* Title: August is over but still Congress has off until after Labor Day which will make this the slowest news week of the year.

* “Puff the Magic Dragon” by Peter Yarrow and Lennie Lipton. In a later, more politically correct version, the line is sung as “A dragon lives for ever, but not little girls and boys…” The song reached number 2 on the charts in 1963.

* A Canadian musicologist … the “Mozart Effect” is term coined by Alfred Tomatis, based upon the research of Dr. Gordon Shaw who claimed that listening to music by Mozart led to a measurably higher level of intellectual capability. Other researchers have claimed this as hogwash. I happen to believe Smashing Pumpkins makes me, like, really, really, um, what-everrr.

* “I aint’ Got Time to Read.” Is a stupid, sophomoric pun on Governor Ventura’s autobiography, “I Ain’t Got Time to Bleed.”

* “… like 5,500 ee cummings poems” Edward Estlin Cummings 1894-1962. A contemporary poet and artist who used words, letters, and punctuation in new ways that, to some observers, paralleled Piccaso’s inventive use of lines, perspective and color. At least that’s what I wrote in my term paper for Freshman English which resulted in a rare (for me) “B.”