WAURIKA — A vacation is beckoning me, but I can’t go off the clock until more of the sticky notes that serve as my memory have been culled:

I scatter grains of salt when candidates say they’re running for office because “we need to take government out of the hands of politicians and put it in the hands of the people.”

It’s a bit disingenuous when a candidate proposes taking government out of the hands of politicians and giving it to “the people.” See, candidates become politicians, and politicians who get elected become part of the government. I’ve yet to see anyone get elected and then turn around and give their senate seat to Mr. or Mrs. Joe Blow.

I also view candidates who tout giving government to “the people” with a jaded eye, because that notion is contrary to historical reality.

Take a gander at the Forefathers who created our system, and how many were just “common folk?” Most of the men who created our form of government and put it into action were doctors, lawyers, teachers, intellectuals, successful businessmen, high-ranking military men and members of the “landed gentry.”

“Common folk” may serve us at local levels of government. But for the most part, state and national leadership has always been in the hands of the “uncommon folks.”

• Personally, I’m sorta thankful “common folks” don’t run turn the wheels of government, especially if George Carlin was right. Said the late great comedian: “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

• Mick Jagger hits 66 on July 26. For Baby Boomers, that’s another reminder of one of the great truths our elders tried to pass on — the older you get, the faster time flies by.

• Fast and young are cool, but slow and old are inevitable.

• “We don’t beat the reaper by living longer; we beat the reaper by living well and living fully.” So said Prof. Randy Pausch, who died last year, a few days after completing the bestseller The Last Lecture.

• There’s a thin line between colorful, eccentric characters and people you hope won’t reproduce — and both species can be found after midnight in the aisles of all-night department stores.

• War Powers Act of 1973 aside, nowhere in the Constitution is the president given the power to make war. That’s the sole power of Congress, which hasn’t utilized it since declaring war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor. (No, the U.S. never declared war on Germany — Germany declared war on us.)

• How does film director Barry Sonnenfeld feel about the younger generation’s willing surrender of privacy on the Internet? He sez: “I suspect we are probably looking at the last generation of Americans that exist in a democracy. Totalitarianism is not far in our future, and the next generation will go down that road happily.”

• I still don’t care to eat it, but okra has been used to increase a cow’s milk yield, stanch bleeding, clean metal and even unstop drains. (Cleaning metal and unstopping drains may be why I shy away from okra.)

• At the start of the last school year, the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools (TAPPS) began levying fines on high schools whose coaches or players are ejected from sports events. First offense costs the school $50 and the fine rises by $50 for every subsequent ejection. Texas is one of eight states now fining schools for the behavior of their coaches and/or athletes.

• Which is correct: “ever so often” or “every so often”? Actually, both. According to The Columbia Guide to Standard American English, “ever so often” is used when referring to “a great many times,” while “every so often” is used in reference to “once in a while.”

• “You can’t go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You can’t.” Actor and ex-jailbird Robert Downey Jr. said it.

• Something else from George Carlin: “Women like silent men, they think they’re listening.”