps his room clean and gets his
homework done."

As for Nathan's next project?  "I got my hands on a couple of old VCRs and a
bunch of videotapes.  Maybe I'll start a TV network."

"As long as he gets his chores done first," emphasized Mr.  Liblick.

==============================================================================

THE SOVIETS
What Are They Pulling Now?

They kicked Andrei Gromyko upstairs and made him president.  They have shuffled
a lot of other people around in the Soviet hierarchy.	Now they're offering a
nuclear testing moratorium in memory of the 40th anniversary of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.

What are the Soviets up to?

And what's the deal with this new foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, who
speaks with so much less bombast than we're used to?

George Shultz, of course, didn't let the lack of Soviet rhetoric at Helsinki
slow him down.	He lambasted Soviet violations of the spirit of the accords up
one side and down the other.

Both sides are "looking forward" to the upcoming summit meetings between Mikail
Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan.  The U.S.  seems to be keeping the verbal pressure
on, while the Soviets are looking like a bunch of the nicest guys you'd ever
want to meet.  Are the tables turning?

Nope.  The tables are not turning, we say; it's merely another Soviet ploy to
soften up the West for a new round of...something.

But what are they up to?

It's possible that they're preparing for a gigantic "40th Anniversary of the
A-Bomb Garage Sale." The Soviets probably have a lot of old stuff in their
collective attic they'd like to get rid of.

It's also possible they're planning to mount an agressive public relations
campaign promoting communistic socialism.  Can you imagine the commercials they
might show on prime time television?

But seriously, folks...George Will, the noted commentator and columnist,
recently stated that nuclear weapons aren't for making war but for preventing
it (or something to that effect).	This is not new stuff, but it seems like a
lot of our political leaders have been catching on to this kind of empty logic
lately.

In fact, lots of them sat around with Walter Cronkite recently and,
paisley-tied, calmly spoke similarly.  What they're really worried about, it
seems, is not that the U.S.  or the U.S.S.R.  will push the button but that
some weirdo like Khadafy will get ahold of a pound of plutonium and start
causing trouble.

(In case you can't see me, my mouth is agape as I write this.)

One political wizard even went so far as to term nuclear warheads "diplomatic
tools." (!!) Now, don't that beat all?

The only way our arsenals of nuclear weapons could become diplomatic tools
would be if someone developed one that would fit in an attache case.

George Shultz ought to send the Soviets a couple "Mad Max" videotapes.  Now
THOSE would be diplomatic tools!

==============================================================================

SECURITY ON THE HOME FRONT
By Robert Brooks

Spies and security leaks are back in the news.  To take advantage of the
increased traffic, the Germans are thinking about raising the toll on their
famous spy-swapping bridge.  And only having the Naval Academy goat stolen by
West Point could be more embarrassing to the U.S.  Navy than having their
secrets stolen by insiders.  Industrial spies are into everything...even the
new ladies' Jockey shorts!  Clearly, we need to reappraise how we handle our
secrets.  Drastic measures are called for; not just at the White House, the
Pentagon and big corporations, but in every American home.  After all, we each
have our own secrets to protect, don't we?  Washington and big business have a
lot of security experts, but who is helping Mr.  and Mrs.  John Doe?

That's why I decided to open the Neighborhood Security Clearance Company.  I am
operating out of my basement, next to the water heater.  If the idea catches
on, I will probably clean up by selling franchises.  Yesterday, my six year old
stuffed every mailbox in the subdivision with advertising flyers.  I expect the
business to start rolling in by the weekend.

I think the Navy's brassheads ...  excuse me, brassHATS ...  have the right
idea:  reduce the number of people who have access to classified information.
I will advise my clients to do the same thing.  Your mailman shouldn't know
that you have two kids away at college.  The IRS may have the right to know
that you can afford the tuition and board, but maybe the mailman's
brother-in-law is a burglar.  Tell the kids to NEVER write home.  Call long
distance instead.  And tell the mail order companies that send you all those
slick catalogs for expensive goodies to send them to your office address.

I have bought a Radio Shack lie detector.  The Neighborhood Security Clearance
Company is prepared to live up to its name by checking out possible security
leakers for my clients.  Sure ...  that nice Mrs.  Bilbow may SAY she just want
your mother's tuna casserole recipe to serve her husband.  But, without testing
how much her palms sweat when she says it, can you really be sure that she
isn't going to submit it to the Betty Crocker contest?  The gadget works.  I
already found out that our old cleaning lady lied about the dog breaking our
statuette of Spiro Agnew.  The new cleaning lady passed the test okay, but she
won't do the ironing.

I see a really bright future for my company.	Two of the guys I play golf with
have already asked my professional security opinion on how to get the separate
rooms with connecting doors when they travel on business with the ladies they
work with.  I didn't charge for the advice, but one guy promised to recommend
the Neighborhood Security Clearance Company to some other guys he met at the
Improve Your Marriage seminar.

==============================================================================

SPY DUST MOPPED UP
A Special Report

In the '70s, there was a special communications shed which purportedly switched
high-level government voice and data messages located behind a famous French
restaurant, The Rive Gauche, at Wisconsin Ave.  and 'M' Street, in Washington,
D.C.

The Soviets -- this was long before they built their new Embassy building
further up Wisconsin Ave.  -- spent huge amounts to perforate the security of
that installation.  Maybe they did.  One thing is certain:  they sure spent a
lot of money at Rive Gauche.

Now we hear that those devilish Soviets have been spraying our personnel in
Moscow with 'spy dust' so as to better track the movements of certain U.S.
nationals who, according to the Soviets, are up to no good.  This has been
going on, we hear, since the mid-'70s, which is no surprise at all.

What our State Dept.	has left unsaid is its knowledge of the development and,
indeed, deployment, of the 'spy dust.'

It shouldn't surprise anyone that our covert agents and not-so-covert CIA types
also dined frequently at Rive Gauche.  The Maitre D' there made a fortune in
bribes from each side for information on when whose reservations were for, and,
what.

(Well, the Maitre D' was playing the only kind of hardball restaurant people
know -- customers are patrons and patrons pay for EVERYTHING!)

Late one evening in 1974, after a lengthy dinner at Rive Gauche, one of our CIA
folks and his party headed upstairs to the night club above the restaurant,
'Boccaccio,' to mingle, dance and drink.  Naturally, the Soviets in the
restaurant excused themselves soon thereafter and headed upstairs to check
things out.

At Boccaccio, clouds of glitter occasionally rained down from an orifice in the
ceiling.  The glitter sparkled in the spotlights and strobe lights of the club,
which, in turn, made everyone sparkly.  (It was fun, then.)

Soviet agents would use snooperscopes to follow our people after they left
Boccaccio.  The UV spotlights would cause the glitter to sparkle and, lo, our
CIA types who had been partying at the club would stand out like beacons in the
night.

This circumstance led directly to the development of spy dust.

But wait!  Back to that fateful night!  After the CIA folks left the club, they
headed their separate ways.  One of them, a recalled operative known only as
Skink, noticed a tail and decided to lead a merry chase.  As Skink was drifting
in and out of various Georgetown nightspots, he began to wonder how the tail so
easily picked him up in a crowded bar, or as he entered another place after
cutting through alleys and passageways.

It was that evening the glitter was found out.  The supplier of the glitter to
Boccaccio had discovered a cheaper source for the product.  This new source
turned out to be a Soviet-run operation.

Skink almost immediately realized how recognizable he was in his dark
herringbone suit speckled with dayglo glitter.

Reports -- everything CIA people do is reported, no matter whose time it's on
-- started to accumulate about how easily our personnel were being tailed.

And, of course, it was found that the glitter was UV sensitive.  Boccaccio
closed soon afterward, due to a precipitous drop in business.

But the Soviets were not to be deterred.  They never are.  They realized that
they had had a good thing going with the glitter, but they also realized
that.....'all that glitters is not gold.'

So, under cover of darkness, Soviet KGB agents sneaked into the kitchens of
Rive Gauche and began experimenting with spices, reduction glazes and cuisine
minceur.  They did this for weeks -- no wonder the owner-chef went through the
roof when he saw his gas bills!

After almost two months, Soviet agents came up with a recipe for what is now
called spy dust.  This is it:

SPY DUST EN CROQUETTES
1 Tsp. cumin pdr.
1 Tsp. pomegranate rind, finely ground
3 Tsp. stone-ground whole wheat flour
3 Tsp. roux
1 oz. petrified Beluga caviar
NOTE: Do NOT attempt this yourself!

Combine all ingredients over medium heat and stir until smooth.  Increase heat
until crystallization begins.  Add 1 oz.  Vodka.  Remove from heat and let
stand until fire burns itself out.  Scrape pan thoroughly and mash mixture with
mortar and pestle.  Add 1 lb.	inert ingredient, such as sugar, salt or
potassium chloride.

VOILA!  Spy dust en croquettes!

The Soviets never bothered to apologize to anyone.  Not to Rive Gauche's
owner-chef, not to the CIA, nor even to Escoffier.

But, like all great recipes, spy dust had a price for which it could be bought.

==============================================================================

HOPING "SPACE" IS A VERB
By M.L. Verb

My official application from NASA's "Journalist-in-Space" program has arrived.
It's my ticket to space.

NASA plans to launch a journalist into the sky (on a space shuttle, I hope)
late next year, and I intend to be the victim.	Writing about the mysterious
blackness of space excites me.	The only thing I can compare it to is writing
about the mysterious blackness of a national political convention or a city
council meeting.

More than a year ago, when I first heard of the possibility of sending a
journalist into space, I wrote an essay listing my qualifications.  One of my
main attributes, I said, is that I do not in any way fear writing about all the
nothing out in space since in my career I have proven I can fill up whole
columns writing about nothing.	I then sent this essay to NASA, which simply
responded with a form letter saying applications aren't yet being accepted.

When I heard they finally were available I sent in for an application, despite
the embarrassing fact that my newspaper has editorialized against sending a
journalist into space.  (I've also voted against people we've endorsed.)

So far I've had a chance only to glance at the package of NASA stuff, but
already it looks good for me.  I meet all the requirements with the possible
exception of having "the approval and stated support" of my employer.  But
surely they won't count off much for so small a fault as that.

Also, I'm looking over the national selection panel list, and I couldn't have
chosen a better group.	I'm on a first-name basis with three of the 15 people,
have met several others and only once quoted one of them in a way that got him
and me into trouble.  Maybe I can put them all on my Christmas card list.

The "evaluation criteria" look like a snap, too.  For instance, one measure
will be "evidence of peer recognition." Heck, I have peers all over the country
who, when they see me, recognize me right off, call me by name and ask how my
wife and kids are.

The judges also want "examples of work that demonstrates .  .an ability to
report or comment on the uncommon event.  .  ." No problem.  That's what I do
for a living every single working day.	Several of the uncommon events I comment
on have even occurred.

Let's see what else is in this package.  Here's something about a "background
investigation" for "security requirements." I may be in trouble.  My background
is full of questionable oddities, and I may as well confess them:  I once
dressed up like George Washington and walked around my hometown trying to drum
up business for local stores.  Worse, I got paid for it.  I have shaken hands
with the Rev.  Sun Myung Moon.	I often split my ticket.  I once chatted with
Billy Carter in Plains, Ga.  And--maybe most scandalous--I have owned
foreign-made cars.  (But only one at a time and none now.)

This application has to be in by mid-January, and includes two essay questions.
(Wonder why no True and False?) Anyway I'll be taking some time off over the
holidays to finish it up.  And I'd appreciate it if you didn't call me at home
much then.  When I get the application done I'll mostly be up on the bathroom
scale practicing weightlessness.

==============================================================================

THE HOLIDAY BLUES

You think you have troubles?  Want to start a "My Troubles are Worse Than
Yours" contest?  Go ahead.  I'll play smugly and win.

I won't win because so many catastrophic things happened to me over the recent
holidays.  My house didn't burn down.  I still have some money left.  Everyone
I know or associate with closely is alive at the moment.  All the cars work and
the heating bill is guaranteed to stay under $400 a month.

I won't win because I didn't get one usable Christmas gift out of the 150 or so
I received.  Nor will I win the contest because of a string of unlikely
disasters.

You, on the other hand, won't win just because your beagle's chronic flatulence
caused an explosion in the garage that started a house fire which destroyed all
the gifts you had hidden in the attic over the garage two days before
Christmas.

And you won't win even if this last holiday season was the 15th consecutive one
during which your family had to spend the Christmas holidays in a camper in the
driveway in minus-zero temperatures because the water pipes froze and your
house has a two-foot ice block covering the first floor.

I'll win hands down because, since my marriage and for the rest of my natural
life (and, probably, far beyond), I have been stuck in the middle of a triangle
which rivals Bermuda's or the Devil's.

That triangle is, if nothing else, simple to reveal:

My beloved wife's birthday, through no fault of her own, is Dec.  22.  (Even
though it's not her fault, she steadfastly challenges attempts to merge her
birthday anniversary with Christmas.) Point One.  Then comes Christmas.  What
kind of animal would fail to place a little something under the tree on
Christmas day?  Not my kind of animal--I don't wish to become extinct.  That's
Point Two.

Few people wake up on the first gleaming day of each new year knowing that,
besides football games and recuperation, there is a wedding anniversary smiling
at them.  Or glaring--it depends on how New Year's Eve went.  I'm one of those
folks and must, for Point Three, be sure to have a plausible gift ready and
waiting.

I know, I know.  YOU don't think my triangle is any big deal, do you?  Want to
try it on for yourself?  For five or six years running?  No?  Why not?  Is it
because you realize that in any field of three gift-giving events you're going
to fall flat on your face at least once?

Is it because you managed, by hook or crook, to spread your own triangle more
evenly about the calendar, and know how lucky you are?

I maintain that no man (or woman, if the tables are turned) can successfully
live through the holiday season with such a triangle flapping over his or her
head year after year.

It's a sword--a sharp, pointed sword dangling from a ceiling beam--like that
tortured soul with a sword suspended over his head by a thin fiber.  An
immortal sword.  A constant sword.

No consolation that peace and tranquility reign eleven months of the year.
There's the Triangle waiting for me during that ten-day period which convention
calls "the Holidays." I'll not say I suffer each year for ten days, but, some
years it's pretty close.

My holiday blues are, therefore, a little bit different than yours.  I suffer
from a plenitude of largess.  From an insidious game of gift-roulette.  I will
fail to please or endear myself at least once during the holidays and have had
to learn how to deal with my wonderful spouse's temporary insanity.

She, you see, doesn't have my built-in failure quotient.  She has to endure the
holiday blues like everyone else--you included.

So, even though I will win any misery contest you care to devise, my personal
happiness, by admitting and living with failure during the holidays, makes me
the cheeriest loser of all.

==============================================================================

HEAVEN CAN BEEP
By M.L.Verb

No doubt you've seen them on belt buckles everywhere -- those tyrannical little
beepers that page people.  I have an occasional nightmare in which I die and am
buried with one of those on.  And my eternal rest is forever after disturbed at
least six times a day by that relentless beeper.

I do not wear one of those things now, and am glad.  There are, I know, people
who must wear them, whose insight and opinion about things are so indispensable
that they are on constant call.  Their most private moments can be -- and are
-- interrupted by the surprise of a beep-beep-beep.

Which leads me to Heaven.  Or, anyway, to what I'd be pleased to find out that
Heaven does and does not have.

For instance, I would sign a long-term lease if Heaven turns out to have no
beepers and no telephones.  I do not deny the many life-saving functions of
beepers and phones, but in Heaven I no longer expect to need to have my life
saved, and thus hope I may be relieved of the demanding buzz of either.

What else about Heaven?

I see a place void of commercials, of late mail, hate mail and vote-for-this-
slate mail, of wet newspapers.	Oh, I can envisage Heaven having newspapers, but
up there the corrections columnist would be out of a job and absolutely
everyone would agree with the Publisher's editorial stances.

Po the busses run on time in Heaven?  I hope not.  I hope nothing there has
anything to do with time.  I hope there are no alarm clocks, no digital
watches, no sun dials, no calendars, no 5 o'clock whistles, no rush hours, no
appointment books, no two-week vacations, no starting, quitting or coffee break
times.  No times at all except good times and, maybe, the Kansas City, New York
or Los Angeles Times and the time to read them if I want to.

I see a place with no lines:  no waiting lines, color lines, age, battle,
boundary or class lines.  No lines to be memorized, no lines to try out on the
opposite sex in bars.  No lines of duty, no lines to read between or get out
of.

Well, perhaps I've overstated my objection to lines.  I would allow first base,
third base, right and left field lines.  But that, roughly, is where I would
draw the line.

I see no empty ice cube trays in Heaven.  No full laundry baskets.  No stacks
of ironing, of unanswered mail.  Books at the library in Heaven would never be
overdue, and would always be on the shelf when you wanted to check them out.

In my Heaven good TV shows would never get cancelled for lack of ratings.  The
radio talk shows would be wonderful.  Think of the guests you could call on.
On Sunday morning TV there would be no electronic evangelists.

There is more about my Heaven, but you get the idea.

I am, however, a little bothered by the idea of a place in which there is no
conflict, where all needs are met, where nobody hurts.	Of what possible use
could I be to anyone?  What use at all?

Maybe I'd better arrange to have one of those beepers with me just on the
off-chance that, if no one up there needs me, someone down here still might.

==============================================================================

A BASICALLY BAD DAY

I don't remember the last bad day I had, except that I frowned at it and shook
my finger, saying "BAD!  Bad Day!"

That spate of strong language made the day cower in the corner and stay out of
my way.  That angered me even more, since it had already ruined things.  The
least it could have done would have been to continue wreaking havoc on my life
for the full length of the day.  You know, sunrise to sunset.

I went along most cheerily for years until today when it came up at me with a
vengeful force that made me want to cower in the corner.  This time, there was
no finger wagging -- I was in a mean enough mood to fight it to the bitter end.

Which is where I am now--at a sleazy bar called the "Bitter End."(I'm using the
pay phone and my portable terminal.  The phone booth stinks of either old beer,
sour beer or, perhaps, beer which has comingled with someone's gastric juices.)

This place, "Bitter End," is a great place to go after having had a bad day.
Everyone is equally sour.  The drinks -- even non-alchoholic ones -- are sort
of turpid.  The bartender and waitress have faces so sulky and grouchful that
patrons simply stare blankly at the floor or the bar or a tabletop and mumble
slurred phonemes.

The jukebox is broken so a tinny radio adds to the torture of everyone's bad
day.  The floors are filthy; the bathrooms are filthy; the language is filthy;
even the cocktail napkins are filthy.  Such a place, this is.

My bad day started when I was awakened by my clock-radio-telephone.  The alarm
kicked the radio into an obnoxious news program and the phone buzzed stridently
at 5 a.m.  I struggled to answer, managing to damage the radio and scare away
whoever it was who called.  I struggled up to find I had captured a nasty
summer cold overnight.  The cat was yowling.

I yelled at the cat, went to make coffee of which there was enough for one cup.
The shower refused to work and my nose started bleeding.

I scrambled out of the house to find the interior of the car soaking wet from
an overnight rain.  I ran out of gas a block from home.  (Getting gas only
delayed me a few minutes, since I'm lucky enough to live two blocks away from a
gas station.)

I arrived at work.  The phone rang off the hook for a solid hour and none of my
help arrived on time -- owing to the fact that this happened on July 5th.
Everyone knows what it's like to get employees to work on time the day after a
holiday.

I was sniveling so freely that I could have just put a bucket under my nose,
but I probably would have drowned in it.

All of the elements of a bad day had occurred and it wasn't even 9 a.m.  yet!

I won't bore you with the rest of the details, other than to mention that I
lost my set of keys to everything I hold near and dear sometime before lunch,
and my awfully bad-tempered cat had sneaked into the car and spent the day
bothering me everywhere I went, or tried to go.

