TATTLE TALES.

• Position: Brief Article

* Leg, dander up: In its North Carolina advertising campaign Buddy the dog, Kansas City-based Birch Telecom Inc., has dropped mention, by name, of competitor BellSouth Corp. "If the big phone company were a fire hydrant," the commercial said, "well, you'd know what to do." BellSouth did, threatening to sue.

* Copy hat: Alleging that Vertigo Software Inc. uses a logo too similar to its Shadow Man silhouette of a figure in a fedora, Durham-based Red Hat Inc. sued the California company. Red Hat knows copying when it sees it: Its business is copying and selling Linux software, available for free on the Web.

* So, who's complaining?: The state Senate, prompted by a case in which corpses were conveyed in the bed of a pickup truck, passed a bill regulating for-profit transportation of bodies. It also prohibits using "profanity, indecent or obscene language in the presence of a dead human body."

* What familiarity breeds: The Jacksonville-Onslow Chamber of Commerce hired a Tennessee publisher to produce a magazine touting the community to businesses and tourists. Outsiders "untainted by bias," the chamber's marketing manager says, will paint a more appealing picture of the city.

* Pink palace: Jim Gross, Charlotte's bad-boy developer, calls the 25-story condo he's building the Arlington. But neighbors, noting its sheathing of mirrored pink glass, call it the Alarmington, Or, The Gross Building.

* Call me a cab: OK, you're a cab. You can skip the old gag in Charlotte nowadays. A new city body created to monitor taxis is called the Passenger Vehicle for Hire Board.

* Fly-by shooting: The New Hanover...