And another thing …

Bon mot of the month

With the Granite State especially annoying of late, whining incessantly about ownership of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, and with slovenly motorists depositing all manner of objectionable flotsam, from pizza crust to soiled diapers, in our turnpike’s new toll baskets, it took the Maine Turnpike Authority and its rapier-like wit to dis two scoundrels with one riposte. “This is not New Hampshire,” new signs at the booths cuttingly advise. Already, exasperated parents of messy teen-agers from Kittery to Fort Kent are laying aside the old “pig sty” schtick and adopting the new aphorism as their own.

Sore Winners Award

Two California Democrats, Reps. Ron Dellums and Vic Fazio, who spent 26 years and 18 years respectively in Congress, announced their retirements last week. The opposition left it to Rep. John Linder of Georgia to bid farewell and recognize the representatives’ decades of government service. “Ron Dellums would not be resigning if he thought he’d be chairman of the National Security Committee in 1999,” said Rep. Linder. “And Vic Fazio would not be calling it quits if he weren’t at risk of an embarrassing defeat next November.” Any thought the retirements might be tied to a lack of civility in the House?

From dream house to double-wide

After enduring years of criticism from both politically correct types and anatomic realists, Mattel Corp. is reconfiguring Barbie, at the ripe old age of 38, with a smaller bosom and a thicker waist. Coming soon: Couch Potato Ken relaxed-fit jeans — teeny little bottle of Rogaine not included.

Thinking outside the box

New Federal Communications Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth, one of the nation’s top five television regulators, doesn’t have a TV at home. No problem, though: he tunes in at the office, particularly enjoying sports. With most citizens stuck in the old paradigm of working at the office and vegging out at home, we need innovators like this in government. Now for a Surgeon General who chain smokes and knows his way around a bacon cheeseburger.

Exploding cigar theory

Following revelations that it spent much of the Cold War dreaming up ways to blame Fidel Castro for calamities ranging from bungled NASA missions to crop failures, the CIA this week released a computer-simulation of the TWA Flight 800 explosion proving that terrorism wasn’t a factor in the tragedy. If the simulation had not worked, secret documents show, the CIA intended to pin the software glitch on a bearded, cigar-smoking computer programmer.