So...  Here I am at the "Bitter End." I'm smart enough not to have a drink.  I
come here merely to get some perspective on what bad days are, and to look
voyeuristically at other poor souls who are also having one--well, two.  They
are having a bad day AND a drink.

There's a drunk guy banging on the door of this phone booth.  He's uttering
slurred phonemes at me with a look of crisp, acute rage.  I think he's
threatening me.  Wait a sec:

<creak> Whaddya want, buster?

Get offa the phone jerk!

No!  I'm on long-distance!

I'm gonna pullyerbutt outta there fatface!  <slurred man reaches in slow motion
for my tangible self>

<I resist; push him back.  He flails out of control, smashing a couple of
tables.> Oh, oh....This is STILL a bad day!

<....later.....>

I've just gotten home from the E/R where a guy who thought he was Elliott Gould
decided to joke with me about the stitches he was lacing across my right set of
knuckles -- those very knuckles which saved my life by stopping a hurled beer
bottle.

I'm feeling a little better now, knowing that the day is clearly almost over
with.  In a few moments, I will be in bed.  Safe.  I'll sleep this day away and
tomorrow will be----

<Kerr-ASSSHHH!> ;;System crash!  <shriek!  shriek!> DIVE!  DIVE!  <gurgle>
<click.  Buzzzz.> HOW YA' DOING GUYS AN' GALS?  THIS IS OL' JOHNNY DAYBREAK,
THE BREAKFAST FLAKE COMIN' AT YA' TWICE AS LOUD AS--- <Thwack!> <Zzzzzzz.>

==============================================================================

ONLY THE BEST FOR UNCLE SAM

There has been entirely too much nattering about excessive prices paid by our
government for things like hammers, toilet seats and coffee makers.

That's not to excuse such boondoggles It's just that we have all paid too much
for something now and again -- why expect the government to be different?

Sure, the Defense Department itself probably has five million procurement
specialists.  But it's still a tough job to spend $300 billion or more just to
keep our rockets pointed in the right direction and our military clothed, fed
and shuttled around from post to post.

Lookit.  You, over there in the back.  Yes, you.  You're complaining that a
really good hammer costs about $20 at the neighborhood hardware store, right?
But what about last Valentine's Day (which you had forgotten even though it's
your wedding anniversary also)?  Remember?  You went out and paid $75 for a
dozen red roses!  Ha!

And YOU!  You bought a perfectly fine new car last fall when the '85s came out
for $17,500.  Right.  Now that same model is advertised for $12,498.  Ha!

And what about your wife who ordered that nightie from Frederick's of Hollywood
for $89 only to find the same thing on sale at Wal-Mart two weeks later for
$6.99?	Ha!

Let's get back to those 5 million procurement specialists for a sec'.  Even if
there were actually that many (and there aren't), each would have to personally
spend about $6 million of the Defense budget in a year's time just to keep up.
When was the last time YOU managed to spend $6 million?  Most of us will have a
hard time going through $500,000 in a lifetime.  Half-a-million bucks A
pittance.

I'll bet if you had to procure as much stuff with as much red tape as those
civil and military people do, you'd have a boondoggle or two in your attic,
too.

What about the time your whole family got together and decided to jointly buy
that condo in Nicaragua?  How long has it been since the Sandinista took it
over for a command post?  What is it they're paying you to rent it?  Nothing??
Ha!

Turn the tables for a moment.  Let's say you have to go out and buy a Star Wars
-- er, Strategic Defense Initiative.  They're not sold off the shelf like
Cabbage Patch Kids, you know; they're custom made.  Do you think the sheet
metal fabricator who works in the back of that motorcycle shop down the road
could come up with one any cheaper than what our government is going to
pay?	Heck, even George Lucas had to spend upwards of $10 million for all that
clay and plastic stuff in his movies, and it's all fake.

Now, here's the most telling point of all:  What was your tax bill last year?
Three, four thousand?  Ten grand?  Did you get what you paid for?  Will you
EVER?  That's gotta be the biggest boondoggle of them all.  Ha!

==============================================================================

BING-BING-BONG
By M.L.Verb

It's easy to get confused by government programs.  Everything seems so
convoluted.

To avoid fighting a war, for instance, the government spends tons of money
getting ready to fight a war.  To fix a stinko economy, the government adopts
policies that throw a lot of people out of work.  And so forth.

All of which should have prepared us for the president's new farm program.  It
follows the same creative, roundhouse, triple-bankshot approach that allowed
the government to call rippping up neighborhoods "urban renewal."

Here, as we get it, is the deal:  The government doesn't want farmers to grow
so much grain.	So if farmers agree not to grow so much, the government will
give them free grain.

Did you follow the bouncing ball?

The problem is there is too much grain on the market and that drives down the
prices.  So if farmers will only agree not to grow so much grain the government
will compensate them by giving them back some of the surplus grain that the
government took off their hands in the first place because they grew too much
of it.

Since the government always has to have a slick name for its programs, it has
decided to call this one "Crop Swap."

Incidentally, a pretty good rule of thumb is that the more clever-sounding the
name of a government program, the worse it will work.  Remember WIN buttons?
Remember Model Cities?	Remember "peace with honor?" Remember tax reform?

Anyway, what are the farmers supposed to do with the grain they didn't grow but
will end up with?  Well, among their options, says the government, is to sell
-- put it back on a market that already has too much grain.

Look, you may just have to take my word for it -- as I have taken Mr.  Reagan's
word for it -- that this all makes sense.

Whether it does or doesn't, it certainly reveals to us once again the
go-North-to-get-South thought patterns that seem to run rampant -- and
sometimes amok -- in the government.

Everything in representative government seems to be done by indirection, by
kicking something way over there on the theory that something way over here
will react in a certain way.  If, for instance, the government thinks it's a
good idea for people to own their own homes, it doesn't go out and build homes
and sell them to folks.  That would be the direct approach.  Instead, it lets
home-buyers claim mortgage interest payments as a tax deduction.

The government, in fact, uses the entire tax structure to get folks to do all
kinds of things they normally might not -- like give to charity or put
insulation in their attics (where hardly anyone ever goes anyway) or invest in
failing businesses because they need the tax losses.

Government economists are the ones most likely to play this bing-bing-bong,
8-ball-in-the-corner-pocket game.  They propose to raise government revenues by
cutting taxes.	Bing-bing-bong.  They propose to cure inflation by raising the
unemployment rate.  Bing-bing-bong.  And they propose to reduce the
unemployment rate by curing inflation.  Bong-bong-bing.

The point of all this is that whenever you hear a government bong, you have to
figure that it was preceded by at least two bings; and a bing by at least two
bongs.

Which, no doubt, is what we should have expected from a president who --
remember?  -- told us that a vote for John Anderson was a vote for Jimmy
Carter.

==============================================================================

BRAINLESS ECSTASY
By M.L.Verb

Each time it happens--and it happens as predictably as an unbalanced federal
budget--I try to understand it.  Even though it's long had me baffled, I'm sure
we are supposed to learn something profound from it.  When the World Series
ends members of the winning team leap to the center of the field and form an
anarchistic pile.  This logjam of human witlessness jiggles around and
collapses in on itself, threatening permanent injury to the celebrants at the
epicenter.  As the perimeter of the mass gets further and further from the
middle, late arrivals heave themselves incautiously atop the jumping lump.  I
know one thing about it:  This is not exactly spontaneous cumbustion.  As the
game nears an end you can see the off-field players moving toward the edge of
the dugout, breathlessly awaiting the final out.  It is clear what they plan to
do--toss their highly paid, exquisitely conditioned bodies on what, in other
countries and cultures, might be mistaken for a live funeral pyre.  What, if
anything, can these people be thinking?  Possibly this:  "I better get out and
hug the pitcher as fast as I can.  Otherwise he won't think I'm happy we won
and, anyway, the world might end in the next 14 seconds and I won't get another
chance to congratulate him.  Especially if he goes to heaven and I don't or
vice versa." Probably not.  It's hard to think about eschatology with two out
in the bottom of the ninth.  Or possibly this:  "Maybe if I throw my $175 glove
in the air and, with brainless ecstacy, jump onto the growing pile of players
I'll be in the inevitable victory picture taken by that guy over there from the
Associated Press and I'll get my picture in newspaper over the country, even
though it's doing something that could get me killed or, worse, end my career."
Probably not.  Few players would know what the phrase "brainless ecstacy" even
means.  Or that I lifted it verbatim from a Kurt Vonnegut novel.  So we have to
ask again:  What are these people thinking?  The answer, I've decided, is:
nothing.  And plenty of it.  What we are really seeing out there is proof of
what lawyers sometimes try to convince juries happened to their clients:
temporary insanity.  For a short time--and for reasons not altogether
clear--the mental circuits of these players simply overload and fry.  That
causes them to do things that in other circumstances they would find deeply
embarrassing.  What they are experiencing, of course, is joy, unfettered joy.
It happens so rarely--at least in THIS life--that when it does we like to have
photographers there to record it.  Unlike some folks I know, I personally favor
joy.  I have experienced it now and then and hope to again.  But I fervently
pray it never happens to me in a crowded major league baseball stadium in New
York City, where fans have been known to join the victory pile and, in their
abandonment, harvest major portions of both the infield and players' uniforms.
Still, an overenthusiastic hug from a whole stadium full of fans and fellow
players would have one advantage:  You wouldn't be expected to write 50,000
thank-you notes.  Would you?

==============================================================================

I CAN'T BEAT THE WRAP
By M.L. Verb

This is the time of the Christmas season I hate most.  The tree is up, house
decorated, cards sent and presents pretty much bought.  Great, great, great and
great.  But now it's time to remember where I hid the gifts and--worse-- to
wrap them.

I'm sure there must be a worse present wrapper than me in the world.  But until
I meet him or her, I will claim the office.  Everything I wrap ends up looking
like it was bowled here from rural Russia.

My inability to cover a gift decently began early in my life.  My sisters--
when they speak to me at all about this congenital embarrassment--remind me not
of the cheap things I used to buy them (what, after all, can a boy afford on an
allowance of $0.00 a week?) but, rather, of the wrapping paper I'd use.

I wish there were some euphemistic way to talk about this, but I may as well
out with it--as a child I used to "wrap" presents in grocery bags.  I wouldn't
even cut the brown sacks into flat pieces of paper and stretch them around the
gifts.  No, I'd just stick the present in a grocery sack, tape the end closed
and, if I had one, stick a bow or some ribbon on it.  Even that I did badly.

The paper would rumple, the bow would get smashed, the ribbon wouldn't curl but
the tape would.  The whole affair inevitably looked bent, folded, spindled and
mutilated.

As I grew older I matured into using true gift-wrap.  Sometimes now I remember
to buy this stuff myself.  More often than not I have to scrounge around in
cluttered cabinets and find leftover wrapping paper.  It's embarrassing to wrap
Christmas presents in baby-shower paper, but at least the recipient can guess
who sent it.

I can't explain why I am such a wrapping klutz.  I'm reasonably nimble with my
hands when it comes to typing, say, or jump-shooting a basketball, though the
delicate domestic arts of picture hanging and plumbing almost always turn my
knees to jelly and my hands to skillets.

I have engaged in psychological speculation, asking whether this failing might
have something to do with being intimidated by expert gift wrappers in my
family.  And at first blush this has merit.  My mother, after all, served as a
Welcome Wagon hostess in our hometown for many years and could wrap up a
basketful of presents for newcomers with the dexterous skill of a North Pole
elf.

But I don't recall my having any envy about her gift (so to speak).

No, I think my clumsiness has more to do with my attitude that wrapping paper
is a wasteful hoax, perpetuated on the world by people who think it's tacky and
unmysterious simply to hand someone a shirt and say, "Merry Christmas."

So I go through the charade of wrapping presents with expensive, lavishly
decorated paper.  I hunt up the scissors and tape and bows and ribbons and I
close the door to our bedroom.  There I wrestle with the strange geometry of
Christmas.  And lose.

I have considered getting all my presents wrapped professionally.  There are
people who do such things.  But giving store-wrapped gifts, I think, is like
bringing frozen TV dinners to your gourmet club.  There just isn't enough of
one's self in it.

No one can say that about the presents I wrap.  I put a lot of myself into the
presents I wrap, starting with blood stains on the paper from scissor wounds.

==============================================================================

$1.99 TO ATLANTA
By M.L. Verb

Airline fares have fallen so low you now can fly to Denver for about what it
costs to take a cab to the airport.  And gasoline prices have fallen so low you
now can drive to Denver for about what it costs to take a cab to the airport.

I'm not sure exactly what's going on here, but it looks to me as if someone is
trying to get everyone to leave town.  How else do you explain $1.99 (or
whatever) airline tickets to Atlanta?  It's eerie.

What I haven't quite figured out is the purpose of the conspiracy.

Is there a secret society getting ready to rearrange furniture all over town as
soon as we leave to mess us up when we get back?  It would take a fairly weird
sense of humor to want to do that, but there are people in my city with a sense
of humor like that.

Is someone planning to move the whole city while we're gone?  I guess that
would be affordable at $3.59 per ticket from here to Houston.

But why would anyone want to move the city to Houston?  Except that Houston
probably wouldn't mind.  Houston doesn't seem to mind anything.  It has no
zoning.  A city without zoning is asking for it.

Maybe the idea is to sell phone answering machines.  Except that if everyone's
going to be gone why would you need one?  The only people left to call you
would be from out of town, and probably you'd be visiting them anyway.

This is a puzzle.

Other possibilities are more obvious.  It might be the travel agents doing
this.  Do you suppose they have a cumulative chart somewhere that keeps track
of the number of local residents who are out of town?  And do you suppose they
have a professional goal to hit 100 percent, the way telethon phone banks
always try to have 100 percent of their phones lit?

Or maybe it's the film sellers and processers who have an overstock problem and
figure the best way to unload is to send everyone out of town with a camera.

I tend not to have a conspiratorial mind, which is why most of these
possibilities seem so ridiculous to me.  But it's certainly clear that
something is happening that bears investigation.

Maybe we should form a blue ribbon panel to delve into this mystery.  In fact,
given the incredibly cheap price of airline tickets and gasoline, we probably
could afford to have this group visit several other cities to see if the same
conspiracy is at work there.

And there wouldn't be any need for panel members to hurry back and report to
us, since we'll all be out of town anyway.

==============================================================================

CAPE COD JELLY
By M.L. Verb

Partly because of high-tech tracking equipment, Elena, certainly no wimp of a
hurricane, killed only four people.

By contrast, Hurricane Betsy in 1965 killed 75 in Louisiana and Mississippi and
Hurricane Camille killed more than 250 in 1969 in the same states.

One reason Elena, though enormously destructive, didn't kill many is that
people did the only wise thing when threatened by a monster killer storm --
they fled in stark terror.

Fleeing from hurricanes in stark terror shows a healthy respect for nature run
amok.  It's a wise thing to do.  I once did it and given half a chance would
again.	My rule is I don't mess around hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes or
potluck supper casseroles.

Hurricane Camille didn't kill me back in 1969 because I was nowhere near it.
But the awful pictures of its wreckage -- a flattened motel stuck in my mind --
made me try to outrun Hurricane Gerda later that year.	At the time Gerda was
bullying its way through the Atlantic Ocean taking dead (so to speak) aim at
Cape Cod.

Normally I wouldn't care much about a hurricane hitting Cape Cod but my wife
and I were vacationing there at the time in a quaint (translation:  cheap)
motel in Chatham.

When we awoke our second morning there we heard metal banging around outside
our door.  The two women in charge of running the motel -- at least the ones to
whom I had given a week's advance -- were picking up pool chairs and strapping
them down in the rain.

Curious, I stuck my head out the door and asked why.

"We don't want to lose them in the hurricane," one of them said.  "And by the
way, you might want to move your car away from the swimming pool a little bit
so it won't get blown in there."

I think it was her nonchalance that caused the first wave of panic to buckle my
knees.  I closed the door, turned to my wife and said, as calmly as possible,
"Oh my God!  We're going to die!"

She turned on the TV and found a fellow standing in front of a map of the
Atlantic coast.  South of Cape Cod he had stuck one of those swirling symbols
for hurricanes.  At its current pace and direction, he figured, Gerda would
pound Cape Cod to jelly about noon.

The pictures of Hurricane Camille's awful carnage appeared in my brain.  We
decided to make a run for it.

I stuck my head out the door again.  "How long will it take to get to Boston?"
I asked.  "Oh," said one of the women (I think she chuckled knowingly), "you'll
never make it to Boston in time.  Why not just stay here with the rest of us?"

"Because," I said, "death does not yet hold an irresistable attraction for me."
She was a nice lady.  She refunded our money.  She didn't have to.  I'd have
left broke.

As I said, the hurricane tracking system at the time was pretty primitive.  I
think it amounted to a guy with binoculars atop the Statue of Liberty and a
cleaning lady looking out a seventh-story window in downtown Providence, R.I.
With such crack equipment, the National Weather Service lost the hurricane.
Simply lost it.  We were driving like crazy (this was pre-55 mph days) toward
Boston and a guy on the radio admitted Gerda was somewhere but no one in
authority knew where.

Just as we crossed the Boston city limits Gerda turned up again.  But it had
missed Cape Cod, which merely got rain and some stiff wind.  It had simply
veered out to sea.  Eventually it turned back and made landfall way over near
Eastport, Maine, which is hard by New Brunswick, but as hurricanes go it wasn't
much to write home about.

When Elena was stalking around indecisively in the Gulf of Mexico recently
governors of four states persuaded 1.5 million people to get out of its way.
At first that may have seemed like an overreaction, but the result proved
otherwise.

It merely showed that being a chicken at heart can keep you alive to panic
another day.

==============================================================================

THE CASKET SHOPPE

A manufacturer of caskets recently opened a retail casket store in Springfield,
Missouri, and the whole funeral industry is dead set against him.

The store, called "Family First," sells caskets, urns and burial clothing at
prices very much lower than those charged by most funeral homes.  This, no
doubt, is one of the reasons the industry is up in arms about it.

They're worried that this casket maker will franchise his shops nationwide and
change the character of the industry -- an industry which has only recently
been required to use fair trade practices.

Selling caskets from a storefront is nothing new.  In South American cities and
towns, there is always a casket store.  You can walk in and browse, finger the
material and discuss with friends what you want to be planted in.

No doubt there are casket shops in other parts of the world, too, where death
is more familiar to the people than in the U.S.  Here, death is about the last
thing you want to think about -- know what I mean?

Besides, these funeral directors are forgetting that there are other uses for
caskets than as vehicles which travel six feet down.  For example, wouldn't a
person with a pet tiger consider buying one for a tiger bed?

I'll bet you could ship valuables in a casket and rest assured that it wouldn't
be lost in transit.  Common carriers -- airlines, railroads and truckers --
know better than to lose a casket or even damage it while loading or unloading.

And so what if the guy is selling caskets cheaper than funeral directors?  How
many destitute funeral directors have you met lately?  (I should rephrase that
sentence -- it reads like he sells funeral directors, too.)

There are some disadvantages to the concept of a retail casket shop, of course.
First among them, I would suspect, is how to handle advance sales.  I mean, do
you want to store a casket in your basement?  If you're a forward-thinking
20-year-old with some extra cash, you might be tempted to buy your casket now
and not worry about it later, like when you're dead.  But where are you going
to store it for the next 60 years?

Well, maybe that's not too much of a problem.  In 60 years, a casket might cost
$40,000.  Now -- at least at "Family First," you can get them from $800 to
$2400.

Another disadvantage to a retail casket shop is insurance.  I'll bet there are
no few insurance agents hanging around that place in Springfield checking out
who NOT to sell to.

