We always come across people doing wild and weird stuff. Usually it’s harmless enough, like singing into the TV remote because they don’t have a microphone. Or using an empty wrapping paper tube – complete with appropriate vibrating sound effects – as a Star Wars lightsaber. Others, however, go to extremes.

And stick the city dwellers with the most expensive garbage collection option instead of the cheapest.

But the weirdest thing is what happened at the grocery store the other day, when we were nearly run over by a group of employees rushing in a mess with these Zamboni-type contraptions – stopping just long enough to toss something inside the little compartments they would open on the side before turning around the corner on two wheels and repeating the process a short distance away. It wasn’t until closer inspection that we realized it wasn’t Zambonis after all, but a giant cart for people too lazy – or lacking in brainpower – to buy their own. groceries.

Now how’s that for something that makes you say, “Hmmmm.”

Why would anyone risk getting stuck with a loaf of bread that looks like an elephant that just used it as a trampoline – or a pound of putrid produce meant only for the compost heap – leaving a bunch of overworked and underpaid carts deciding if it’s up to the task is totally beyond belief. Yet that is exactly what happens every few years, when approximately a few thousand yahoos choose their party’s nominees for Secretary of State, Attorney General, Supreme Court justices and a host of other statewide positions. Because big decisions like that can’t be left to commoners like us.

And we are also you.

That’s what state lawmakers said when they drafted the final version of Michigan’s election code in 1954, after concluding that hardly anyone even knew these offices existed — let alone who. showed up for them. Winnowing the tares, they thought, was a task best left to initiates. Because everyone knows the best decisions are made when deals are done in smoky rooms.

rather than daylight.

And so it is that certain groups of Democrats and Republicans have regularly held their own little conclaves to choose who the rest of us will have a choice in November. Only now there is an additional twist. A bit of silly nonsense called endorsement conventions that both major parties just completed – one was a real snoozefest while the other was a little less so – to anoint their elected officials. So those with the most favored pooh-bah status could get on with doing what really matters. Raise tons of money. And so in a few months, when the August nominating conventions come around, they can get together and do the same thing again.

Yeah, that doesn’t make sense to us either.

Frankly, it’s high time to relegate these archaic coronation events to the dung heap of history and let the real brokers of power – the voters – decide instead. Most of us already manage primary elections very well. So what’s so hard about adding the secretary of state, attorney general, and state boards of education and universities to the mix? To change things, all it takes is a simple petition. Between annoying delegates used to running the show and ticking off candidates who currently only have to force a few hundred people to see things their way, what’s not to love?

But if one of them is playing jokes on us, that’s okay. We spotted a few unused bins on the street, and guess what?

They are just their size.

Talk Back with Doug Spade and Mike Clement is heard every Saturday morning from 9 a.m. to noon EST on Buzz 102.5 FM and online at www.dougspade.com and www.lenconnect.com.