INSTIGATING LOGIC
By JARED PUTNAM Union Sentinel Editor

Occasionally after I write an editorial I read it again after the paper has printed and wonder to myself, will that make any sense to people at all?

My second guessing usually comes from the fact that I often have a lot of tongue-in-cheek comments in my opinion articles, or in the case of my "Forecasting fear" article, it becomes entirely a sarcastic, tongue and cheek commentary. In that case I took a very real comment by Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe and mocked it from start to finish.

Luckily each week I usually have a few different people comment to me about specific things they liked about a particular editorial. It always makes me feel a little better to know that even though I was being sarcastic and somewhat vague, people still "got it," and it wasn't just an incoherent mess that no one understood.

Sarcasm is my style of humor and there are not a lot of things that I'm not willing to poke fun at. Part of that attitude comes from a belief that most things that don't require a trip to a court, a hospital, or a funeral home, are not the end of the world.

Besides, I often find it hard to stay too serious with all the over the top comments people make and things people do in the world today.

For instance, people that create spam email are one of my favorite people groups, right up there with people that write things on public restroom walls. Even as I write this there are more than 50 junk emails in my spam folder, ranging from offers to "strengthen your love muscle" to a request from Mr. Mombosa asking me to send him some money so he can help me inherit my recently deceased Nigerian relative's $10 million fortune.

Sorry Mr. Mombosa, maybe next payday.

Then we have the national media providing a never ending source of entertainment. Nevermind the fact that there is a war going on or any other number of global events that are worth devoting more attention to, because as I occasionally glance at the tv across the room from me, I know fully well that I have a much better chance of seeing the latest update on Anna Nicole Smith or Britney Spears before anything else.

I can't wait.

It feels like we're also a little overdue for a report on another group of climbers needing to be rescued from atop Oregon's Mt. Hood. It's been what, an entire week since the last incident? I always feel that by rescuing these idiots who attempt to climb the thing in the middle of winter, that we're somehow interfering with nature's way of eliminating the dumber portion of the gene pool. It's not a nice thing to say, but I don't think its entirely untrue either. For the hundreds who try to climb Mt. Hood in the winter, maybe someone needs to offer them a piece of sound, simple advice such as: stop doing it.

So long as there are people in the world, there will be strange people in the world. That may mean more spam e-mail, more dysfunctional celebrities, and more unnecessary rescue missions, but it also means that I will never run out of things to write about.