There are other things we could discuss here, but I would rather end with a
little ditty I learned in nursery school:

A tisket a tasket
You already have your casket
You've awakened dead
The family's eyes are red
But there's a way to mask it!
Close the lid.

==============================================================================

PAWN TO KING'S BISHOP FOUR

The Summit meeting between Gorbachev and Reagan may or may not have been
concluded by the time you read this.  It doesn't matter.  It's just another
move in the long game of diplomatic chess played by the two superpowers since
WWII.

The terminology of the game has been updated.  And so has the size of the
playing surface.

Used to be, chess was played on a 64-square checkerboard.  No longer.  Now it's
played on the surface of the globe, with nearly 200 squares in the act.

Here's a sample game we filched from the trash bins outside of the State Dept.
in Foggy Bottom:

(The U.S.S.R. always moves first)

USSR:  Ve mof 100,000 pawns to Afghanistan.
US:  Hey, you can't do that! That's cheating!

USSR:  So vhat, schnooks?  Ve already did it.
US:  Okay, we'll deploy Pershing missiles in Europe.

USSR:  Da.  Gud mov.  Ve vill strangle Poland.
US:  Hey, you can't do that! That's cheating!

USSR:  Tough luckski, ve already did it.
US:  Okay, we'll snuff an insurgency in Grenada and then take our move back.

USSR:  Great moof!  Now, ve vill send $400 million in aid to the Sandinistas in
Nicaragua.
US:  That's not nice!  We'll debate about sending $14 million in aid to the
Contras in Nicaragua.  So there!

USSR:  Hmmmm.  Okay, ve vill step up our propaganda campaign.
US:  Ouch!  We're going to bury you with our technological prowess and announce
a Strategic Defense Initiative.  Just call it Star Wars.  Ha!

USSR:  Can we talk?  Let's call this game a draw and start a new one in Geneva.
US:  No, no.  No draw yet. Let's just adjourn the game for a few days and see
what we can work out.

USSR:  Fine.  Vile you're cramming for dat, ve'll mek sum moofs vith our spies
to mek you look silly.
US:  Sticks and stones can break our bones but defectors who renege can't hurt
us!

We carefully scrunched the papers back into the State Department's trash bins
and decided to come back again after the Summit.

==============================================================================

THE CHRISTMAS EQUATION

Back in the olden days, when savvy merchants first discovered they could
increase sales by promoting gift-giving during the yuletide season, one or two
people began immediately to lament crass commercialism.

People, especially merchants, are basically parasites, after all, and to think
there may have been even one or two Christmases without the accompanying
fanfare of "prices drastically reduced" or "give her the gift of love" is
unthinkable.

So, instead of declaiming mercantile rites, Christmas purists began to solemnly
preach about "the Christmas spirit," and "the true meaning of Christmas" to
anyone within earshot.

(No doubt the Chinese have been laughing about our barbarian-style
yin-versus-yang tussle between secular and religious rituals for one or two
thousand years--but that is another topic.)

When the inevitable post-holiday depression sets in (usually, in these times, a
couple of weeks before Christmas), many of us question anew the whys and how
comes of modern life.

For instance...


	
Why, when I tried to steal Jimmy's new GoBots toy, did mommy lecture me that


Baby Jesus died for my sins when he just got born a couple of days ago?


	
What do Jewish people do on Christmas day?  Do they hide?  Do they go to the


country club?  Do they work on their taxes?


	
Why do I crab about having to buy gifts for everyone while wondering


simultaneously what everyone is going to give me?


	
Do you really think bad little boys and girls actually get lumps of coal in


their stockings anymore?


	
If I plan things right, I can spread my first payments for all this stuff all


the way until April.  Then I only have to sweat it until the tax refund comes
in the mail.

Well, you get the idea.  We had planned to do this later, but we now bring you
the text of a debate sponsored by the National Satirist between a Christmas
purist and a crass merchant.

PURIST:  Let's talk about being saved.
MERCHANT:  Savings?  You want to talk about saving?  Look in my store, there's
all sorts of savings there.  It's killing me to let go of these.  Look--real
nylon.	Four bucks.  Over there, I make about a nickel on those. Go ahead!  Buy
something!  Send me to the poorhouse.

PURIST:  No, no!  I mean your everlasting soul, for goodness' sake!
MERCHANT:  No such thing in the world.	They all wear out. But look!  These
soles are made of PVC!	They last longer than the uppers, I tell you.  Twenty
nine dollars.  You're stealing from me!

PURIST:  I'm not interested in your trinkets.  Don't you understand?  This
isn't what Christmas is all about! Christmas is our commemoration of a holy
event!	The birth of our Savior!
MERCHANT:  Look.  You want Rambo?  I got Rambo.  Dolls, T-shirts, Tommy guns,
gunboats! All sorts of Rambo.  Look, I'll give you two percent off any of the
Rambo stuff just because you're persistent.  I respect persistence.  Come on
into the back room, that's where I keep good things for discriminating people
like yourself.

PURIST:  Uh, er, you.  You're Jewish, aren't you?
MERCHANT:  And so was my father, and my father's father. Two percent, that's as
low as I can go.

PURIST:  How about a couple of headbands?  Oh, and that Sweaty Chest Kit, and,
let me see, yes! I'll take the bandolier with M-16 chewing gum bullets, too!
MERCHANT:  Thank you, sir. Have a Merry Christmas!

PURIST:  Thanks!  Same to -- er, Merry Christmas to you, too.
All of this leads up to a very important discovery we made, which we are about
to share with you as a gesture to the Christmas Spirit.  You see, we have
derived an equation which quantifies Christmas:

E = M Times C Squared

When you apply the numbers to our equation, you will understand why Christmas
really lasts all year long.  You'll understand why disputes between Purists and
Merchants don't amount to a hill of beans.  Your eyes will light up with glee
and you will never again experience the onset of post-Holiday depression.

"E" is the Economy.  Our economy is driven by a huge engine called Christmas
(C) which is fueled by Merchants (M).  Christmas is a mathematically constant
velocity and Merchants, comprised of merchandise, is a variable.  In order for
the equation to be equal on both sides of the (=) sign, you have to square the
product of (M) and (C).

Q.E.D.	Take away Christmas and you have an economy in shambles.  An economy in
shambles is capital-letter BAD NEWS for everyone who lives within its purview.

Obviously, each of us is an integral part of the economy which, in essence, is
the sum of what we can spend.  We can only spend so much more than we can earn.

If you don't support the crass commercialism of Christmas, all will be lost.

And, as every purist knows, Christmas is a celebration of the day we were
saved.

==============================================================================

A Fable:  (unfortunately true)
by Michael P. Andrews (c) 1982

In the early days of public transportation, there were streetcars.  They made
noise and were wide open.  On hot days, sweaty people got on them.  And the air
raced through and cooled the people as they rode to their jobs in the steel
mills.  The streetcars were powered by hay and emitted a little air pollution
and a lot of ground pollution.

But progress solved these problems.  Streetcars were replaced by buses.  Now
the people were out of the rain.  And on hot days sweaty people got on the
buses and the open windows cooled them as went to their jobs keeping small
books for small businesses.  The buses ran on gasoline and emitted much air
pollution.

But progress solved these problems.  The buses were air-conditioned to keep the
pollution outside.	And on hot days sweaty people would ride on these in modern,
carefree comfort and the air-conditioner would cool them as they rode to their
jobs keeping big computers for big companies.

But the EPA solved this problem.  The EPA ordered that windows on the new buses
should be sealed to save energy.	The people rode these buses in isolated bliss
to their jobs keeping very big computers for multi-national corporations.

But Murphy solved this problem.  The air-conditioners on 25% of these new,
modern buses never worked.  And because the windows were sealed people rode in
sultry, miserable, smelly, and intolerable heat.  The people would dream
wantonly for the coolness of a steel mill.

But progress solved this problem.  The authorities invented a tool to hold the
emergency escape windows open.	The buses went merrily along the boulevards,
windows flapping like a steely green pteradactyl.  And the people put up with
the incessant noise.  At least they could breathe as they rode to their jobs,
keeping very large computers for multinational corporations.

But progress solved this problem.  New buses were ordered without air
conditioning, but with windows that open.  And the people cheered as they rode
to their jobs keeping very large computers for a gigantic multinational
corporate information service that was taking over the government.

Moral:  To really screw things up it takes a bureaucrat.

==============================================================================

WATCH OUT FOR THEM CRACKERS!

Used to be a Cracker was someone from the South.  Nowdays, a Cracker is someone
who haunts BBSs and loads in buggy programs which zap unsuspecting downloaders'
operating systems.

Times change.

We have dealt with a few nasty Crackers and have developed a few very simple
ways of handling them and the results of their 'Arf Arf' programs.


	
After your computer has blown up, take it back to Crazy Lou's Emporium and


tell them it self-destructed.  Those salesmen are merely rerouted car salesmen
-- they'll never know.  Just be sure you sent in your warranty information.


	
Feint Download.  Download only to a capture buffer so you can scrutinize the


program before sinking it into your three thousand dollars' worth of PC.


	
Start a Shooting War.  Do your own buggy programs, even if all they do is


show Brownian motion onscreen.	Describe them in lofty, hi-tech terms so the
Crackers themselves will want to try them out.


	
Embed sections of text from "You Guessed It" in any programs you download


before testing them.  The inane chatter will act like a roach bomb.


	
Before you download anything, ask around.  Don't ask the obvious questions,


just subtle ones like, "Is there a message at the end?"


	
Get back up on the BBS after having your computer fixed and tell all.  That,


of course, won't stop Crackers but it'll make you feel better.

There's no question this new hobby among Crackers is just the beginning of a
reign of compu-terror, but there's another side to the issue.

A friend of mine is an accomplished programmer who does work for small clients.
He always embeds necessary controls in his work so that, if the client fails to
pap0iim on time, he can destroy the program with just a few quick taps on the
keyboard.

Major software vendors have taken less blatant steps to protect their
proprietary rights, as you no doubt know.

The question is, how do you thwart compu-terrorists but protect your own
rights?

One suggestion is to deflect them.  Let's get compu-terrorists on our side!

Anyone know a key phone number in, say, the Soviet Union, Libya or South
Africa?

==============================================================================

CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME,
BUT WHERE DOES IT END??
By M.L. Verb

Everyone in the world, it's clear, is trying to raise money for some charity or
other.

Massive international concerts feature the alleged talents of hundreds of
entertainers and technological gimcrackery unknown to previous generations.

Overexposed celebrities appeal to my guilt and heart on telethons that seem to
go on for weeks.

Little boxes near the cash registers of convenience stores beg for my spare
change.  People phone and want me to send kids to a circus or want me to buy
tickets a police or firefighter's ball.  Adorable children at my front door try
to sell me candy or candles or hot hubcaps (I just made up the part about
candles.  I've ever seen that done door-to-door.  Yet.) Pitches come in my mail
by the pound.  Political parties want my money to save the nation from
communism, Republicanism or worse.  Homes for the criminally obtuse need funds
to add a new wing.  Churches, charities and worthy civic causes write earnest
letters, and keep the Postal Service afloat in the effort.

Once or twice a week Lee Iacocca writes to tell me my original $15 gift to save
the Statue of Liberty wasn't enough.

Colleagues in the office creep around my desk to get my pledge for a dime or
quarter for each mile their kids can surf in the Great Metropolitan Surfathon
or for each comic book they can read in a disease readathon.  A week later
they're back taking orders for boxes of cookies or tulip bulbs, trash bags or
sterling silver candle snuffers.

The Save the Coal-Generated Whale group is having a clothes-line sale and wants
my old ties (narrow or wide, it doesn't matter), while self-help agencies covet
my broken appliances, soiled furniture and thread-bare suits and are ready with
fleets of trucks to dispatch to my house this afternoon (tomorrow for sure) if
only I'll say the word.

Libraries and college alumni groups lust after my dog-eared books.  My own
college alumni association wants me to send scholarship money and to buy
expensive black wool pants with dozens of gold letter "M's" embroidered on
them.

My children's schools want my old newspapers, shoved into paper bags, please,
and dropped into a big metal wagon on Tuesday or Wednesday of this week, if you
don't mind.

Street people ask me for a quarter, apparently having spent the one I gave last
week.

Public radio stations are on their poor knees for a few of my disposable
dollars, and TV evangelists think it won't hurt my chances with their Boss if I
will send them a fat check.

If I didn't throw them away eventually my collection of charity raffle tickets
could fill my basement.  (I'm still waiting to be notified if I have won the
Cadillac in the 1982 Elba, N.Y., Onion Festival.)

Actresses want me to save the children.  Actors seek my donation to help build
great hospitals in countries I can hardly pronounce.  And sports stars want me
to now that, thanks to me (and the payroll deduction plan), it's working.
Everywhere people are passing the plate and the hat.  Everywhere.  And do you
know what?  It's kind of nice to be needed.

==============================================================================

DON'T TAKE COMPUTERS FOR GRANTED

Palo Alto, California - Not an hour goes by, it seems, without some mention of
computers.  Ever wonder what it would be like living through a revolution?  Now
you know.  There's nary a nitch in which to hide that would get you away from
computer talk, computer news, rumors or sales pitches -- not to mention the
hard and/or soft wares which, increasingly, stare you in the face during some
portion of almost every day.

Most people withstand this inundation pretty well.  You can ignore most of it,
selectively listen to some of it and even assiduously pay attention to whatever
kind of computer flak you desire.  Whenever it was that whoever it was declared
the "Computer Revolution," he or she sure knew what he or she was declaring.

You just can't take computers for granted.

Which, by the way, is exactly what I hope to be able to do at some point in my
lifetime -- take computers for granted.

Consider some of the things we already take for granted if you want to have a
taste of what life will be like for our descendants...


	
Political Freedom.	Do you hear much talk about this during odd-numbered


years?	Nooooooo.  Why?  We take it for granted, of course!  Political freedom
in the U.S.  is like getting a letter from your college alumni association.
You ignore it unless you have some extra cash.


	
Family life.  Who doesn't have a family to take for granted?  Okay, even an


extended family.  There's always some aspect of family life you can grant,
accept and ignore, whether it's your mother-in-law or that pesky second cousin
from Areola, New York.


	
Television.  The only time you don't take TV for granted is when you realize


the set you have is over ten years old and it goes dead on you in the middle of
"The Cosby Show."

Won't it be a fine day when, in the far distant future, computers can be added
to the list of things accepted without mention?  (I could have written "taken
for granted" here, but I've already used the phrase 39 times.  See?  I'm
looking out for you!)

By the time you-know-what happens, computers will be so much a part of
everything, so user-friendly and cooperative there'll be no choice about
ignoring them.	They'll be like refrigerators or toasters except in quantity.
Like TV, except in quality.  Like political freedom, except in Central America
or the U.S.S.R.

And, by that time, we will be ho-humming them from little urns in marble
buildings or deep space.

==============================================================================

CLEARING OUR RECORD

Over the past three odd years of publishing the National Satirist, we have seen
some certain of our ideas and/or speculations come close to reality.  It does
our hearts good when something we've published almost makes it into the
mainstream.

For instance, two years ago, when this wave of tax reform was in its infancy,
we did a piece called, "The Flat-Out Tax." The article proposed that the
government take all our money right away and send each of us a check for what
is left.  (It turns out that is really what the government does, except it only
takes up to 50 percent or so at first, then goes to tax court for the balance.)

The trouble with taxation is that we let our government determine how much
money it needs, then jerk around the tax code so it gets a goodly portion.  The
balance, called a deficit, is financed by the selling of government securities
back to some of us who have more left over than others.

If the government tries to take too much, we all get het up into a voters'
frenzy and dis-elect pork barrel politicos, get the tax rates cut and start
another round.

How silly.  We the people are the financiers of government.  We should take a
more interested view of the process by which government procures our hard
earned dollars and turns them into aircraft toilet seats and such.

Which is exactly what the Reagan administration has been proposing since it
became clear that Carter was washed up.

Why, then, is it so difficult to cut tax rates and government spending?

Here are some of the reasons:


	
We are a nation of masochists.  Apparently we don't want extra money in our


pockets, so we allow the government to use it to finance ways of making us hurt
when April 15th comes along.


	
We are a nation of do-gooders.  We figure that our elected officials have


hearts of gold and let them give money to poor countries with key raw materials
or which threaten to side with the U.S.S.R.


	
We like big government so much we throw money at it to keep it going.




	
We hate big government but want to keep it around to make life interesting in


taverns, and so we will have something we can complain about.


	
We really want to cut taxes and spending but are afraid of what we'll use all


the extra money to buy.


	
We want tax reform but are so affluent we don't need the money and figure the


government's purpose is to waste it for us.

Any of those ideas hit home, eh?

There is another possibility.  Perhaps we feel big government is our best
security for the future.  Hmmm.  In a way, that must be true, since we have
been busily mortgaging that future since World War II.

==============================================================================

A COLUMN ABOUT COLUMNISTS
By M.L.  Verb

Last year, in a rare fit of opulence, I sent $10 to Louisville, Ky., and became
an official member of what may be the strangest collection of individuals
outside the United States Senate--the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.

I knew it was a legitimate organization because it had both a newsletter and a
rented post office box.  In fact, a story in one of the first newsletters was
about the post office box.

Pretty soon the N.S.N.C., as the thing took to calling itself, sent out a
questionnaire.	It's what groups do when they can't think of anything to do.
That and hold conventions.  (The N.S.N.C.  convention this year is in Norfolk,
Va., but I'm not going because I haven't yet recovered from the last time I was
in Norfolk, which was on Jimmy Carter's campaign plane.)

The survey, it turns out, was sent out to the 149 N.S.N.C.  members, of whom 66
of us had so little to do that we filled it out.  What I'm about to reveal
about newspaper columnists may get me kicked out of the N.S.N.C., but I'm
willing to risk it because I think you deserve to know a little about this
scruffy collection of scribes.	So here are some survey highlights:

The columnists, 85 percent of whom are male, ranged in age from 28 to 72, with
the 30-39 group predominant.  (This is unsettling news for those of us who now
have to look backward to see that group.)

I was surprised to find that only 18 percent smoke, although there was no
indication of what, exactly, they smoke.  More expected was the news that 86
percent drink.	Which also means 14 percent lie.

It stunned me to find that fully 26 percent of the columnists describe
themselves as regular church goers.  Although I suppose some of them think
regular means every other Christmas and others go looking for column ideas.

Almost two-thirds of the columnists have children (100 kids among the 66
respondents), though it was not revealed how many remember their names.

More than one-third of us have received threats to our families or ourselves
because of something we've written.  Again, however, the information was
incomplete, failing to reveal how many of those threats came from our
employers.

This is an interesting political group, because 11 percent acknowledged they
aren't registered to vote.  As to political affiliation, 56 percent claimed to
be something other than Democrats--such as Republican (15), Independent (24) or
Other or No Answer (17).  It would be my guess that included in the "Other"
category are several members of the National Apathy Party.

How much money do we make?  We are, as you might well expect, ridiculously
underpaid.  Five percent make less than $20,000 a year.  The N.S.N.C.
concluded that a "typical" salary is $33,200, though columnists on major
metropolitan newspapers make more like $39,300.  One clown reported making
$68,000.  I can't prove it, but I bet he's one of those who failed to reveal
what he smokes.  Or what he has on his boss.

More than 60 percent of us think we don't get enough vacation time--a feeling
often shared by our readers.  And 62 percent of us say we have to write our
column even we're sick.  In fact, I'm thinking of sticking this line at the end
of my own daily column:  "Be gentle.  He might have written this when he was
sick."

Here were a few responses on the subject of what we like about being a
columnist:  "making fun of people who deserve it," "the freedom," "beats
therapy" and "feeling like the court jester and village idiot all at once."

Dislikes?  "Getting past management's faint-heartedness," "feeding the beast
daily, lest he eat me," "explaining to people I do it" and "no damn privacy
anywhere you go."

