There are still weeks ahead of dreary winter weather and already I’m bored and depressed. Perhaps it’s time once again to engage in my annual winter doldrums project: thinking deep thoughts.

I’ve heard that deep-thinking philosophical types often band together and form think tanks and are paid enormous sums of money to ponder life’s mysteries. I couldn’t convince anyone to join my think tank, so it’s really more of a think thimble.

Still, there are many topics other thinkers consider beneath them, subjects to which I intend to devote my vast intellectual talents. Subjects like:

The Magna Carta calls for a jury of one’s peers to settle legal disputes. Does this mean that, for example, a drug dealer should be tried before a jury of other drug dealers? Or did the drafters of that document mean that a “jury of pee-ers” was a jury composed of 12 people with weak bladders? Please excuse the bad pun.

Here’s a deep thought to mull over. A museum once exhibited so-called performance art consisting of an unmade bed strewn with champagne corks, soiled underwear, and used condoms. It that really art? Discuss amongst yourselves.

I read about a sculptor whose teacher referred to her art as “scatalogical,”which is a nicer term for the four-letter “s**t word. Rather than being insulted, the artist built a career of sculpting lumps of wax into piles of excrement so realistic that gallery visitors crawled around on the floor sniffing her “art.”

Artist Cosimo Cavallaro once plastered every surface of a Manhattan hotel room with melted Swiss cheese and called it art. He said, “What I don’t want is to become known as the Cheese Guy.” What would he rather be known as? The Stark Raving Lunatic with a Dairy Fixation,” which would be more accurate?

I heard a daytime talk show host refer to a news story about a couple who met on a nude beach and two years later were married on that same nude beach. The groom was not totally nude. He was wearing two neckties. One around his neck and one (as the talkshow host said), “around his personality.” What do you think he meant by that? Discuss.

Following is the opening paragraph of an article once written by Cincinnati Enquirer columnist Pat Crowley: “Holton Garrison strolled past a winged gargoyle, a topless woman, a dressed pig, a sleeping gnome, and a deep green alligator before pulling up a cement stool next to a praying Jesus.” I lost the rest of the article before I had a chance to read it, but it sounds like the dream I once had after a midnight snack of cold pizza, sardines, and fudge brownies.

A Harvard entomologist claimed that there are about ten people in North America who can identify individual ants, but “when it came to cockroaches, there are maybe only two or three.” Really? I envision a homeowner, who has just stomped on a roach scurrying across his kitchen floor, leaning over and saying, “Oh, gee, is that you, Bob? Sorry.”

Hollywood director John Waters, known as the king of gross-out entertainment, described his 1972 movie “Pink Flamingos” as a “date movie for lunatics,” In the movie the leading lady puts a chunk of dog excrement in her mouth. Waters referred to this scene as “funny.” He added, “It’s easy to be gross and appalling. It’s hard to be funny and gross and appalling.”

Waters also directed a movie called “Anaconda” about a giant killer snake. Waters, who claimed to be proud of this box office bomb, said, “I saw my influence when the snake vomitted Jon Voight.”

Finally, I read an article in a women’s magazine which stated, “Every woman should have a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill, and a black lace bra.” Here’s a piece of advice for other wives who take this advice: Don’t wave the screwdrivers around and repeatedly press the high-speed button on the drill. The shock and terror will make him forget how fetching you look in that black lace bra.

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