Honolulu Lite
Two or three of you regular five or six "AloHa! Friday" readers were probably a bit confused to see a "Honolulu Lite" headline on last week's "AloHa! Friday" column. I know I was, and I wrote the damn thing. The difference between
‘Lite’ and ‘AloHa!’I can't really blame the editors for planting the wrong flag on that pile of verbiage. I've become adept at keeping teams of editors in confusion, hunting down "Memmingerisms," words that are misspelled so cleverly they slip past the defensive line, skirt the secondary and gambol downfield before editors finally tackle them on the goal line.
However, "Honolulu Lite" and "AloHa! Friday" are completely different types of columns. In "Honolulu Lite" I make up stuff, and in "AloHa! Friday" I simply steal it. With that in mind, let's go to this week's weird plunder:
A city of garbage mouths
TAIPEI (Reuters) >> Garbage trucks in the city of Tainan will soon broadcast English lessons from loudspeakers to educate citizens as they haul away rubbish."This is Tainan's first step toward internationalization," said Mayor Hsu Tain-tsair. "Even grandmothers and grandfathers will be able to speak the most basic conversational English."
(Like, "Hey, ya jerk! You ran over my garbage can!" And "Put down the Dumpster, buster, Uncle Wang's still sleepin' in it.")
Washers get chatty
CLEVELAND (Reuters) >> Swedish appliance maker Electrolux has introduced a washing machine in India that can communicate to its users in two languages. The "Washy Talky" says things like "Drop detergent and relax" and "Please close lid."(It also says, "Whatever that garbage truck said about me is a big fat lie.")
Caught in a legal noose
BROOKSVILLE, Fla. (Reuters) >> A woman who hanged herself in a Florida jail left a suicide note asking her lawyer to sue jail authorities for allowing her to kill herself."This is all I can give to my children," her suicide note said. "They won't have to watch my trial on Court TV."
(The trial over her bizarre lawsuit, however, is expected to garner huge TV ratings.)
'Honolulu Lite' on Sunday:
No taxation without personalization! Raiding the Hurricane Relief Fund for $55 million to spend on non-hurricane-type stuff was just the beginning of a dynamic new way to fund government: personalized taxation. Homeowners, beer guzzlers, smokers, taco eaters, scooter drivers, reverse-print aloha shirt wearers, TV watchers ... virtually anybody with a specific like or need will become part of the fabulous "designer tax" craze.
Quote me on this: "A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except learning how to grow in rows." -- Doug Larson
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com