One of the benefits of being a licensed counselor is that I am able to penetrate the guise of my own emotions, subcutaneous my feelings, and then delve into my belief system.

Don’t you love the word “delve?”

Delve would be a good name for a guy that dribbled chewing tobacco on his wing tips.

Back to the benefits of self-analysis. Shall we do a duel delve?

Yesterday another light bulb went on as I was clipping newspaper articles from old Seattle Post-Intelligencers.

Is there a stranger name for a newspaper?

I may not be intelligent enough to understand from whence came The Intelligencers, but I bet they have big guns.

While clipping out from The Seattle P-I Sunday Parade, another little informational morsel, I realized that I have a disease resulting in the die-ease I experience when I do not share information with others who may or may not be interested in the information shared.

Why do men read the sports page?

To gain information.

To gain knowledge.

Einstein said once, or maybe several times, that “Knowledge is power.”

Now we have Google and we can all be powerful. Valuable knowledge, and power it is.

Did you know that, according to Transparency International, after interviewing more than 11,000 executives who travel and work abroad, India is the number-one nation for business bribes. China, Russia, Turkey and Taiwan round out the top five.

The good news: the Swiss and Swedes are the least likely to offer bribes.

I guess it’s still safe to use my Swiss Army knife on Swedish pancakes next time a drunken friend takes me to Denny’s.

Why do my retired lawyer buddies watch CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN and ESPN-NU all day and night?

Information.

Did you know that a French judge recently ruled “that an extreme-right group, Solidarity of the French, cannot serve pork soup to the needy, saying the charitable handouts aim to discriminate against Muslims and Jews who don’t eat pork because of their faith.”

“Pork-fat soup is traditionally the soup of the poor because it provides complete nourishment,” said Bruno Le Griel, a lawyer for the group.

Bruno might have enjoyed our college fraternity some of those early Kansas City mornings in the ’60s when we poor college folk would pork-out at Gates Bar-B-Que, still my choice for the finest flavors for Midwestern mouths.

Speaking with mouths, as power of attorney for our coffee mate 1504 Frank, I am frequently being asked for Frank’s personal information.

Banks, doctors, storage facilities, insurance companies, social workers, accountants, credit card companies, veterinarians, electrical companies, landlords, property management teams, realtors, gardeners, magazine sales reps, cousins, friends, buddies and baristas.

Of course, to answer their questions, I have to get information — from Frank’s doctors, bankers, storage facilities, insurance companies, social workers, accountants, credit card companies, veterinarians, electrical companies, landlords, property management teams, Realtors, gardeners, magazine sales reps, cousins, friends, buddies and baristas.

What a web of voluminous informational interaction we weave along the information rush-hour bottleneck.

So, why do I need to read a newspaper every day when we have the Internet, the TV, the radio, the telephone, the post office and our neighbors and friends to fill us in and out with info?

Because I have a disease, inherited from my family, on both sides.

The disease is Clipitis or the uncontrollable urge to clip, tear or rip newspaper articles, columns, obits, tidbits or paragraphs to share with family, friends or fellow clipsters.

We’re not talking coupons.

We’re talking information, like the article yesterday on sending e-mails from your grave.

We’ll mail this effort by reporter Todd Bishop of the P-I to my frat brother Grod in Chicago since Grod’s dad, Edward, a 1930s fraternity brother of my dad, Lewis, became a mortician and funeral home director in Alamosa, Colo.

He’ll have fun with this news during his next seminary lecture.

How about the article from the Associated Press describing the escaped prisoner in Daytona Beach, Fla. who stole country singer Crystal Gayle’s tour bus for a joy ride?

We’ll send this clipping to Bothell to the great-grand nephew of President William McKinley, also William McKinley.

Billy Bob and I were locker mates in law school. He was fresh from driving tour buses in Alaska. I was fresh from slop shoots at Camp Pendleton.

Back then, Crystal Gayle was trying to make her brown eyes blue while Bill and I were doing legal graffiti with white-out.

How about the report that bottled water is pricier than gasoline?

The Earth Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. says that the U.S. is numero uno in bottled water consumption.

We chug about 8 ounces of H2O a day, per person.

At $2.50 a liter for the top organic, natural imported brands, that is $9.45 a gallon, or 7.3 cents an ounce.

Fosters Special Bitter Beer runs about $2 for 25.4 fluid ounces.

Five of those Fosters big green cans would cost about 10 bucks a gallon or 6.2 cents an ounce.

We’ll send this bottled water clipping to my cousin Rusty in Houston to remind him that he is absolutely right again.

It is cheaper to drink Australian beer from Canada than alpine, glacier artesian bottled water from California.

Well, and I don’t mean water, that about wraps up our allotted space.

Thanks for joining us for another “delving” into the land of unnecessary information.

Hopefully, if you do clip this column to send to a fellow clipster, you’ll use scissors and not tear randomly.

Presentation is everything in this business.

That’s another reason why “Tight Lines” sports columnist Neal Sims and I chose designer baseball hats for our pictures in The South Whidbey Record.