Funny Business

And Now, For the Rest of the Story ...

I'm on stakeout outside Trump Towers, hoping to snag Ms. Marla for an exclusive "H'rumphs" interview before People magazine gets to her. Suddenly a slip of paper falls from the inside pocket of my House of Geraldo trenchcoat. It's a clipping from a newspaper (so I figure it's gotta be true), and the headline stands out from the sidewalk like a Band-Aid in a punch bowl. This is big -- bigger than billionaire divorces or German reunification or global trade wars.

It's the vampire bat story, and it'll scare you to death.

It seems the Florida State Museum in Gainesville employs an expert, Gary Morgan, who's been comparing the global warming trends of the past few years with similar atmospheric conditions believed to have existed 80,000 years ago. According to Morgan, the deterioration of our ozone layer and the current elevation of temperatures we're now experiencing are creating the ideal conditions for a reassimilation of vampire bats into the continental United States.

These disgusting creatures (italics mine) used to be indigenous to our land until something unknown and wonderful happened to get rid of them. But now they're coming back -- and I'm not hanging around to take the first pictures, if you know what I mean.

Not that there's anything to be afraid of, since most zoologists insist this particular species does not attack humans. (But then, I've also heard that bats are blind, so to them a neck is a neck.) I can just see these scientists standing out in a moonlit field with notebooks and tape recorders, reminding each other not to injure any of the approaching specimens since the quest for knowledge is more important than petty human fears. And then, WHACK! A flutter of wings around the head and these guys start dropping like draftees in a foxhole, wondering why Professor Johnson looks so wrinkled and pale.

Say what you want, but it's enough to make me want to take money from my cosmetic-surgery fund to buy some leather turtlenecks and a bus ticket out of here. ("Mind if we keep the window closed, Ma'am?")

Cigarette? No, Thanks, I Don't Read.

Comedian Jay Leno probably had the best line against a tobacco company's targeting of inner-city blacks with the new cigarette called Uptown. He said, "They named it that because the word 'genocide' was already taken."

Unfortunately, Philadelphia Mayor Wilson Goode didn't have such a snappy comeback when he was queried about his city's acceptance of a Philip Morris grant to promote literacy. Asked if he had any qualms about taking a reported $1.5 million from the nation's largest addictive drug producer, Goode replied that, by becoming literate, people "will be able to read the warnings on the [cigarette package] label."

"We Have Ignition ... But Don't Tell A Soul"

Last month's launch of the space shuttle Atlantis was with a top-secret military payload and, hence, information about it was limited. Media cameras were not permitted inside the perimeter of Cape Canaveral, and a night liftoff was planned so nobody could see what they were doing (nobody, of course, except the half of the state of Florida that would be lit up by the thrusters).

The first scheduled launch had to be scrubbed because of weather -- and it's a good thing, too, since Soviet dignitaries were ACTUALLY VISITING THE LAUNCH SITE ON THE SAME DAY. Talk about your security breakdown. And these Soviets had the gall to MAKE FUN OF OUR MISSION by saying we weren't in step with the new openness and freedoms taking place in the rest of the world.

Personally, I'm just as happy that our military has not altered its course and continues to send spy satellites over the Soviet Union. How else are we going to keep track of the suspicious shenanigans taking place behind the Iron Curtain -- like free elections, competing newspapers, and economic change?

Ed Spivey Jr. is art director of Sojourners.