Funny Business

More Increases On the Way...

One of the lesser-known problems caused by the crisis in the Middle East is the unexpected hike in magazine prices. Most of you probably didn't know this, but virtually all of the paper used in progressive religious magazines was produced in Kuwait. Well it is, and just because you didn't know doesn't change a thing, now does it? And because of the sea blockade, our paper stock can't get through. Thus, we have no choice but to raise the price of each issue by $625, since the only other source of religious magazine paper is from unscrupulous small-town, family-owned domestic producers.

Now I realize this is a bit of a hike, and some of you may be saying to yourselves, "Hey, I thought only about 5 percent of our paper came from Kuwait and why haven't you been searching for alternative sources to decrease your reliance on foreign countries and, wait a minute, this is starting to smell like gouging the consumer and taking advantage of a very serious political situation."

Our response to you, of course, is, "Did you ever hear of punctuation! Do you realize you should have used at least three commas and a semicolon in that last sentence?!"

But I digress.

Our paper consultant, Jim Bob "Tex" Sunbelt has assured us that the industry has been exploring creative alternatives for paper, and has already begun testing some very promising substitutes using coal, oil shale, and nuclear energy. Some minor glitches still plague the latter, however, and testing will resume as soon as the volunteers get out of the hospital.

For now, we're just happy the president had the vision to send our troops over there as a display of resolve and to show the world that we're prepared to put up with excessive profits for the long haul.

Speaking of Texas...

This month's Champion of the Environment Award goes to Othal Brand, a member of the Texas Agriculture Resources Protection Authority, the watchdog agency that regulates the use of toxins in crop sprays. An appointee of Gov. Bill Clements, Brand recently defended the use of chlordane, a known carcinogen: "It's going to kill a lot of people, but they may be dying of something else anyway."

Tip to the FDIC...

One of this summer's low points in the continuing savings and loan debacle was the news that the government had sold 15 struggling S&Ls to a convicted felon for only $1,100 cash. His name was James Fail, and one of the banks was the Bluebonnet Savings & Loan of Dallas. Now, we here at the H'rumphs financial desk realize how overworked and harried the government's banking regulators are these days, what with all those memos from Congressmen requesting favors. But it seems that this particular lapse of judgment would have stuck out of any ledger sheet.

To help things along, we have the following suggestions to the FDIC:

- Never sell 15 struggling banks to a former felon. 10 or 11 is fine, but any more than that and the work load might interfere with his probation hearings.
- Carefully monitor the practices of any bank named after margarine. Bank names, after all, should have words like "Trust," or "Fidelity," or "Permanent." Not "Bluebonnet" and especially not "Parkay."
- Never, NEVER sell a banking institution to anybody named Fail. It just might.

Ed Spivey Jr. is art director of Sojourners.