Items
Items of little note, but still worth a few lines.
Slick Willie took advantage of the Republican-controlled Senate being in recess to appoint three new ambassadors to Slovakia, Barbados, and Norway. Together, the three had contributed more than a half-million dollars to Clinton, Gore, and the Democratic party. They will serve until January 20th of next year. It’s hard to imagine what they will be able to accomplish during their term, other than to relocate and pack again for the trip home, unless perhaps they contribute a similar amount to Bush-Lite and the Republicans.
Item...Twenty-two houses in Philadelphia have fallen down in the last coupla weeks, and city officials say another 3,100 could fall down at any moment. Apparently being the City of Brotherly Love hasn’t been enough to keep folks in Philadelphia, which has lost almost a third of its population in the past three decades, leaving 31,000 vacant houses and another 20,000 lots vacant. As W.C. Fields said, I spent a week in Philadelphia one Sunday afternoon.
Item...Venice is falling, into the Adriatic Sea. Still. More. And according to the latest expert to weigh in on the subject, a multi-billion dollar plan to install flood gates won’t work. Archaeologist Albert Ammerman has studied the situation and notes that since there were people in Venice, they were all about landfill but could never bring in enough dirt. More recently, the problem has been garbage and sewage in the canals. Maybe the 300,000 Venetians would like to try Philadelphia.
Item...If Philadelphia won’t work, there are alternatives. Scientists have discovered new planets circling HD83443. That’s in the Vela constellation, which is out past Texas about 141 light years. Now in case your junior high astronomy week is only a foggy memory, in human terms that means it would take the Concorde flying at Mach One over 111,000,000 years to get there, or roughly a hundred times longer than man has walked the Earth. No word on Clintonian ambassadorships for the new planets.
Item...Who says television doesn’t work? At least in creating brand loyalty. A local Chevron station is charging $1.93 for their cheapest grade of gasoline, while the Arco station across the street is getting $1.65. And yet, the Chevron station always has customers. Despite all of the advertising to the contrary, the plan fact is that Chevron’s gas isn’t any better than Arco’s; and certainly not worth five bucks more a tankful.
Item...Our power was knocked out during a recent fire, so I called the ever-utile PG&E to find out when the electricity would be turned on again. I spoke to a fellow who couldn’t have found Redding on a map of Northern California but was sitting diligently in front of a computer repeating reports from the scene. When he punched up my address, he was informed of a fire in the area. When I asked him if it said anything about restoration of power, he said the situation was "clueless". "Clueless in Redding," I repeated. I’ve long been suspicious....
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.