There’s No Way to Sugarcoat Such Stinging Words

Annoyed letter-writers to the Palisadian-Post are in the habit of complaining about speeding drivers, cellphone yakkers, loud gardeners, vroom-vroom-vrooming motorcyclists and low-flying pilots, to mention a few. But one reader prompted several angry responses when he linked the Girl Scouts to the nation’s obesity problem. As a defender of the sweet peddlers of sweets countered:

“Eating a few Girl Scout cookies once a year will do a lot less damage to your body than stressing about them.”

Beam me up, Dad! There are so many scientific breakthroughs these days, I’m not surprised I missed this one.

Chris Knight of Culver City received a note requesting that he fax a member of his family to his insurance agent (see accompanying).

School daze: R.F. Roswell notes that a local school observed what was probably the first and only “54rd” commencement in the nation (see accompanying).

Dropping into class: Marge Miller, who is retiring after 21 years of teaching at Long Beach Poly High, told the student newspaper that one of the most unsettling events in her classroom occurred when a snake fell from the ceiling and landed on her desk. The serpent had a rat in its mouth.

Fortunately for Miller, she was not there that day. A substitute was teaching. Things like this always happen to substitutes.

A way with words: Loren Collins of Yucca Valley saw a property ad about what sounded like a weakened spa (see accompanying). And who’s Hugh?

Hef?

You know, those earn-millions-while-you-work-at-home ads? Well, S. McQuinn of Moorpark passed along a more “realistic” offer in this genre (see accompanying). Boy, is it realistic.

Were the unions consulted? During Bob McCormick’s “Business Hour” on KNX-AM (1070), traffic reporter Timothy Greenwood broke in with this timely bulletin: “It sounds like a business topic -- a Ford merger. A Ford van merged into a Ford Escort. Both have merged to the right shoulder.”

Annals of Unusual Crimes: David Chan of L.A. noticed that the police log of the L.A. Independent said that “unknown suspects broke into a residence” in Hollywood and stole the inhabitant’s “laptop, containing compromising pictures of famous actors and actresses.”

Killing with comedy? Pat Wilson of Corona, an administrator for the World Clown Assn., received a call “from a telemarketer who asked me if this was the ‘World Clown Assassination.’ ”

miscelLAny: Los Angeles magazine won nine awards at the City and Regional Magazine Assn. competition but finished second in the Leisure/Lifestyle Interests category.

The winner there was Cincinnati magazine for “Sex and Our City.” I don’t believe I’ve ever written “Cincinnati” and “sex” in the same sentence before.

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, Ext. 77083 and by fax at (213) 237-4712.