"I read somewhere that 77% of all the mentally ill live in poverty. Actually, I'm more intrigued by the 23% who are apparently doing quite well for themselves." - Jerry Garcia

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SEMANTICS ALERT: We've visited the topic before in this space but new episodes make updates unavoidable. In war torn Srinigar, India some 10,000 fatalities since 1989 have left a similar number of widows moping about the countryside. Officials there have borrowed a page from American spin doctors. They have decided to purge the word "widow" from all legal documents and official publications. This, they say, is because the reference depresses the women. Heneforth the spouses of fallen soldiers will be referred to as "wife of late".

Like us, the East Indians are coming to the realization that reality is what you make it after submitting it to a good wordsmith. Words that conjure more pleasant imagery could displace all those that make us feel bad. Perhaps we could rid the world of genital herpes and rush hour traffic if we started referring to them as "peppermint ice cream" and "March of the Warm Puppies", respectively.

Who would be embarrassed if word got out that they had gotten peppermint ice cream and who wouldn't want to jump in line behind the March of the Warm Puppies?

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President Bush apparently decided last week that Kosovo isn't such a bad place for U.S. troops afterall. A politician reverses his stance on a campaign platform plank? Alert the media! Oh. That's me I guess. Consider us alerted.

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Having grown up in California, the land of fruits and nuts, hokum salespersons were a fact of life as long as I can reemember. That is why I was not shocked by the "new" immortality organization sprouting now out in Scottsdale, Az.

It's run by three yahoos who meet twice weekly with their members and charge them $10 each per meeting to hear what they want to hear, namely, that they aren't going to die. I submit they couldn't get that much from them to confirm the contrary but I will do it for nothing. Die you will. I guarantee it. There. No charge.

When I say this kind of thing is not new to me, let me qualify myself.
I had a girlfriend in the 60's whose parents were convinced that "the end was near" and "the saucers were coming".

So convinced were they that when a "seer" pitched a vision and set the date for Armageddon (sometime back in 1966) it was determined that a particular hilltop, conveniently located in the nearby, scenic Malibu Hills, was to be the debarkation point for the chosen to be uploaded into waiting saucers just in the nick of time. The vision called for mass destruction to begin even as the saucers were pulling us aboard.

Yes. I went along. Even at the age of 19 I knew a good hoot when I heard about one. Posters assured attendees that they were among the chosen as evidenced by the fact that they were holding a poster. A sure sign that the gods were watching out for them.

Anyhow, the visionary stood on a pallet with his arms raised and blessed the crowd all night as they alternated between bowing and scraping in his direction and running to the precipice to see if Pasadena had yet begun to disintegrate or implode or whatever cities do under such ordinances.

During most of this I was in the car with my girflfriend trying to convince her we should find new and exicting ways to say goodbye. It didn't work any better then that it did a few years later when I told all those girls I was shipping out to Vietnam the next morning, but I digress.

The food vendors did well that night and just before dawn the "seer" pitched yet another vision that called off all bets until the following solstace.

Undaunted, the celebrants marched down the hill, got into their waiting sedans, and sheepishly drove back to their suburban homes.

The folks in Scottsdale will come to the same moment of disappointing truth. I just hope they don't have to pay too many ten dollarses before they achieve true illumination.

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CORRECTION: A couple of readers sent me E-mails correcting last week's error in which I named Robert Bloch for writing a sci-fi story called "The Monkey House". The actual author was Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Robert Bloch wrote "Psycho" and a host of other short stories and novels. (Unless readers inform me otherwise.) Thank you for keeping me on my toes.