Bundle of Kale in Refrigerator Suspects the Worst (Popcorn by The Colonel # 32)

Routine municipal testing confirms continued existence of law of gravity

On a night in late October
When I was one-third sober

And was taking home a load with manly pride

My feet began to stutter

So I lay down in the gutter

And a pig came up and lay down by my side.

We sang "It's All Fair Weather" 

And "Good Fellows Get Together" 

Till a lady passing by was heard to say, 

"You can tell the man who boozes 

By the company he chooses" 

And the pig got up and slowly walked away.

Verse novels, generally less popular than in their 19th-century heyday, thrive again in young adult novels. They're not just for vampires anymore.

Against the trend of cutesy title, colon, long-winded subtitle: There Once Lived a Girl who Seduced Her Sister’s Husband, and He Hanged Himself: Love Stories.

Compromise over interests is possible, however difficult; compromise over principle is less often possible. For this reason, the politics of conscience bears the ever-present danger of violence and war.

Dear Ethicist: I make a good salary and can afford to buy new clothes at a regular retail store, but I enjoy shopping at a particular thrift store where I find great bargains. I sometimes buy items I don’t need. My question concerns my enjoyment versus the needs of others who are less fortunate (and are now deprived of the opportunity to buy items they probably need more than I do). Am I guilty of fulfilling a shadow pleasure at the expense of those in need? Signed, Uneasy

Uneasy, Uneasy, you have no complaint

You are what you are and you ain't what you ain't

So listen up buster and listen up good

Stop wishing for bad luck and knocking on wood

Signed, Ethicist

Pop Quiz: Which of the following is the “shadow pleasure” the fulfillment of which made Uneasy uneasy? Feel free to use your psychic power of omniscience, if you have it, but not to copy another testee's answer.

(1) Shopping at a thrift store when Uneasy could afford to buy at full-price stores, which would help to steady the wobbly recovery.

(2) Craving bargains.

(3) Buying things Uneasy doesn’t need.

(4) Depleting thrift store inventory, thereby reducing the stock available to those less fortunate than Uneasy.

(5) Bothering Ethicist, who recently died and deserves to rest in peace.

(6) Compulsive shoplifting unexcused by need.

(7) Cross-dressing.

(8) Chocolate.

(9) Testing eye makeup on lab rabbits and dressing them up in thrift store doll clothes that could have dressed the naked, headless dolls of the less fortunate.

(10) A premium NRA membership under the pseudonym “Silencer Cal” Coolidge.

“This life is the emergency we have to face.” --Hans Kung

Pope Benedict XVI and Hans Kung are the only two theologians active at the Second Vatican Council who are still working. They are retiring virtually simultaneously in the near future.

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." --Mark Twain

When John C. Calhoun argued that slavery was a “positive good,” crucial to the Southern way of life, Lincoln responded that if slavery is a good, it is a good that no one ever chose for himself.

Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day, February 12, 1809, to different mothers.

Traditional contract language is horrible. Reformed modern contract drafting style produces language as pleasant to experience as any well-built artifact. One rule of modern contract drafting is, "Use the word shall to impose a duty on the subject of the sentence, and in no other way."

"Fools rush in where fools have been before." --Polonius Shetlandus

Headline: "Mismatched Tupperware Lids Not a Problem After Devastating House Fire."