No. 329: "Ladies Foist"
"Please be a
lady," Sen. Jesse Helms chided Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., in a Senate hearing
room Tuesday. Then he sicced the cops on her. What had Rep. Woolsey
done?
Send
your answer by 5 p.m. ET Sunday to [email protected] .
Wednesday's Question
(No. 328)--"Hello, Wieners":
A study by the Department of Health and Human Services shows
that kids are four times as likely to do it on Halloween as on any other
evening. Do what?
"Turn
off the television and go outside."-- Neal Pollack ( Peter Carlin
had a similar answer.)
"Strangle another child with a gummy worm."-- Nell Scovell
"Pick
up a bacterial infection from hanging around the undead."-- Merrill
Markoe
"Can I
give a shout out to my peeps? Yo, yo, what up Shacky and T? Keepin' it real in
da H-town."--Jon W. Davis
"Trick
or treat. And frankly, the number seems a tad low to me."-- Tim
Carvell
Click
for more answers.
Randy's Wrap-Up
Many responses remark on our sedentary youth,
barely able to leave the couch, let alone the house, sedated by the television,
the Nintendo, the ennui, the Quaaludes. Budget cuts have eliminated sports
programs in many urban schools. And bicycles, once the vigorous instruments of
suburban freedom, are rarely spotted in the playground; parents fear for their
kids in heavy suburban traffic. Most bicycles are now sold to adults, all too
often wearing ill-advised spandex pants.
Another HHS study cites
the immobilizing effect of the car. A report on the increased rate of obesity
in America (from 1 in 8 in 1991 to 1 in 5 last year) shows the biggest
increase--67.2 percent--in the South, with a hefty 101.8 percent gain in
Georgia. The cause: not grits, cars. Atlanta's sprawl keeps people sitting in
their cars for hours, encouraging them to eat fatty fast food and run down kids
who, bloated and logy from their indoor lifestyle, bike-less and slow,
staggering along on foot, slowed by 35-pound backpacks, make easy targets and a
sickening sort of "squish" sound. It's like dodge ball, but with an actual
Dodge.
Screech of Bats
and Brakes Answer
On Halloween, kids are
four times as likely to be fatally struck by a car. Trick? Treat? The study is
a little vague in its conclusions.
Get It off Your
Chest Extra
I give the expression of
dismay; you give its object.
Dismay
1. "Shock, horror, disappointment."
2. "There are phenomenal shenanigans and
accusations."
3. "They're full of blackish, horizontal lines and
some have worms in them."
4. "So fat and windy that they sit, with some
exceptions, like hefty neglected lumps."
5. "It's another reason
to move to Sweden."
Object
1. Russ Johnson, amateur pinball historian, reacts
to the news that WMS Industries is shutting down its assembly line, leaving
Stern Pinball as the last manufacturer of the beloved game. (But go ahead and
make up an Atlanta Braves joke if you like.)
2. Bohdan Krawchenko, a Ukrainian democratic
activist, is dismayed at his country's rigged presidential elections. (Note to
translator: What is Ukrainian for "shenanigans"?)
3. A Fox executive is disappointed with the way
their new shows look on television. No, wait. I'm wrong. It's a letter-writer
to the New York Times who's having trouble with his organic carrots.
(Probable cause: The "wonderful world of the carrot rust fly." Prognosis:
excellent.)
4. A U.S. senator is disgusted by his colleagues.
Or perhaps Times columnist Martin Arnold thinks a lot of books are just
too darned big. (And on a personal note, it's just so sad when any lump is
neglected. I think that's the message of that new Meryl Streep movie where she
plays a heroic violin teacher.)
5. Another American has
had it with his HMO. Or an unnamed beverage industry executive hates
Coca-Cola's plan to put temperature sensors in its vending machines to
automatically raise the price of a Coke on hot days. (But he wasn't so snippy
about my plan to affix temperature sensors to Meryl Streep.)
Common
Denominator
Razor blades.
