10.20.09 Tues. "Fore!"

Just in time for holiday shopping, several malls in our state will open up liquor stores. Alderwood Mall, Pacific Place Mall, and the Commons at Federal Way will all soon have booze for sale. It may sound a little weird for there to be liquor stores in malls, but think about it… Christmas shopping can be pretty stressful…

This is either crazy or brilliant, I can’t decide which. Orting is becoming the first city in our state to allow golf carts on its streets. Before recently, golf carts weren’t “street legal” and had to be used only on, well, golf courses. Not anymore. Now if you need to run to pick up a gallon of milk, now you can hope into your electric golf cart and tool on down to the store. And if you happen to pass by a neighbor’s house with a really nicely manicured lawn and drive a couple of balls, so be it….

Astronomers have found 32 new planets outside our solar system. The bad news is none of them show signs of life. The good news is that means there’s no reality TV shows on them.

The number one gadget that injures pets? Ipods. Usually when they try to eat the headphone wires. Other things that can force you to take Fluffy or Fido to an unscheduled vet visit? Laptop comes in number two, and the remote is number three. But if you have a cat so big they are swallowing a remote control, you may have bigger issues.

Why can’t we take out politics seriously, like they do in Europe?
A British politician is criticizing the BBC for a children's show that changed traditional nursery rhyme "Humpty Dumpty" to give it a happy ending. The politician said he was shocked to see the altered rhyme on the program "Something Special." He said the program changed the ending of the rhyme, which traditionally goes "All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again," to say the group instead "Made Humpty Dumpty happy again." The politician said the program also featured a version of "Little Miss Muffet" that ended with the character befriending, rather than being frightened by, a spider. A BBC spokeswoman said the changes were not meant to sanitize the nursery rhymes.

If we can’t stick the flag on a locker, then the terrorists really have won:
In Chester, Pennsylvania, firefighter James Krapf has been suspended without pay for -- get this -- refusing to peel off an American Flag sticker from his locker! Apparently a new department rule mandates that all stickers and statements – union, cartoon and political – be stripped from lockers after several offensive and racist images showed up in the firehouse. But Krapf figured the red, white and blue was still safe and told his chief, "No disrespect chief, but I'm not taking the flag off." That's when he found himself suspended from his 11-year job. But Krapf's not giving up and the firefighters union plans to negotiate with the department on the issue. Krapf says, "It's the American flag, we should be able to fly it wherever we want and don't believe it's offensive to anyone."