Loaded for bear in Sudan

Thoughts at large:

I still don’t get why the streets of Khartoum were filled with men named Muhammad wanting to kill a teacher for naming a teddy bear Muhammad.

I’m thinking people my age were a lot more afraid of our parents than our children are of us.

I find that if you use an old, unhip cell phone, people think you’re equally so.

Remember when your wife told you when to turn instead of the female voice in the GPS device?

Sign of the Times: AT&T is about to phase out pay phones. What’s next, film, floppy discs and VHS tapes? Oh — those are almost gone, too?

Why do phone recordings tell you to listen carefully because their options have changed, even though they were changed three years ago?

When did strollers become heavier than up-armored Humvees, allowing mother to plow people aside as they head down the sidewalk?

Does it occur to anyone that if weren’t for oil, the heads of Venezuela, Iran and even al-Qaida would be obscure neighborhood players?

And Iraq would be another Mauritania.

Does it make my car stereo racist if its equalizer has a setting for country but not for hip-hop?

Teenagers have contempt for you if you click the help button on a computer program.

Now that apartments west of Central Park are at $1 million and up, do kids think West Side Story is about Yuppies investing in real estate?

I instantly know that Ruth hit 60 and Maris got 61, but I have to think a while to remember that Bonds got 73 and McGwire got ... 70? That says something.

For all I know, Howard Stern is the biggest thing in satellite radio, but he seems to have disappeared since cutting that deal. Which leaves me with a question: $500 million?

Why do I have to punch my credit card number into the phone if the live person they transfer me to is going to ask for it again?

Rather World

Will someone tell Dan Rather that his suing CBS only confirms that he lives more in his own world than the real one?

I just got a “smart phone” and realize I’m not bright enough to understand it. Does anyone sell a remedial phone?

A recent study found that the IQ of second-born sons is 3 points below first-borns, which is exactly my circumstance, so I guess that explains it.

Are you telling me that the scam-artists in Nigeria who keep getting spam past everyone’s firewalls are smarter than the geniuses at Microsoft, Google and MIT?

I think AARP Magazine just had a major misprint on its latest cover. It said Carolyn Kennedy just turned 50. Couldn’t be.

And no, Tina Turner is not almost 70; it’s a lie, I tell you.

If Paul McCartney offered me $40 million for a few lousy years of marriage I wouldn’t freak out and demand $100 million instead.

Scripps Howard News Service