MY PERFECT COLUMN

Diana Griego Erwin graciously accepted me into her home at a time when the world seemed to be falling apart around her.

Her orange-and-black tabby cat eyed me suspiciously, with the look a feline gets when an intruder has entered her domain.

Griego Erwin had just resigned from her job as a columnist for the Sacramento Bee. Her offense: Making up cheesy stuff, presenting it as fact, and assuming her unsuspecting readers would swallow the swill, including highly descriptive interviews with people who, it turns out, existed only in her imagination.

"I was only trying to write the perfect column," Griego Erwin told me, her eyes damp as she diced an onion for the paella she was making.

"I know what you mean," I told her sympathetically. "Fortunately, most of my readers recognize the swill I serve is obviously made up."

At that moment, Griego Erwin's nephew arrived home from school.

"Good afternoon, Aunt Queenie," he said breezily, pulling off a sweater to expose his Ziggy Marley t-shirt. "Smells like paella."

The nephew, a sensitive boy with a lot to learn, noticed the tears in Griego Erwin's eyes. He walked over and embraced his aunt.

"That's okay," he said. "I still love you."

Griego Erwin pulled a tissue from her doily-wrapped Kleenex box and blew her nose. I recognized the gesture as that of a person who recognizes her career is headed down Hard Knocks Alley, by way of Alkali Flats.

"It's not that I'm a bad person," she told me. "I still volunteer at the Quadriplegic Veterans Homes. I still give money to the Sudanese Orphans Society."

She then grabbed a box of peas from the Kenmore Elite refrigerator-freezer in the kitchen. She had purchased the refrigerator only days before she resigned from the Bee.

"I knew I couldn't really afford such a nice refrigerator," she told me. "But my old one conked out and my nephew needs chilled food. I'm the only one left for him. And then I had to quit my job. I don't know how I'll make ends meet now."

At that moment, a quadriplegic veteran rolled into the kitchen with a Sudanese orphan on his lap. Erwin's cat rubbed up against the wheelchair happily.

"Thank you for buying this wheelchair," the veteran told Erwin.

"Thank you for finding me a home," the orphan said.

Griego Erwin sniffled and smiled, the smile that comes when a person recognizes that life still holds abundant surprises, even while her career is headed down Letdown Avenue, by way of Desolation Road.

"Wanna stay for paella?" she asked.

As the cornball tenderness unfolded in the kitchen, I was suddenly aware that Griego Erwin was providing me with a scenario from which I might write My Great Column.

Maudlin sentiment has always been huge in newspapers. Mining the continuing drama of life's rich pageantry is why columnists exist.

But something was missing. What I needed was the coup de grace, the one over-arching statement or action that would turn My Great Column into My Perfect Column.

The tension was building. And then Griego Erwin said something completely unexpected.

She glanced up from her simmering paella. It was the wistful glance of a person who recognizes she can help a fellow writer, even while her own career is headed down Hard Knocks Alley, by way of Bathos Boulevard.

"I just don't get it," she told me. "I don't understand why bad things happen to good people."

Perfect.

FULL OF SITH

The only thing more exciting than interplanetary travel is the spectre of interplanetary war.

As any thinking person who has ever paid attention to Star Wars knows, the United States is under constant threat of attack by diabolical aliens from distant worlds who wish to penetrate our borders to work in the lettuce fields for peanuts and, while they're at it, impose their will on an unsuspecting public distracted by the finger in Wendy's bowl of chili.

It's all so confusing!

That is why we are thrilled the Pentagon is investing billions of dollars to develop space weapons and preparing to deploy them in the military's unrelenting efforts to protect us, the unsuspecting public, from an attack by Martians.

In a story published this week, the New York Times, a newspaper operated by a clan of Wookiees, Pentagon officials have turned their attention from their valiant search of Osama bin Laden to the breathless development of weapons capable of strafing Uranus.

Let's face it. None of us will ever feel completely safe until we know our country has developed laser sabers capable of destroying the army of dweebs hanging out in front of megaplexes dressed like Jabba the Hutt.

According to the Times, the Air Force is developing lots of useful space weapons with Apocalyptic names, including a program called "Rods from God" that would hurl cylinders of tungsten, titanium or uranium from the edge of space at the villains who would destroy us.

The Times quotes Gen. Lance Lord, an alleged real person who leads the Air Force Space Command, as saying the U.S. "must establish and maintain space superiority. Simply put, it's the American way of fighting."

Lord defines space superiority as "freedom to attack as well as freedom from attack" in space. Lord was not asked to define the American way of fighting, but the obvious Lance Lord definition would be "freedom to spend unlimited gobs of money on goofy programs."

And if we ever need a guy to lead the Forces of Good against evil jurisdictions intent on universal domination, it is reassuring to know we are sending someone with a cool Star Wars name like "Gen. Lance Lord."

Unless, of course, "Gen. Lance Lord" turns out simply to be another Bush droid.

Nevertheless, the Pentagon has already spent $100 billion to plan and create its space forces, according to the New York Times.

Even after all that money, though, Pentagon officials sheepishly admit they can't reliably detect and destroy a threat today. Which means we must still remain alert to the possiblity that Pluto will attack us tomorrow.

Unfortunately, there are still weenies in Congress who aren't willing to spend more money on space weapons. They are the types who refuse to acknowledge that the galaxies are filled with Darth Vaders intent on destroying all that is Right and Just in the universe.

Perhaps we are full of Sith, but the scenarios set out by the Pentagon promise great career opportunities right here at the Monterey Institute for Interplanetary Studies, especially for those of us who have aspired to become wise old Jedi wizards deployed to negotiate peaceful settlements with scheming Neimoidians aboard the Death Star.

The possibilities are endless.

(By the way, has anyone ever seen Jar-Jar and Lance Lord in the same room together?)