So, we at Various Things & Stuff take a couple days break from blogging to attend to the business of, well, Various Things & Stuff, and the whole world’s gone crazy! Let’s try to set things right with a heaping plate of Quick Hits, served Buffalo style with bleu cheese and celery sticks!

• Shut up, Jim Gibbons! After getting stung by a joke news release sent out by gubernatorial rival state Sen. Bob Beers, lawyers for Republican congressman Gibbons sent the Beers campaign a threatening letter, saying residents and the media didn’t realize it was a joke. (The parody was obvious: The release claimed Gibbons took a stand supporting Beers’ tax restraint initiative, and we all know Gibbons doesn’t take stands. Only kidding, Gibbons lawyers! Don’t send us a threatening letter! In truth, Gibbons — like everybody else — is against the tax measure.)

Funny story: One Reno TV station didn’t realize it was a joke, and actually aired the story! KRNV Channel 4 missed the part of the “Gibbons” release that said it was paid for by the Beers campaign, or so guesses my friend and colleague Anjeanette Damon on her blog.

But while most commentators have bashed Gibbons for having no sense of humor whatsoever (true), and of being stupid, or of thinking the voters are stupid, there’s a bigger problem here. Gibbons is trying to use the force of law to silence another political candidate, who just happened to nail him good. The letter from Beers’ lawyer back to the Gibbons camp is funny and hits all the right notes. Fight satire with satire, Gibbons people! Don’t deploy boring lawyers to make silly arguments. That just makes you guys look lame!

• Here’s a funny, related side story: We at Various Things & Stuff were once mistaken for Beers, by a Reno TV reporter. (We don’t remember if he was from KRNV or not. Darn.) Anyway, he wanted to interview us about the impeachment trial of Controller Kathy Augustine.

Why? Because he thought we were Beers! And it’s not the first time that’s happened, either.

While we briefly toyed with the idea of granting the interview (”Listen I know we’re not supposed to prejudge these things, but Kathy is such an awful person, I plan to convict!”) we ultimately decided against it. After all, if the interview had aired, the poor reporter would have lost his job.

Well, when we finally told him we weren’t Sen. Beers, he gave us a dirty look and walked away! Hey, asshole, we just saved your job! Why are you mad at us?

• We know the city wants to have nice parks. But what in the hell is the fetish that Las Vegas council members have about giving away city resources to private businesses? If it’s not tax breaks downtown, it’s subsidizing big parking garages. And if it’s not subsidizing big parking garages, it’s huge giveaways to Bill Walters. And if it’s not huge giveaways to Walters, it’s huge giveaways to Big League Dreams.

Under the current scheme, the city wants to pay about $36 million to build six stadiums designed to look like big-league ballparks. The park will then be turned over to private Big League Dreams to manage. Then, Big League Dreams will charge people to get in.

Charge people (read taxpayers). To get in. To a taxpayer-funded park. That they already paid for.

Those bastards.

• We’d slam our old “friend,” U.S. Rep. Jon Porter, for sending a franked mail piece to 100,000 voters in his district at taxpayer expense under the gossamer-thin premise that he was really providing “emergency services” information. But we know he must be really, really sad that his BFF in Congress, U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, has been forced out of his race for re-election due to DeLay’s total lack of morality and unrepentant law-breaking. So sad.

It was once said to us by somebody who knows Porter that in Nevada, Porter campaign chief Mike Slanker is the congressman, and in Washington, D.C., Tom DeLay is the congressman. Now, we wonder, who will be the congressman in Washington?

Oh, that’s right. New Majority Leader Roy Blunt. Whew. That was close.

• A big shout-out to Gov. Kenny Guinn, recovering at Spring Valley Hospital from a slick new kind of minimally invasive hip-replacement surgery. The governor is working hard at the hospital, and plans to be up and around soon. Get well soon, Gov. Guinn!

• In a surprising twist, former Assemblywoman Merle Berman has announced she’s running for dog catcher. Only kidding! Don’t write us any threatening letters! See, for the Gibbons campaign, that’s what’s called a joke. It’s funny because Berman has announced she’s running for secretary of state, state controller and Clark County public administrator, all in the space of a few months. So what’s left? Dog catcher! As in couldn’t-get-elected-to. Get it, Gibbons people?

• Finally, props to our friend and colleague Erin Neff, whose column today reveals that the Clark County Health District has at least one downright dishonest human resources employee working there.

While refusing Neff’s request to get information that should be open to the public, Joyce Champoli apparently went snooping into Neff’s own records, and those of her kids, too. Here’s hoping somebody tells Champoli that she needs to follow the law, and that what she did is a Nixonian no-no.