<i> Snapshots of life in the Golden State.</i> : The Desert Gets a Dose of Cheesecake a la Stone

The cover shot of Palm Springs Life magazine’s medical guide issue shows noted blade-wielder, actress Sharon Stone, in gluteus- length white smock and white fishnet stockings not seen since the last episode of “Nightingales.”

In one hand is a syringe bigger than a Pepsi can, and her other hand is pulling at the waistband of polka-dot boxer shorts on a man she’s evidently about to inoculate. The issue itself is rich in information about health and medicine. A note about the cover remarks on Stone’s 150-plus IQ, and hints that the photo is Stone’s way of repaying a debt to medicine, a thank-you to nurses and doctors who worked to rehabilitate her after a head-on car crash on Sunset Boulevard.

There’s no accompanying medical warning that cheesecake can make your blood pressure rise.

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Bar-barity: In the wake of the tragic shootings in San Francisco, the president of the State Bar of California has called for an end to lawyer-bashing, which he believes can encourage violence and should be classed as a hate crime. It is hard to tell how the plea will fare among movie audiences, who invariably cheer the scene in “Jurassic Park” when the big lizard eats the little lizard.

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Guns don’t start brush fires, people . . . Some weekend marksman plinking away with a gun at granite rocks out on Sidewinder Mountain near Apple Valley created a whole new meaning for “Ready, aim, fire!” Officials said the shootist struck the rocks, the rocks struck sparks, and you know how sparks are: 333 acres of brush went up in smoke.

Boating Accidents

There were 700 reported boating accidents statewide last year, resulting in 59 deaths, 447 injuries and $4.3 million in property damage. The number of accidents fell by 60 from 1991, but property damage rose by nearly $1.9 million. The five counties with the most accidents last year:

COUNTY ACCIDENTS DEATHS INJURIES PROPERTY DAMAGE Los Angeles 65 6 23 $600,900 Contra Costa 51 1 43 $154,500 Riverside 51 1 59 $39,900 San Diego 45 2 18 $1,875,700 San Joaquin 44 2 28 $144,300

Compiled by researcher Tracy Thomas Source: State Department of Boating and Waterways

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Save the last “dis” for . . . The Dakotas, which had the good sense to split in twain while the splitting was good, unlike another state we could name. Secretary of State and former L.A. lawman Warren Christopher assured a gathering of former Peace Corps workers in Berkeley that the United States would not neglect poor, out-of-the-way countries. “As a native of North Dakota, I am not one to overlook the importance of places far from the headlines.”

And in the smoke-free confines of the state Senate health committee, Sen. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) wasn’t exactly quaking in his wingtips at pro-smoking groups’ warnings that a ban would scare off the tourists. “I don’t think people are going to opt to visit the vineyards in South Dakota,” he said.

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There really are no sacred cows: The budget that ate California may be turning its hungry eyes toward the state’s $32-million Fair and Exposition Fund. That’s seed money for 81 local fairs that link Californians to their salad days. The fund began in 1933, according to the California Journal, when parimutuel betting on horse racing was legalized, and some of the money it raised was purified by using it for county fairs. The word “privatizing” has been fired across the bow; watch for 4-H Clubs massing on the Capitol steps any day now.

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May the best Jack win: We may be losing the post-Cold War war as the defense industry decamps, but we’ve got ‘em on the run in the Wisconsin Dairy Skirmish. The Christian Science Monitor says that by the mid-’90s California will pass Wisconsin in milk production. “Wisconsin is noted as America’s dairy land,” said Gov. Tommy Thompson, practically flinging down the gauntlet. “We are not going to lose it.” And a California company--Barn Tours of Templeton--will be conducting the tours of the dairy, swine, poultry and beef barns at this year’s Ohio State Fair. Company President Sandra Wallace said the agri-guides will bring barnyard smarts to suburbia: “I equate it with going to NASA and looking at a guy in a white coat. I wouldn’t know whether he was a rocket scientist or a janitor.”

Or Sharon Stone.

EXIT LINE “I am living proof of what you can do in America.” --Entrepreneur Desia Ritson, 53, owner of Balantines’s South Bay Caterers of Carlsbad, quoted in The Times in May. Ritson, who heads a $9-million-a-year business serving food at military bases and immigration centers under government contract, was indicted this week on charges of defrauding the government with a forged birth certificate, bribing the woman who approved the contracts and lying on her application to the minority small-business program.