Sunday, September 7, 2003 - With a baffling lack of procrastination, I attended YMCA Traffic School yesterday and learned many fun facts. If a police officer, using a radar gun, pulls you over for speeding, you are well within your rights to request “May I see your tuning fork?” In California, you have to wear seat belts in the front and back seats of a passenger car as well as when you’re braving a ride in the flat bed of a pickup truck. Folks cooking up bacon and eggs in their careening motor homes have no such requirement nor do school buses. It is legal for motorcycles to drive between lanes of stalled traffic, however, if a car changes lanes and hits the motorcycle, the motorcyclist, not the car driver, is to blame. Poetic justice?

Monday, September 8, 2003 - I love work. I can sit and watch it all day. This explains my morbid interest in such PBS shows as This Old House and its sadomasochistic companion The New Yankee Workshop where Norm proves, time and again, that you can build anything out of wood, providing you have equipped your 3-car garage with $700,000 worth of noise-polluting power tools. Now The Discovery Channel is airing a series called Great Biker Build-Off where legends like Indian Larry and Paul Yaffe have 30 days to create an original chopper from scratch. Who knew there were old school issues like wire spokes versus high tech laser cut spokes? Hammers pounding metal. Sparks flying. My tiny brain exploded.

Tuesday, September 9, 2003 - In London, while David Blaine is attempting to stay in his glass coffin for 44 days without food, pranksters have declared open season. Less than six hours into his ordeal, teenagers peppered the coffin with eggs before they were chased away by security guards. Two young girls bared their breasts and threw fish and chips. And golfers teed up on Tower Bridge and tried hitting the coffin with golf balls. In the small hours when the exhausted magician tried to get some sleep, he was woken up by a man banging an Indian bhangra drum. Blaine entered the coffin, saying: “I can only hope for the best and expect the worse.” He may not have been prepared for the rowdy British crowds, however.

Wednesday, September 10, 2003 - What letter makes an evergreen impartial? What letter heats up a battle? What letter makes a needle blush? Now, for the first time, you can lookup online hints and answers for my game 3 in Three, courtesy of CHz Productions, Ltd. (Although CHz “doesn’t stand for anything, nor does it mean anything,” the term was derived from Cheez Whiz which is manufactured by Kraft Foods Inc. who is celebrating their 100th year anniversary. Coincidentally, one hundred years is also the known half-life of any Cheez Whiz product. In the spirit of J. L. Kraft who sold cheese from a horse-drawn wagon in 1903, “Dive in. Look back. Think ahead. We’re looking forward to spending our next 100 years with you.”)
Thursday, September 11, 2003 - No politics here. “In my former life as a wildlife biologist, I did a study that was designed to learn more about coyote breeding pairs and territorial needs. The study involved putting radio collars on both the male and female coyote in each pair. To catch the animals for radio placement, a padded jaw trap was used. These traps were placed in the area of several known pairs of coyotes. By the end of the study, radios had been placed on six pairs of coyotes. As they were tracked by radio signal over the two year study, it was determined that none of the adults were trapped in their own territory. It was only when they left their familiar surroundings that they got into trouble and were trapped.”

Friday, September 12, 2003 - Philip G. Hamerton asks “Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?” I suppose so. When authors unknowingly write quotable passages, they invariably clutter the page with less memorable words as well. Alfred North Whitehead complains “I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning, or destroyed it altogether.” More important, who is Alfred North Whitehead? As to Godzilla attacking Mt. Rushmore, I quote the White Album “The walrus was Paul.”
Saturday, September 13, 2003 - “This reminded me of one of your mug shots,” writes Sin City. “Hardy, har, har,” I reply eloquently, wishing I could look half that good. Even Ambrose Bierce acknowledges “Every time Europe looks across the Atlantic to see the American eagle, it observes only the rear end of an ostrich.” When asked — joke “ostrich” — Google counted 15,100 occurrences of the “Sir, what’s with the ostrich and the cat?” joke. Furthermore, an ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain, a shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes, a cat has 32 muscles in each ear, a dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours, a goldfish has a memory span of 3 seconds, and tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.