Come Home Dan Quayle, All Is Forgiven

Sometimes you read news stories there's extraneous information. By that, I mean facts in a news release that no matter how often you read the story don't really have anything important or essential to do with the story itself.

For instance, "Norman Luger, 37, of Summit is a left-handed phlebotomist, and also an amateur cat-wrangler, described as a person of interest by the Upper Montclair Snotty Crimes Task Force in a wave of serial tap dancing incidents at drug store parking lots." See what I mean? Which hand he phlebotomizes with doesn't seem to be especially germane unless his last name is Jackson.

However, in this instance, Willow, in these stories no one is called "Alexis" or "Clarisse", and this spuds for you, all seem to be in some kind of interstellar harmony. Not a word too many or a detail too obscure. Here's that same story, from the pages of The Washington Post who can afford photography and multi-syllabic words.

Truth be told, the first time I read it, I thought of a thirty-five plus years ago acquaintance from American Force Radio who had previously been assigned to our affiliate at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, SHAPE.

He wasn't a left-handed phlebotomist in a previous life but would call our office stapler 'the Belgian potato' explaining the orientation briefing for a SHAPE assignment called the potato a staple of the Belgian diet. Cat-wrangler sold separately. Makes me wonder again to what or to whom Bert Lahr was referring.
-bill kenny