The cicada's symphony is with us once more, getting stronger as evening approaches. They are big and ugly, these insects, but they can fly and stay on the tops of the tallest trees.

Cicadas live for up to a dozen years, first underground until they emerge to molt and shed their skins mostly on tree trunks. They are not of much use to us but in Shanghai, they fry them until golden, and serve them with lots of garlic and vegetables. Contact us for a copy of the best recipe.

The Queen mother celebrated last week her 101st birthday. She still walks about on her own, still speaks and thinks brightly, and continues to place wagers at the racetrack.

Meanwhile her daughter, Princess Margaret, has suffered two strokes, and is confined to a wheelchair. Upon seeing these events on TV, our own 96-year-old mummy insisted on relating to us in great detail the "real" lurid story of Princess Diana's demise. She had recently been reading about it in Yiddish, and knew every detail, and where the tunnel was, and which wall they smashed into, and she concluded: "a stupid husband, the one with the big ears, and if only that girl didn't run around."

One of life's pleasures is not having plastic shower curtains in your house. Naturally, when traveling, you find all hotels use this artifact causing that dreadful "sucking in, clinging to your body, clammy action." As you shower the curtain flutters and glues itself to your body.

Recent scientific studies have theorized, but not agreed on, as to the reasons for this mysterious effect. They mention "air displacement," "airplane lift off activity," and "ill wind," or "a natural attraction by the plastic to human skin." Meanwhile, curtains become dirty and moldy because people think that getting wet all the time will keep them clean, and we go on to other mysteries of daily life.

Why, we wonder, don't they make mouse flavored cat food. We understand olive oil, but how do they make baby oil? We have a shipment ready of Styrofoam sheets, but how do we pack them?

With all these prisoner executions going on, we wonder do they first sterilize the lethal injections? Why call them apartments when they are actually stuck together?

My son Joshua is a vegetarian and eats vegetables. I consider myself a humanitarian.

How come Tarzan never grew a beard? Tell a guy the bench is wet from paint, and he is certain to touch it.

email: bernardx@excite.com