The Slice: Time is now to lose a few good pounds

The summer solstice is two months away.

I mention this just to remind you that, if you are planning on losing weight or otherwise getting in shape for some summer event, the time to get serious has arrived.

Or, if you can’t handle the truth, you could wait until Saturday and start your regimen on actor Jack Nicholson’s birthday.

“Happy Earth Day Eve: Last week, The Slice invited readers to rank the planets.

“You’re just begging for a Uranus joke, aren’t you?” wrote Eric Rieckers.

Not necessarily.

“This is truly a conflict of interest,” said Jim Sisseck. “I live on Earth.”

Mike Carlson also ranked Earth No. 1: “Obvious reasons, only one that sustains life.”

He suggested the other planets orbiting the sun might be good places to send telemarketers, bad drivers, politicians, et cetera.

And Jim Dettwiler got into the spirit of the exercise with his list.

1. Earth: Let’s try not to ruin it. 2. The Moon: Future crossroads, port and shipyards of the solar system. 3. Asteroids: Mineral resources. 4. Mars: Has fascinated us for centuries. 5. Mercury: Probably a good source of metals, but terrifying proximity to the sun. 6. Saturn’s moons: Far-future honeymoon destination for the beauty of the rings? 7. Venus: Useful only as an inner-system gravity sling. 8. Jupiter: Powerful gravity sling for spacecraft on the way to the outer planets. 9-11. Uranus, Neptune, Pluto: Just too far out.

“Slice conspiracy theory (for which I have utterly no substantiation): Certain American hotels secretly operate jamming devices that make it hard to use your cell phone — so you are tempted to make long-distance calls using your room phone and wind up paying $10 a minute.

“Musical memories: “I was listening to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 on a Sunday afternoon when my wife told me that we were expecting our first child,” wrote Richard Strauch, a member of the Whitworth music faculty and trombone player in the Spokane Symphony. “That has been a favorite piece of mine since high school, and all the more since that day.”

Another reader told of hearing Gordon Lightfoot’s “Poor Little Allison” over the hospital intercom when his daughter Alison was born.

“Warm-up question: What other big event took place on the day you were born?

“Today’s Slice question: When greeting someone, saying goodbye or simply interjecting an observation in a conversation, do you occasionally find that you inexplicably produce a vocal sound that is only marginally recognizable as human speech?

(Though not restricted to stressful situations, Mystery Syllable Syndrome tends to surface on first dates, job interviews and at holiday parties.)