By Steve Fey

No, not the week in politics, or in the Middle East. There’s no ground to till there, as evidenced by what Trent Lott said about Bush picking a new nominee for the Supreme Court: he wants the President to choose a "man woman, or minority." With that sort of thing coming direct from Washington, I haven’t got a chance at making a competitive joke, so I’m forced to talk about other aspects of the week, beginning with baseball.

Baseball is rife with long-honored traditions like the infield fly rule, spitting, crotch grabbing, and teams from Chicago always losing. In yet another demonstration of how things are going to Helena Handbasket, the venerable White Sox, second in the hearts of Chicago fans only to those precious Cubs, swept the World Series in four games flat. In another slap in the face of long established tradition, winning in only four games deprives the networks broadcasting the games of about gazillion-dillion dollars in extra revenue. World champions, huh? Of stomping all over the sacred, is what.

Another hurricane swept through last week as well. This one was named Wilma, and it did a bunch of damage to Florida, but a whole lot more to a foreign country we never have cared much about: Mexico. The real news, of course, is that we’re now stuck calling hurricanes after Greek letters for the rest of the season. Alpha? Beta? Well, Beta is bigger than was Alpha, so maybe they’re like software releases. The next storm will be the one for actual release, so batten down the hatches. Although it might be that there will be an easy way to make it crash, meaning that hurricane Delta will be the one to watch. Bets?

In Cahlifohnya the governator is up to his rippling pectorals in controversy as his proposals to revise the way that state handles both money and people are hotly debated on TV, Radio, and in a large abandoned industrial district near Downtown Los Angeles. Rumor has it that the chief spokesman against his ideas is an icy cold beauty of an android sent from the future to ensure that his ideas are forever killed. Even worse, popcorn at the debates costs twelve bucks a bucket, and that’s without butter. Of course the proposed laws may all pass easily, as he has offered to "go all Conan on the heinies" of anyone opposed.

A major development in human genetics was announced during the past week. It seems that there is now a map not only of the total genome, but of special spots that affect particularly interesting portions of human development and disease. And really, screw MS, no offense, but won’t it be nice to detect the tendency to go into politics in childhood, so as to prevent breeding that would only preserve the species (politicians.) Or how about detecting the gene that makes someone sit outside of a house and honk the horn, rather than going up to the door? Those kids we won’t just sterilize; we’ll euthanize them forthwith for their own good.

There were other things that happened in the past week, of course, but because I’ve gone past my limit of five hundred words, they perforce do not matter at all to anyone. Least of all to you, my dear and gentle reader. In fact, nothing of interest is going to happen from now until next week when I update this page. You have my word on that.