Recently in Santa Cruz (motto: "aren't exploding slime molds great?"), residents reported an outbreak of sporks. Perhaps you think there are no sporks in Santa Cruz. Perhaps you are an idiot.

As the French say, au contraire (literally: "pucilanimous cad!"). I have here in my hands a copy of an Associated Press article sent in by alert reader Mike, whose name can be rearranged to spell "MEIK", although that is not my main point. "Mike", by the way, only has the letters "Mike" in in common with "Monica Lewinsky", so there is no other reason to mention Monica Lewinsky in this column.

According to a quote which I am not making up, from Santa Cruz Mayor Riley (formally "Mayor Riley" and informally "joe-bob"), sporks ranks as a major crisis just behind pork, foon and Burger King (insert your "slime molds" joke here), as evidenced by the following conversation between Santa Cruz government employees:

FIRST SANTA CRUZ EMPLOYEE: "eat that, poindexter!"

SECOND SANTA CRUZ EMPLOYEE: "you coax-socking bastard!"

FIRST SANTA CRUZ EMPLOYEE: "uh... hey, how about them Knicks?"

Fortunately I have a suggestion for Mayor joe-bob, and that is: aggressively injure George Steinbrenner's testicles.

No, seriously, my suggestion does not involve George Steinbrenner's testicles, although it might involve running over with a steamroller Tobacco Institute scientists. My suggestion is more along the lines of a coup de grace, from the French coup, meaning "fishing", and de grace, meaning "for small-mouth bass". The procedure (you may want to write this down):

1. put it on a rocket and shoot it into the sun
2. jam a large metal snake into it

But instead the Santa Cruz city council (motto: "We'll cheat the working stiffs when you pry the grande mocha latte out of our cold, dead fingers") thinks that they (the sporks) can be used as a fork... and a spoon soon, sending this message to the public, and to the world: "baptists - they're not just for cannibals anymore.".

Speaking of which, "The Santa Cruz Sporks Outbreak" would be a great name for a rock band.