Hey, Matt: Recently I landed at Lindbergh Field and noticed a sign on some building near the runway that read, “It must be FODfree." Huh? What’s FOD? What’s “it”? — Jim, downtown

Sugar free. Salt free. Fat free. Cholesterol free. Preservatives, MSG, nitrates, dye, perfumes, ozone, freon... Aspirin free. Lead free. Willy free...and now FOD free? American industry spent the 1950s and ’60s putting things into the junk we buy, and now in the ’80s and ’90s they’re taking it back out again. Modern life has officially become too exhausting and complicated to be lived. And they wonder why nobody votes anymore.... Well, at least FOD isn’t anything to lose sleep over. The sign is a reminder to any employees who happen to be tooling around on the Lindbergh runway to police up the area, to pick up that “Foreign Object Debris” that might cause a blowout or other aviation mishap. Stray metal, bolts, gravel, gum — that kind of thing.

KILLER BEES BROUGHT TO JUSTICE! THREE STINGS AND YOU’RE OUT!: Here’s a follow-up to our recent Africanized bee question. And it’s great news for you law-and-order types who figure America is heading straight to hell in a carjacked Mazda.

By now we all know that killer bees have crossed the Arizona border into California. A few weeks ago the state Department of Food and Agriculture found a gang of them in Blythe, a dusty farming burg in eastern Riverside County. But in their first bulletin, the ag guys didn’t say exactly where in Blythe they’d located them. Only later did they mention that once the bees crossed the Colorado River, they flew straight to Chuckawalla Valley State Prison, a medium-security oasis about 15 miles west of town. I guess a sharp sense of irony isn’t required if you make your living inspecting alfalfa.

Feel better now? Nothing to worry about after all. Apparently, killer bees will cross the state line, get one whiff of the lock-’em-up-for-life atmosphere in California, and immediately throw themselves on the mercy of the Department of Corrections.