Because it worked out so well for Youngstown

I'd have never guessed: Apparently, one of the worst things to do with rich alluvial soil and a long growing season is waste it growing stuff. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has proudly announced that by offering $600 million in tax-free bonds, he has managed to attract a large steel production facility to the banks of the Mississippi River. And this is land once thought fit only for agriculture. Isn't ponying up tax dollars to entice somebody to build a steel mill in your cane field is a lot like pimping for your sister and then lending the guy a twenty?

More choleric than splenetic, though.

You want a rant? I'll show you a rant. Seriously, this week I'm not writing one, just showing you one. It may the best rant ever, by anybody. A rant so quintessentially ranty that to attempt a rant of one's own in the same time frame would be like (insert clever pop culture reference here). So I'm simply turning around, trotting into the locker room, and changing back into civvies. I'll content myself with this 100 Word Intro to the rant you should be reading, by a guy who has been busting my cubes, humor-wise, literally since the Carter administration.

Enlightened shelf interest

Isn't Terry Jones, the mouth-breathing Florida preacher who was threatening to start his own bonfire of the inanities with a stack of Qur'ans, that one guy from Monty Python? Or maybe he's getting paid off by big paper and printing ink cartels anxious to maintain market share in the face of the inexorable penetration of the e-book into their bailiwick, down-loadable data files being less than optimum kindling. Okay, unlikely conjectures, both of them. But I'll bet when he rounded up the volumes he was planning to torch, it was more books than he'd ever owned before in his life.

We have been naught

It's hard to believe, but Labor Day was originally an occasion to celebrate "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations." So let's take a few moments to recognize the hard-working people who make this holiday possible, even the ones being chased across the Arizona desert to get to their jobs. Maybe you're enjoying a regatta or a bass fishing contest. Possibly you're playing croquet or watching the kids bounce on the backyard trampoline, attending NASCAR or the National Symphony. Just thank your lucky stars 'n' stripes you live in a country without a class system.