Was It Booze or a Big Belly That Left Bus Rider With the Blues?

And how was your day? The crime log of the Dana Point News said a caller, who sounded inebriated, told officers he wasn’t feeling well “because a heavy man fell on him getting out of the bus.”

Speaking of weighty problems: The Saddleback Valley News’ crime log said “a woman reported her 15-year-old son was refusing to go to school. She said he is bigger than she is and she can’t drag him out of the shower.”

Good news for stay-at-home adults: Delta Air Lines will award you for declining to travel, at least with Delta, as John Faulkner of Dana Point learned (see accompanying).

OK, so he or she has a good personality ... : But Anne Olmstead of La Crescenta wonders if this tutor can teach (see accompanying).

Weapons of minimal destruction: The hype is building for “War of the Worlds,” starring Tom Cruise, one of the endless number of suspense yarns about a seemingly invulnerable Martian force invading Earth (see also, or don’t see: “Mars Attacks!” and “Independence Day”).

What I think would be a refreshing change would be for Hollywood to film “The Sirens of Titan,” a novel by Kurt Vonnegut, in which Earth was stormed by a monumentally inept force of Martians who were promptly wiped out.

So disorganized were the intruders that one Martian “attacked all of India with a double-barreled shotgun,” surrendering to his billion or so enemies after the gun exploded.

The only Martian success was the temporary capture of a meat market in Basel, Switzerland. I’d cast Robin Williams in the role of the meat market proprietor.

Now to some old business: You may recall my mention of the ambiguous message flashing on Interstate 5 in northern L.A. County: “LEBEC EXIT -- WOMEN IN OUTDOORS.”

My informant, Roger Duncan of Coarsegold, being a male, reported, “Naturally, I slowed to observe, but saw nothing.”

I don’t know about you but I hate to leave a mystery, no matter how trivial, unsolved. I checked with Caltrans, which said it wasn’t a Caltrans sign, but luckily a worker remembered something about a get-together at nearby Tejon Ranch. Sure enough, “Women in the Outdoors” was the name of an event for members of that sex to experience hiking, hunting, four-wheeling and such -- organized by the National Wild Turkey Federation. When I spotted the sponsor, I knew the item was destined to be in this column.

miscelLAny: Craig Heiller points out there are certain words that should not appear in cemetery ads (see accompanying).

Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, Ext. 77083; by fax at (213) 237-4712; by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A. 90012; and by e-mail at [email protected].