By Tim Sanders

Here I sit at my keyboard, pondering a topic for this week’s column. There are lots of strange news items out there. Strange, but not necessarily funny. What to choose?

1.The headline "Wombat rape victim cried wolf" appeared in the March 27 edition of UK Metro.com. It interested me because a) one would think a ‘wombat rape victim’ would cry ‘WOMBAT’ in capital letters, not ‘wolf’ in lower-case type, b) I wasn’t exactly sure how much bigger a wombat was than a regular bat, and c) where, exactly, is the wombat’s "wom" located, anyway? Once I read the article, however, I learned that those questions were moot questions, because the alleged victim, 48-year-old Arthur Ross Cradock of Nelson, New Zealand, had not been entirely truthful when he called the police to complain about the wombat assault. In fact, a few moments after his first call on February 11, he called back to tell the operator that he was retracting his wombat complaint, and "apart from speaking Australian now, I’m pretty all right you know, I didn’t hurt my bum at all." Cradock was convicted of "using a phone for a fictitious purpose," and the judge sentenced him to 75 hours of community service. I decided against writing about the story, since all I really learned was that in New Zealand they still use the politically incorrect term "bum" instead of "homeless person."

2. Another odd story made headlines around the nation, and was even mentioned on several cable news channels. Apparently Art Price, Jr. of Bellevue, Ohio had been romantically involved with ... with his picnic table, and had been observed being very, very romantic with it on at least four occasions. I did some research, and learned way more than I wanted to about the incident, which involved Mr. Price on his deck, romancing not your regular old wooden picnic table, but one of those round, metal deck tables constructed to accommodate an umbrella. On March 14, a neighbor, who was obviously troubled by Price’s behavior, videotaped him and contacted police. Price’s neighbors are worried. They have picnic tables, too. Attractive ones. No column there, either.

3. In the March 28 edition of the Pasadena Star-News, staff writer Melissa Pamer reported that a substitute teacher at South Pasadena Middle School had been suspended for reprimanding a student inappropriately. What she did was, she "used the tip of her finger and patted the student on the forehead," saying "C’mon, you, you can do better than that." SHE PATTED THE KID ON THE HEAD? When I was a kid, we had a teacher who threw erasers. He had a good arm, and was very accurate. We were not emotionally scarred by the flying erasers; we certainly preferred them to the occasional chalk missile. In fact, many of us wanted to study hard and become teachers so that one day we could throw erasers at students, too.

We understood that education could be fun if you did it right. We weren't wimps.

4. And speaking of California, last Tuesday the Los Angeles City Council actually seriously debated a plan to proclaim a 40-hour moratorium on killing. According to Los Angeles Times Staff Writer David Zahniser: "The symbolic ban on homicides had been proposed by Los Angeles author and political commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson, who had urged the city to make a bold statement about the recent increase in homicides." The article explained that "council members voted only for a resolution that promised to build awareness and dialogue about ‘the root causes of violence and killing.’" The "awareness and dialogue" period was scheduled to begin at 6:01 p.m. Friday, April 4, and end at 10:01 Sunday, April 6. Even though the proposed homicide ban was voted down, mostly on the grounds of "silliness," it still made me twitch. I kept imagining the following scenario:

WIFE (WITH LARGE CALIBER PISTOL): Out all night with that floozy Irene again, huh! Well this time you can kiss your butt goodbye, Wendell!

WELL INFORMED HUSBAND: But wait, sweetheart. See here in my hand; this is a newspaper containing the text of an official Los Angeles City Council proclamation calling for a moratorium on killing. It is a bold statement about the recent increase in homicides, and also is in effect until 10:01 a.m., and it’s only 7 a.–

WIFE: KAPOW!

5. And in the April 2 edition of the Blackpool (UK) Gazette, Julia Bennett tells about 59-year-old Frank Jones, of Thornton, England, whose wife, Sadie, died five years ago. Jones claims that Sadie has been calling him regularly and even leaving text messages on his cell phone. He told the reporter "She always had a mobile (cell phone) with her. We buried her with the phone. There have been messages with words Sadie would say but there’s no number." You can’t make a column out of something like that, either. Any fool knows that burying a wife with a cell phone would just be inviting disaster.

There was some other stuff about a lady named Annette Edwards who raised a 49 lb. rabbit and Ted Turner. No, Mrs. Edwards didn’t raise Ted Turner; he was raised in the forest by squirrels. The rabbit story had nothing to do with Ted Turner, except that Ted told PBS reporter Charlie Rose that in thirty years global warming would raise the earth’s temperature by 8 degrees, which would result in worldwide crop failures and no animals for food, which would certainly include 49 lb. rabbits. This would inevitably lead the human race to cannibalism. The photo of the rabbit was interesting, but the Ted Turner quote was just normal Ted Turner stuff.

So since those are the only news items I’ve run across, I decided instead to write this week’s column about an incident which involved my wife Marilyn, a bowl of excellent homemade chili, and a very humorous sound–

I’m sorry, my editorial board and proofreading staff tells me that I’ve run out of space. And she also says that if I even mention that chili incident, I will sleep on the deck for the next two weeks with the cat. And the picnic table.