So, here we are in late August, and the heat has been baking all of our brain pans for what seems like eight months. (For my Texan friends, you actually have had your brain baked that long, when it wasn't raining.) We're starting to see things, and some of us are acting a tiny bit more bizarre than usual.

More on that shortly, but first I've got to get a bit of business out of the way with an open letter to a cell-phone giant. This may inspire you to write an open letter or two of your own, and I'd love to see them. Send them along, and they might appear in an upcoming column!

Dear Alltel,

OK, so I love the "Chad" commercials, with four basement-dwelling rejects representing the other four major cell-phone providers tormenting our hero with a variety of thoroughly incompetent assaults.

However, the wording in one of the current commercials has me wondering if perhaps someone at your ad agency is a Dave Barry fan.

The four fools "kidnap" Chad and put him in a van. In the original version of the commercial they then either threaten to "do stuff" to him or one of the fools pinches him. A new version has one of the fools threatening to beat Chad with "a tube sock full of wood screws."

Now that's some funny verbiage, but it's not original. In "Dave Barry's Book Of Bad Songs," a DJ writing to Barry says, concerning "Cat's Cradle" by Harry Chapin, "The next person who requests this is gonna get hit upside the head with a tube sock full of wood screws." That's a rough approximation of the quote, as my own copy of the book has been swiped by one of my many book-mooching friends. However, the "wood screws" reference is correct.

Whether Dave wrote it himself or the letter writer in the book actually exists, the screw-filled footwear traces its origin to the book.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled cavalcade of oddities.

Get Your Fried ... Coke?

I've long been a proponent of deep-frying just about anything. I've done everything from Twinkies and Snickers bars to the more conventional fryer bait like french fries, mushrooms, cauliflower and shrimp. But a vendor at the California State Fair has set the bar a bit higher when it comes to truly avant-garde grease-soaked delicacies: Fried Coca-Cola.

As I understand it, the concept is basically a hush puppy-type concoction made with a dollop of soda syrup, then drizzled with yet more syrup after it comes out of the oil. The caffeine and sugar content of this delicacy is difficult to contemplate.

Guy, my favorite bartender, says he's going to carry this experiment a bit further. If it works, fried tequila and fried margaritas will be coming soon to a tavern near you.

Confidence is not high.

To Love, Honor And Share Cooties

Thanks to a typo, it is for the time being legal for toddlers in Arkansas to marry. A bill passed by the state Legislature with the intention of establishing 18 as the minimum age of consent and allowing pregnant teens to marry with parental consent has, thanks to some incautious wording, made it technically legal for any children to marry, as long as they're not pregnant.

Wedding planners in Little Rock are scrambling to find recipes for Lucky Charms-studded wedding cakes. Event planners are adding nap time to all bridal shower and bachelor party timetables.

Happy Birthday To You, And You, And You, And You ...

I'm about to be a father for the second time, so the experience of the Jepp family in Canada scares the hoo-ha out of me. Their family just grew by four ... four identical baby girls.

I've had friends over the years who have had identical twins, and I can't imagine what it will be like trying to keep four identical kids straight. When they hit high school, I'm going to recommend four separate schools lest they wreak havoc on their teachers.

Now all we need is four identical boys, and the potential for playing true havoc with the laws of probability will exist.

Got anything weird in your world? Drop me a line, anytime!