Reporters’ Notebook

One of Harry Reid's latest Senate campaign mailers features a picture of a lemon on the cover and compares the ideas of his opponent, Sharon Angle, to the acidic fruit that has become synonymous with defective products.

So we wondered: If Angle were to respond in kind, what kind of fruit would she use to label Reid?

Prunes were suggested, but they're actually good for you. Besides, these days they're called "dried plums," which is just no fun at all.

The next idea was melon, which makes no sense because Reid is neither round nor juicy. (Or so we assume.)

So forget the fruit and try out Neyraudia Reynaudiana, a plant originally from Asia. It's an invasive species that chokes natural growth! Plus, once it takes root it's as hard to get rid of as a long-term U.S. Senate incumbent.

Best of all, it has slender stalks and is topped with a very fine woolly floss -- in other words, it's a hairy reed.

ALAN CHOATE

County Commissioner Tom Collins had his own fruity moment recently when describing the difference between private ambulance services and firefighter paramedics.

"It's like comparing bananas to watermelons," he said, never explaining which fruit was meant to symbolize the crews wearing fire caps.

SCOTT WYLAND

We get lots of press releases here. We ignore most of them and pretend the spam filter was overzealous when the PR hack calls to follow up on the Big News. But every now and then, one catches our eye.

Like, say, one we got the other day.

It came from a guy named Mark Dice. He wrote about himself in the third person. He included his Facebook address in his press release about himself. And he noted that he has thousands of Facebook fans.

The purpose of his press release? He was launching a weeklong boycott of Facebook because it encourages narcissism.

Yes, apparently it does.

RICHARD LAKE