Anyway, so far I've managed to eek one column--counting this one--out of being
a member of the N.C.S.C.  A couple more and I'll have gotten my $10 worth.

==============================================================================

ADDITIONAL OXYMORONS
By M.L. Verb

What this nation just did recently, authorities tell us, is hold free
elections.  Give me a break.  I can't think of a thing that's free about
elections.  Which makes the term free elections one more example of an
oxymoron--two words often seen together that contradict one another in some
fundamental way.

I began a collection of these words last year and managed to pile up quite a
list.  A few of my favorites:  airline food, home office, jumbo shrimp, pretty
ugly, economy car, Civil War and rock music.

Obviously I did not manage to get all possible oxymorons listed.  Readers with
little better to do have sent in contributions, to which I have here added more
that have occurred to me in the mean time.  (Mean time qualifies for the list,
too, doesn't it?)

So while you're waiting for the TV networks to project a winner for 1988, you
might wish to busy yourself adding to this list and sending in the results.

  Here, then, are a few previously unlisted oxymorons:
  Kansas City
  Dry ice
  Cheese cake
  Almighty dollar
  Land Trust
  Same difference
  TV news
  Clean restrooms
  Free throw
  Federal budget
  Mind set
  Racist joke
  Good news
  Modern convenience
  Lebanese government
  Free trade
  CbE@p shot
  Dirt cheap
  Poetic justice
  Military precision (Not unlike the classic oxymoron, military intelligence.)
  Complete selection
  Authentic reproduction
  Progressive tax
  Build down (A short-lived arms negotiationg term.)
  Civil servant
  TV dinner
  Likely story
  President Mondale.

==============================================================================

MANIA IN MANILA

If you think presidential campaigns are strung out in the U.S., you ought to
visit the Philippines--these islands are spread so far and wide across the
Pacific that in certain remote locales people are still waiting for WWII to
end.

Widespread semi-literacy only complicates matters.  Information is so
thoroughly manipulated by the power elite that the probability of a fair
election is small.

There are two sides to the presidential election scheduled for February 7.  The
strings of both are being pulled predominantly by supporters of the status quo
and Ferdinand Marcos.  Marcos himself called for elections not six weeks ago in
response to an annual wave of discontent.  His tactic of allowing insufficient
time for opponents to gather momentum has paid off handsomely the last four or
five times.  Is there any reason to suspect he would fail to be reelected?

Perhaps.  Marcos himself is now charging that his opponent, Corazon Aquino, is
playing dirty politics.

We gained access to a "victory scenario" from Marcos' camp and, in the spirit
of free elections (meaning voters don't have to buy their ballots), have
excerpted it for you, below:

VICTORY SCENARIO

"...play the injured party by casting dispersions at Aquino's tactics while
attempting to better them..."

"...keep on hand approximately 16 million 'absentee' ballots just in case..."

"...organize extravagant parties for international election observers..."

"...follow the advice of those guys you brought in from Chicago..."

"...announce new reform policies and publicize them heavily two or three days
prior to the election..."

"...tell everyone you're thinking of retiring anyway in a couple of years..."

"...should a loss seem incontrovertible, play for time by impounding all
ballots, imprisoning election officials and engaging in 'transition talks' with
the other side..."

==============================================================================

VOYAGER ENCOUNTERS HERSCHEL
By M.L. Verb

Astronomers and the like are excited because the Voyager 2 spacecraft recently
made its closest approach to the planet Herschel.  Well, you may know it better
as Uranus, a ridiculous name that no one knows how to pronounce.

I prefer the name given it originally after it was discovered in 1781 by an
amateur British astronomer, Sir William Herschel.  At least I think it was
named Herschel.  My research is in conflict.  One source says Herschel while
another says Sir William himself named it "Georgium Sidus" for King George III.
Apparently Sir William couldn't spell very well.

At any rate, I think Herschel is a planet you can appreciate, get close to,
feel good about.  It creates an image of a dependable blue-collar planet that
shows up for work every day.

It's sure better than Uranus.  Do you have any idea who Uranus is or was?  This
may ruin your day, but I'll tell you:  Uranus was the god of the sky in early
Greek and Roman mythology.  And what a god!  He was kinky.  There's no other
way to put it.  He was both the son AND husband of Gaea, the earth.	He and Gaea
were the parents of that first race of mythological beings, the Titans.  The
Titans also used to be a New York football team, but that may have been a
different bunch of mythological beings.

What I want to know is why anyone would change the name from Herschel to Uranus
in honor of a pervert who, with his mother, fathered a New York football team?

I think we ought to change it right back to Herschel, and soon.  And while
we're at it, some of the other planets could use better names, too.  Oh, I'd
keep Earth, because I've grown attached to it.  But the only other planet name
worth a whip is Pluto, which honors that cartoon dog.

Pluto is so far away, however, that hardly anyone ever thinks about it.  Same
with the planet next to it, Neptune.  So I don't see what it would hurt to
rename Neptune after that other cartoon dog, Goofy.  I think we could all feel
good about a solar system with planets named Pluto and Goofy.

And I really want us to feel good about our solar system.  We'd be much happier
people if we thought of our solar system as our friend.  But is that possible
with ornery planet names like Mars and Jupiter?  No.

I'd like a solar system full of planets with ordinary names.  Names you can
trust.	Like, oh, I don't know, maybe Bob or Frank or Lillian.  Or maybe we
could name one after Sir William's astronomer sister, Caroline Lucretia
Herschel, the first woman to discover a comet.  Lucretia would suit me lots
better than Saturn.  In fact, it runs rings around it.

Because our own Earth contains many cultures we'd want to be sure we had equal
opportunity planet names.  We'd need to consider Pedro and Hans and Indira and
Mao and so forth, as long as "so forth" doesn't include Moammar.  (We need SOME
standards.)

Just think what a pleasant world it would be if one day our grandchildren could
point up to a bright light in the sky and ask, "Grandpa, do you really think
there's life on Willie?"

And Grandpa can whisper, "Maybe, dear.  And possibly on Ethel, too."

==============================================================================

WHOOPS!!

We had one heckuva week last week here in the spaciously cramped office of The
National Satirist.

First, our practically brand new personal computer, outfitted with an amazing
array of software and peripherals, attempted machinicide by daisy-chaining RAM
chip failures up and down the Mother Board.

Eight hundred thirty-six dollars later -- don't feel sorry for us, we have a
service contract on it thank God -- we were on our merry way again, only four
days behind schedule.

Then, just as we were about to fix the silly mistake we had made in last week's
edition (by means of which readers were spirited into our Feedback area instead
of our Political Satire area), a member of our family began imitating our PC's
failure, blowing out scads of brain cells in a manic episode that ended up in
admission to an exclusive suite in the local hospital to the tune of $500 per
day, three weeks' minimum.

As if none of the above were the single choice of the week, we were visited by
a platoon of mourning relatives of a good friend of ours who was taken by Mr.
Dead against her will -- and suddenly, to boot.  (Mr.  Dead is here through the
courtesy of "Mad Max, Beyond Thunderdome" by the way.)

The saying that "bad things happen in groups of three" couldn't be more
applicable to our situation unless the saying could be changed, thus:  "bad
things happen in exponents of three." Here is a short list of some of the other
things which happened to us last week...


	
The kitty that adopted us three weeks ago turned out to be pregnant.




	
Our spouse was attacked by her own gall bladder.




	
The gall bladder, stunned at its own viciousness, rampaged throughout the


neighborhood and caused much damage.


	
Our four-year-old tried to fly.




	
We were attacked in our office by four foul-smelling drunken thugs.  They


didn't hurt us but, in their alchoholic state, managed to trash the place.


	
One of the thugs sobered up later in the day and came back in order to turn


us into some kind of steak for having him arrested and detained by the police.


	
The police -- this time from another jurisdiction -- pulled up in battalion


strength in front of our house.  They had the right address but the wrong
street.  We felt, for a moment, like the MOVE.

We promise to do better in the coming weeks.	(Gosh, I hope they have a terminal
available at St.  Eligius.)

==============================================================================

MY DESK: A HOWL?
By M.L. Verb

Trained dogs soon may be sniffing around our office for illegal drugs.	When I
first heard this news, I was not worried at all, except about whatever the dogs
may inadvertently leave on the floor by my desk.

First, I figure a private employer has the right--however distasteful and
demoralizing it may be to employees--to entertain dogs in the office, or even
owls or sheep, if he wants. I myself once tried to help arrange for a cow to
parade through our office several years ago, but the plot failed when one of
our conspirators chickened out and when we realized the cow was too big to
bring up the back elevator.

Second, I have never used illegal drugs and, unless someone plants them in or
on my desk, I have no fear of being caught with any.

But then I thought about having to reveal the contents of my desk--even to a
dog--and it scared me to death.  The innards of my desk are chaotic, haphazard,
almost inexplicable. I cannot imagine trying to explain them to anyone.  It
would take weeks, and leave the investigator and his dog in tears.

There are six drawers in my desk.  I will pull a few things from them at random
and give you a few examples.

Here are nine 1979 basketball trading cards--including the mortal Sonny Parker
and the especially mortal Marvin Webster--and 13 baseball cards from the 1970s,
including one picturing the entire Atlanta Braves team, with none other than
Biff Pocoroba front and center.  How can I explain their presence?  How do you
hold a moonbeam in your hand?

Here, too, is a small collection of political buttons, including two with
pictures of Sen. Dale Bumpers and one that says, Thorsness full time.'' Who
would want to listen to my story about Leo Thorsness?

Here, too, is a business card from a man now dead several years, a man once
known as Kansas City's real estate junk dealer.

The presence of my 1972 appointment book will take some explaining.  And I
wonder what someone would make of this 1984 Shelter Insurance Almanac.	Or this
collection of casette tapes.  Here's one that says it has on it a 1975 speech
by Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago.  The flip side seems to have some Jimmy
Carter words on it.  And one of these tapes has Richard Nixon's 1974
resignation speech on it.

What about all these Manila folders?  Especially this one marked Great Quotes
of 1977''? How am I to account for that?

Or for this drawer full of mail, some of it dating back 10 or 12 years?

I've got a Phillips head bolt in here from who knows where. And a couple of
one-cent stamps. And a Mickey Mouse button or two.  And a file of never-
written story ideas from 10 or 15 years ago.

This is embarrassing, revealing, incriminating stuff. Almost my whole bizarre
professional life is stuffed into these drawers, willy-nilly. Or anyway it
would look willy-nilly to a security guard and a dog.

The guard, with the dog growling menacingly at my knees, would want to know
what I was doing with this stuff and why I didn't clear most of it out. Answers
would be demanded. Lives would be filleted.  I'm beginning to think this would
all go easier if I could find a few ounces of marijuana to plant in my desk
instead.

==============================================================================

I LOVE A PARADE
By M.L Verb

There's a parade outside my work window as I write this.  Snare drums are
executing noisy paradiddles and horses are making just piles of work for the
street cleaners, always the last entry in any well-planned parade.

Parades are wonderful.  It is no coincidence that parade and paradise come from
the same Latin root word.	(Actually, I don't know that to be true, and it's the
sort of fact I'd rather not look up in case it isn't.  In fact, if you press me
on the point I will admit I just made it up.  You can say things like that and
usually no one will challenge you.  A lot of life has to do with faking things
with unwarranted confidence.)

Anyway, I'm not sure why parades are so much fun.  I simply know that most
memories I have of parades are pleasant.

The first parade I can remember was one celebrating my hometown's centennial in
1950.  I got to dress up like Daniel Boone and ride my tricycle, which was
toting a Red Flyer decorated to look like a Conestoga wagon.

It was a hot day and my coonskin cap made me even hotter as I pedaled around
our town square.  When the parade ended some adult handed me an envelope,
telling me to be sure not to lose it.  That kind of order is a serious burden
to a 5-year-old kid, especially an overheated one who still had to pedal his
Conestoga wagon four blocks to home.

But I managed the responsibility and even remembered to deliver the envelope to
my mother, who had the presence of mind to open it.	It contained $5 for winning
some parade entry category or other.

Back then $5 was as much money as I'd ever seen all in one place, and right
away I knew that despite their small inconveniences I would always like
parades.

Since then I have marched in dozens of them and have seen many more.	As drum
major of my junior high band I even got to lead a parade or two.  (Junior high
drum majors, by the way, are not chosen for their skill or coordination but
because they play the oboe.)

My hometown wasn't very big, however, and it always seemed to me that people
there went to see parades just to watch one or two of the participants.  But I
never was able to convince the city authorities that it should be municipal
policy to have parades stand still and have the people walk around them.

I have discovered that most small towns have proprietary and protective (both
from the same root Sanskrit word) feelings about their parades.  As a young
reporter I was sentenced once to cover a civic celebration in a small town in
northern Missouri.  In the course of my story I simply noted without further
comment (the way reporters are taught) an interesting phenomenon:  The parade
was so short that it went around the block and came back by again so the
spectators (who were lined up along the street in some places as much as one
deep) could enjoy the thing all the more.

After my report was published some lady wrote me a letter complaining I'd been
snide and inviting me not to come back.  People are so touchy.

Well, I'd rather watch or be in parades than cover them.  I'm not the only one
in my family who has been in a parade, by the way.	My older daughter last year
got to ride on a fire engine in a parade.	That's a lot better start in life
than pedaling your own Conestoga wagon, and I suspect she'll always love a
parade, too.

Even the Soviets like parades, albeit ones with more missiles and tanks than
clowns and floats.  Maybe, in fact, that's the secret to preventing World War
III.  Surely not even the coldest-hearted world leader could order a bomb
dropped while there's a parade going on.  Maybe as a follow to the Geneva
summit someone could propose that both countries have at least one parade going
at all times.  I've heard of goofier ideas from summits.

==============================================================================

REFLECTIONS ON DISASTER

When the weather system that created those awful tornadoes which killed so many
in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Canada swept through our part of the country, we were
only slightly more jittery than usual during tornado season.

We knew we were underneath some monster thunderstorms.  We held fast to the TV
and often looked worriedly out the window.  There was something different about
the very air.

"Go look outside, Bob.  See if you can see anything."

"Just look at the radar, Honey.  The big ones are south of us."

And, living in Kansas we should know about these things.

"It's so still outside.  Not a breath of air."

"And the sky is kind of brownish..."

As the storms raged around our slice of suburbia, we watched a ball game on the
tube and discussed where the safest refuge might be should we be advised to
take cover.

The center hall?  Under some heavy furniture?  Or should we leave for the
church basement?

The sirens began to wail.

And, this time, the funnel clouds didn't touch ground as they passed us by.

Not fifteen hours later, hundreds of miles to the east, those storms dropped
hell on many.  They killed almost a hundred, laid waste whole communities.
Caused millions of dollars in damage.

As we watched the videotaped highlights of the disaster, we realized how silly,
how complacent we had been.  What if it had happened here?

Would we have survived, huddled together in the hallway or under heavy
furniture?  Uh-uh.

We were jaded -- used to the process that brings severe weather every spring.
Sure, we were nervous, but not enough to go out of our way to take the
precautions that would have saved our lives.

We discussed this as we watched the awful news about Albion and other
communities wiped nearly off the face of the map by hundred-mile tornadoes:

"Those were pretty big tornadoes."

"Yeah, but think of the odds!  It's not like a hurricane that covers hundreds
of square miles.  Tornadoes are like a crap shoot.  Hit or miss."

"Sure, but who knows where they'll strike?  We would have been sucked up and
spit out like toothpicks!  No way hiding in the hall would have saved us."

"Well, it's over now.  We'll be more careful next time."

Next time.  Right.

==============================================================================

A LITTLE DING IN THE DOOR

I loaned one of my cars to a friend a couple of weeks ago.  I received a phone
call one evening during the term of this loan...

<Ring!  ring!>

Hello?

Hi!  Hey, look, I just wanted to let you know I got a little ding in the front
fender yesterday.  I'll pay for it, no problem.  I was pulling out of a parking
space and kinda scraped the next car.  Not too bad, though.

Thanks for telling me.  I appreciate it.

<....later....>

I go to pick up the car.  I see this huge crater in the front fender -- no, I
see this remnant of a front fender attached to my car.	I get in.  What used to
be clean is a pit, a stinky dungeon.

I swallow hard.  I try to put myself in my friend's shoes....

<Several moments of wavering harp music>

...Snort, ruffle, grunt!  Oink, oink.  Crash.  Waddle, waddle.  Oh, it's just a
little bitty dent, no problem.  Snort, oink, ruffle, grunt....

<Several moments of wavering harp music>

No, my friend cannot have lapsed into temporary insanitary, nor could this
person be a were-pig.  Besides, the moon wasn't full while my car was on loan.
How could someone call that smashed-up fender a 'little ding'?

<Light bulb snaps brightly on>

Of course!  It's MY car, not my friend's!  It's never as bad if it happens to
someone else's property.

<Light bulb clicks off>

I go to three body shops and get three estimates.  Fi' hunned.  Fo' hunned.
Fo'fi'ty.  Which should I hand to my friend as the true amount of damage?
Should I get it fixed and render that bill, even if it's less than the highest
estimate?  Should I collect the highest estimate and take the car to the lowest
one?

<Little devil appears on right shoulder>

Go ahead!  Make it work to your advantage.  Your friend will never know.
Besides, that was supposed to be a 'little ding,' not a quarter-total!  Chalk
up what you clear on the deal as compensation for mental anguish!

<Little angel appears on left shoulder>

Do what's right!  Get the car fixed and give your friend that bill.  Take $50
off because -- remember?  -- you already had a little ding on that fender.

<Angel and devil flutter in air, verbally battling>

Oh, I'll take the middle ground.  I'll accept the middle estimate and that'll
balance the ding I already had in the fender.  Now, how do I do this?  Should I
get it fixed and then get the money from my friend, or should I collect the
money first and then get the car fixed?

<Poof!  Financial wizard appears>

Don't use your own money.  Collect it from your friend.  Do it now!

<Poof!  Common sense wizard appears>

If you collect the money first, you'll spend it and never get the car fixed.
You know yourself well enough by now, don't you?  Take that car in to the shop
right now!

<Poof!  Poof!>

<Dial, dial>

<Ring!  ring!>

Hello?

Hey lookit, I got estimates on the car.  The low one is four bills and the high
one is five.  How are you going to pay me for the damage?

Oh, er, well, I was going to buy a fender and put it on myself.  It just has
fifteen bolts.	Piece of cake.	I'll get it done for about $150.

I don't know about that.  Let me think about it.  I don't want mismatched
paint.

Hey!	Don't you trust me?  C'mon!  I don't have a lot of money, you know.

<Click.  Buzzz....>

<....later....>

It's trade-in time.  All the car dealers laugh when they see my baby blue car
with the lime green fender.

==============================================================================

KA-BLOOEY

By M.L.Verb

As we try to understand the MX missile system, we first need to move ahead in
our minds to Doomsday.	This is the day when the guys with their fingers on the
buttons finally can't stand restraint any longer and push them.

Well, not guys, exactly.  Or at least not yet.  We have to assume that it won't
be our guy at that moment -- whose name, let's say, is President Harold Jordan
-- who punches the button first, but rather their guy.  So let's picture just
one guy -- the one over there in Moscow -- letting all hell break loose.

We'll have to make up a reason for him doing this.  Any reason will do.
Perhaps he misread a joyous Washington-to-Moscow hotline holiday message that
was supposed to say, in abbreviated form, "M.  Xmas, Sing Halj." Only it got
glitched up in transit and came out "MX massing.  Signed Hal J." So the nervous
Soviet boss, in the name of national security, orders the Russian missiles to
wipe out those massing American MX missiles.

Ka-blooey.

