Many among us make resolutions for the new year. Among
them are pledges to lose weight, start jogging, obey our parents,
pay our bills, watch less television, avoid lutefisk, go to
church, stay out of jail and avoid county commission meetings
in Salina.
Our litany of resolutions is endless. And boring. What we
need are new year’s headlines and anecdotes to tell us how
things are in our busy, complicated lives – and how, with a bit
of fantasy, they might be.
For example(s):
*
SALINE COMMISSIONER
IS AWARD FINALIST
Saline County Commissioner John Price is among three
finalists for this year’s Etiquette in Government award from
the Council for Rural-Urban Debate (CRUD). A spokesman
for CRUD said Price had demonstrated a “unique understanding
and awareness of life values and compassions embracing
public employees, governing policy and citizen participation
in government.”
Price acknowledged the CRUD nomination, saying the two
other finalists, including a woman, were “scum,” and “lowrent
bottom-feeders. But we’re the bosses, and it takes all
kinds to be bosses in government – even women, the pretty
little things.”
*
ESPN PLEDGES IN-DEPTH
POST-GAME REPORTING
Sideline reporter: Coach, tell us how you felt on the sideline
during this thrilling victory. Are you proud of your team?
Coach: Not particularly. Actually, I was busy thinking about
my new seed catalogues and whether zinnias and marigolds
were best for my front flower beds.
Reporter: Hollyhocks might work if your porch is high
enough, or nasturtiums for a lower profile.
Coach: Ya think?
Reporter, now turning to player: So you’ve finally won the
big one! So what’s going through your mind right now?
Player: Sooo, I have a test on Tuesday – macro economics in
post-war Luxembourg. My tutor has small pox. So I’m worried
about my grade.
Reporter: Get a flu shot.
*
ROSE BOWL OFFICIALS
PROMISE NO MORE BAND
PASADENA – Following a flood of complaints about this
year’s pre-game Rose Bowl ceremony, pageant officials said
they would no longer allow a marching band to perform
original arrangements of the National Anthem before the big
game.
“It baffled the entire crowd,” said one event coordinator who
declined to be named for fear of lynching. “No one seemed
to understand this version, the original score for the Anthem.
Next year, we’ll scrap the band and return to the awesome
popular country-western, or an awesome hip-hop arrangement.
Heavy metal is also awesome. Billy-Don Warbler was awesome
last year with his fiddle and steel geetar and barbeque
smoke Anthem fireworks. The original classical Anthem is not
awesome enough.”
*
ROYALS, RED SOX SIGN FOR
$2.6 BILLION SHAVING AD
The Kansas City Royals and Boston Red Sox, fresh from last
season’s advertising campaign for facial fertilizer from Scott’s
Turf-Builder, have signed a multi-billion dollar contract to
harvest the results.
They’ll be featured in television ads for two of Gillette’s
latest shaving products – the electric Macho Bush Hog, which
features four tiny, replacable weed-whips for trimming longer
beards, and the thick-bladed, Paul Bunyon Beard Axe for those
close, hard-to-get facial canyons.
Team spokesmen said their players had also been offered
new endorsement contracts for personal “sport spittoons” from
Glob-Master and from Sling-Screen, which makes special netting
to catch flying sunflower seed shells.
Officials said the offers may conflict with the players’ forgotten,
unexpired contract with GooberGone, a manufacturer
of absorbent dugout carpeting.
*
LINDSBORG LEADS CHARITY
CAMPAIGN FOR STATE AGENCIES
Lindsborg City officials have launched a campaign to raise
more than $5 billion to help counter the state’s growing budget
deficit, now estimated at more than many thousands of millions.
“State legislators, the poor things, spent more money than
they thought they had cut in taxes, having no understanding of
the difference between red and black ink,” said a press release
from downtown Lindsborg. The problem apparently stems
from a mixup in sorting the governor’s mail, and confusing the
statement balance of his personal bank account with the state’s,
and thinking all was well.
Lindsborg will begin the campaign by sending a team from
Soderstrom Elementary School to help tutor budget-challenged
lawmakers by using a special textbook entitled
My dollar, Your budget and Our Problem
How your bad math led to our worries
The campaign’s second phase will include volunteer fundraisers
from other cities joining the program.
*
ACTIVITY IN WASHINGTON;
HOUSE PASSES A BILL!
WASHINGTON – The U.S. House of Representatives on
Monday passed and sent to the Senate a measure that declares
Monday as the start of the work week, increasing speculation
that the Congress may get a bill out of its logjam and send it to
the president for his signature. This year.
Observers were confident that the Senate would quickly
approve the House measure. The bill, after all, is an exact replica
of a work-week measure passed six times by the Senate
last year, but rejected each time by the lower chamber because
not all House members had been consulted during the Senate’s
debate.
Although Monday has been decided as the beginning, skeptics
are doubtful the House and Senate can agree this year on
the day to end the Congressional work week.
Intense debate over the full-week measure was suspended
when proponents announced that they did not have the votes
to decide whether Wednesday or Thursday would end the work
week. A compromise measure, listing only Monday as the
beginning, was quickly drafted and introduced.
*
NCAA EXPANDS BOWL
GAME SCHEDULE
The NCAA, citing increased demand for post-season bowl
games, has added five games to its current 39-game postseason
schedule, including the new Waffle Bowl, to be played
in leap year Februarys in (of course) Washington D.C.
Additions are the Bowl Bowl, the Dot.Org-Dot.Net Bowl,
the Bawl Bowl, Compressed Air Bowl, and Dot-Dot-Dit-Dot-
Dit-Dot Bowl, sponsored by the Association of Federated
Morse Code Cluckers.
The Dot.Org-Dot.Net Bowl is to be sponsored by the
Consumer Affairs division of the American Society of Dot-Net
fishing lures and accessories. The organization had planned to
call it the Fish Bowl but decided the name lacked the flair to
reflect a need for technology in fishing.
The Bawl Bowl is sponsored by the Federation of Persistent
Complainers and Whiners and is already embroiled in a controversy
over changing colors – currently black and blue – for
the sponsoring logo.
The Compressed Air Bowl, in Bicycle Pump, Tenn., is the
brainchild of a newspaper editor in Sterling, Kansas. Several
years ago he offered that bowl site for the Big XII Kansas
Jayhawks, anticipating their first winning season. (For the
Jayhawks, a winning football season is a season with a win.)
The Association of Federated Morse Code Cluckers originally
planned to join as a sponsor for the Bawl Bowl, but its
sponsorship offer was declined by the Federation of Persistent
Complainers and Whiners, who protested the sharing arrangements
as “fair, to a fault.”
The NCAA also denied rumors that it is considering plans
for a sixth new post-season contest sponsored by Kansas legislative
budget planners, to be called the Dust Bowl.