HEADED FOR THE SUPREME COURT?
Congratulations to Miss Florida, who has been selected as the new Miss America.
The seven judges selcted the Sunshine State native by a 5 to 4 margin.

WHO'S FIRST?
Traffic reporters on the radio are certainly exhibitting their sense of humor in the midst of our post-Isabel era. Since signals at many intersections remain dark, these wacky jokesters are urging--get this--everyone to come to a four way stop when confronted by non-operating traffic lights!! HAHAHAHA!!!!
Yeah, right.
Let's face it: In the real world, it's the largest vehicle at the intersection which has the right of way. That may not be the correct way to drive, but it's how things work on the planet Earth.
Besides, I drive a Bradley B2, which is the civilian version of the Bradley fighting vehicle. The faux gun turret is especially great for intimidating the riff-raff stuck in their BMW's and Volvos.

ROAD TRIP
Yesterday evening I had to drive down to Norfolk, which is in the Tidewater area of Virginia. It's also just above the North Carolina state line. After seeing the situation down there, it became apparent that people up here in northern Virginia got off very light.
Interstate 64, which runs from Richmond to Tidewater, had obviously been impassable the day before. Road crews had done an unbelievable job of clearing the road, for the shoulders were still littered with the remains of fallen timber. Some of the exit ramps looked as if they had been covered with as many as a dozen trees. And the power outages there were far more widespread than anything up here. I saw two open gas stations, and took me a while to figure out why each one had cars lined up down the block 10 o'clck at night: They were among the very few stations to have electricity.
Being a clever fellow, I decided NOT to waste my time sitting in those lines and fill up at some point on the way back to Richmond.
As it turned out, there was nothing open anywhere from Newport News to Richmond. Each time I follwed the advice of those blue highway signs with the Exxon/Texaco/Shell logos and exited the interstate, I was greeted by nothing but darkness. I was becoming genuinely concerned that I would run out of gas and be forced to eat my own limbs in a desperate bid to survive.
Shortly after my low fuel light came on I saw the exit for Richmond International Airport. Sure enough, the power was on in that area, and there were open gas stations.
One of the popular accessories in that area at the moment is the portable power generator. There have been a number of incidents where people have pulled up in a pickup truck, grabbed the generator, and taken off with it. Carjacking is bad enough, but generatorjacking? That's a new level of desperation.

IS THAT FROZEN CARBON DIOXIDE IN YOUR
PANTS, OR ARE YOU JUST HAPPY TO SEE ME?
Pepco--the power company for DC and parts of Maryland--had been handing out dry ice for the benefit of those without electrricity. A block of that in your freezer will keep your food frozen. However, they had suspend the distribution after the plant making the dry ice lost power.
Now is that ironic, or what? Well, perhaps we should run the situation by singer and world-renown irony expert Alanis Morissette for her opinion....