The Slice Is Your Business Card Special?

It’s Labor Day, so it must be time for The Slice’s fourth annual Business Card Contest.

Can you feel the excitement?

Here are the rules: 1.) Send us your business card by Sept. 16. 2.) Wait patiently for the results.

This year judges will be instructed to make sure that elegant, no-nonsense cards are given a fair chance against the splashy-graphics numbers that have pretty much ruled this competition in years past.

There will be multiple winners. A committee is mulling what to hand out as prizes. (Past winners have received awards ranging from lunch to T-shirts.) Good luck.

Spocain: There’s an upside to people in other parts of the country mispronouncing the Lilac City’s name. It helps locals keep our own inevitable case of Center of the Universe Syndrome in perspective.

Slice answers: Readers said they roll their eyes when the local media suggest unbridled development and our area’s famous quality of life can coexist, that local colleges are inferior just because they are local, that everyone likes the same kind of summer weather and that everyone around here is a WSU Cougars fan.

Stages of a woman’s life: “Infancy, childhood, adolescence, young-sexy-thing-often-ending-in-married-lady, oh-my-God-I-can’t-believe-I’m-a-mother, oh-my-God-I-can’t-believe-I’m-a-grandmother, fear-of-being-a-bag-lady-or-actually-being-a-bag-lady, death.” - Chicago Tribune

Inland Northwest’s collective IQ, ranked by season: 1. Fall (highest). 2. Spring. 3. Winter. 4. Summer.

More readers’ gone but not forgotten businesses: the Rathskellar Inn, Mel’s Golden Point, A&K Market, Spokane Hotel and Strawberry Jams record store.

Warm-up question: What percentage of the new Spokane US West phonebooks have had that folded city map ripped out?

Today’s Slice question: What would co-workers identify as your most irritating trait?

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Drawing

MEMO: The Slice appears Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; fax (509) 459-5098.