THIS has been a strange year. There's been so much news. But none of it seems cut and dried. For every interesting thing that happens, there's an equal and opposite explanation, a sort of good news-bad news kind of deal. Here are some of the more interesting news tidbits I've been saving up. (Feel free to swap the "good" and "bad" designations, according to your own political beliefs.) The news is:
Good
Bad News: Attorney General Janet Reno has decided not to contest Oregon's doctor-assisted suicide law.
Good News: Bill Clinton immediately appointed Ken Starr "ambassador to Portland."
Bad News: Ginger Spice quit the Spice Girls.
Good News: She joined the Western Athletic Conference. (A pre-publishing survey found that 48 percent of the reading public didn't understand this joke.)
Good News: Japanese tourists are now coming to Hawaii to buy the new drug Viagra to take home because it's not yet available in Japan.
Bad News: A thriving Viagra black market is bound to spring up, run by hardened criminals.
Bad News: The U.S. House of Representatives has decided against a constitutional amendment to allow organized prayer in public schools.
Good News: Students still are allowed a blindfold and last cigarette before the shooting starts.
Bad News: High school students must wear ugly matching uniforms to combat the display of gang colors.
Good News: The uniforms will be made of Kevlar.
Good News: The government has established new, more strict, guidelines to determine if you are overweight.
Bad News: I'm now listed as a "USS Missouri-class naval vessel."
Bad News: California has gotten rid of mandatory bilingual education in its public schools.
Good News: Para bailar La Bamba, se necessita una poca de gracia, para mi, para ti, ay arriba, ay arriba, por ti sere, por ti sere, yo no soy marinaro, soy capitan ..."
Bad News: India and Pakistan have blown up nearly 10 nuclear bombs in the past few months and brought their countries to the brink of an apocalyptic disaster.
Good News: No cows have been killed.
Bad News: During his state visit to China, President Clinton will be received in Tiananmen Square, nearly nine years to the day students rallying for democracy were slaughtered by the Chinese army.
Good News: No students were killed during class.
Bad News: The University of Hawaii football team has decided to leave the WAC after all.
Good News: They are joining the OIA and have a pretty good chance of beating Waianae but may have to take points against St. Louis.
Bad News: Massachusetts has decided that there will be no score-keeping in any youth league soccer games because officials feel "if one team wins, all the rest lose."
Good News: Entertainer Mel Cabang wasn't handicapping those games anyway. (For the record, for such a politically correct state, Massachusetts sure seems to be hogging an awful lot of "s's" and "ts." Seems to me it could cut back to "Masachuset" and share the leftover letters with the rest of the country. Not that I'm counting.)
Bad News: Bishop Estate trustees are threatening to move its business offices to the mainland.
Good News: Slot machines in the lobby.
Good News: There are plans to build a pedestrian promenade in Waikiki along Kalakaua Avenue.
Bad News: Now the streetwalkers will be five abreast, so to speak.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to charley@nomayo.com or
71224.113@compuserve.com.
The Honolulu Lite online archive is at:
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