One of the most popular features on our website is the The Nearly Useless Factoid at the end of this column each day. I have mixed emotions about it. They are:

Joy – Because it was my idea.

Sorrow, Fear, Rage – Because I don’t do it. Senior Internet Editor Suzanne “Believe It Or Else” Kubota researches and writes the fractured factoids that are so popular.

I mention all this because Suzanne “She Who Must Be Obeyed” Kubota is leaving us. For awhile. That’s the bad news. The good news is that Suzanne “I May Be Wrong But I Doubt It” Kubota will be back. She’s taking some time off to spend time with her very ill mother.

But like spring, or the swallows that come to Capistrano, she will be back. So if you’ve got an idea for a nearly useless factoid and can write it up, send it along. We want to keep the feature going partly because it is so popular and partly because Suzanne “The Place Will Crumble Without Me” Kubota should learn that nobody is irreplaceable.

Got a whacky factoid? Send them to us: mcausey@federalnewsradio.com

The Nearly Useless Factoid

One for the road: It takes 98 tons of prehistoric plants to make one gallon of gasoline.

Meantime…

Faster Than A Speeding Buick! Reader Ron Dank passes on this great item (from policeone.com). We’d like to think it’s true, but… Either way, here it is:

“In most of the United States, there is a policy of checking on any stalled vehicle on the highway when the temperatures drop to single digits or below.

“About 3 a.m. , one very cold morning, Montana State Trooper Allan Nixon #658 responded to a call there was a car off the shoulder of the road outside Great Falls, Montana. He located the car, stuck in deep snow, and with the engine still running. Pulling in behind the car with his emergency lights on, the Trooper walked to the driver’s door to find an older man passed out behind the wheel with a nearly empty vodka bottle on the seat beside him.

“The driver came awake when the Trooper tapped on the window. Seeing the rotating lights in his rearview mirror, and the State Trooper standing next to his car, the man panicked. He jerked the gearshift into ‘drive’ and hit the gas. The car’s speedometer was showing 20-30-40 and then 50 mph, but it was still stuck in the snow, wheels spinning.

“Trooper Nixon, having a sense of humor, began running in place next to the speeding (but stationary) car. The driver was totally freaked, thinking the Trooper was actually keeping up with him. This goes on for about 30 seconds, then the Trooper yelled, ‘Pull over!’

“The man nodded, turned his wheel, and stopped the engine.

“Needless to say, the man from North Dakota was arrested, and is probably still shaking his head over the State Trooper in Montana who could run 50 miles per hour.”

There are different regional jokes, and whipping boys, around the country. The question is do people in Montana tell North Dakota jokes? And if so, who are the fall guys for folks from North Dakota?

To reach me: mcausey@federalnewsradio.com

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