#968 Spring Cleaning

Time to do some spring cleaning in the old joke idea closet. These are hard commentaries to write because I have to go so many different directions. I eventually develop that condition all authors hate. It’s far more excruciating than writers cramp.
Yep, I’m talking about segue fatigue...
Speaking of which.
I was driving by the old Safeway the other day. You know, the one they’re tearing down to make way for the new City Hall. One stop shopping for permits and such. Well, I noticed something odd. Though they’ve torn down the old building, they left up the old sign. Just blacked it out.
Olympia is like most hope-to-be beautiful cities. They have a pretty tough sign ordinance. So when new businesses move into an old place they usually try to find a way to grandfather in the now non-compliant sign they inherit.
It’s kind of cool to note the city doing that with this Safeway sign. Apparently, even the city doesn’t want to take on the city sign ordinance department.
In an entirely unrelated universe, my friend Bobby brought me an interesting cut-out from a Kraft Macaroni and Cheese box. I guess they’re trying to make Mac and Cheese more healthy. The box description proclaimed that this was “Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, made with 50% Whole Grain!”
Which raised the almost Zen-like conundrum: Can something be 50% whole?
On another note, I was reading some statistics that said the mobile home manufacturing industry employs a lot of migrant labor. What we are now calling guest workers. They build the walls and floors and what not. So I’m wondering. If a regular site-built wooden house gets carpenter ants, does a wooden mobile home get guest worker ants?
And lastly, in the incongruity department, a local tax service is using human directionals dressed as the Statue of Liberty. Unfortunately, one I saw the other day had a moustache. Verdigris green gown, spiked crown, and a moustache. He didn’t look so happy to be dressed up as a woman either, even if she was Lady Liberty.
When it came to suffocating ridiculousness of his costume, it looked like he was yearning to breathe free.
America, ya gotta love it.