No, let's hold off on our ka-blooey for a minute.  First, let's get the Soviet
missiles.  How many?  I don't know; let's say 100 -- on their way.  OK.
They're on their way.  Except for 33 of them.  If you always build in a 33
percent error factor in any human endeavor, you'll be a lot closer to
predicting what's really going to happen.  So:  Only 67 Soviet missiles are
ever going to get off the steppes.

Those 67 missiles now are heading for the MX Dense pack silos just outside of
Cheyenne, Wyoming, because everyone in the world knows that that's where we've
put them--100 of them.	But since 33 percent of ours won't work either, we don't
have 100 missiles against 100 but, rather, 67 on 67.

How many of those 67 Soviet missiles will be aimed at our 33 duds?  Why, 33
percent of them, of course, or 22.3 of them.  Let's call it 23.  So we've
really only got 44 (67 minus 23) Soviet missiles to worry about.  The others,
if they work, will hit duds and we won't lose much.

How many of those 44 will actually get to Cheyenne?  This is rank speculation,
of course, but you've got to figure that 33 percent of them will end up
somewhere else--Greenland, maybe, or Miami Beach or Wake Island.  My guess is
that a few will wind up in Gdansk, Poland.  The Kremlin later will call this an
'accident.' So we can scratch off another 14.67 missiles -- make it 15 -- and
have just 29 to worry about.

By now you should realize that 33 percent of those remaining 29 missiles simply
won't go off when they get to Wyoming.  They will be duds -- or worse.  Rounded
off, that removes another 10 from our worry, bringing us to 19.  Back there a
sentence or two ago, when I said they'd be duds 'or worse,' what I meant was
that the duds not only wouldn't go off, but 33 percent of them -- 3, say --
will wipe out about 33 percent of the incoming functioning missiles.  That
will, in rounded figures, leave us with 13 Soviet missiles to fret over.

Next, consider tht the 'fratricide' plan -- as the Pentagon calls it --
postulates that the incoming Soviet missiles will be coming in so close
together that they'll end up knocking themselves out.  Almost certainly the
Pentagon's hopes are 33 percent too optimistic.  But let's grant a 67 percent
missilecide rate attributable to fratricide.  That leaves only 4.33 -- make it
4 -- Soviet missiles to be concerned about.

So, when we shake this whole thing out, the American plan is to spend $26
billion to fend off maybe 4 Soviet missiles.

Which may be a real bargain, but personally I'd rather spend it on government
waste, fraud and abuse.

==============================================================================

RED JUICE AND RICE

Baseball players from all over have been congregating in a courtroom in
Pittsburgh for the last few weeks to testify about drug use in major league
baseball.

The trial, which has provided much needed grist for Howard Cosell's daily radio
commentaries, has also revealed some interesting recipes for athletes' pre and
post-game cocktails.

Not a few of these recipes have enough power to make cocaine seem about as
innocuous as salt.  For instance, there is 'red juice,' which is a powerful
upper that won't let the user come down.  How do you come down off of red
juice?

Take a downer, of course!

(Then there's Pete Rose's recipe, "High on Life," but nobody's trying to find
out if it comes in liquid or capsule form.)

Players who have testified in return for immunity from prosecution have been
naming names -- some of them among the game's most revered.  It makes you
wonder who might be implicated next.

Here's a roundup of what we have learned in recent testimony:


	
Ewing Kaufman, owner of the K.C.  Royals and giant drug manufacturing firm


Marion Laboratories, has not included freebies with any of his players'
lifetime contracts.


	
The number of players who have testified under immunity is not larger than


the number of players in the major leagues.  * High salaries are not
specifically linked with high drug usage.


	
Players who live in California are no more prone to drug use than players who


live elsewhere.


	
There is still no drug that will enhance performance better than a corked bat


or a greaseball.


	
There has been only one documented instance of a player using drugs to get


from one city to another instead of flying on the team plane.


	
Most players don't lock their lockers.




	
Nicotine is the most popular mood altering substance in use in the major


leagues.


	
The trial wouldn't have been in Pittsburg if the Pirates had had a better


team this year.

==============================================================================

DEFECTIVE DEFECTORS

The big league spy games are heating up as the U.S.  and Soviet Union head into
the pre-Summit stretch.  Last week, spectators were awed as the two super
powers played a taut game of Cross Over.

While top level discussions between the two nations generally are viewed as
beswaddled in subtle maneuvering, the action in the press, where propaganda
points are better than hard currency, is overt--at times almost comical.

In the last few weeks of play, the Soviets have scored twice.  First, there was
the incident on the Mississippi, during which a sailor (read 'player') jumped
into Big Muddy with defection apparently on his mind.  Our folks gave him back.
He jumped again.  We gave him back again.

Then Sen.  Jesse Helms subpoenaed the sailor and a coterie of Senate aides hung
around the Soviet grain ship to keep it from departing our borders.  How could
it, with a circus-like river jam of tourist boats, Coast Guard cutters and
other merchant ships blocking the way?  Easy.  It just left.  Bye, bye!

Our second loss, the one termed 'embarrassing,' was of Mr.  Yurchenko, an
obviously defective defector.  Apparently, the CIA didn't treat him well enough
so he decided to return to Mother Russia after a 3-month sojourn in the States.

Yet another defector incident is in progress.  A Romainian sailor has sought
asylum in the U.S.  Will he get to stay?  Probably, since he isn't a spy.

The National Satirist, of course, has a tap on some of the CIA's phones and we
overheard an earnest discussion about pre-Summit defectors between two of the
Company's finest...

CLOAK:  Do you think they're plants?

DAGGER:  Lemme check my file of double and triple agents again...no, I don't
think so.

CLOAK:  But maybe YOU are and, if so, then they are too.  Right?

DAGGER:  Only if you haven't doubled and are trying to cross me up!

CLOAK:  Come to think of it, you always call in sick on May 1st...

DAGGER:  Sure, it's my mother's birthday.  Lookit, how are we going to tell if
any of these three guys is cool if all we do is argue about which of US might
be a mole?

CLOAK:  Okay.  Suppose you and I are straight arrows.  Then Yurchenko got to
us, right?  That's not supposed to happen.  Therefore, someone in the Company
has doubled and threw him back into the sea.

DAGGER:  I can't believe he took off out of 'Au Pied du Cochon,' that's such a
great place to eat.  Who was escorting Yurchenko?

CLOAK:  Someone in Deep Cover.  You know we're not supposed to operate here in
the States.

DAGGER:  How do I know it wasn't you?  You do local escorts to make Christmas
money, don't you?

CLOAK:  No, it wasn't me.  I was playing in the Company's tennis tournament.

DAGGER:  I didn't see you there!  What flight were you in?

CLOAK:  Don't try to trip me up!  I know for a fact you were NOT there because
I wasn't either--I was assigned to follow you.

DAGGER:  Then you know I wasn't the escort.

CLOAK:  No I don't!  I lost you on 'M' Street at rush hour.  You drive like a
madman--<brrrrrrr!> madman!  Where WERE you between then and no--
<Brrrrr---zap!>

Oh, heck, we lost our tap.  As you can see from the above conversation, there
is a really good reason the CIA is forbidden from operating inside the U.S.

==============================================================================

Yikes Goes the Weasel
By M.L. Verb

Someone innocently ruined a perfectly good song for me again the other day by
messing up the lyrics to get a laugh.  From now on every time I hear this song
I will think of the distorted lyrics.  I just know it.  I know it from
experience.  There are lots of songs to which I've heard wonky lyrics, and
every time I hear one of those songs I override the original (and often lovely)
lyrics with the revised (and often corny, punny, dirty or semi-sacrilegious)
lyrics.  The "Star Spangled Banner" may be the first song thus destroyed for
me.  Whenever I hear the first few bars, I inevitably think--and I bet some of
you do, too--"Jose can you see any bedbugs on me?" I don't enjoy thinking,
"Jose can you see.  .  .?" I find it juvenile and ridiculous.  But the synapses
of my memory have been short-circuited and I can't get to the final two words
of our National Anthem--"Play Ball!"-- without dragging in Jose, whoever he is.
In much the same way, a friend has permanently ruined a song about Carolina by
starting it out this way, "Nothing could be finer than to wake up with a
Shriner in the morning.  .  ." He thinks it's a nice, naughty song that way.
It makes people laugh.  I even laugh.  But I can never hear that song's real
lyrics without thinking about the singer waking up with a Shriner.  The start
of a Christmas carol also has been permanently altered in my cranium.  For me
it now begins, "We three kings of Orient are, puffing on a loaded cigar." And
it goes on, "It was loaded, it exploded.  .  ." and so forth.  I'm no longer
even sure I can remember the true lyrics to "Yankee Doodle," having heard so
many off-color, off-beat and off-the-wall substitutes over the years.  There
used to be a comedian named Allan Sherman who would ruin songs by the
truckload.  I once made the mistake of listening to a whole album of songs
Allan Sherman was ruining right before my very ears.  And now those songs have
turned to dross for me.  For instance, he sang a famous ditty this way:  "Do
not make a stingy sandwich, pile the cold cuts high; customers should see
salami, comin' through the rye." And a famous hymn like this:  "Glory, glory
Harry Louis." (Or maybe it was Lewis.  He didn't tell me how to spell it.) And
to the tune of "Matilda" he sang, "My Zelda, she take-a me money and run with
the tailor." Allan Sherman was a one-man song-wrecking crew.  He had other
lyrics that are glued to my gray matter, but I can't stand to demolish any more
standards for you.  Anyway, I started to say I was innocently sitting at my
desk the other day when a fellow called to announce he had a joke for me.
(Some people think I run a Dial-a-Columnist-to-Listen-to-a-Joke service.)
Whereupon he asked why it is inappropriate to wear a three-piece suit to a
Lenten dinner at a church.  I allowed as how I didn't know but I guessed it had
something to do with vests or vestments.  He said I was pretty close.  But his
answer really was a now-ruined hymn:  "In Christ there is no Easter vest." I
thanked him as politely as I could and immediately wrote off the possibility of
ever being able to hear or sing that hymn the right way.  (I've forgiven the
caller.  He couldn't have known the trouble he was causing me.) There is only
one example I know in which the distorted lyrics improved the original.  I'm
thinking of the wonderful Christmas carol words occasionally found in the old
comic strip Pogo:  "Deck us all with Boston Charlie.  .  ." and so
forth--lyrics that are a treasure compared with the dull first version.  In
fact, I often find myself singing those lyrics at Christmas when I'm driving
and become stuck in the snow.  At times like that I figure it's either go with
the genius of Pogo or degenerate into that old Rolling Stones song, "I can't
get no tire traction."

==============================================================================

TEEN-AGED EXPERT COINS 'GINGERLY' ORIGIN HOAX

One of the features of the word-oriented Morris household is what we have come
to call "instant folk etymology." If someone asks where a word comes from, the
person asked is obligated to give an immediate answer, the more plausible the
better, but not necessarily based on fact.

A good example came up the other day when one of the children used the phrase
"proceed in gingerly fashion" and followed it with the question:  "Where does
'gingerly' come from?" Mimi, one of the more creative of the tribe, responded
at once.  "In the mid-17th century," she announced, "a fleet of spice ships
returned from the Far East to England, bearing a shipment of ginger far more
potent than any of the English had ever had before.  At first people used it in
their recipes in the same proportion that they had been accustomed to, but the
result was that many people found their lips and tongues burned by the powerful
ginger.  So soon they were warning they're friends that they should use this
more potent herb 'in a gingerly fashion.'"

We all agreed that this expmcnation was both imaginative and instantaneous.  We
wish we could also call it correct, but it's far wide of the mark.  The actual
origin of "gingerly" seems to be in the Old French word "genzor," the
comparitive form of "gent" meaning delicate.  There are other theories,
including one that it comes from the Icelandic by way of Swedish.  However,
unfortunately for Mimi's glib and persuasive theory, all authorities agree that
the "ginger" in "gingerly" is not the same as the "ginger" in your kitchen.

In today's world of radio and television, our language is in peril of becoming
homogenized, of having all the local color drained out of it by bland and
colorless announcers on the air and on the tube.  This seems to us a pity.
We're reminded of a charming country-reared woman, college-educated and a
former teacher, who once sent us a jar of what she called barley duck." It
turned out to be a tangy preserve made with gooseberries.	And it tasted even
better to us than if it had been given the pronunciation appropriate to it
under its more fancy name "Bar le Duc" (bar-luh-DYOOK) from the name of the
French town where it originated.	And a Happy Christmas Day to all of you from
all the Morrises!

==============================================================================

LATE BREAKING SATIRE
Wednesday, September 19

Fritz Mondale has been bending over backwards to point out that his upcoming
meeting with Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko, although in advance of Gromyko's
meeting with President Reagan, is not intended to upstage the president.

Why the Soviet minister has elected to meet Mondale first is clear to us, no
matter how others explain it.  First, Gromyko is going to ask Mondale why he
didn't choose Jesse Jackson as his running mate.  Then he's going to give Fritz
some campaigning tips.	He'll probably offer Mondale some Soviet PAC money, but
Mondal}ie will turn it down, saying he's already beholden to too many other
PACs.  Gromyko will ask if maybe the Soviets should invade Luxembourg to make
the president look bad, but Mondale will scoff at that and both will come out
of the meeting saying they had "frank and fruitful talks on a wide range of
topics." Then, Gromyko will meet with the president over hot chocolat}ie and
cookies in the White House.

Gromyko will tell Reagan that his talks with Mondale left a lot to be desired,
especially since Mondale is so boring he almost fell asleep during the
discussions.  The meeting will adjourn so that each can take a short nap, and
when discussions resume, they will have a "frank and fruitful chat on a wide
range of subjects." After both meetings, Gromyko will return to the Soviet
Union and visit Premier Chernenko in his hospital suite.  He'll tell Chernenko
it really doesn't matter who wins the U.S.  presidential elections this year
since, if Mondale wins, everyone in the cosiIe will be bored to tears and if
Reagan wins, he'll spend ninety percent of his time sleeping.  Chernenko and
Gromyko will have a hearty laugh and begin to plan the next Soviet foreign
adventure.

==============================================================================

HELP!  THE GROMMET'S MISSING!

I had a happy Father's Day Eve.  I was sipping a tasty Rheinhessen on the back
porch when a clattering disturbed my oenophilic reveries.  I looked up and,
eyes agog, stared blankly as the rest of the family lugged a huge box marked
"Gas Grill" into view and dumped it huffing at my feet.

(They were huffing; the gas grill huffed later on.)

"Happy Father's Day!" they crowed.

My ministrations of pleasure and affection amid the hubub of familial
excitement soon turned into thoughts of defenestration as I set about
assembling my newest toy.

Why?	Here is a quote from the assembly manual and you'll see why:

"Affix hoop (18) to side standards (33) with provided long bolts after first
securing hub (4) through axle carrier (12) and side ribs (7).  Repeat procedure
other side.  View illustration."

I thought about throwing the instructions away right then and should have, but
my wife (referred to in the instruction manual as "helper") is the logical sort
who believes her husband ought to "do it right this time."

So, I resigned myself to assistance from both manual and spouse and sturdily
continued assembling my Father's Day gift.

I was distracted in this effort by the cat and the two-year-old who both came
curiously close to being killed when we reached the climactic chapter in the
instructions -- you know, the one that tells how to "insert Venturi tube into
line assembly (25), adjusting inlet valves to 1/8-inch windows while drawing
spark line (41) through eyelet."

I was also distracted by the not-so-fond recollection of countless witty Sunday
magazine insert articles about self-assembly of Christmas bikes, gas grills and
household widgets.  You know the kind I'm thinking about:  some depraved writer
who had to send the bike back to the manufacturer for repairs due to his
botching the job writes a funny piece in order to recoup his freight expenses.

This, by the way, isn't one of those articles.  The gas grill works fine.  But
the episode does bring to mind a couple of my pet theories about kit-making.

The first is about the so-called "ease of assembly." What American
manufacturers do, I think, is have a group of employees write the instruction
manual.  The product of their effort is then translated into Japanese or
Spanish (depending on where the kit is packed).  Then, either a Japanese or
Mexican re-translates the manual into English again, prints it and stuffs it in
with all of the parts.  That's my only explanation for the ponderous and, yes,
tortuous nature of instruction manuals.

My second theory is this:  You can't fault the quality of workmanship if you're
the one who did it.  So, if the drive chain on your kit-assembled ten speed
bike falls off, or if your gas grill blows up in your face, or if your
made-at-night-at-home color TV set only works on Channel 1, you only have
yourself to blame.

For sure you can't blame the wife, kids and cat.  Even if they never let you
forget about the ten speed color gas grill sitting useless on the back porch.

==============================================================================

GARAGE WARFARE
By M.L.  Verb

In a parking garage not long ago I learned again why there have been wars, are
wars now and--barring divine intervention--will always be wars.

It was a weekday noon hour.  My wife and I had arranged to have a rare
childless lunch together.  When we pulled into the garage it was clear we were
not the only ones with that idea.  The first level was full.  Also the next.

We circled higher and silently resigned ourselves to the fact that the first
two available parking spaces would go to the drivers of the two cars in front
of us--a woman in a domestic sports car and a man in a German luxury sedan.

Several levels up we began to see a few vacant spaces toward one end, and also
could see that the next level was almost empty.  Suddenly the man in the car in
front of us stopped.  A car was backing out, clearing a space for his machine.
Then we noticed that the car in front of him, driven by the woman, also had
stopped, but beyond the space being vacated.  She threw her car into reverse,
judging by the back-up lights, and meant to back up and take the space.

My wife and I waited while the parked car squeezed out between them.  Barely
was it gone when both cars in front of us shot--one forward, one backward-- for
the spot.  They stopped--bumpers nearly touching--in back of the parking space,
neither able to win it.

The woman sat there.  The man behind her sat there.  Clearly both cars would
not fit. Clearly neither intended to move to let the other have the space.

As we pulled around them and took a space just six or eight stalls down the
line, the man jumped out of his car and ran to the woman's car.  We couldn't
hear what he was saying, but he was obviously enraged that she would try to
take a space behind her.

As we walked past them into the shops, neither was saying a word.  (And I admit
it did not occur to me until much later to try to act, somehow, as a peacemaker
between these fools.) The man just leaned on the woman's car next to her
window. He stood frozen, staring at her, his demands for justice already having
been loudly articulated. She sat frozen in resolute inconsiderateness.

My wife and I headed for lunch, expressing astonishment to one another that two
people would behave like such spoiled children, especially when there were
plenty of nearby spaces easily available.  It was almost as if these two had
conspired secretly earlier in the day to stage some guerrilla garage theater,
some morality play in concrete.

After lunch, as we were returning to our car, we remembered the fight for the
parking space and wondered who had prevailed.  We stepped into the garage and
there was the man's machine in the space.  He had humilitiated or outwaited the
woman and had taken his prize.

Why is it so astonishing that great nations grovel in history's slime and kill
over the likes of befouled Afghanistan or the barren Falklands or ravaged
Vietnam or the sands of the Sinai?  After all, we dishonor ourselves in
countless and similarly untenable ways every day--diminishing, even if usually
not taking, life.

==============================================================================

THE PRESIDENT STEALS PERSONAE
OR
HAIL TO THE THIEF
By Robert Brooks

The White House staff got a copy of "Rambo" for the President to watch a few
weeks back, and he seems to have been fantasizing about it ever since.	First it
was an off-mike remark during the TWA hostage crisis.  If skyjackers were to
humiliate the USA again, Ronnie Rambo would "know what to do." The President
ripped off Rambo's tough guy persona again while beating the drums for tax
reform during a speech in Independence, Missouri.  One would assume that an
ex-actor is more prone than others to take on roles, but is the world really
ready for a continuing series of Presidential Personality Put-ons?

