Off-Kilter

Unwelcome Immigrants: Anyone who thinks animosity toward Californians has softened in the Pacific Northwest hasn’t visited Oregon lately. On a recent trip to Portland, we found a store selling Californian Detection Kits. Each box contains a vial of “polluted air” (L.A. residents will give themselves away by not gasping for breath when it’s uncorked), a chart for identifying suspicious suntans and a book of test questions. Sample: “Remove the wooden toothpick from your kit, show it to your subject and ask where they think it originated.” If the answer is “a shopping mall” or “an hors d’oeuvre tray,” beware. The proper Oregonian response is “a tree.” Also, to avoid possible tampering with the testing equipment, each box is stamped with a warning: “Do not accept from anyone wearing sunglasses.”

Then again, maybe Pacific Northwesterners should be more afraid of each other. In 1996, the Golden State logged a mere 49 cases of highway violence involving guns, whereas Washington recorded 1,100. Of course, we can’t help but wonder how many of the 1,100 were transplants from Los Angeles.

Names You’ll Soon Be Sick of Department: The most popular names for babies in 1997 were, for girls, Sarah, Emily, Kaitlyn, Brianna and Ashley, according to San Francisco’s BabyCenter. The top boys’ names were Michael, Matthew, Nicholas, Jacob and Christopher. What, no Orenthal, Geraldo, Kaczynski or Latrell?

Praying for Guidance: What makes a Christian pop singer Christian? The lyrics of her songs or her belief in God? When it comes to Amy Grant, the answer is elusive. According to Christianity Today magazine, the gospel music industry is in a tizzy because Grant’s latest release, “Behind the Eyes,” contains no religious references.

Some Christian stations are refusing to play the record and other evangelicals wonder if it should be eligible for the gospel music industry’s Dove Awards. On lyrics alone, the answer would seem to be no. But there’s a catch. Dropping mega-seller Grant from gospel sales charts would “diminish Christian music’s market share, a factor that plays significantly in efforts to secure television coverage, sponsorship and advertising for events like the Dove Awards ceremony.”

Bad Taste Department: In yet another sign that society has lost all moral bearings . . . the New York Post reports that several of Dodi al-Fayed’s friends claim the late playboy often videotaped his sexual escapades and--in the wake of all the hubbub over the Tommy and Pamela Lee sex tapes--a rush is on to see if he recorded any interludes with Princess Diana.

Best Supermarket Tabloid Story: We couldn’t wait for our next Weekly World News, so we visited the tabloid’s Internet Website (https://wwnonline.com) and retrieved this classic from the archives: It seems an L.A. clinic has developed a “flatulence-control” suit that cures people who break wind excessively. Patients spend $13,250 for an eight-week program in which they are forced to wear airtight, spacesuit-style outfits that attack “the psychological causes” of gas by forcing perpetrators “to endure their [own] odor until they finally decide, subconsciously, to end the problem.”

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* Roy Rivenburg can be reached by e-mail at roy.rivenburg@latimes.com.

Contributors: Olympia Daily World