POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

Some of the terms that have been 'modified' over the years make sense. I love adding the 'handicapped' to whatever the disability is - I got accustomed to 'visitor' rather than 'tourist' in Hawaii (at Target, it's 'guest' rather than 'customer') - black rather than colored (although African-American is just a few too many syllables) - Native American instead of Indian (the drawback there is that Native Americans call themselves Indians, not Native Americans).

But why in the world are telephone poles no longer telephone but UTILITY poles. I think they've always carried electricity and wiring of all sorts of other things rather than exclusively telephone wire.

More importantly - WHO CARES? Is there an activist group on behalf of telephone phones? Have they been discriminated against by being called telephone poles? Do little telephone poles grow up with poor images because they are called telephone poles? Have there been studies that prove being called a telephone pole lowers your IQ by sixteen points, and stunts your growth (well, actually, that one might really matter)?

Tomorrow I am overseeing the chainsaw massacre - wait, that doesn't sound good - how about surveying the environmentally incorrect butchery... nope, can't do that either ... the carnage of a (now I'm on track) UTILITY pole - in fact, four of them.

I have acquired (doesn't that verb always sound ominous - you don't acquire toys or plastic duckies or french fries - you only acquire stolen rifles or illegal chemicals or rat poison) four poles, but they have to be cut down to at least 20 foot lengths to be transported (at least by the one guy I found who will do it).

So the other guy is someone who knows HOW to run an actual chainsaw, HAS one, and is willing to come down after work to CUT the poles for me. He is a nice, extremely quiet guy... who right now just happens to be going through a divorce...

Wait a minute, oh my gosh, I SHOULD be worried about this - I'm going to be the lead story on CNN tomorrow night! ARRRGGGHHH!