Provided he doesn't get his daydreams mixed up at inappropriate times, there
may be benefits in having a Walter Mitty-like Chief Executive.	For example,
Ronnie Rambo isn't going to be pushed around by his counterparts in the
Kremlin, and that's okay with me.  But there will be hell to pay if the
President carries that role into a meeting with the Pope.  Likewise, although
Mr.  Reagan can effectively use Paul Newman's character in "The Sting" while
dealing with most Members of Congress, it just won't play at all in
international trade talks.  And, while taking on the persona of Daddy Warbucks
from "Orphan Annie" might be just the thing for closed-door meetings with
big-buck Republicans, that characterization will scare the blazes out of the
average taxpayer.

Realizing the Presidential penchant for poaching personae, one would hope that
the who decide which films are scheduled for his entertainment will be
sensitive to problems that could ensue if they provide him the wrong role
models.  God only knows what will happen if the President sees "Pee-Wee's Big
adventure."

==============================================================================

DIRTY AIR

Scientists are now saying that the air inside your home may be more polluted
than the air outdoors.

That doesn't surprise me.  I've known it for a long time.

Excuse me--<cough!  hack!>

Most indoor pollution, though derived from the usual sources, reaches harmful
proportions because of a unique feature in most homes, ceilings.  Ceilings keep
that stuff in, like, for instance, Los Angeles' natural ceiling -- the
inversion layer -- keeps in smog.  If people were smart and lived in houses
without ceilings, there wouldn't be a lot of ink used up telling about indoor
pollution, I'll wager.

Even though ceilings are a convenient excuse (in more ways than one), they
aren't the entire indoor pollution problem.  People do things indoors they
don't do outdoors.

For instance, indoors people slave away in the kitchen mostly without any kind
of range and/or oven venting.  Knowing what I know about how most people cook,
it's fully understandable that some lasting trauma to the human population of a
house would occur even long after the broccoli was burned black that night that
Mom and Dad had the hellacious argument.

People cook indoors because it's convenient, no doubt, although I have been
observed using my gas grill outdoors in every month of the year.

Here are some other major causes of indoor pollution:


	
TV sets, especially color TV sets.	They're noisy and overbright most of the


time.  They attract another cause of pollution -- children.


	
Children.  Kids are a major pollutant in most American homes.  Not only are


they personally noisy, they're also messy eaters, sloppy dressers and sling
toys all over the place with abandon.


	
Cosmetics.	Cosmetics are also a major source of indoor pollution.	They're so


insubstantial, you can create a cosmetic dust storm just by breathing.
Cosmetics are sold in teeny tiny little containers that drop behind beds,
dressing tables and vanities.


	
Newspapers and magazines.  If you were true to the computer revolution, you


wouldn't have this problem.  Do you see any old copies of The National Satirist
laying about?  Un-uh.  How many magazines are you saving because there's
exactly one thing inside you think you'll need in 1998?


	
Mismatched tablewares and 'keepsakes.' I actually know a family that never


has this common kind of pollution.  If one piece of a set of dinnerware breaks,
they throw out the whole set and buy a new one.  The rest of us end up with a
flea market inside our kitchen cabinets.


	
Cords.  When someone finally figures out how to rid our homes of electric


power cords, that someone will be immediately elected to the American Inventors
Hall of Fame.  Think of all the electromagnetic radiation that oozes from your
cords!	Yecch!


	
Aerosols.  Sure, aerosols are potential pollutants and potentially dangerous


explosives.  That's not what I'm talking about.  When I say aerosols are
pollutants, I mean what's inside of the spray cans.  Room deodorant, hair
fixative, cleansing solution -- droplets of all of this stuff hover around the
house all the time.  Maybe Howard Hughes was right...

Okay.  Now you know about the major sources of indoor pollution.  (I didn't
bother to mention smoking materials -- too obvious.) But what about MINOR
sources?

Refrigerator magnets.  Kitty litter.	Refuse -- I mean garbage.  Dust.  Pilot
light fumes.  Precipitate matter from that awful city water.  Little men in
toilet bowls.  Mildew.	Rust Junk mail.

The list goes on and on.  I think I'll join my son in the tent in the back
yard.

==============================================================================

HAMMOCKS
By M.L.  Verb

I've been wondering lately where all the hammocks have gone.  It's odd the
things one wonders about when one has time on one's hands, as I recently had
(but don't anymore, so don't ask me to volunteer for something.)

I bet I haven't seen a hammock around for 20 years.  Except in cartoons.
Hammocks in cartoons are always used to make some point about laziness.  But
even there they are getting pretty scarce.

It's possible, I suppose, that the lack of hammocks nowadays has something to
do with the physical fitness craze, for surely someone at some time declared
hammocks bad for the back.  Nearly everything has been declared bad for the
back at one time or another -- including things I've never done and things I
never intend to give up -- so I'm pretty sure, without actually having the
offending issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association here to
cite, that hammocks are among them.

But I don't put much stock in the bad-back theory, now that I've raised it.
For anyone who's ever spent part of a soft summer afternoon in a hammock knows
that when you finally do agree to vacate it you feel so good and rested that
even if your back hurt you wouldn't know or admit it.

A more plausible answer probably has to do with the demise of trees.	You may
have noticed that when developers build new subdivisions the first things they
rip up are all the trees.  I'm not sure why they do this.  Maybe it's because
without lots of shade trees they can sell bigger air conditioners.

Whatever the reason, the demise of the trees in this country almost certainly
has helped hasten the demise of hammocks.  Oh, I suppose you could hang a
hammock between a couple of TV satellite antenna dishes or between the golden
arches of the fast food joint down the road, but somehow it just wouldn't look
right.	For hammocks you need trees.  And, in my experience, at least two of
them.

And once you raise a generation of children without hammocks it's almost
impossible to re-establish the practice.  It's a little like losing the art of
hand-tying a bow tie or making candles.

I think the last serious hammock I knew about was stretched between two monster
shade trees in a backyard in Pittsfield, Ill., which is the town you have to
drive through if you need to get from Louisiana, Mo., to Jacksonville, Ill.
(Oh, all right, there are other, more circuitous ways to get from Louisiana to
Jacksonville but only someone being especially contentious would even mention
it.) That hammock was there the last time I looked, which as I say was about 20
years ago.

Several weeks ago, when I needed to get from Louisiana to Jacksonville and
beyond, I drove through Pittsfield.  I even stopped for some chicken livers at
the Cardinal Inn or Redbird Cafe or some such (where, says one of my kids, you
should order the shrimp, not the livers) and I thought about going to see that
hammock.

But I didn't.  I was afraid it wouldn't be there any more.  And a fellow is
always better off if he thinks he knows where -- if he needs one badly enough
-- he can still find a serious hammock.

==============================================================================

READER SURVEY

Please record your responses to the questions below with pen-and-paper; then,
enter our 'Send Us a Message' area to record your answers.  Be sure to enter
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INTRO TO THE SURVEY

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opinion surveys.  Please read the questions below and lie shamelessly to us.
All responses will be kept; names will be nameless.  If your religious
convictions have ever gotten you thrown into jail, you must have found the holy
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1:  Would you lie to a pollster?  (Y or N)

2:  Would you lie to a gangster?  (Y or N)

3:  Have you paid your public opinion poll tax?  (Y or N)

4:  Do you believe a random survey of 1200 Americans will show results which
reflect accurately the opinions of those who were surveyed?  (Y or N)

5:  Fill in the blank:  "If you ask what my annual income is, I'll give you a
number within ------ percent of the actual amount."

6:  Write a short paragraph that describes what you think about what other
people think about things pollsters ask.  (25 words or less)

7:  If you are called on the phone and asked to take a few minutes to respond
to a survey, what is your immediate reaction?  (choose one of below)

A:  Hang up; B:  It's a come-on to sell you something; C:  Thrill down the
spine; D:  A and/or C; E:  B and/or A and/or C; F:  F

8:  How many polls could a good pollster poll if a good pollster could poll
polls?	(Enter a perfect square rounded to one decimal place)

9:  What is a polecat?  (choose one of below)

A:  The opposite of a cat pole; B:  A really hip Yuppie poll taker; C:  Another
word for 'nasty scum'; D:  All of below; E:  All of above; F:  F

10:  Was this survey a fair poll or a foul poll?  (choose one of below)

A: Fairly fair;
B: Fairly foul;
C: Full of fantastic fru-fru;
D: A fairly foul fair poll;
E: Same as the converse of D or A;
F: F

Thank you for taking our poll -- er, survey!	Don't forget to get right over t
our 'Send Us a Message' area to record your answers.  Perhaps some lucky
respondent will get something nice in the mail!  Responses will be published
after a whole lotta scientific mumbo jumbo.

==============================================================================

A LITTLE KNOWN CASTLE IN THE OZARKS

My wife and I took ourselves and the kids to the Ozarks last weekend.

Now, this is obviously going to take some explaining.  First of all, the Ozarks
are mountains in Missouri, but, like almost everything else in that fine state,
they are somewhat paradoxical.

Missouri is a state of contradictions and the Ozarks are not exempt.  In what
other state do you have the reigning World Series champs AND the runners-up?
Well, the Ozarks are mountains you drive downhill to get to.

No lie.  I don't know the geological terms, but you just tend to sink down into
the Ozarks and, sure enough, they are mountains.  Now, to Ozark aficionados,
these mountains which are interlaced by a fine series of lakes, are the chic
place to get away from it all.

Back in 1906, a Kansas City businessman fell (not literally) in love with the
topography in an area now known as the Ha Ha Tonka State Park.	This guy decided
to erect a 60-room castle atop one of the Ozarks' mountains, hopeful that he
would be able to retire in peace from the hectic life of urban,
turn-of-the-century Kansas City.  (Ha!)

He started work on the castle in 1906.	Stone was quarried on the spot and
hauled upslope by rail.  It was tough work and he didn't live to see his aerie
completed.  He was killed in, of all things, an auto accident.

His son finished the castle in '22 and lived there for a few years.  Later,
after the crash of '29, a lady bought the place and turned it into a hostel.
That turned out to be a crackerjack idea except the place burned down in the
'40s and is now in a state of ruin.

So.  Me and my wife, our four-year-old and our two-year-old headed to the
Ozarks for a get-away-from-it-all weekend and found our way to Ha Ha Tonka and
the castle.

The highlight of our visit was the attempt by our younger son to walk backward
up a nature trail.  I was not amused.  The lowlight was staying four feet from
the water in a fine cove without a boat.

Underneath a good part of the Ozarks' mountains are caverns.  Missouri is
replete with caverns, as any fan of Mark Twain's would know.  We ventured into
one called the Bridal Cave since it was close by.  Both of the kids were
nonplussed by the subterranean climate but, by then, I was inured to their
antics.  The Bridal Cave has scored nearly 900 weddings, although the frequency
of marriages has declined in recent years.

They'd make more money if they called it the Divorce Cave, since that was what
I was a step away from because of the funky fettle my wife's kids were in.
Everyone knows the kids are mine only when they're good.

The Ozarks region is famed for the high incidence of hand crafted baskets and
pottery, much of it hand crafted in Taiwan.  It would also seem an unlikely
place for fast food chains to sprout but those eagle-eyed brats found every one
of them.  Nevertheless, we had a pretty good time not boating, fishing and
relaxing.  We enjoyed driving the alley-oop roads until one of the kids decided
to get car sick.

Still, a castle in the Ozarks is not everyday stuff and few people are aware of
the Ha Ha Tonka castle (no relation to the toy company).  Stop down--or up--to
the castle whenever you might be around Camdenton just 15 miles from the dam
which keeps all those hollows filled up with water and fish.

Let me know if your kid can hike backward up that cliffside nature trail, will
you?

==============================================================================

OIL GLUTS ARE FOR GLUTTONS

There is an oil glut.  OPEC countries have lots more oil available than non-oil
producing nations are buying.  The price of crude oils is going down, something
which helps curb inflation and the balance of trade deficits.

Some say OPEC is falling apart at the seams; that the once powerful cartel
can't keep its members to hug uniform prices the way they did when they caused
the price of oil to rise about $20 per barrel in the '70s.

Enter our first Law of Economic Gravity (with no appleologies to Newton):  What
goes up may or may not come down.

Now, according to the National Satirist's Law of Economic Gravity, the price of
gas at the pump, home heating oil and related products will not drop
commensurate with the drop in the price of crude oil.  No way.	Consumer prices
will hold steady or rise, just like they did with mortgage and other interest
rates that went sky-high also in the '70s.

That is because of the First Corollary of the Law of Economic Gravity:  When
you raise the ceiling, you also raise the floor.

It's enough to make us really angry at the way the '70s were conducted.  Just
look at the evidence, as if the above were not sufficient:

In the '70s...

The Defense budget went sky-high as we wound down the Viet Nam war.  Has the
Defense budget dropped since?  No,no,no.

Consumer prices went way up.	Did they come down?  Nope.  They just stopped
going up, even though many wholesale prices have dropped.

And so on.

Our Second Corollary:  It's easier to climb the tree and let the fire dept.
rescue you than it is to climb down yourself.

Now, according to the National Satirist's Second Corollary of the Law of
Economic Gravity, what is keeping the cost of money, oil, defense and consumer
goods high isn't, as we noted above, increased demand for such things.  What is
keeping the floor up is Fear of Inflation.  Consumers aren't afraid of it, but
manufacturers and lenders are.	And they're the ones who hold the purse strings.

All of this brings us to a fork in the road.	Left fork:  What can you do about
the situation?  Right fork:  What's going to happen next?

The answer to both forks is:	Nothing.  Not for a while.

Then all you-know-what will break loose.  We will be gobbled up in a huge tax
increase which will absorb Fear of Inflation and all of our extra money to
reduce the Federal budget deficit, causing a lowering of the ceiling (but not
the floor--in other words, we'll be squeezed juiceless).

The inflation of the '70s was fueled by oil prices which caused everything else
to go up too.  The inflation of the '90s will be fueled by deficit reduction.

Which brings us back full circle to our premise:  Oil Gluts are for Gluttons.
We have learned to be sensitive to oil prices and the cost of things like we
never were before the '70s.  In a few years, we will learn to be sensitive to
the amount of our money to which the public sector helps itself.

But probably not before Uncle Sam gets all of it.

==============================================================================

ODDS ON, ODDS OFF
By M.L. Verb

Lottery officials in the various states have established the odds of winning
with care so they don't give away more money than they're supposed to.  In
Missouri's new lottery, for instance, the odds run from 10 to 1 against winning
another ticket to 2.4 million to 1 against winning the $86,000 instant jackpot.

I say those aren't bad odds, considering what we're often faced with in the
larger lottery game called Life.  I have done a little research (and, where the
literature was deficient, have done my own calculations) on the odds both in
favor of and against certain things happening to you in Life.  While you are
sitting around counting your instant losings from your state lottery game,
maybe you'd like to ponder them.

To begin with, the odds against your even being around to play a lottery game
are almost infinity to 1.  To get that figure you must consider the high odds
against your great-grandparents (we can start earlier, if you want to up the
odds) ever having met and having had your grandparents.  Then work down through
the generations and the billions of swimming around and dying male and female
seed.

In fact, given the seeming randomness of the human reproductive process, the
odds are about 2 to 1 that you aren't really you at all but someone else.

The odds against your having the name you would have chosen for yourself had
your parents agreed to wait and just call you something generic for the first
several years of your life are about 8 to 1.  Adopting such a name- yourself
system might reduce the current number of Jasons and Jennifers, but would have
the disadvantage of dramatically increasing the number of Madonnas and Mr.
T's.

The odds in favor of your faking continued belief in Santa and the Tooth Fairy
for pecuniary reasons are 112 to 1.  The odds in favor of your faking other
things for generally the same reason are 1,112 to 1.

When you reach adolescence, the odds in favor of your falling in love are 144
to 1.  The odds in favor of hurting yourself in such a fall are about twice
that high.

The odds in favor of embarrassing yourself in public as a result of something
you ate are 4.5 billion to 1.  These odds increase the closer you live to the
Equator.

The odds in favor of your answering twice as many wrong-number phone calls as
you ever make are 7 to 1.  The odds against understanding how this can be
universally true are 46 to 1.

The odds against your knowing the names of all your elected officials are 219
to 1.  The odds against all of your elected officials knowing your name is
753,219 to 1.

After you die, the odds against your voting in the next election are 12.5
million to 1, except in Chicago, where they are closer to just 3 to 1.  Which
is why, by the way, so many people seeking immortality live in Chicago.  That,
and the high odds against ever having to bother trying to get tickets to the
World Series.

==============================================================================

PUMPING NEURONS
By M.L.  Verb

Brain researchers say they're making a little progress--but not much--in
understanding memory.  They know there are no easy answers to how the brain
remembers things, but at least they've found a few ways in which the brain
seems to transfer information.

Beyond that they're pretty much in the dark.

Here's what a University of California researcher said recently:  "We are still
at a primitive stage in our understanding of how memory works."

I'm convinced memory research is futile.  In my experience memory--unlike other
bodily functions--operates completely on whim.	And it won't surprise me if
countless researchers eventually drive their brains bonkers trying to make
sense of memory.

I even have a vision that some day a researcher will bellow, "Eureka!  I've
figured out how memory works!" But by the time he remembers where he left his
pencil and paper to write it down he'll have forgotten the secret.

Scientists studying memory in the face of such inevitable frustration have
concluded, at least tentatively (which is as committed as good scientists ever
get about their findings), that many areas of the brain work together to code
and store information.	And scientists are reported to be paying special
attention to single brain cells called neurons because they think the whole
memory process is somehow tied to neuron activity.

It may be true that when our brains actually do remember something (as often as
not something useless), neurons are at work.  But the real mystery about memory
is not which cells do what but why the whole process seems so married to--and,
thus, marred by--randomness.

For instance, there is absolutely no good reason why I remember a few, but not
all, of the home phone numbers I've owned over the years, beginning with 893.
No, 893 isn't one of the years (no matter what my kids tell you).  It was my
childhood phone number.

And there's no sensible reason for me to remember Ernie Banks' 1953 batting
average but to be unable to dredge from my memory what I'm doing this weekend.
I can recall the exact day and date on which a colleague died almost 10 years
ago but have trouble remembering the birthday of one of my sisters or the two
things my wife sent me to the store for.

I remember who caught the final pop-foul out of the 1954 World Series but I
can't remember the name of someone to whom I was introduced 10 minutes ago.  I
always can picture the face of a clergyman I've known casually for more than 10
years but I inevitably have to struggle to come up with his name.

Over the years people have dreamed up ways to improve memory--and some people
even claim a few of them work.	But for my money these schemes are ultimately
doomed to fail because they try to impose order on chaos.

I am often awed by the order in the universe, by the natural laws and the
intricate systems created o keep things humming along predictably.  But I
confess I am baffled by how unglued and unreliable memory seems to be.

It's sad to me to see scientists devote their lives to the pursuit of something
so ultimately fruitless as explaining the mysteries of memory.	I don't
understand why they are so driven and so uncomfortable with mystery.

Do they deceive themselves into thinking that if only they understand which
cells activate memory they somehow will be able to tame its wildness and
control its vagueries?	Think of the countless books full of explicit pictures
that show us in microscopic detail which glands react when women and men fall
in love.  Has all that knowledge made love any more logical?  No, thank
goodness; nor will it memory.

==============================================================================

AN ERA OF MODEST CLAIMS
By M.L.  Verb

Maybe it has finally arrived:  the Era of Modest Claims.  If so, welcome.

I began to notice it a few years ago in commercials and ads.	I recall a
cigarette ad that said:  "At only 3 mg.  tar, this doesn't taste bad.  Not bad
at all."

