The Slice: Throwers, blowers will soon unite

There are two kinds of people in the Spokane area.

There are those who call the driveway-clearing machines “snow blowers.”

And there are those who say “snow throwers.”

But a shovel is a shovel. Unless it’s a scoop.

•Question for cubicle creatures: Could you draw a seating chart indicating who sat where at the time you went to work at your first real job?

•Slice answer: Most responding readers reported that the things they say to their computers are not printable.

•A cry for help: “I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw your Slice topic this morning,” Susie Schmidt e-mailed on Sunday. “We just got an e-mail yesterday from our Thanksgiving hostess requesting forbearance on the subject of politics this year.”

Schmidt seconded the motion. “However, that leaves us with a dilemma. What else can we talk about? We’re out of practice. Do any of your readers have any good suggestions? I mean, clean ones? Something uplifting that isn’t either boring or fatuous? Help us out! We’ve only a few days to go!”

•Looking ahead to Dec. 31: Fashioning marmot hats will be one activity for kids at First Night Spokane. Though this is not an official project of the Marmot Lodge, it has my approval.

As I understand it, the children themselves will wear these festive hats. There will not be any attempt to place them on the heads of actual rodents.

•Slice answer: “Thanks to Greg Rouse’s wilderness survival class (2004) at North Idaho College, I would be able to find food and start a fire with zero supplies,” wrote Carolyn Lenhard of Wallace. “But probably I would not find myself in that situation because Greg was insistent in having us prepare a small emergency kit to take with us whenever we were going into the woods.”

•This date in Slice history (1995): Having seen a movie featuring a scene in which someone fell through the frozen surface of a lake, a 5-year-old boy at Riverfront Park expresses reservations about skating at the Ice Palace.

•Today’s Slice question: I can’t remember lots of things that might qualify as important. But I could name many of the baseball players who were starters in the National League back when I was 9. And I could tell you whether a song was by Gary Lewis and the Playboys or Paul Revere and the Raiders. Need to know The Flash’s secret identity or the name of Green Lantern’s girlfriend? I’m your man. Trust me, I could go on.

How about you? What categories of trivia clutter your brain?