Howdy all!  If you've been visiting me here at this blog, please note ... from this point on I'll just be updating my OTHER ShoutPost blog: http://realitycheck.shoutpost.com and my TypePad blog: http://mtrealitycheck.typepad.com

Please stop by and say hello.  Sit a spell.  Y'all come back now, heah?

I've been robbed!

That's right, cunning master criminals have taken advantage of my trusting nature and lax security to help themselves to my most treasured belongings: my cell phone and my prescription glasses.

OK, these aren't my most treasured belongings at all, but I do miss them both.
Additionally, the burglar - or burglars - managed to abscond with two music CDs and about 11 bucks in singles and change.

The robbery took place one recent Saturday morning, in the wee hours between 4 a.m. and sunup. The robbers broke into my truck through the little, sliding back window. (They didn't actually break in, exactly; the window wasn't latched and the perps just slid it open.)

The next day, I didn't really notice I'd been robbed until my neighbor, Jerry, came over to tell me his car had also been burglarized.

When the police came by to take the report, they informed me of several similar break-ins that have occurred around the neighborhood in recent weeks. The officer who took the report said two suspects - older teenagers on bicycles - had been spotted earlier in the week trying to break into cars, but had been chased off.

Now, far be it from me to tell the police how to do their job, but I've seen enough episodes of "Law & Order" to know the perpetrators are most assuredly not kids on bikes.

Also, I've sat through nearly every episode of "Columbo" and "The Rockford Files," so as you can plainly see, I'm nothing if not a crime fighting expert.

As such, I feel duty-bound to offer the police the benefits of my near-legendary sleuthing ability. So ... let's examine the robbery - and the robber - on a point-by-point basis (Columbo does this a lot, so I know it works!):

POINT 1: The robbers took my prescription glasses. These are "old man" glasses, used primarily for reading and preventing me from bumping into walls. Also, they're not especially stylish. From this, we can deduce the perpetrator is at least 45 years old, and no "kid on a bike."

POINT 2: The robbers took my cell phone. However, according to my service provider, no calls were made before I noticed it missing and had the service discontinued. Hence, we can safely assume the robber, committing the crime without prescription glasses of his own, mistook my cell phone for a tuna sandwich. He was not only half-blind, but also hungry! Aha! Now we're getting somewhere.

POINT 3: The CDs the burglar took were 1) Charlotte Church singing "sacred" music and 2) excerpts from Ruggiero Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci." So we know the perpetrator likes opera. Definitely not a kid on a bike!

POINT 4: The robber did not steal several other tapes and CDs which were laying there in plain sight, including copies of: "AC/DC Live", "The Best of Sam & Dave" and Gove Scrivenor's "Shine On." A kid on a bike would definitely have made off with the AC/DC and definitely not the Charlotte Church.

POINT 5: The burglar did not wake my terrifying watchdog, Kipper, who barks his damn fool head off at pretty much everything, at least everything that sounds like a Snickers Bar being unwrapped.  So we know the burglar was wearing soft clothing that didn't make crinkly candy wrapper sounds when he moved.

POINT 6: Back to the opera CDs again. People who love opera often wear a tuxedo to concerts at the Metropolitan in New York. A good tux does not make crinkly candy wrapper sounds. Obviously, our perpetrator was wearing a tux.

POINT 7: Nobody heard the robber drive up to the house or away from it. Therefore, we know he was on a bicycle. (So far, that's the only part the police have right!)

CONCLUSION: By examining all the facts, we can safely deduce that the burglar was a tuxedo-wearing, bicycle-riding, opera-starved, hungry, cell phone-eating, tuna sandwich-loving, myopic man in his mid-to-late 40s who can fit through the rear window of a pickup truck!

Now that I've developed the profile, it's only a matter of time until the cops collar the guy.

And so, Mr. Robber, I'm going to make you this one-time, public offer: turn yourself in now and I'll offer my services as your defense attorney, free of charge. I'm not exactly Bar Association certified, true, but I have watched almost every episode of "Ally McBeal."

By the way, I'm going to need my glasses back in order to prepare your defense.

To contact Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or legal inquiries, e-mail mtaylor@midmich.net or write via snail mail to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429. Want more? Archived "Reality Check" columns as well as photos, links and previously unpublished "mini-columns" may be found online at http://mtrealitycheck.typepad.com.

