The Rev. Bob-Bob Lee, whose direct hotline to the Holy Spirit was knocked out by the recent storms, has asked patients in local hospices to serve as couriers. He has a number of demands to which the Spirit has been unable to respond owing to the breakdown in communications. If you are scheduled to meet your Maker in a few days or weeks, would you kindly consider taking a message from the Rev. Bob-Bob with you? He will be sure to add your family’s welfare to his list of demands.

Sir: Everywhere I go, people are telling me to be worried about security. Microsoft says bad actors can send harmful spreadsheet files as email attachments. My bank tells me that bad actors may try to trick me into giving them my banking information. Google wants me to enable two-factor authentication so that bad actors can’t break into my account.

So my question is this: Why is everybody so worried about Nicholas Cage all of a sudden? He doesn’t scare me. —Sincerely, Hugh Grant.

Sir: In the last few decades our country has made great advances in gun rights. Gone are the days when guns could be “controlled” the way we control legitimately dangerous substances like added sugar. Our enlightened Supreme Court has enforced a strict interpretation of the Second Amendment, which states, and I quote, “Blah blah blah something something the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Yet the visible progress on the right to keep and bear arms is nullified by a complete lack of progress on the right to use them. In every state of the union, Florida and Texas excepted, outdated laws remain on the books that make murder illegal, and sometimes punishable by a term of several months if not years in prison.

Of what use is the right to keep and bear arms if we still have not gained the right to use them for their intended purpose? It is time for our legislators to wake up and see that the job is only half done. It is time to get rid of those archaic medievalistic laws against murder. It is time at last to give life to the glorious vision of freedom our Founders saw before them when they drafted the Second Amendment.

Fortunately our legislators are in a receptive mood. At least I saw State Senator Cardoon in Krzrnski’s last night, and he was drunk out of his mind. So now is the time for citizens to let their legisators know that now is the time. Write your state representative or senator now, and enclose a bottle of good Monongahela rye, and let the sun of liberty shine at last on our glorious Commonwealth.

–Sincerely, Angus Platter, President, Armed Cranky Old Men of America (ACOMA).

The Rotary Club of Blandville once again failed in its bid to have a traffic circle mandated by legislation at the intersection of Bland Street and Brackenridge Avenue. It was suggested at Tuesday’s meeting that bribing the commissioner of public works might be a more effective alternative. Members voted to hold a rummage sale the first Saturday in June to finance the bribe. Persons in the community who have rummage to donate, or who know a good recipe for rummage or how and where rummage of good quality may be obtained, are urged to contact Stu at his usual hangouts.

The Rev. Bob-Bob Lee made waves at a Pittsburgh Council of Churches summit when he accused the Catholic Diocese of bingolatry, which he defined as the sin against the Holy Spirit. In an impromptu sermon by the espresso machine, he called on Western Pennsylvania Catholics to abandon their pagan worship of the bingo card and return to the purity of the church of the Apostles. Bishop Zubik said that he was sure the Rev. Bob-Bob would turn out to be a very nice person if he got to know him, which he hoped would never happen.

The Great Blando was in the news again, charged with attempting to smuggle a rhinoceros on a flight from Latrobe to Orlando. Mr. Blando told TSA agents that the animal was his emotional-support rhinoceros, which he had been instructed never to be without by his therapist, Dr. Emil von Wolfspitz. Dr. Wolfspitz was unavailable for comment, as he was in custody at Allegheny County Jail, charged with illegal procurement of a rhinoceros and unauthorized addition of the preposition “von” to his name.

In their opening game of Artists League Baseball season, the Pittsburgh Warhols defeated the New England Rockwells by four identical runs in different combinations of garish colors.

Sir: I was reading the signs along the sidewalk for the first time today. Now, I know that I ought to have read these signs every day, because they are placed there by our municipal government for our enlightenment and contain vital information of import to every citizen, but I have a life. But today I was stuck waiting for someone who never showed up, and I’m calling off the engagement, Rita, so if you read this good riddance, so I had time to read the signs.

Did you know you can go to prison for loitering? At first I thought it said “littering,” and of course everyone agrees that someone who drops a paper cup on the sidewalk should be put away for fifteen years. But no, it said “loitering” was punishable by fine or imprisonment.

As I understand it, loitering is the crime of remaining stationary longer than the cop who observes you thinks you ought to be wherever you are. For example, the signs say you can go to prison for “loitering” on the benches at the intersection of Murray and Darlington. Normally you would think that sitting in one place would be the purpose of a bench, but if you do it you’re loitering. I suppose you’re meant to fidget from one bench to another, but how many times a minute do I have to move? If you move six times in one minute but the cop thinks you should move eight times, off to prison you go.

Well, no wonder we’re spending so much money on incarceration, when everyone who isn’t an Olympic sprinter can end up in prison for sloth. Our jails are stuffed with people whose crime was inertia, and we’re paying tens of thousands apiece to house them at the public expense.

Now, I am not an unreasonable man. I do not like to point out a problem without having a solution to suggest. My proposal is a sensible one that solves the problem of expensive and overcrowded prisons while at the same time preserving the criminality of loitering, which appears to be a dear and treasured American principle necessary to maintain our hallowed tradition of freedom. We shall keep the crime of loitering on the books, but simply move the location. Instead of making it a crime to loiter on a bench along the sidewalk, we shall make it a crime to loiter in prison. Upon conviction, the penalty will be instant expulsion. Since I understand that the conditions in our prisons are favorable to loitering, I expect the prison population to be diminished by a considerable percentage just in the first year. —Sincerely, Dr. Hasdrubal M. McClutch, Associate Professor of Ancient Semitic Languages and Pickleball, Duck Hollow University.

In spite of repeated protests and even threats of legal action, members of the Daughters of the American Revolution were once again refused admission to the Allegheny Brass Band concert at DFIW Braddock Memorial Hall last night. Security guards referred all questions to Mrs. Effingham, President of the Daughters of the French and Indian War, who said in a prepared statement that she didn’t want a bunch of Janey-come-lately riffraff treading mud through her nice hall, and if they don’t like it they can go back where they came from.

Bozar the Clown was arrested again yesterday afternoon, charged with failure to possess a smartphone in a public place. After an hour in the room with the television, Mr. Bozar confessed that he had thrown his smartphone into the Monongahela from the Smithfield Street Bridge, which added two more charges. The magistrate ordered him released on $50 bail on the condition that he would go home and immerse himself in social media on a laptop computer, desktop computer, or tablet until such time as a new smartphone could be procured for him at his own expense. When, however, Mr. Bozar confessed that he did not have any social-media accounts, the release was revoked and four more charges were added.