Best of The Slice: Two down, a personality test to go

Editor’s note: Paul Turner is taking some time off. In his absence, we’re diving into the archives here at Slice Central. Today, we revisit April 2, 2009.

OK, where were we.

Oh, yeah. The Slice had asked about the difference between your two-beers personality and your no-beers personality.

“Paul, I guess I never really thought about it,” wrote Tim Finneran. “But the next time I’m having beers, I’ll stop and make an assessment before I have my third.”

“Before the beer I’m usually quite happy,” wrote Patsy Wood. “After two beers I’m usually asleep.”

Spring cleaning: What did you find in the pocket of a garment you had not worn in ages?

If you spend enough time in grocery stores: You will encounter a guy who is facing shelves of toilet paper and asking someone on the phone, “Do we get the kind with the sleeping puppy or the kind with the playing puppy?”

Half baked: Kathryn Vogler grew up on a farm back before newspapers arrived in plastic bags on rainy days. She remembers waking up to the distinctive smell of The Spokesman-Review drying in the oven.

New revenue stream: If local hospitals will no longer share birth notices with the newspaper, perhaps the S-R can charge parents for paid newborn announcements. “Half off for real names.”

And don’t even get me started on flutists: S-R classical music maven Travis Rivers didn’t have his glasses on when reading the headline on a recent Slice column. He thought it said, “Despite violinists, Spokane is not so bad.”

Actually, it was “Despite villains.”

But for a moment, Rivers expected to read about how string musicians of a certain stripe were the Lilac City’s one true burden.

Slice answers: Asked what Spokane’s teenage criminals have in common, readers spoke of pathetic delusions, a fondness for loser fashion statements, parenting issues and a belief that their antisocial choices have earned them admiration from their brainless peers.

In the matter of backyard grills resembling space-movie robots, Marta Bunch reported that her family named a small gas grill “R2D2.”

Sam Dressler said that when her cats Ben and Jerry were kittens, they used to give her shin-rubs while she was trying to shave her legs. Ben then graduated to licking Vaseline Intensive Care lotion. “Ben is gone now, but I still check to see if I’m alone before putting on the lotion.”

It looks like I’ll have to save the Five Mile/Nine Mile thing for another day.

Today’s Slice question: In the Spokane area, passionate disagreement about what public policy issue is the No. 1 killer of budding romances?

Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; fax (509) 459-5098; e-mail pault@spokesman.com. For previous Slice columns, see www.spokesman.com/columnists. Guys named Roy make the best doughnuts.