The Slice: Be sure to fill out your TPS reports

The first Monday of the year probably ought to be recognized in some way, shape or form.

Got any ideas? Maybe we could take turns calling each other “Lumbergh.” (That’s from 1999’s “Office Space.”)

Let’s move on.

Old business: Before we leave the whole North Idaho/northern Idaho thing behind, I wanted to mention something I came across back at the time of Idaho’s centennial.

It partly explains my interest in the topic. (Slice readers know I am not a grammar purist.)

Somewhere I read that the “North Idaho” usage reflected a separatist sentiment that owed its origins to long-ago suspicions about Mormon influence in the southern part of the state. But I never hear anyone allude to this when discussing the whole “North Idaho” thing.

Has anyone else ever heard that? Does anyone care?

I was reminded of this when I noted that Utah became the 45th state on this date in 1896.

Warm-up question: Back when Christmas songs were being played on radio last month, I discovered, not for the first time, that I could sound eerily like Elvis Presley. At least in recreating certain lyrical phrases.

OK, it’s a good bet that I am utterly delusional about this. But walking along and listening to “Here Comes Santa Claus” coming through my earphones, I convinced myself that my vocal hiccups were amazingly Elvislike.

Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus…

For the record, I do not imagine that I sound like just any old singer with whom I happen to be mumbling along. For instance, I have never thought my pop-song croonings replicated Bing Crosby’s voice in any realistic way.

That leads me to the question. What singer do you, in your feverish imagination, think you sound like?

Today’s Slice question: When you eat a hamburger, do you lift it straight up off the plate and commence chomping or do you flip it over while picking it up so that the top bun is then facing down?

(A couple of my colleagues have conducted an informal lunchtime survey and they have made some observations about how there seems to be a gender divide in burger handling style. And I suppose it would be too much to hope that there might something unique about the way Spokane hamburger eaters do this. But I will await your reports.)

Write The Slice at P. O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. Start planning your observance: As I never tire of noting, Jan. 12 is the birthday of the HAL 9000 computer in “2001: A Space Odyssey.”