—Not on the school supplies list: Every kid wants to start the school year with sharpened pencils and a full supply of notebook paper. Guns aren't usually part of a back-to-school arsenal.

That's why Walmart is apologizing for a sign reading "own the school year like a hero" hanging over a display of guns. The phrase is part of the company's back-to-school campaign, but hanging it over a glass case filled with guns was not in the plan.

The retailer wound up fielding complaints for 24 hours after a photo was posted on social media. Walmart said it did not know which store had the display and that employees were trying to track it down to make sure the sign was removed.

In a series of tweets, Walmart denounced it as "terrible," "definitely NOT okay" and a "regrettable situation."

This is not the first time someone has gotten creative with Walmart displays. Last September, boxes of Coca-Cola in a Panama City, Fla., store were stacked to resemble the World Trade Center in an apparent attempt to commemorate 9/11.

Saying no disrespect was intended, Walmart took down the tower.

—Americans to Trump: Stop tweeting: In the news-we-already-knew category, a CNN poll says that most Americans, Democrats and Republicans alike, want the president to stop tweeting. They really, really mean it, which is a major reason why the president's popularity ratings continue to plummet. Three quarters of those polled said they can't trust most of what they hear from the White House.

In a rare moment of candor, even President Donald Trump's counselor, Kellyanne Conway, conceded that Trump needs to start paying attention to his poll numbers. "His approval rating among Republicans, conservatives and Trump voters is down slightly. It needs to go up," she told ABC News.

According to CNN, seven in 10 poll respondents agreed that Trump's tweeting habits "too often seem to be in response to news he may have seen on TV." More than six in 10 say his tweets "too often turn out to be misleading" and are "easy to misunderstand."

Hard as it might be to imagine a world without Trump tweets, here's a more sobering thought: What would a president contemplating war with nuclear-armed North Korea do with his time if he didn't spend it tweeting?

—Ba-a-ad goat: A Washington County, Ore., sheriff's deputy shot and killed a $1,200 breeding male goat named Volt this week, saying the horned animal was charging him and that he had no choice but to shoot.

The deputy said the animal approached with his head down and his horns — which he estimated were 18-inches long — pointed at the deputy's groin. Other deputies said they had already seen Volt charge a tree.

The Portland, Ore., farmer who owned Volt said the animal wasn't dangerous and that 7-year-old kids play with goats on his farm. He blamed himself, though, and said he should have kept a closer eye on his perimeter.

The deputy can't be faulted for keeping a close eye on his own perimeter.

—New Pa$$w0Rd pr0toC0l*: Fourteen years ago, a guy named Bill Burr wrote a paper recommending that computer passwords include odd combinations of lower and upper-case letters, numbers and little-used keyboard characters like asterisks and exclamation points. Also, he recommended changing passwords every 90 days.

The idea, wrote Burr, then with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, was to thwart hackers who were getting good at figuring out birthdays, children's and pets' names and other common password combinations. Burr's suggestions were widely adopted and recommended, ushering in 14 years of password hell.

Now Burr says: Never mind. "Much of what I did I now regret," he told The Wall Street Journal. Words to live by.

If you can come up with an easy-to-remember, easy-to-type combination of four random words and string them together without spaces, you're better off. And forget having to change them. A word combo takes about 550 years to hack, a random letters-and character-version about three days.

—Sounds to drive carp crazy: The Wall Street Journal further reports that the Army Corps of Engineers, as part of a $275 million plan to stop the dreaded Asian carp from invading the Great Lakes, is considering erecting a "wall of sound" at the Brandon Road Lock and Dam on the Des Plaines River in suburban Chicago. It would generate noises fish find loathsome, causing them to stay put, sparing the Great Lakes' $7 billion fishing industry.

The idea recalls the "wall of sound" employed by the U.S. Army in 1989 to drive Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega out of the Vatican Embassy in Panama City. The Holy See objected to high-decibel Metallica, and President George H.W. Bush ordered it stopped after three days. The fish won't have the pope on their side.

If you've got a better idea than scaring fish with noise, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder wants to hear from you. He's offering up to $700,000 for creative solutions.

Asian carp are not funny, as anyone who's been hit in the head by a 50-pound fish while boating on the Missouri River can attest. The Trump administration, at the best of Republican congressmen advocating for the shipping industry, has been soft on carp. Let's see how those congressmen like Van Halen at 120 dB.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST LOUIS POST DISPATCH