No jailhouse lawyer jokes, please: You know...

No jailhouse lawyer jokes, please: You know how hectic moving can be. When attorney John Setchell transferred his offices from Long Beach to Huntington Beach, he left his new phone number on a recorded message. Unfortunately, the one he left was for the Orange County Jail.

Mystery of the day: Mike Tamada of Pasadena says he’s perplexed by a “Bus Emitter On” sign on Ventura Boulevard. “Is it dangerous when it’s on?” he asked. “Shouldn’t L.A.’s non-English-speaking visitors and residents be warned of our bus emitters? What is the international symbol for ‘Bus Emitter On?’ ”

Hey, our English-speaking residents deserve an explanation, too.

Mystery solved: Bus emitters aren’t anything to fear, a city spokesman assured us.

“The sign is a reminder to bus drivers to turn their emitters on,” he said.

The experimental devices give an electronic signal that prolongs a green light for buses that have stops on the other side of the intersection. Better to have the buses loading/unloading then, the theory goes, than at the beginning of a green light.

Suddenly, we have new respect for hi-tech Ventura Boulevard.

Boss From Hell: In honor of Professional Secretaries Week (April 20-24), the L.A. Downtown News has asked readers to submit horror stories about employers, whose identities will be kept secret (even for the worst ogres). First prize: $100 in cash and a $100 gift certificate (plus our sincere admiration to anyone who mentions a current boss).

Our company town: A reporter at a downtown L.A. bar mentioned that an obscure movie, “The Taking of Beverly Hills,” was one of the biggest flops of 1991, losing a reported $24 million. A waiter who overheard exclaimed: “It lost that much! Geez, I knew it hadn’t done well, but. . . .” Yup, he’s an actor by day.

They’d also make for great fraternity pranks: Forget about the Alaska-to-California water pipeline plan. And the towing-icebergs-here scheme. Now, a Santa Barbara company wants to pump water from Alaskan rivers into huge nylon bags, float them down here and sell them to the utilities.

“Only somebody in California could come up with something like this,” commented Joe Mead, operations manager of a barge company in Alaska. “At least if it breaks, it won’t hurt anything.”

Just the job for the former captain of the Exxon Valdez.

miscelLAny:

The red, green and gold flag of Los Angeles made a space shuttle flight in 1984 and was autographed by astronaut Sally Ride. It’s on display at City Hall in case there’s anyone who doubts that L.A. has a flag.