Why does the Chron's Friday section exist? Some weeks we wonder why the editors don't slather their own bird poop across the pages -- but wait, they do. Here's an overlong, thoroughly useless feature story on a high school robotics competition (where have we read that before? Ah, yes, in every other American newspaper's feature section. In 1988). Here's another ultra-exciting "Two Cents" feature, where Chron readers tell us how they feel about rainy days or taxes (hint: "They suck"). The Mercury News must be green with envy. We just don't get it: There's plenty of room in the Chronicle for innocuous features and bad lifestyle columns -- that's what the Datebook section is for. Why subject readers to a once-a-week section that doesn't have any unifying theme or purpose, except that it's always bad? Put this stuff in Friday Datebook, please, and let our birds read the Automotive section every once in a while.