Can you imagine that?  "Not bad at all." It didn't say that smoking them would
make you masculine.  Or that you'd be sexually liberated.  Or wander around in
flowery meadows.  Just that they weren't bad/

More recently I've seen a beer commercial in which a drinker concludes
essentially the same thing:  Hey, that's not bad.  He doesn't say it's the
world's finest.  Or that you'll be able to smash your fists through radiators
if you drink the stuff.  Just that it's not bad.  Similarly, there's a
drain-cleaning product commercial out that promises the stuff won't wreck your
pipes.	A pretty modest boast, if you ask me.

If this modesty trend continues, just think what we can expect:


	
Deodorant:  "You won't smell as bad or as often if you use this."




	
Cars:  "This'll get you there.  So will a bus, of course, but a bus probably


won't fit in your garage."


	
Winter coats:  "This won't make you look like a million bucks, but it'll keep


you from freezing to death, unless you haven't got the brains God gave
artichokes."


	
Watches:  "If you keep it set, it'll tell you the time."




	
Paint:  "Pretty decent stuff.  Comes in several colors, too."




	
Shaver:  "This will cut your whiskers until it breaks down."




	
Alarm clocks:  "It will usually go off about the time you set it for."




	
Toys:  "This won't break any quicker than most other unbreakable toys."




	
Restaurants:  "Maybe we're not the '21 Club,' but hardly anyone can remember


the last time someone who ate here got sick because of it."


	
Airlines:  "Your chances of getting there with us are pretty fair.  And the


chances that your luggage will get there with you aren't too bad, either."


	
Hotels:  "Our rooms are probably cleaner than yours at home."




	
Charge Cards:  "Accepted some places but not others."




	
Beer:  "After one or two ours tastes as good as anyone else's."




	
Insurance companies:  "Sometimes we even pay off on claims."



Why, if we could get this Era of Modest Claims off and rolling, it would be
marvelous, stupendous, wonderful, terrific.  And not bad, either.

==============================================================================

WATCH MY LIPS
By M.L.  Verb

Women think men hear with their eyes.

I used to think this was an uncommon anatomical misconception, occurring
against long odds only in my family, but more and more friends confirm my
observation.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you," is the way one fellow tells me his wife
addresses him.

"She is convinced," he says, "that I cannot read the paper, watch TV, clip my
fingernails AND listen to her simultaneously.  She is satisfied only if I'm
looking at her while she talks to me."

This mistaken idea that men hear with their eyes probably is the cause of as
much marital misunderstanding as the widespread notion that if you've paid for
it with a credit card it didn't cost anything.  Divorce court records are
filled with sad examples of broken marriages that might have succeeded but for
this bizarre view of the way men's sense organs work.

In fact, in the past few weeks several men who consider themselves woefully
misunderstood on this matter have asked me to do what I can to set the record
straight.  I consider it a privilege to educate women on this score.

My extensive lack of research has failed to reveal just how this wonky idea
first reared its ugly eyes.  But we can speculate.  It is possible the matter
first arose when some woman made another false assumption -- that a man whose
eyes are open is always awake.

The truth is most men consider it a cheap and easy trick to sleep with their
eyes open, and do it every day.  My favorite example occurs each time the
president of the United States addresses a joint session of Congress.  Seated
behind him will be the speaker of the House and the vice president -- both
conked out dead asleep with their eyes open.

Most men in such muckety-muck positions of power have taken self-help courses
to teach them how to move around as if awake while sleeping in public.	Tip
O'Neill and George Bush are so accomplished at this that they sometimes can
seem to be whispering or giggling to one another while the president speaks.
That is a much trickier thing to learn than applauding at appropriate times
while fast asleep.  Applauding is child's play.

Anyway, getting back to our speculation, it is possible that some wife
somewhere was speaking to her husband on the assumption that he was awake,
based on the circumstantial (and often misleading) evidence of his open eyes.

"So," she said in conclusion, "do you want to go or not?"

On her sharp "so," he awakened, but since the question made no sense to him he
replied, "Go where?"

To which she shot back, "Next time I'm talking to you LOOK at me." Which wasn't
the problem at all, for a man is equally capable of sleeping open-eyed while
seeming to stare at his wife as he is while seeming to stare at the newspaper
or the TV.

Now that it's clear what men don't hear with, it may be helpful to understand
what they do use.  Although ears do the job for most casual conversations, a
man's serious listening is done through the top of his head.  This is the part
of his body he instinctively turns toward engrossing conversations.

No doubt this has led to misunderstandings, too, among women who think men with
their faces parallel to the floor have set sail for nada land.  But if a man is
listening to you with the top of his head you really should take it as a
compliment.  Assuming, of course, he isn't snoring and drooling.

==============================================================================

WHO WANTS TO THROW WEIGHTS?
By M.L. Verb

First, let's admit that Donald Regan, White House chief of staff, is a bozo for
saying what he said in Geneva about women.

What he said, in case you read only summit stories about the Nancy Reagan-
Raisa Gorbachev "Style Wars," was that women "are not going to understand
throw-weights or what is happening in Afghanistan or what is happening in human
rights.  Some women will, but most women.  .  .would rather read the
human-interest stuff of what happened."

No question, it was a mindlessly insensitive thing to say, and he deserves the
lashing he's gotten.  Flail away.  Grant him no mercy.  And while you're at it,
drag in the names of Golda Meir, Indira Ghandi, Margaret Thatcher, Jeane
Kirkpatrick and Gerry Ferraro, a collection of your average women.

But if you're through flogging him, let's be honest.  There was at least SOME
truth in what he said.	Mr.  Regan's error was in thinking that widespread
ignorance about the substance of international policy is limited to women.

The harsh, frightening truth is it's not just most women who don't understand
throw-weights, it's also most men and children.  More than that, details of
what's really happening in Afghanistan (plus Nicaragua, South Africa,
Washington and Moscow) are mysteries not only to common citizens around the
world but also to diplomats.

Some of what we don't know isn't our fault.  Because of the oppressive,
paranoid Soviet system, the sorry state of invaded Afghanistan is closed to
prying Western eyes.  We get only snippets from refugees fleeing in stark
terror through Pakistan.

And some of what we hear about nuclear arms and throw-weights is so bizarre and
unbelievable that we must conclude either no one understands it or people are
kidding us.  I recall visiting within the past year with a man who occupies a
lofty position among U.S.  arms negotiators.	It was his straight-faced
testimony that the most likely date in any year for the Soviets to launch a
nuclear attack on the U.S.  is Columbus Day.  More than that, the risk is
greater in either the morning or evening, I can't remember which.

If we get through October each year, he said, we're pretty much home free.
What can even the brightest among us make of such talk?  It is like listening
to the crazed predictions of astrologers and palm readers, knowing all the
while there is at least some small chance they may be right.

The part Mr.	Regan got at least a little right, however, has to do with what we
CAN know but don't.  Our interest in matters of real importance often is
distracted by our interest in TV broadcasts of sit-coms, sports or soap operas.

How else do you explain the outcry that inevitably comes when news bulletins
interrupt taped TV shows?  How else do you explain the enormous popularity of
magazines like "People," or "Women's Wear Daily" or "Sports Illustrated."?

Or TV like "Entertainment Tonight," MTV or "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous"?

Donald Regan is wrong in thinking women are the only ones ignorant about what
really affects our lives (but he's far from alone in this old-boy
administration).  One gender is no less guilty than the other.

==============================================================================

WARRANTIES
By M.L.  Verb

Our great nation was founded on a simple idea:  If you aren't satisfied with
your tea you have the right to float it back to the port of origin.  That proud
and demanding heritage is being reclaimed.  We are starting to see examples of
people again taking personal responsibility for their work, of people becoming
accountable.  Textile workers, for instance, are starting to put their names on
"Inspected by" tags, doing away with the vaguely discomforting anonymity of
finding No.  3 or No.  17 in our underwear.  More often now we know we can
blame Eveline or Juan if our trouser seams are crooked.  And we know it doesn't
say Hanes until that cruise missle of a lady on the TV commercials says it says
Hanes.  Now this encouraging movement is spreading to some educational
institutions.  At Howell High School in Michigan, for instance, next year's
graduates will come with a warranty.  It's true.  Employers will get a written
notice saying if they hire Howell graduates and then find they lack basic
skills (reading, writing and arithmetic) necessary for the job, the school will
take them back.  Students recalled will get additional free coursework.  A
couple of Michigan colleges--Eastern Michigan University and Henry Ford
Community College--plan to have similar programs.  It's hard to imagine why
it's taken so long to offer such assurances.  It's true that lots of companies
offer warranties on their products, of course, but rarely have they done so
when their products are human beings.  I hope the trend doesn't stop with high
schools and colleges.  This pattern needs to be nurtured.  A Little League
baseball coach, for instance, should be able to promise parents that if they
leave little Reggie with him for, say, four hours a day, six days a week, the
kid will get at least a minor league contract by age 18, with options on shoe
endorsements.  Similarly, drill sergeants worth their salute should be able to
produce battle-ready soldiers in a set period of time or be willing to take
back the duds for a second round of boot camp.  Surely any dance instructor
with pride could promise an audition with the New York City Ballet within five
years.  If it doesn't happen, the instructor should be willing to buy back all
the kid's beat-up old point shoes.  And theological seminaries ought to
guarantee its alumni will record a certain number of saves within the first
three years of graduation.  If they don't, the schools should retool them as
social workers or denomination executives.  Voters have the right of recall for
politicians who don't pan out in office, but it's rarely used because it's so
cumbersome a process.  The same is true of impeachment proceedings.  I think
politicians should agre keep any promise made; if they don't, they'd
automatically be out of office and a new election would be scheduled for a week
from Tuesday.  Recidivism is the term prisons use to talk about inmates who
keep getting sent back to the slammer.  It seems to me recidivism is a good
idea for other institutions in society.  If doctors can't get you well, send
them back to medical school.  If lawyers can't win your case, back they go to
law school.  And chefs to cookery school.  And mechanics to car-wrecking
school.  And if journalists can't be fair and accurate.  .  .  Well, let's not
get carried away.  If you don't like this column, which I've written under a
pseudonym, mail it to my alma mater or my mother, whichever one you can find.
It's probably their fault.

==============================================================================

                          THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE
                        By Chauncey V. Panache IV

Nearly every writer has compunctions about the use of language which may, in
fact, be more idiosyncratic than semantically proper.  But who, in this year of
newsspeak and in these times of jargon-mongering, really cares?

Rather than questioning care, I believe it is more to the point to ask if we
can, indeed, have some fun with our dear language, or, at least, devote some
energy toward changing it for better or worse.

Why do I hold the above view?  First, I have long since given up purism as a
viable linguistic concept.  Keeping a language pure in form and usage is, in my
considerable opinion, a waste of time.  Other people, like myself nowadays,
will go ahead and do what they want to it.  Besides, the utility of a language
is found in the ease it brings to communication among people.  If a language is
hard to use, fewer people will use it.  Look at Esperanto.  Esperanto--that
condominium of romance languages--turns out to be more difficult to use than
any one of its progenitors.  To learn Esperanto, one must learn parts of, I
think, seven or eight other languages, including grammatical forms and idioms.

Besides, we here in America don't really speak English.  We say we speak
English, but when we go to England we find we have to listen very carefully in
order to understand what's being said.  For a long time, I have espoused
calling our language "American." It make sense, since the French speak French
and Germans speak German and Japanese speak Japanese, that Americans speak
American.

Now, just because American is very similar to English doesn't necessarily mean
that it's not a viable, self-contained language all of its own, replete, in
actuality, with regional dialects and unique idiomatic expressions.

And, when one takes the time to compare English with American, the differences
become much more apparent than the similarities.

I think we have been doing ourselves a national disservice by teaching English
to our kids.  We should, instead, offer English as a second language and teach
American to our school children.  Give them some national pride.  Give them a
sense of stupefaction that they may make individual contributions to the growth
and refinement of a brash, young language.

Give them liberty!  Free them from the constraints of the old order so that
they may someday join hands with each other and exclaim, "Free at last!  Free
at last!  Thank God Almighty we're free at last!"

Oh.  Ahem.  Excuse me, I got carried away there for a moment.  But really, now,
isn't what I have been saying sensible?

Well, make up your own mind.  Take a look at what the American language has to
offer.  See how many English-language rules we break commonly in the course of
a day.  Thrill to the spread of slang and the incorporation of technical terms
into daily conversation.  Embrace the use of odd phrases, oxymorons,
portmanteau words and street jargon.  Try talking like a Valley girl.

Then, and only then, will you see how vibrant and alive the American language
really is.  Really.  Oh, wow.

==============================================================================

THE DAY RICHARD LOST HIS MARBLES
By M.L.  Verb

The day Richard Irwin lost his marbles probably was the day I grew up.	Poof
went my innocence.

Richard Irwin had a wonderful collection of marbles.  Purees, steelies, cats
eyes, the works.  But he wasn't a great marbles player so he rarely brought
them to school.  Then one day when he did some jerk swiped them out of the
cloak room, where we kept our wraps.	(Did you ever notice that only elementary
school teachers call coats wraps and only teachers and congresspersons call
closets cloak rooms?  This bears investigation, but not now.)

The reason I'm thinking about Richard Irwin's marbles is that the National
Marbles Tournament was held recently in Wildwood, N.J.	Marble playing is making
a strong comeback, and I was just wondering whether the marbles I used to
have--or that Richard lost--are still floating about in the world.  And, if so,
whether they wound up at the tournament.

It's possible.  Marbles--unlike their owners--don't die.  And marbles are
nomadic.  A rolling marble gathers no moss, and whoever heard of a marble that
didn't roll?  There's a company in West Virginia that makes 365 million marbles
a year.  Which is a million a day, including Sundays and holidays, though I
have no idea why the company is making marbles on Sundays and holidays.
Anyway, I bet every one of those marbles rolls.

When most people think of playing marbles, they envision some Norman
Rockwell-like painting of boys in knickers kneeling around a circle, each with
a marble loaded and cocked in his hand.  Maybe that's the way Norman Rockwell
played marbles.  Maybe that's the way 99 percent of American males over age 40
played marbles.  But it's not the way WE played marbles on the playground of
Dean Street School.

We were both much more expansive and more restrictive in our games.  We used
either the whole grassy playground or only a tiny opening in a cardboard milk
carton.

Our favorite game was simply throwing one of our marbles and trying to hit
another kid's marble.  The first kid would toss a marble way out on the
playground.  The second kid then would throw a marble in the same direction.
Whenever the thrown marble hit the lying-still marble on the fly the thrower
got to keep the other kid's marble.  (Except for baseball and puppy love, we
didn't play complicated games then.)

Since there could be dozens of marble-tossing games going on at recess,
strolling aimlessly around the playground was a little like taking a walk
inside a life-size pinball machine.

I grew up in an era of important transitions--FDR to Truman, Truman to Ike, war
to post-war and glass milk bottles to paper milk carton.  Milk cartons-- at
least in the early days--had very small openings in the top through which to
pour the milk.

We started keeping our marbles in empty cartons.  That led to the game of
taking a marble, standing directly over another kid's milk carton and trying to
drop the marble through the tiny pour opening.	If it went in, the dropper got
his own marble back plus another from the carton owner.  If it failed to fall
in, the carton owner kept the dropped marble.

I don't know the rules for competing in the National Marble Tournament but I
bet they're more complic than that.  Probably today there are marble agents.
And multi-year marble playing contracts.

Richard Irwin later became an electrical engineer or some such.  It wouldn't
surprise me to learn he's spent his whole life perfecting high-tech marbles
with computerized brains.  It would prove one thing:  I wasn't the only one to
have grown up the day Richard Irwin lost his marbles.

==============================================================================

WHY THEY'RE CALLED FILIPINOS

(Editor's Note:  The following may be deemed racist by certain readers.  If you
are certainly a certain reader to whom this piece appears racist, well, sorry.
If you're a Filipino, we think you're cute.)

Even in the echoing halls of government, Filipinos wear sport shirts and
jackets.  On TV last week, during the heist of the Marcos government, it looked
like everyone had just come off the golf course to conduct a little bit of
casual government business like, say, a revolution.

Compared with the Filipinos we saw on TV, even the laid-backest of Californians
would look like a Type A workaholic, for sure you know?

Look how Filipinos conducted their revolution!	Did they shoot each other up?
Was the revolution protracted and angry?  Are we kidding?

Marcos' tanks, rolling through the streets of Manila, obeyed traffic signals.
Citizens, rampaging through his palace, changed their minds and deposited loot
at the door before leaving.  Was there an effigy dangling from a streetlamp?
If so, we didn't see it and it probably had its shirt tail tucked in.

Is the new government going after Marcos with venegance?  Absolutely--by
Filipino standards.  Corazon Aquino herself appointed a Minister of Good
Government to go over the books.  The Minister will probably cut Marcos'
pension or something equally strident.

All of this, while amusing, points out how civilized people of the Philippines
are, compared with almost any other nation.  Can the South Africans solve their
racial problems so peacefully?	No.  Could the U.S.  settle its civil rights
problems so efficiently?  Uh-uh, no way.  Was Baby Doc DuValier kicked out of
Haiti with such grace?

Philippine political tactics may not be sweet, but, compared with Chicago for
instance, even the reports of widespread tampering pale.  And, although Cory
Aquino's new government is not exactly constitutionally kosher, it is being
quickly recognized by other nations simply because Filipinos are so nice.
Nice.

A member of our domestic federal government, George Shultz, called the change
in government a dramatic example of the democratic process, and it was.  Look:
Marcos called the elections a couple of months in advance, did his best to
manipulate it to his advantage, won but lost the confidence of the electorate
and therefore lost and left the country.

Compare that dramatic example with U.S.  presidential elections:  Democrats
fight with other Democrats for 18 months--likewise the Republicans.  Then,
Republicans and Democrats fight with each other for four months.  If the wrong
candidate wins by losing he wins anyway and stays in office without even
thinking about giving the winning loser a vacation in Hawaii.  Ex-presidents
stay on the payroll for life instead of being conveniently exiled to another
country.

Wouldn't you have felt better if Nixon or Carter had been exiled?

We personally know a few Filipinos living in America and they are among our
treasured acquaintances.  Were they up in arms about the turmoil in their
homeland?  We called the other day and heard their phone-answering machine say:
"We're not home right now but leave a message and we'll call you right back.
Oh, by the way, we support Corazon Aquino as the duly elected leader of our
country, but when Ferdy calls in a couple of weeks we'll probably have him over
for Bar-b-que.  Beep!"

==============================================================================

THE FLAT-OUT TAX REVISITED

Over two years ago, we published a column ridiculing some tentative tax reform
proposals which had sprouted in the Congress.  There was, at that time, a small
move for reformation of our ludicrous system of taxation.

We proposed a "Flat-out Tax," which would allow the government to take all of
everybody's money and refund whatever might be left over.  Americans would
simply live on credit all year long and, hopefully, be able to pay off at
refund time.

Sound familiar?  The president, in his televised message last week, mentioned
that many of us wouldn't even have to file a return under his proposed tax
program.

Hmmmm.

There were some other features in our Flat-out Tax which are included to some
extent in this new proposal.  For instance, we had suggested that the standard
deduction should be raised to $25,000 per person.  Just look what the president
has suggested:	raising the standard deduction!

In our Flat-out Tax, we knew that revenues lost to the government from
individuals would have to be made up elsewhere.  We suggested making businesses
tax, at least once in a while.	Well, what do you know?  The president actually
proposed having corporations pay income tax!

(Technically, corporations are supposed to pay tax now, but there are so many
loopholes that many don't.)

But there are still some of our proposals which need to be included in this new
tax plan.  (The administration obviously has a copy of our article -- it has
stolen so many of our good ideas -- but it must have lost a page or two.)

For example, we suggested making some foreign countries pay U.S.  income tax.
Like Japan, Israel, El Salvador and Korea.  They get enough U.S.  aid!	They
ought to be willing to pay some of it back in taxes.

