View from the North 40: The news is falling my way today

For the record, I don’t need anyone to applaud me or approve of the way I negotiate life for me to feel validated, but sometimes that kind of support makes me want to laugh like a jerk, “haaaa haaa hah!” while pointing my bust-a-cap fingers in that sort of “middle-aged white woman tryin’ a be all gansta” way.

A clean house? Overrated. And now they’re also a waste of taxpayer dollars in Beaverton, Oregon, where a babysitter got several cops, including a canine unit, involved in a house-cleaning incident.

The babysitter thought she heard an intruder in the bathroom, so she called 911 for help, The Associated Press said Thursday. Officers swarmed the house, warning the intruder that they were on site and the person might get bit if he or she came out with hands up.

That didn’t happen. In fact, the intruder couldn’t come out, or put its hands up because cops entering the bathroom discovered the intruder was a Roomba vacuum that had roomba’d its way into the bathroom and got caught in the room when it knocked the door shut while auto-cleaning.

I guess we could consider its banging noises a call for assistance, like its version of “Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” But the babysitter didn’t understand roomba-speak.

On the other hand, as a matter of principle maybe police departments should, as a standard practice, teach their canine partners to attack Roomba’s first and ask questions later. Well, maybe not. I mean, it’s not like the Roomba has limbs for the dog to grab to subdue the dirt thief. And the dogs certainly can’t go for the throat.

I think, maybe, the thing should’ve been shot, then we can all go back to the good ol’ days when dirt floors were acceptable, not respectable, (I get that), but acceptable. I, being Roomba-free, am leading the way to those old days.

It’s not just cleaning that’s overrated these days, all of a sudden coffee is too. I don’t drink the stuff. Half the time when I smell it brewing, the first thing I think is that a skunk has entered the building. My distaste for coffee might lose me 50 percent of my audience, but I guess both those people will have to find something else to do on a Friday because I tried to like coffee, but no. That was a long and horrible-tasting week in my life.

Now the Swiss government is questioning its support of coffee, as well.

Reuters reported Wednesday that Switzerland announced that morning it plans to abolish the nation’s emergency stockpile of coffee after declaring the beans are not vital for human survival.

Since sometime between the two world wars, the Swiss government has required companies like Nestle, maker of the instant coffee Nescafe, and other importers, roasters and retailers to store bags of raw coffee.

Apparently, Switzerland stockpiles other staples, too, such as sugar, rice, edible oils and animal feed as preparation for any potential shortages in case of war, natural disaster or epidemics.

But now government officials have said: “The Federal Office for National Economic Supply has concluded coffee … is not essential for life. Coffee has almost no calories and subsequently does not contribute, from the physiological perspective, to safeguarding nutrition.”

Coffee has been deemed to be of no intrinsic value to humans.

Welcome to my world, suckers, a world in which nobody in a governmental department anywhere on earth has ever authorized the stockpiling of my Diet Coke to hold me through the bad times.

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If someone would declare sweats to be acceptable as “business casual” life would be perfect at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40/.