I just renewed my driver’s license. Warning — don’t ever name a male child a junior. If you do you can depend on creating the inevitable complications sometime in his life. I am a junior. My passport does not have me as junior but my expiring license did. I wanted to scream, “Thanks a lot mom and dad.” The confusion at the DMV got resolved after I handed over my birth certificate etched in a stone tablet.

What’s more important than the junior stuff in my name is that my enhanced super duper license cost me $94.50. Living in the Empire State as New York touts itself, it’s perfectly understandable to pay that much for a new license. One can expect to pay a lot of money to drive around dodging those empire-quality potholes that you don’t find in a not-so-empiric state like West Virginia.

The question that popped into my mind was how did the state officials come up with $94.50? Was there a huge meeting of political experts that came up with negotiated settlement of $94.50?

Being New York state, I’m sure there was a committee organized to determine the proper price. No doubt one position was that, “I believe 94.55 is extremely reasonable. With that extra five cents, we can maintain New York State as the Empire State. Another position would favor 94.60 because with that additional 10 cents we can make New York State great again.

The third position would make the argument that New York state is not out to gouge the working man. “We should only charge $94.45 because I believe that the common man is the backbone that makes New York state the Empire State. Joe Q. Public deserves a break.”

So that’s probably how $94.50 came to be.

¯ Donald Trump continues to call the Mueller probe into his campaign Russian collusion a “witch hunt.” My phenomenal research staff has found some fascinating material from the Trump people about witches in our history. Witches had a big impact on the Trump family. No wonder he’s concerned about witch hunts.

The most famous of witch hunts resulted in the 19th century Salem witch trials. According to Team Trump, several witches with curious names attacked the Trump family members and cast spells upon them.

One of the witches tried was Geronimo Cohen Warren. He was found guilty of driving Jedidiah Ezekiel Trump into a spell of the screaming meemies.

The famous witch Maxine Charity Pelosi was found guilty of casting a spell on Phineas Enoch Trump. He ended up with a case of the jim jams.

The most wicked of all, even more wicked than the one from The West, was Omarosa Elizabeth Clinton. She was found guilty of casting a horrible case on Jedediah Josiah Trump. He got the horrible hubble bubbles.

¯ A congressman named Duncan Hunter from California was recently indicted. Ho hum. Misuse of campaign funds. So what else is new? Another swamp creature has been identified. A politician being dishonest. Wow, now there’s a headline you only see about every five seconds.

There’s one charge against Hunter that is a bit unusual and it didn’t involve a porn star. MSNBC stated that he spent $600 to fly his pet rabbit to Washington D.C. for vacation. This is probably just a poorly written headline. If it is literally true, I’m puzzled. Do rabbits really need a vacation? Do rabbits, who live in California, do things that require a break from trouble and turmoil in their life that they need a break from the day to day grind?

Now if I was on that plane with the rabbit, I could have saved that Congressman Hunter a few bucks. He could have given me $300 and I’d let that rabbit sit on my lap during the trip to D.C. I would even scratch his ears as a bonus for nothing, even slip him carrot or two along the way.

I read where rabbits who cannot express their natural behavior can become bored. Good grief, what is the normal behavior for a rabbit on a plane? There’s no grass on a plane for this little guy, so he may get bored. I don’t think Duncan Hunter would be happy receiving a bored rabbit at the airport

Worse than that, if there’s another rabbit on the flight, we can have a pretty ugly incident of chasing. Two rabbits facing off each other in a head-on collision in the center aisle; fur flying with two rabbits in combat. Not a pretty sight.

What’s even more troublesome is the possibility of a predator on the plane. Some guy could be flying with a support-coyote on a leash. Coyotes get hungry. Duncan Hunter would be a bit peeved at me as I hand over to him a bloody carcass that was once Peter. “Sorry, senator, the coyote got off his leash.” But, at least your rabbit didn’t die from boredom.” On second thought, perhaps his $600.00 was well spent.

¯ Speaking of boredom, do you notice how that first popcorn morsel that comes out of the bag taste great but as you dig into the remnant, the enjoyment wanes? Two university professors call that the result of “hedonic adaptation.” Your hedon adapts over time which leads to less pleasure. Who even knew that we have a hedon? These two profs have suggestions to keep your hedon hopping.

Here’s what they suggest to keep your taste buds dazzling as you munch more popcorn. Try eating popcorn with chopsticks. They say that will fool your brain into believing the flavor is still vibrant.

Have you ever noticed how that piece of pizza fails to sustain the exhilaration of the first bite? Do this to your pizza. Eat it from the back towards the point.

The profs say that if you drink water from a wine glass, it’ll be a supreme experience. I tried it. Wrong! Because I’m such an adventurous guy, I thought I would go one step further with the water. You might find that water tastes really fantastic, if you consume it with chopsticks. It’s the ultimate.

¯ As you can tell by the quality of this column, I can always do with a step-up in brainpower. I always thought that brainpower was pretty much established. According to a study by Northwestern University, you can improve your brainpower while you sleep. Hmm, I thought. My readers would appreciate an improvement on this drivel that they get once a month.

What the guys at NWU suggest is that one should sleep with pink noise-like the sound of a waterfall. Holy cow! Here I have been sleeping to the background sounds of 2016 campaign speeches of Hillary Clinton. I thought those words of unequaled wisdom would make me smarter. After all, she has been described as the smartest woman in the world. What better noise could there be than her words? That might explain my waking up and believing that Hillary really deleted subpoenaed emails that dealt with Chelsea’s wedding dress.

Well, I guess I was wrong. Who would have thunk it? Water and rocks are smarter than our almost First Lady President.

Nin Privitera is a Fredonia resident whose column appears the second Sunday of each month in the OBSERVER. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com