I want to say one word to you. Just one word.

"Metals."

With market prices for metals rising skyward, suddenly aluminum is the new gold. Or maybe I should say the new copper. Whatever. From sea to shining sea, thieves are snapping up the lightweight metal and selling it to scrap dealers for quick pocket change. Nothing that is made of aluminum is safe, it seems. Guard rails, ballpark bleachers, light poles. In my town a couple months ago we had a rash of thefts of aluminum ladders from people´s garages.< P>

Now, though, at least in some places, cops and scrap dealers are getting wise to the schemers´ scheme. In the above-linked Associated Press story, one Oregon dealer notes, "We stall sellers of stolen material and call police. If it is moderately suspicious, we will ask the seller to provide some documentation."

Which brings me back to "The Graduate." With a tip of the Inbox cap to Simon and Garfunkel:

We´d like to know a little bit about you for our files/We´d like to help you learn to help yourself ...

Insert Your Favorite "Strike" And/Or "Hardball" Pun Here
In Pittsburgh, the host city for Major League Baseball´s All-Star Game next month, unionized garbage collectors are threatening to raise a stink, both figuratively and literally, by going on strike right before the big game.

Such impeccable timing. Such shrewd strategery. Talk about leveraging your big national-spotlight moment.

Dead Perp Walking
Speaking of spotlight-leveraging, a lawyer for one of the waste haulers implicated in the FBI´s ongoing trash industry crime probe in Connecticut is accusing the feds of gearing up to stage a perp walk -- a big showy arrest for the news cameras -- in lieu of allowing his client, the defendant-to-be, to turn himself in to authorities if-or-when he is indicted. "If they want to be cowboys, it´s up to them," the lawyer notes.

I dunno, do you think these guys should maybe think about watching a little less TV?

Housekeeping: Sorry to have fired a blank in Tuesday´s Daily E-mail. I took Monday off, and normally when I take a day off on a column-writing day (Mondays and Wednesdays for those keeping score at home), I post a note saying Inbox is off and will return whenever it´s next scheduled to run. Which, as many of you have probably already figured out, I forgot to do. Again, my apologies.

Benumbed By Warming
Let´s end the day with a piece of climate-change-slash-early-presidential-election-jockeying "news" from the Borowitz Report: Sen. Hillary Clinton has reportedly helped produce a documentary film highlighting the oratorical prowess of former VP Al Gore in order to make the case that a Gore presidency "would set off a doomsday scenario of global tedium."

They´re calling this prospective phenomenon "global boring." Remember: You read it here first.

Pete Fehrenbach is assistant managing editor of Waste News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.