Pesidential polyps, wolves and Tasers … vacation’s over

So I’m back from vacation, ready to resume the rampage you readers so richly deserve.

(COLUMNIST PLEDGE – In light of recent newspaper price increases, I personally guarantee to deliver a 33 percent increase in mockery.)

But before we go galloping half-cocked into the future, I feel a journalistic obligation to dissect and interpret a few of the important stories that surfaced during my absence:

•Wolves are on the prowl in Eastern Washington.

There’s no cause for panic, folks. The numbers of these dangerous and mangy predators will be thinned substantially once primary election ballots are counted.

•Spokane’s posh Davenport Hotel has once again received the coveted “Four Diamond” ranking from the American Automobile Association.

Downtown winos say the Davenport’s sidewalk flowerpots are still triple-A OK for public urination, too!

•After a massive invasion, benign polyps were eradicated from President Bush’s colon.

The hunt for WMDs goes on.

•Sacred Heart Medical Center reported that surgeons operated on the wrong body parts twice last spring.

I’m guessing the bills made it to all the right places.

•Campus cops at Washington State University have added Tasers to their arsenal.

What possibly could go wrong?

•Avista Corp. spent $120,000 lobbying the federal government during the first half of 2007.

Where are those damned Tasers when we need them?

•Developer Kree Kirkman’s fairytale village east of Sandpoint would have tiny houses, no cars and expected interaction between neighbors.

Kirkman, in other words, is trying to build Hell.

•Love is not the top reason for sex, according to an extensive survey of both college-age men and women.

Or as Woody Allen put it: “Sex without love is an empty experience, but as empty experiences go it’s one of the best.”

•Spokane mayoral candidate Robert Kroboth, a 73-year-old retired debt collector, won’t talk to the press or engage in candidate debates.

Kroboth doesn’t have a chance of winning, but he’s arguably the wisest guy running.

•Some 8,000 pot plants were seized and three people arrested in a Columbia River Gorge drug raid.

I know it seems like a copious amount of weed, man. But I got the glaucoma reeeal bad.

•Blood samples taken from Fred Russell – the alleged drunken driver who fled to Ireland not long after a fiery 2001 car crash left three dead near Pullman – were destroyed by a state crime lab.

The yellow streak running up and down Russell’s spine, however, is still intact.

•Congress is getting close to approving a much stronger ethics bill.

If passed, members of the House and the Senate will be limited to lying out of just one side of their mouths.

So that ends our column for today. See you Thursday for more fun and frivolity.

CLARK SARCASM BONUS:

•Were you as amazed as I was by that story about Oscar, the cat with an uncanny ability to sense which nursing home patient is about to expire?

Here’s the even more amazing update. Oscar has left the Rhode Island home to turn his precognitive skills on doomed political races.

Yep. The famous feline was spotted in Spokane recently, curled up next to a Re-elect City Councilman Brad Stark sign.