And now, for something completely different...

As I travel around the highways and byways of Big Animal Grove, I do have some random thoughts.

Random, in this case, means things that strike me as being odd and b.) may not be related (gasp!) to the village board.

For example:

1. Oh, no -- a cell phone tower in the village? Oh, wait, there are already more than a dozen in then village, the highest being 140 feet, higher than the 120-foot tower proposed by T-Mobile. Let's hope it works -- heaven forbid someone's texting would be interrupted.

2. Parents who let their pre-pubescent children play in the self-checkout lanes at stores should be beaten with pipe cleaners.

3. Can someone explain, in lay terms, what the heck they did do to Arlington Heights Road.

4. Has there ever been a buffalo in Buffalo Grove? (I know we've been buffaloed, but that's a different story)

5. How did Wheeling get the Target?

6. Does anyone really watch Ch. 6?

7. When Buffalo Grove High School turns 100, will it celebrate its Bisontennial?

8. How come the most successful operations in Town Center deal with alcohol or Torah?

9. It seems as though a certain Trustee is obsessed with air quality because of alleged pollution by a composting facility. Ironic, isn't it, that this comes from a trustee in a village where residents don't think twice about emissions from over-sized, gas-guzzling SUVs and Hummers. At least composting is recycling.

10. If air quality is such an issue, the village needs to relax its ban on what kind of animals can be domesticated. Sheep, for example, would be a great alternative to noisy, air-fouling lawn mowers -- but knowing some trustees, they'd accuse fellow Board Members of pulling the wool over their eyes. (Sorry, couldn't pass that one up)

11. Yaks. No there's a solution. Yaks graze, they're quiet and can be used to carry up to 150 pounds, and are more intriguing to look at than sheep or buffaloes. They would also be representative of some Board Members who tend to, sorry, yak a lot.