WHEN I INTERVIEWED Commissioner Randy Horiuchi several weeks ago, I asked him how the construction of 522 units on the smallest part of Highland Drive ever got approval. He called it an unfortunate decision that was made before he was elected.
Unfortunate is right. The Pinnacle Highland Apartments, starting at 7600 South Highland Drive, is now well along, and political types are saying when the already overburdened, two-lane road is widened we'll "never know the difference."Are you kidding? They are building an entire city right there!
* Recently, I wrote a column about Utah wedding invitations and gave examples of the unorthodox wording that has surfaced on some of them. My conclusion was that such wording, differing from traditional norms, is rare.
The very day the column appeared, I received in the mail a wedding invitation with a jazzy photo of the couple in identical striped shirts. The wording thumbed its nose at tradition.
It said I was invited to a reception "at the home of the financially devastated Doug and Lynette Weaver. Their daughter Valerie will be marrying Keith Warburton, son of the brokenhearted Robert and overjoyed Carol Warburton."
Since Doug Weaver is an accountant, he may in fact be "financially devastated." Only he knows for sure.
* There is one time every day when I feel a peculiar sense of power. When I park my car on the eighth floor of a 10-floor-parking garage, I usually go for the elevator.
Sometime ago, I learned that if I press both the DOWN and UP buttons, the UP elevator always comes first - and it is never going any farther.
When I approach the elevator, I see the DOWN button light on and a person waiting. Invariably, I push the UP button, and almost immediately, the elevator arrives.
I get in, then try to talk the person who pressed DOWN into coming in with me. "No, thanks," this person says. "I'll just wait for the DOWN elevator." "Trust me," I say, omnisciently, "This one will go down."
And it does.
* Speaking of power, I recently noticed just how much power the weather guys have over my life. After a series of unbearably hot days, I failed to watch the TV weather. That evening it felt cool outside, but I denied it.
"Are you kidding? Cool? Here?"
That night, I got up in the middle of the night to close both windows because I was freezing.
This proved I was unable to discern the true weather, because the weather guys had not told me what to think.
* Ever consider how odd it is that the U.S. government is about to recognize Vietnam at the same time they are thinking of blockading Cuba? Neither one has a democratic government.
* Here is a sign allegedly seen at a German camping site: "It is strictly forbidden on our black forest camping site that people of different sex, for instance, men and women, live together in one tent unless they are married with each other for that purpose."
Another in an Austrian hotel, catering to skiers: "Not to perambulate the corridors in the hours of repose in the boots of ascension."
A dentist in Hong Kong: "Teeth extracted by the latest Methodists."
* Richard Lederer, an English teacher in Concord, N.H., has collected many actual student bloopers.
Here is one: "Rome came to have too many luxuries and baths. At Roman banquets, the guests wore garlics in their hair. They took two baths in two days, and that's the cause of the fall of Rome. Today, Rome is full of fallen arches."