By Steve Fey

The biggest thing I’m wondering about just now is whether the flags are at half mast because we’re mourning the passing of the head of a church, or because we’re mourning the passing of a foreign potentate. Frankly, I don’t think Prince Rainer deserves that much attention, nice man that he undoubtedly was. But, there are other things as well.

I’m wondering why it is that somebody will shell out thirty-five grand for a humongoid SUV that is shown in commercials driving up a forty-five degree slope over a boulder field, and not have the nerve to drive the same vehicle over a pebble in the road going faster than a snail’s pace. Too low on the ground clearance, maybe?

I also wonder why smoking pot is illegal when you have various government officials who are obviously taking something a lot stronger actually employed in positions where they can get a whole lot of people hurt or killed if they make a bad decision. And when they do make a bad decision, they get the Medal of Freedom. But smoking pot is illegal, so don’t do it, okay? Run for office instead.

Speaking of car commercials, I wonder why more people don’t seem to notice that the cars driving on the snowy roads are never driving on more than half an inch or more, no matter how high the stuff is piled up alongside the road. The cars they show stuck, they’re off in two feet or more. I don’t have to wonder what happens if you put the average SUV in two feet of snow, because I’ve seen it. My advice is to not run yours through more than an inch or two at a time.

I really wonder what President Bush and Tom Delay and the others who intervened to have Mary Shiavo’s feeding tube reinserted thought they were accomplishing. I’m sure that the way to curry favor with the courts is to tell them they’re evil and wrong. It always worked on my dad, who was quick to respond to such criticism by changing his ways to something more to my liking. Or maybe not; it’s been a while. In any case, I’d like to thank those people for demonstrating that they’re even stupider than I’d imagined. Who’d have thought?

Lately I’ve been wondering why I ever wondered why there were doctors specializing in things that affect men as they age. It seems obvious to me now. Not that I need any such attention, you realize, but I do know a number of less fortunate men my age who find reasons to visit the sort of specialist that comics make jokes about. Old comics, that is. Wait ‘till you hear my new routine. Whoo-eee, do I lay into those urologists!

Besides all that, I continue to wonder about the routine stuff. You know, like why the line I pick is always the slowest, or why they’re always out of the one special thing I want because somebody just bought the last one, or why that idiot in front of me just keeps picking his nose after the light turns green. But those are so common and old-hat that they just aren’t funny any more.

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?