When I first heard the news that my column has fans overseas among some local military units, I reacted like a typical big-name humor columnist who is accustomed to such (yawn) attention: I jumped up and down and hollered, “I have fans. Did you hear that? Real, live, actual fans. Fans, plural — with an ‘s.’”

I already knew about that one fan, the guy in Pennsylvania who wrote after my “Men in tights” column to tell me about his pantyhose fetish.

That was exciting, but this? Who knew I had multiple fans?

Donna Spears, a local coordinator of Soldiers’ Angels, told me she’d been sending some of my columns to soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan and they seemed to really enjoy them. Ask for them, even.

Of course, she also told me these particular soldiers are serving in very isolated areas, cut off from the world and sleeping in tents, fighting off those giant man-eating spiders and Madagascar hissing roaches (OK, I made that last part up. But that’s how I imagine it would be).

Apparently, any tidbit of news from home is exciting under these conditions.

OK, so they may be really isolated and starved for news. That doesn’t make them any less fans.

Does it?

So I decided to dedicate this column to soldiers everywhere and specifically to the men and women from these units: the 128th Medical Co.; 158th Maintenance Co.; 1184 CNE Reg.; 226th Area Support Group; Co B, 279th Signal Battalion, 30th HSB, 1st AD; 1303 Engr Detachment; Co. F 131st Aviation; CCAG-76th SIB; 3-76th ETT; 1st Balltaliion, 131st Avn; and 142 Signal BN.

I thought I’d send them a news roundup. Here goes:

On the national front, everyone has been all excited about Sarah Palin. Haven’t heard of her? She’s a candidate for vice president but she’s not much like her predecessor Geraldine Ferraro. No one would ever think of calling ol’ Geraldine “Caribou Barbie” or “sexy librarian,” or having a stripper-Geraldine-look-alike-pole-dancing contest in Las Vegas.

Believe it or not, Sarah and Paris Hilton pretty much take up all the pre-election airtime these days. I’ll explain the Paris thing later. Not enough space here. Let the words “your commander in bikini” suffice for now.

But Athens, Ala., has been hopping. Let’s see. A new pizza joint opened downtown. And then there was the 85-year-old man who was injured and lost in the woods for four days until he was rescued by a cow. His advice after he was safely home? “Eat more chicken.”

Which reminds me: Sheriff’s dispatchers have been getting fewer calls of chickens on the lam from poultry trucks but there’s been a rash of 911 calls about cows breaking out and wandering among us humans. I’m not sure how that qualifies as an emergency because I’ve never seen an attack cow, but I guess people are being cautious.

BTW, those cow items aren’t related. I just thought of them in that order.