LEAVE IT TO PEEVER

The making of a drug dealer.

— Bumper sticker of the week: Terrorists sometimes live in White Houses.

— Quote of the week: “We have different ways of saying things in this country. Most people call the head of their country Mr. President. We call ours Dimwit.” The Peever

— I got a good notion to go back to Florida, but I’m not going to be that easy on you.

— Here’s a good one: We got an offer from AmerenlP to defer our new, higher electricity rates until the summer. I hope the person who thought that up wasn’t a college graduate, or I’m sending my diploma back. They want us to defer payment, so they can charge us interest, and pay the deferred bill back in the summer, when we will already be paying exorbitantly high rates for air conditioning. That’s a brilliant plan. These guys get funnier and funnier. Pretty soon they ought to run for office.

— Speaking of elected officials: Our city council still don’t get it. They can’t keep running this town like it’s a growing proposition. The population keeps going down and they keep raising taxes. A sure formula for failure.

— How to create drug dealers: Take a high school kid, kick him or her out of school for smoking pot, send them to in-patient rehab, possibly charge them with drug possession, and you’ve almost guaranteed that they will drop out of school, making it unlikely that they will ever get anything outside of a minimum wage job, and, presto — you created a future drug dealer. This is the result of our decision makers using their brains a good 10% of the time.

— Reasons it looks like civilization is doomed:

• Paris Hilton.

• Suicide bombers. Stupidest idea ever.

• Donald Trump.

• Intelligent design.

• Ann Coulter.

• Bottled water.

• George W. Got reelected.

• Scientology.

• Right-wing Christian Republicans.

• The poker craze.

• Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Bill O’Reilly.

— A dieter’s fantasy:

• If you eat something, but no on sees you, it has no calories.

• Drinking a diet pop cancels out the calories in a Big Mac.

• Pieces of cookies contain no calories.

• If you are cooking something, eating samples does not count.

• Late night snacks have no calories.

• Food and drink for medicinal purposes does not count.

— How to make the most out of your life:

• Try to stay positive. Use as many good things in life as you can to your advantage. Don’t limit your choices.

• Sleep at least eight hours per night. It takes your unconscious mind that long to straighten you out.

• Keep work no higher than 5th on your priority list.

• Do something worthwhile for someone else at least once per day.

• Never hand-feed hungry alligators.

• Read a lot. Fiction, non-fiction, magazines, poetry. Dump the Enquirer and the dime-store novels. Those things only clutter up your mind.

• Never listen to anyone who claims to know “the truth.”

• Give yourself a break. You’re going to make mistakes. The best you can hope is that they won’t be fatal.