Bits & Pieces

 

Bits and pieces from this reporter’s notebook.

Da-deet-da-deet-deet.....There is an old joke about the safest place to hide money in Italy is under a bar of soap. But the people in the land of The Boot are on their way to getting rid of one particularly dirty habit that still plagues most of the pseudo-developed world. They’ve banned cigarette smoking in public places, including offices, factories, bars and restaurants. Considering how much the U.S. spends on health care, it’s obscene that we are not a smoke-free nation already.

Da-deet-da-deet-deet....Another propaganda brouhaha has boiled over the Bushian pot. The Education Department -- they were once going to call it the Department of Public Education; great acronym -- is spending huge sums hiring major PR firms to float their No-Child-Left-Behind boat. A quarter-million bucks, that might otherwise have been spent fixing a few leaky roofs and heating a coupla icy classrooms, were dumped into the pockets of conservative commentator Armstrong Williams. Williams proselytized about the faux program over the air and in his print commentaries, never mentioning that he was on the take.

Da-deet-da-deet-deet....Awards are out for the dumbest product labeling. On a toilet brush, this warning: "Do not use for personal hygiene." Second prize went to a children's scooter with a warning that said, "This product moves when used." And then there was the digital thermometer: "Once used rectally, the thermometer should not be used orally." Reminds one of the woman in Georgia who sued a contraceptive manufacturer when she got pregnant after using their product...on her toast.

Da-deet-da-deet-deet....Television viewers shouldn’t need to be warned that watching might atrophy the brain. Probably too late for most. Like the guy who is suing NBC over "Fear Factor" for showing people eating rats that had been bite-sized in a blender. He handwrote his brief, if that isn’t a clue, claiming that seeing this putrid display had caused him to be dizzy and disoriented. Apparently too dumb to sit down under the circumstances he ran into a doorway, "causing suffering, injury and great pain."

Da-deet-da-deet-deet....Finally, a California appeals court ruled that it doesn’t matter where you get your alcohol. A teenage partygoer was stopped after weaving in traffic, with bloodshot eyes and slurred speech and she got stopped. She claimed she’d been drinking cough syrup, as if that justified her dangerous driving.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.

 

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