I look both ways before crossing the street.  I don't jump off bridges (No mom, not even if my friends do).  I don't keep a loaded pistol under my pillow.

I've never been one of those live-fast-die-young-leave-a-good-looking-corpse types.  When I do go, I want my corpse to look at least 100 years old.  Older, if possible.

But lately, some of my acquaintances have been making me feel as if I'm living on the edge.

It all began when I signed on for some tanning sessions at a local salon.  In my parents' day, doctors actually used to prescribe sunny climes to ailing patients.  In these more enlightened times, we've all heard enough from the surgeon general (the world's biggest party-pooper) to know that sunshine, whether real or artificial, is bad for you.

When my buddies learned of my efforts to bring my skin-tone in line with my own self-image as a groovy beach-type guy they immediately started in on me.  Some said it was the height of vanity to work that hard at a tan.  Some implied I'd be dead of radiation exposure within a week.

Well, so far it hasn't been much work.  It's been over a month now and I'm still not dead.  And for the first time since I moved north from Phoenix I have a decent tan.  I think in this case my various detractors are simply jealous of my pre-melanomic glow.

I intend to sign on for another hitch of artificial sunshine when my current membership runs out.  Is it worth the health risks involved?  Sure, and I'll tell you why:  Everything - yes - everything is bad for you.  Even things you've been led to believe are good for you.  Like sunshine.

An example: Several years ago, I rented a house with a hot tub on the back deck.  Back then, they were all the rage.  All the health and fitness "experts" said they were great for everything from tired blood to manic depression.  I figured this was actually the case.

Then my brother the nurse paid me a visit.  He had helped me move a particularly heavy stove and since neither of us are regular partakers of manual labor we were both a little sore.  I was looking forward to a long soak in the spa and I invited him to join me.

Eyeing the bubbling water dubiously, he said, "I'm not sure.  Is it safe?"

"What do you mean?" I replied.

He dipped one finger into the water, examined it carefully, then wiped it on his T-shirt.  "Well, I've heard these things are a breeding ground for dangerous micro-organisms."

"Oh, not this one," I said confidently.  "I have enough chemicals in there to kill anything."

My brother nodded knowingly.  "That's what I'm afraid of," he said.

I ended up soaking alone.  I looked carefully, but didn't see any micro-organisms.  And the chemicals didn't even burn off my tan.  I kept using the tub.

There are plenty of other "healthy" things I've done that have, in recent years, been declared unsafe:  Jogging.  I used to jog.  Then it turned out jogging is bad for the knees.  At least my knees.  I gave that one up.  I never cared for it much anyway.

Mega doses of vitamins.  Like a lot of people I went through a vitamin phase.  For about a year I took enough B, A, C and D to keep a small Mediterranean country sniffle-free for a decade.  Then someone (probably the surgeon general) discovered all those vitamins were doing weird things to my insides.  I gave the vitamins up, too.  But then, I hadn't liked the vitamins any better than I had liked jogging.

And what about all the things that used to be bad for us that have turned out to be healthy (or at least non-harmful) after all?  Like beer.  It used to be one of the seven deadly sins.  Now doctors tell us a couple glasses a day help prevent heart disease.  I don't know which doctor first discovered this fact, but I'd like to shake his hand.

Sitting too close to the television.  My mother always told me I'd shrivel up and die if I sat with my nose pressed against the screen.  She was wrong.  I still watch TV that way.

Reading in dim light.  Mom said it would make me blind.  Current ophthalmologic thinking says this isn't so.  It might give me a headache, but that's about it.  

With this kind of dubious track record, how can any of us be expected to trust health "experts"?

I, for one, have had it with trying to keep pace with what is and isn't bad for me.  From now on I'm going to keep my own counsels.  Good or bad, at least they will be my own.

I'm going to keep eating red meat, salt and fish from Lake Michigan.  I'm going to keep watching TV in the dark.  I'm going to be late to bed and late to rise, and I bet I'll still live longer than Ben Franklin, although I doubt I'll be as wealthy or wise.

And of course, living this way, when I finally do die, my corpse will look 100 years old.  Even if I go tomorrow.