TATTLE TALES.

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* Un-boll-weevil-ble: Dale Earnhardt bought into Kannapolis' Class A baseball team, which changed its name from Boll Weevils to Intimidators, after the hard-driving NASCAR racer's nickname. Some fans complained that the new name didn't reflect the true spirit of America's pastime. And a six-legged economic disaster does?

* Kinder, gentler: Charlotte software company Vicious Systems Inc., changed its name to Seurat Co., after Georges Seurat, the French painter. Even though it's founder Jim Kunevicius' nickname, the old name didn't come across as very user-friendly.

* Not tonight, deer: Rather than buck the Superior Court order that halted a bow-and-arrow hunt to thin its herd, Biltmore Forest, near Asheville, is considering implanting its fast-breeding deer with a slowrelease contraceptive.

* Read-faced: In a letter trying to drum up executive support for a Charlotte Chamber reading program, Kit Cramer, vice president for education, asks, "Did you know that 45% of Mecklenburg County's population is illiterate or barely so?"

* There goes the neighborhood: "It's disheartening. I care about this place and wouldn't want to harm it," responds John Pace, owner of Tarheel Paving Co., to opponents of his proposed asphalt plant outside Hendersonville. The site is bounded by a sewage-treatment plant, junkyard, train tracks and U.S. 25.

* Personal banking: How to explain a 33% increase in Triad bank robberies during 2000? "It has a lot to do with the friendly atmosphere here," FBI agent Chris Swecker says. Translation: Too few security guards, not enough bullet-proof glass.

* Chew on this: After prohibiting its vendors from selling chewing gum for more than a decade...

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