Grateful Dead, fateful dead

The greatest challenge for a humor columnist nowadays is to compete with the real news. But we'll try.

    The world's a funny place. It's also a stupid place, but never mind, that's what the rest of the paper's for.
    As I recall, we were in the middle of reviewing the best from Postscripts, the former corner of this paper where weird little stories were dumped by reputable editors who wouldn't run them.
    Not that Postscripts didn't cover important topics like politics, crime and California.
    F'rinstance, elections in the California primaries. Roger Donaldson, in his first foray in politics, had good reason to be optimistic: he was unopposed in his district. He got 171 votes. Ruefully, "None Of The Above" got 207. 
    We'll get back to the Loony State, but first, this breaking news bulletin from Pensacola, Florida: Al Gliniecki set a world record by tying 679 cherry stems into knots with his tongue. "Thith ith thuthy hooth," he was quoted as saying.
    In other fruit news, Scotland Yard reported another eccentric crime mystery: a London gang throwing farm produce from cars at passersby. The rash of molotov salad attacks became a matter of murder when a man was killed by a turnip.
    Taxpayers in California (we knew we'd get back to it, because most weird things happen here) spent $750,000 for a three-year state-appointed study to get the following conclusion from the researchers: "Self-esteem is central to most of the personal and social ills that plague our society today." The California Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility also discovered this jolting fact: the family is a "crucial incubator of self-esteem." A state senator called it "one of the most historic documents ever produced by the state government in California." That sure tells you something. 
    Meanwhile, a nun who had taken the vow of poverty won $1 million in the California State Lottery, and a charity concert was organized for the victims of a San Francisco earthquake -- which was a nice thing to do, but did they have to invite a rock group called the Grateful Dead?
    The exact opposite happened in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where about 50 people gathered on a bridge to watch a woman commit suicide. The bridge collapsed. Nine spectators were killed. The woman walked away unhurt. 
    We get a keen insight into such incidents from Saudi King Fahd. When 1,426 Muslims died in a stampede in Mecca, he wasn't particularly upset. "It was God's will," he said. "Had they not died there, they would have died elsewhere and at the same predestined moment." (Funny, when it comes to Palestinians, it's not God's will, but Israel's ill will.)
    This seems to be a common philosophy. Othal Brand, an appointee to a Texas pesticide review board, said this about the reported dangers of the termite killer chlordane: "Sure, it's going to kill a lot of people, but they may be dying of something else anyway."
    Or take this reassuring thought by Jim Stapley, a councilman of Mesa, Arizona. He wanted an airport built but ran into stiff opposition from a group of elderly people living near the site. They met, and he said they had nothing to worry about, because the airport wouldn't be built for another 20 years and "most of the people in this room will be dead."
    Keep in mind, these are people responsible for the safety and wellbeing of the public.
    Next time you complain about Egged drivers, think about this statement by a Bangladesh union of transport workers, who went on strike to protest stiff penalties for drivers causing fatal actions. Their defense was theologically impeccable: "Accidents are always an act of God, no matter if the driver of the vehicle is responsible for it."
    When in a pickle, blame God.
    One of my all-time favorite Postscripts (in the top 1,000, definitely) was this item; nothing ever came close to it for environmentally correct absurdity: The US Air Force changed the cooling system of their ICBMs to eliminate gases harmful to the ozone layer. Very considerate. It should be mentioned that each ICBM carries up to 10 nuclear bombs, enough to wipe out entire cities.
    What's wrong with the world today amounts to this: In the early '90s, the US helped the Taliban defeat the Russians, keeping a decidedly more benign enemy out of Afghanistan until such time as the US had to call upon Russia to help defeat the Taliban, which the US had boosted to power in the first place. Similarly, Pentagon planners once asked the government for $320 billion to develop the F-22 fighter, saying the plane was necessary to defeat F-15s and F-16s the US had sold to certain Middle Eastern countries.
    Who's running this world anyway? This will give you a clue: Chelsea Clinton had a headache in school, but the nurse wouldn't give her an aspirin without a parent's permission. Said the president's daughter: "Call Daddy. Don't call Mommy, she's too busy."

CHANGING THE subject to, I dunno, fish (just for the halibut), we go to Denmark, which is perfectly capable itself of being silly. There's a law there that you can't break the ice, and I don't mean socially. Fishermen are charged 500 crowns ($70) for a permit to cut a hole in the ice, but abiding by the law is foolish -- the fine for illegally making a hole is only 200 crowns.
    Tourists are everywhere, except, of course, in Israel and Afghanistan. Apparently, even wretched North Korea gets streams of visitors: overlooking the Potongang River in the capital, they built a 105-story, 3,000-room hotel. Good luck to you if you're lost and trying to explain that you're staying at the Ryugyong on the Potongang in Pyongyang.
    It's not true that there's nothing to eat in North Korea. Pyongyang has a 5,000-seat cold-noodle restaurant.
    Meanwhile, at the Chateau Laurier on the Rideau Canal in Ottawa (North Koreans have a lot of trouble saying that), concierge John McComber was approached by a guest who said he was in desperate need of 10 trombones. It took some doing, but McComber triumphantly fulfilled the request. Grumbling about the lousy service, the guest had wondered what the hell took so long. He was French-speaking, and had asked for trombones, which translates as "paper clips."
    It's not just Anglos misunderstanding Francos; some Brits can barely understand other Brits. The BBC was sued for saying a man had herpes. Balderdash, the BBC retorted, claiming it had referred to his "hairpiece." One more reason the British should switch to Americanese.
    The world's most misunderstood written language is Prescription. Half the pharmacists who responded to a survey admitted they had misread prescriptions and given patients the wrong drug -- but they blamed doctors' careless handwriting. In one such incident, a patient suffering from an ache in his right ear was prescribed an antibiotic and local anesthetic. The doctor scribbled that the medicine should be administered to the "R ear." Sure enough, the nurse read the instructions as "Rear" and the patient was given the drug in his rectum three times before the mistake was discovered. Mind you, he didn't have an earache in his tushy anymore.
    We'll get to sex in a minute, but first, music.
    Soprano Beverly Sills was 17 when she embarked on a singing tour of the US Midwest. She arrived in a Nebraska town at the same time it was hit by a grain fungus blight called "stinking smut." Picking up a copy of the local paper to send to her proud mama, she found on the front page a picture of a dead cow with the caption "Beverly Sills to sing at high school." And underneath, a photo of her with the caption: "Stinking smut hits Nebraska."
    The same sort of thing happened to one of our favorite Palestinian leaders. The Honolulu Advertiser ran a story about Aileen Wuornos, "a hitchhiking prostitute portrayed as a calculating killer of seven men [who] has a self-destructive personality and suffers from a slightly dysfunctional brain." Unfortunately, the story was accompanied by a photo of Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi. We can't decide if that's defamation of character, or definition of character.  
    Following reports that a British woman who never had sex was artificially inseminated, some Christian clergy denounced virgin births as immoral.
    Five fortune tellers had their crystal balls stolen in Ireland. The theft caught them by surprise -- predictably.
    If things are bad these days, it's actually worse than you thought. Astronomers estimate that days are gaining 1.7 milliseconds for every 100 years. It's the last thing we need to know, that days are getting longer.