by Curt Kovener 
That helpful but kilowatt consuming appliance—the electric dryer— is a most convenient apparatus. It sits next to the washer so that one load of clean damp clothes gets tossed in the dryer rather than hauled outdoors and hung up on a line for all the neighbors to see and birds to use for bombing practice.
While the dryer is convenient, rubbing and tumbling clothes together means abrasions to the fabric which result in small bits of fiber being dislodged.
This fiber, circulated around via warm air movement, gets trapped as lint in a filter. The lint filter after a load or two of clothes can be a patchwork and kaleidoscope of colors and designs. And the lint trap must be cleaned out fairly often lest it clog up the whole works.
Now you have an understanding of the basic premise behind this week’s column. It is bits and pieces of various thoughts, facts and opinions that have rubbed up against one another and must be shared before they clog the creative juices from flowing at all.
Besides I needed to clear off the scraps of notes clogging my desk and collecting in the office as if it were flypaper.
•If “he isn’t” is a valid contraction of “he is not,” and “they aren’t” means “they are not,” what’s wrong, one might ask, with “I amn’t?”
•Humanists maintain that nothing exists in the universe that doesn’t provide some benefit, however minuscule, to mankind; but political commercials, hemorrhoids, and reality(?) TV as possible exceptions.
•Definition of maturity: The ability to cope with anything and everything present and unpleasant in our lives that is impossible for us to either evade or change.
•What’s in a name? One of the more effective programs for physical conditioning is a combination of fast and slow running or walking which is called “fartlek” (I kid you not, check it out on Google). It is disappointing that it is not an Olympic event. While many of my running friends may be aware of the conditioning method, they certainly would not fess up to doing it. It seems to have fallen out of both polite conversational favor and the dictionary. But I dare you to try discussing it with a straight face as you explain, “Wow, I am really feeling more healthy since I have started to fartlek.”
•Speaking of names, a peanut isn’t a nut – it’s a legume; a firefly is a beetle, both prairie dogs and guinea pigs are rodents, catgut comes from sheep, and an English horn is neither English nor a horn; it’s an alto oboe from France.
•A prayer for those in despair: “Dear God, you made me what I am. Please help me to become whatever you want me to be.”
•Great quote from the late Arthur Godfrey: “I’m proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money.”
•Never get into an argument with a pig-headed moron. After a brief exchange, people overhearing you will be unable to discern a difference.
•Old age is when almost everything hurts—and what doesn’t hurt doesn’t work nearly as well as it used to assuming it works at all.
•When someone says, “to be perfectly honest with you,” what does that imply about what they have said previously?
•Something I didnπt learn in Mr. Bard’s high school algebra class but betcha didn’t know that 111,111,111 times 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321. (Most calculators wonπt register that high so to confirm the answer check the math with a paper and pencil. It’ll be a good mental exercise. I suppose the process could be called a brain fartlek.
That pretty much clears the lint trap.
