Things we’re against

Sometimes you have to take a stand

“Take a line.” —H.L. Mencken

READING the news from last week was, in part, inspiring (the cave rescue in Thailand), in part frightening (any of the stories involving North Korea) and sometimes even entertaining (watching Democrats trying to find anything on Brett Kavanaugh). But sometimes the news was downright spooky.

In the great tradition of editorial opposition when the opportunity arises, we give you, this weekend day, Things We’re Against:

The paper said there has been something of an invasion in the Carolinas, as the longhorned tick has suddenly appeared there. The blasted thing is a native to Asia, so how it got on these shores is anybody’s guess. But likely it came on a plane.

It’s “exotic” and an aggressive biter, according to the experts. It’s also just as capable of spreading disease as its American cousins. Thankfully, it’s also vulnerable to the same insecticides.

This thing threatens people, pets and livestock. And it’s a tick. We’re happy to say about these bloodsuckers: We’re against them.

NPR reported the other day that a man in Arizona saw a snake pop out from under the hood of his car. And climbed his windshield. While he was driving.

First things first: Without pulling over, he started shooting video of the visitor. Next, he turned on his windshield wipers, but the snake reportedly treated it like a ride, going up and down with the wipers.

The snake finally retreated under the hood and disappeared. As of this writing, it hasn’t been accounted for. We’re against snakes in our engines. Time to sell the car.

Speaking of snakes, a man in New York state was sound asleep in his bedroom when a snake dropped from the ceiling. It was a big one, too. A 6-footlong boa constrictor.

Authorities say it came from the apartment upstairs. The man wasn’t injured, the snake was returned to its owners, but that doesn’t make it OK. We are 100 percent opposed to boa constrictors dropping on people as they try to sleep. We can’t compromise on this one.

We watched the movie trailer for The Nun during an outing to another film. The trailer made us jump out of our seats. (How in the world was that approved for viewing for all audiences?)

Yeah, we won’t be watching that movie. We’re against heart palpitations during entertainment.

But the “oh, uh-uh” story of the week might have been this one, out of China: A 737 passenger jet dropped, actually plunged, 25,000 feet after a co-pilot mistakenly turned off an air conditioning system . . . in an attempt to hide his vaping.

We’re not 100 percent certain how this works, but the Chinese aviation people said—at a press conference no less— that the vaping co-pilot didn’t want his smoke to spread into the main cabin of the plane, so he tried to turn off a ventilation system. Instead he hit the wrong button, “leading to a decrease in cabin oxygen levels.”

In turn, the emergency warning system came on, thinking that the plane had flown too high, ordering pilots to drop, and quickly.

When the instruments returned to normal, the jet climbed back to 26,000 feet and continued to its destination, rather than the nearest airport. According to reports: “Industry experts said the decision to climb and continue the flight was unusual given the oxygen masks had already been deployed.”

Holy moly. Yes, we think we can take a line on this one, too. We’re against everything in that story. Somebody get us a bus ticket.