And we still think the Soviet Union ought to shoulder some of our Defense
budget.  After all, they're the ones we're spending all that money on.  (At the
very least, in the event of nuclear war the U.S.S.R.  should be required to pay
us back for whatever we dump on them.)

We think an essential element of any new tax plan ought to have some provisions
for the rich and for those with extraordinarily high incomes.  Like, maybe,
they ought to be able to make 'tax-adoptions' of needy folks.  A tax-adoption
would be a loophole, sure, but if a rich guy paid taxes for a few poorer folks
and took a credit for it, the government wouldn't miss out on any money and the
tax rates could be kept low.

Our Flat-out Tax included a program of monthly or quarterly tax returns.  Each
period would be separate and unique.  So, if you make a lot of money in three
months and none in the other nine, you'd have a chance to save some money.  And
take long vacations.

We'll reprint our original article if we can find it.  It's amazing how much
went straight into the president's supposedly new ideas.

==============================================================================

ECONOMIC ROUNDUP

The stock market, with new expanded trading hours, has been slugging along
around a Dow Industrials of 1300.  Unemployment crept up.  Total employment is
bounding up.  Leading economic indicators are positive.  The GNP is growing a
little faster and the dollar is finally taking a beating after having reached
new highs.

Congress lifted the debt ceiling, but hasn't taken action on a tax bill.

The balance of trade is heavily in favor of imports.

What does all this mean?  It's really very simple to understand if you buy a
copy of NUMBER CRUNCH software!

Coleco, which puts out NUMBER CRUNCH, expects it will exceed even Cabbage Patch
dolls in popularity this Christmas.  Why?  According to Coleco spokesperson,
Beth Louise (we looked at her birth certificate), "People want to know the
precise moment when they should ask for a raise, seek credit to buy Coleco
products, or dip into the kids' college tuition funds."

But NUMBER CRUNCH is more than software for confused adults.	It has two
outstanding features which will insure its popularity at department stores
everywhere:  First, it provides a forecast of excuses the Administration will
use when trying to explain new economic figures, and, second, it has an
easy-to-use section for children called, aptly, ALLOWANCE.

ALLOWANCE is the star attraction, without doubt.  Using ALLOWANCE, your kids
can keep the family's finances in their own perspective.  For example, suppose
your 8-year-old has been cajoling you to let her rent her own apartment ("All
the other kids are moving out!").  Lead her to ALLOWANCE and it'll pop out a
colorful chart:

LESLIE WANTS TO MOVE OUT?  1:  Candy costs per month--$96 2:	Rent and
Utilities--$654 3:  School lunch money--$10 4:	Legal assistance--$65 5:  Total
expenses per month--$825 6:  Allowance--$25 7:	Proceeds from parental neglect
lawsuit--$1,000,000 8:	Help from Grandma--$88 9:  Total income per month 'til
18 years-of-age--$6500 10:  BUY A LUXURY CONDO IN BEL AIR!!!

Now, any kid can understand THAT.  Still, NUMBER CRUNCH's other feature,
EXCUSE, can provide hours of fun for the whole family.	What excuse will the
president use to explain rising unemployment?  What excuse will Daddy use to
delay an increase in the kids' weekly allowance?  What excuse should the kids
use to cover up for those lousy-looking report cards?

There's no question about it.  NUMBER CRUNCH will knock the socks of your
entire family.

==============================================================================

OUR ECONOMY IS A SHAM
By M.L. Verb

I was innocently reading some news stories the other day when this astonishing
bit of information leaped on me:  There are more than 220 styles of cigarettes
on the market.

Not just brands but styles.  Like low-tar king filters or regular unfiltered
types or extra-longs in a crush-proof box or menthol slims with turbo charge
and so forth.

I reached for my pen to make a note about this but I couldn't find my red or
black ballpoint or my blue ultra-fine point model so I put my hand in a nearby
pencil holder and pulled out a No.  2 lead model from the seven or eight styles
in it.

Which is when it struck me:  Our economy is a house of cards, a sham.  It is
built on endless varieties of the very same product.

For instance, consider the shampoos you'll find in my own bathroom.  To keep
the five heads of hair that usually reside in my house shiny we own enough
different kinds of shampoo to stock a small-town Woolworth's.  I use the bottle
with the green top.  My wife and kids (I try to not understand about this, so I
can't tell you which belongs to whom) use the orange, pink, yellow and gold
caps (all of which carry the same brand name) plus the blue and white bottle,
which I also use now and then.

We also have special summer swimming shampoo that takes out chlorine, winter
shampoo that takes out snowdrifts, fall shampoo that takes out leaves and
spring shampoo that takes out winter.  I'm not even bringing up all the
conditioners and rinses and such.  I'm talking just shampoos.

When I think about shampoos I lose my respect for the imaginativeness of the
cigarette industry, which has only 220 or so styles.

The shampoos in my house, by the way, share shelf space with the six or seven
kinds of toothpaste needed to meet the special consumer demands of our mouths.
We've got your regular flavor fluoride type, your mint flavor, your winter-gel
mint flavor, your tarter-control gel, your combination toothpaste and mouthwash
recommended by the interpersonal relationship committee of the American Dating
Association and your brighter-than-white tooth powder.

With all the toothpaste and shampoo there's hardly enough room on the bathroom
shelves for the 400 bottles of nail polish, which appear in such colors as
Spring Tulip, Roseate Spoonbill, Amber Rosehips, Champagne Cake, Well Red and
Start from Scratch Pink.

Nor is this plague of varieties limited to my bathroom.  There are white golf
balls with 365 dimples, orange golf balls with 299 dimples and neon green golf
balls with dufferflex no-cut long-distance covers.

If you shop for a car you can't just buy a car.  You can't even just buy a
Dodge.	You've got to choose among your K cars, your J-through-Z cars, your
unpopular-features special package of options on your wagon, your sedan or your
hatchfront.

Can an economy based on 46 different brands and 157 different varieties of
toilet paper survive?  Maybe we should fire up our home computers--our IBMs
(both the PC and the orphan PCjr, which I own), our Apple IIe's and IIc's, our
Franklins, our Commodores, our Leading Edges--and look for answers.

If I discover any, I'll try to publish them in the newspaper I work for, either
our morning or evening paper, although I can't say whether it'll be in the
state edition or the metro or city edition or one of our several suburban
editions.  Just think of them as shampoo and buy them all.

==============================================================================

HE CAN AFFORD TO THROW IT AWAY
By M.L. Verb

The first thing I noticed recently about the old garage on the farm where my
father grew up is that it wasn't there.  But I wandered around back of the barn
and milking parlor (where the cows aren't anymore) out by where the train
tracks aren't anymore, and there it was, a machine shed now.

When things in my house -- and yours, too, I'll bet -- get old and useless we
throw or give them away.  But farmers -- especially in this bum agricultural
economy -- can't afford to do that.  Oh, I guess my uncle, who runs the farm in
central Illinois, could afford to throw away a lot more than he does, but years
of resourcefulness have made it hard for him to pick up such new bad habits.

Where that old garage used to be he's built a fancy new garage with room for
his Corvette, which he'd be glad to sell you, his Seville and maybe a pickup
truck or two.  Not his old red Chevy pickup, which was new for about a day and
a half back in 1951 or so.  That has been recycled into a place to sit out in
what used to be the old milking parlor, which in turn has been recycled into a
tool shed and fix-it shop.

I remember years when he recycled part of the barnyard into a slick new milking
parlor.  My uncle was proud of it.  He wouldn't mind getting visitors up at
4:30 or so in the morning to show them how much the cows liked it.

He sold his dairy herd a few years ago to concentrate on corn and soybeans, and
has recycled the new milking parlor into a shoe store warehouse.  He didn't
exactly mean to, but one of his sons-in-law owns some shoe stores and needed
place to store extra shoes, so there they are.

The farm is like a clever puzzle that's constantly being pulled apart and put
back together in a new way.

My uncle thought about tearing down the old barn but changed his mind.  Instead
he ripped out the hay loft, thus making space to park the tractors and other
tall machines.  Then he jerry-rigged a big back door on the barn by recycling
the rollers off the old garage door.

Out back of the barn there used to be railroad tracks.  Even used to be a
railroad.  My father thinks it's either funny or philosophical to tell about
being a boy there watching the trains go by with either his father or
grandfather.  When the final car had passed the old man would say to the boy,
"Well, the last car was behind again."

Anyway, not long ago the railroad went bust or something and tore up all its
old tracks and sold some of the right-of-way to my uncle, who has recycled it
into an addition to the corn field.

The rule seems to be to use everything at least 100 times and when you've got a
problem, try something, no matter how goofy it sounds.

An old house that isn't there any more is a good example.  When my grandfather
took over the farm from his father, he needed a bigger house, so he simply
moved the old house a few dozen yards closer to the road for my
great-grandparents to use.

When my great-grandparents died my grandfather gave their old house to a
relative on the next farm south, whose own house had burned down.  They simply
moved that old house again, and there it stood for decades.

Recently, however, it had fallen into considerable disrepair in its role as a
tenant rental house.  (Apparently it was in roughly the same shape my uncle's
old ed pickup truck is in now.) There was some discussion about saving it but
for once the prevailing opinion leaned in favor of demolition.

So someone called up the folks at the fire department and suggested they come
out and burn it down.  Which they did.	My uncle says the fire department there
gets lots of calls to burn things down.  It's good practice for them, I guess,
and it means a dead house can be useful unto the cold- cinder end.

All this recycling and resourcefulness impresses me.	In fact, I am mulling over
the idea of arranging to be sent to the old family farm at the apparent end of
my usefulness in life in the hope that someone can salvage me somehow.  Just as
long as it doesn't involve my being burned down by the fire department.

==============================================================================

T-10, WHERE ARE YOU?

<Ring!  Ring!>

Hello.  This is T-10, heh.  Well, I think I've got another one for you, heh.
Bogart's been acting oddly lately; you ought to check him out.

<Click.  Buzzz...>

(Radio Announcer) <nasally> It was the late 1940s when the Red Scare was at its
height in Hollywood and all across America.  The FBI, under Director J.  Edgar
Hoover, turned thousands of mattresses...peeked at hundreds of closet
skeletons...sifted through reams of information, all in a grand attempt to root
out Commies from our midst and keep America from being subverted.

(Yokel) <turning from radio to yokelette in rural Kansas> <twangily> Sure looks
like them G-men is tryin', Maudie.

(Maudie, Yokelette) Shut up, Herb, an' come hep me with th' dishes!

(Radio Announcer) <nasally, static-laden> ...With the help of courageous
informants all over the nation, the FBI, under the leadership of J.  Edgar
Hoover, is beginning to throw its net on Commie cells everywhere...

<Ring!  Ring!>

Hello.  Well, uh, this is T-10 again.  Heh, well, I think you should have a
look at Bacall, too.  Y'kno he's been spending a lot of time with Bogart...

(Senator Whoever) <at congressional hearings> What do YOU think we can do about
the rampant Commie influence in America, Mr.  Reagan?

(Ronald Reagan) <right hand in air> Now, heh, well, let me say this.	I don't
think any political party should be persecuted for its ideological basis, heh.
<under his breath> ...but that doesn't mean we shouldn't go after people, does
it....

(Radio Announcer) <stridently nasal> The FBI gives each informant a code name
and number to secure the informant's identity forever.  Do YOU know any
Commies?

Anyone who leans to the left, say?  Someone -- a coworker, for instance -- who
has a pink house?  Call the FBI, under the leadership of Director J.  Edgar
Hoover and TURN 'EM IN to preserve the American way of life from the Commie
threat.

<Ring!  Ring!>

Hello.  T-10 here.  Well, heh, I think you ought to check out Fonda, Tracy,
Hepburn, Carlisle for sure, heh, and, well, while you're at it, well, why not
some of those kids like Douglas, Mitchum, Lamarr---

<Click.  Buzzz...>

==============================================================================

OH TO BE IN TRALA, LA.
By M.L. Verb

I was driving through Virginia a few weeks ago thinking abstractly about Mary
Anne Pikrone.  You don't know her.  My wife and I once worked with her.

Well, I assume you don't know her.  Maybe you do.  It really doesn't matter one
way or the other because Mary Anne Pikrone has nothing at all to do with this
story, except that she lived in Virginia the last I knew, which is why she was
vaguely on my mind.

napping in the seat next to me and my children, for the first time in hours,
seemed to be quiet in the back seat, listening to crazed punk rockers on their
tape recorder head sets.

So I simply kept still about Sali, Va.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I finally got back home and opened a copy of a
new book called "Names," written by a fellow I know, Paul Dickson.  "Names" is
a fun book full of all kinds of strange names, including, it turns out, Paul's
collection of real and made-up towns that fit with apt state abbreviations.  Of
which Sali, Va., is not one of his examples, though it certainly could have
been.

His list includes Fiven, Tenn.; Faux, Pa.; Houdy, Miss.; Odear, Me.; Praise,
Ala.; Eski, Mo.; Noaz, Ark.; Sayno, Mo.; Drain, O.; Shapeless, Mass.; Lowe,
Cal.; Carr, Wash.; Nohitsnorunsno, Ariz.; Farmerina, Del.; Proan, Conn.; Ether,
Or., and Acapel, La.

If you have memorized the abbreviation rules in your newspaper's style book, as
I assume most of you have, you will notice that some of the state abbreviations
used in that list don't conform.  For instance, we don't abbreviate Ohio.  But
you have to allow a bit of leeway with this game.  There isn't much funny,
after all, about Drain, Ohio, although Drain, Ohio, is not a bad idea.

In any event, my experience in Sali, Va., and Paul Dickson's timely new book
have whetted my appetite for this sort of meaninglessness.  So I now offer you
my own list of made-up towns with apt state abbreviations and encourage you to
waste your own time thinking up more and E-mailing them in.  (I'll try to
explain the few that may not be immediately obvious.)

Trala, La.; Jor, Ga.; Sali, Va.; Mash, Mich.; (which would have been better
turned around if only the state were named Machigan); Pretty, Miss.; Near,
Miss.; Locken, Ky.; Timeto, Wash., and Hillen, Del.

As I say, I'm collecting these.  So make some up and send them in.  Then Send,
Mo.

==============================================================================

PAPER LAZARUS
By M.L. Verb

It took some time but we figured out that the guy on the rediscovered old
poster next to Paul Splittorff is Doug Bird.  And the guy on the left end of
the top row is Joe Zdeb, whose strange name I still remember how to spell.  But
the fellow with the moronic smile between Hal McRae and Amos Otis has us
stumped.

This poster of the 1978 Kansas City Royals recently emerged from one of the
filing cabinets--penetralia of professional mysteries--currently being cleared
out in this area of my office.

Every few years some employee or other disappears without a ripple and it's
widely assumed he or she has been either sucked into--or inadvertently filed
away in--one the several hundred thousand filing cabinets that stand around the
newsroom like grim soldiers at parade rest.

They are not soldiers at all.  They are mausoleums, filled mostly with the
useless flotsam and jetsam of careers run amok.

One of my colleagues turned up an old notebook containing quotes she once
jotted down from the first interview she had with a public official who later
became her husband.

Posters, once deeply meaningful, have risen to life like so many paper
Lazaruses.  For the most , we have treated them better than Lazarus was
treated--we have reburied them.

Books--usually unread--have been tossed into the atmosphere for anyone to grab.
I latched onto a 1973 Erich Segal book about Poop's Peak.  That's all I can
tell you about it.  I'm planning to take it home to my kids.  My kids probably
are more interested in Poop's Peak than I am.

Copies of the "Congressional Record" from five or six years ago filled one
shelf, and were offered around.  It may restore your faith in people in a
newspaper office to know that no one wanted to take them home to read.  So far
I have not begun my task of clearing out a shelf of files I have halfway across
the office and moving them to a more convenient shelf near my desk.  I am
waiting to do this until some weekend, when fewer people will be around to ask
why a grown man with 20 years left on his mortgage keeps on file the 1970
Census Bureau advance reports on the population of Missouri and Kansas.

The common view about people in the news business is that they live only for
the moment, the next deadline, that they have no more respect for the past than
a Soviet historian.  But that is not true.

We live our professional careers in the company of silent gray metal burial
plots full of history.  Out of them, some of us probably can produce a 1968
edition of the Yellow Pages.  Others have sports programs from games played
when Richard Nixon was trying to figure out how to dump Spiro ("Nolo
Contendere") Agnew.

We have calendars for years in which the well-dressed man's wardrobe included a
Nehru jacket.  We have books listing government officials who held office
before many of us were born.

All of these resources are here so when deadline presses near we can use them
to add background and perspective to our public musings.  And we would do that,
too.  Except all this stuff has been reshuffled and rearranged yet again and
once more (and still) nobody has the remotest idea where anything is.

==============================================================================

POINTERS FOR DINING OUT
By M.L. Verb

No doubt because one of my daughters and I were about to see a ballet company
from Utah, of all places, perform a ballet called "Billy the Kid," of all
things, we chose first to eat at--what else?--a German restaurant.

This child of mine studies French and, unlike her father, even has visited
Paris.  So when I was trying to signal our German waiter, I put on my best
French accent and called, "Garcon, Garcon." It was a cheap joke but if no one
else will laugh at a cheap joke your kids sometimes will.

Having paid me that small compliment, though, she informed me that the real way
to summon a waiter in a German restaurant is to yell out, "Dummkopf!

Dummkopf!" So I laughed at her cheap joke.

Then I recalled an article I once wrote in which I offered wrong-headed
tourists tips to people visiting Kansas City--urging them, for instance, to
stop by Hallmark and ask for all the free greeting cards they need.

And it occurred to me that it would be fun to put together a small booklet for
people who want to say the correct thing and act the correct way in
restaurants.  Except, of course, my advice would be purposefully and
consistently wrong.  Towit:  calling out "Dummkopf!" to summon your German
waiter.

Here are a few things I'd like to put in such a booklet.  Perhaps you can think
of others.


	
Take care to pay in the correct currency.  Fancy French restaurants, for


instance, accept only French francs.  Taco Bell, by contrast, requires Mexican
pesos.  And the Japanese steak houses considers it bad etiquette if you don't
pull out a wad of yen.  At the restaurant specializing in American cuisine?
Only plastic, of course.


	
Cajuns, as you know, count backwards.  Ask them how far it is to some place


and they'll say, "Oh, 5 or 4 miles." Which is why you need to read prices
backwards at Cajun restaurants.  Blackened redfish, for instance, may list for

$9.95 but the waiter expects you to pay only $5.99.


	
At Greek restaurants waiters think it's especially amusing if, when you order,


you say, "I'll have the blue Plato special."


	
One of my favorite things to do in high-class seafood restaurants is to take


along a fishing pole and angle for my own lobster in the tank.  If you're
feeling brave, just take off your jacket, roll up your sleeve and haul one out.
It's best to holler, "I'll eat this baby!" when you get one and then toss it to
the nearest waiter, who will admire your spunk.


	
At the chinese restaurants be sure to make two reservations.  One for, say, 7


p.m., and the second for 9:30, an hour after you finish your first dinner, when
of course you'll be starved again.


	
Waiters in Eye-talian (be sure you say it that way) restaurants are always


eager to hear your latest Mafia jokes.  Also be sure to ask for the Greek salad
there and insist that it be served only with French dressing.  You should
explain to your waiter that you'd have asked for the blue cheese but you don't
like things that end in vowels.


	
Barbecue joints consider it a mark of good taste if you bring along a jug of


your own sauce.  You'll get a break on your tab if you ask for the owner and
explain to him why yours is better than his.

I'm sure there are more tips worth passing on here but I'm out of time.  I've
got to run by Kentucky Fried Chicken before it closes and pick up a Big Mac for
one of my kids.

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Such Concludes the humor of M.L. Verb -
Call The Works BBS - 914's Textfile BBS. 914-238-8195
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