Henrietta Hay's Column

The world in engulfed in doom and gloom. International, national and even local news is mostly frightening and depressing. Time magazine arrived this week with a deep gray cover and the word "Evil" in dead black with the question, "Does it exist - or do bad things just happen?" I haven't read it yet, so I don't know the answer.

To remain sane and relatively happy, you can choose to ignore the news, which is not a good idea, or find something in it to laugh at. I much prefer the laughter route, but it has been tough lately. I have been searching for funny stories in the news, and there aren't many. The prize-winner of the year, according to my funny bone, took place in May.

Imagine trudging off to the beach early one morning in northern Oregon to dig clams. But you get there and find the beach littered with sneakers. The clams were not wearing them, but riding in them. It's enough to send you back to the kitchen for another cup of coffee. The shoes were brand new Nikes, never worn, but filled with sand and seaweed - and clams. One couple from Astoria found more than 140 Nikes on the beach and an artist who until recently had never owned a Nike shoe now has 70.

The mystery was solved when it was discovered that five boxcar size containers had fallen from a cargo ship in the Pacific a year before. About 40,000 pairs of Nikes were dunked, and after travelling thousands of miles, they washed up on the Oregon shore. With all the garbage floating around the oceans and littering the beaches, it must have been delightful for those people to find something clean, wet and useful. And the thought of a size 10 sneaker swimming several thousand miles does make up for some of the lousy news of the day. Of course, the shoes did not arrive in pairs,so enterprising citizens set up a swap system to match them.

The second funny story I could not have used a year ago, but the "c" word has become so widely and respectably used that I will risk getting it past my editor. The Northrop Corporation took legal action to prevent a Texas company from marketing a new product that they said might be confused with its B-2 Stealth Bomber. The product is the Stealth Condom. Somebody must have been confused.

No other recent stories can begin to match those two, but several do point out the weirdness of the human race. For instance, there is an organization in Philadelphia which teaches people how to give CPR to their pets. Personally, it is not something I would be interested in learning, even at possible peril to my aging Siamese. Also, I would not recommend it for owners of pit bulls.

Johnny Carson said it first, but it appeared in the newspaper so it counts. There was a big scandal at the national spelling bee. They caught one of the contestants in the alley buying vowels from Vanna White.

Food seems to bring out the oddities of human nature. For reasons completely incomprehensible to me, the owner of La Perla restaurant in Phoenix, recently put together the world's largest burrito. With 900 tortillas and huge amounts of other edibles, the thing came out just an inch shy of 432 feet. That's longer than the distance from home plate to the center field fence at Yankee Stadium.

"Prawn cocktail" flavored potato chips are the third most popular snacks in England. Since they are made with a generous dose of saccharin they are due for elimination by the new European market. The Brits feel that when the chips are down, they lose.

If you want weird, the City Fathers in West Palm Beach Florida are trying to prohibit hot dog vendors from "appearing naked in public," while hawking their wares on street corners. The story did not explain why nudity is especially appealing to hot dog vendors. I certanly can't either.

Of course, in searching the daily papers for "funny", I remember what Mae West said, "It's hard to be funny when you have to be clean."