Bread Is Bad

Found here:

1. More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users.
2. Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests.
3. In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever, and influenza ravaged whole nations.
4. More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread.
5. Bread is made from a substance called “dough.” It has been proven that as little as one pound of dough can be used to suffocate a mouse. The average North American eats more bread than that in one month!
6. Primitive tribal societies that have no bread exhibit a low incidence of cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, and osteoporosis.
7. Bread has been proven to be addictive. Subjects deprived of bread and given only water to eat begged for bread after as little as two days.
8. Bread is often a “gateway” food item, leading the user to “harder” items such as butter, jelly, peanut butter, and even cold cuts. Read more …

COLUMN: And Have a Nice Day

By Tobin Barnes
My wife was shopping at one of the big-box retailers recently. She was just trying to breeze in and breeze out, picking up five or six items. She was wearing a knee brace because of an injury, so walking and standing were difficult for her.

She’d gone through checkout, paid for her stuff, and was heading out the door when an alarm sounded.

Now that’s embarrassing right there.

So she stops in the entranceway while the store “greeter” compulsively goes through her bag over and over again checking the items against the receipt. The greeter has morphed from a glad-hander into airport security agent.

This all takes time. The guy’s elderly. Meanwhile people are passing by, thinking who knows what.

But the greeter just can’t figure it out. Everything in the bag is accounted for on the receipt. Nevertheless, he won’t give up.

My wife’s knee is hurting. She tells him, “If this is going to take longer, I’m going to go sit down.” She goes to take a seat in the nearby shop. Tells him to come get her when he’s done.

Finally, he figures it out. One item evidently didn’t scan properly even though it showed up on the receipt and was paid for. It’s like who knows with those gizmos?

Evidently, the scanner normally turns off the alarm function or something. This time it didn’t.

Anyway, after what seems like twenty minutes, the greeter hands over the items, and my wife says, “This is embarrassing!” to the guy.

His response?

“Have a nice day.” That’s it.

In other words, at these prices, you’re going to have to lump it. And she WILL lump it. She just hopes this article won’t get her banned from the store.

And no doubt the prices are great. I once read that when a big box, like Best Buy, Walmart or Home Depot, comes into your town, it’s like getting a pay raise.

I’ve also read that the big boxes are major targets for rip-offs by coordinated crime rings. Mark Doyle, president of a security consulting firm, says that “brazen thieves will wheel out dollies loaded with appliances, cases of liquor or, in one recent instance, an entire sectional sofa.”

Granted, but come on. How about all the cameras? How about all the associates behind one-way mirrors and stuff?

Not long after my wife’s incident, I ran across an article posted on Smartmoney.com. It’s where I got the above quote. It seems other big box customers are also upset with the “cough up the receipt” and “let’s see if the scanner made a mistake” policies.

The article started with the story of a middle-aged CPA living in small-town America who was convicted of misdemeanor assault after a multi-day trial that had his town abuzz.

So what did mild-mannered Casper Milquetoast do? He shoved a 75-year-old greeter who wouldn’t let him leave without examining his receipt.

“He didn’t have the right to make me do that,” he told the local paper.

This was the talk of the town because many people have shared his experience of bopping into a store for a thing or two and feeling like Homeland Security was on their case. Evidently, people aren’t enjoying being suspects until proven otherwise.

“You shouldn’t be required to sacrifice your dignity to get a better deal,” says a Sanford, Maine, web designer. After seeing a fellow customer going through the doorway mill, he put up a website to generate protest against receipt checks. The site has had 130,000 hits.

John DeArmond, “a nuclear engineer turned trucker turned retired Tennessee mountain man,” takes a more direct approach. He “insists that the checker compare every single item in his grocery cart against the receipt. (He's got a lot of free time.) Once, as a sort of grand finale, he marched his cart back to the service counter and returned the entire load.”

Another guy, Michael Righi from Brooklyn, Ohio, has had 200 supporters contribute to his defense fund after he was arrested for causing a stir when he refused to produce his receipt at the door a of big box store.

Next thing you know, receipt rebels will be building bonfires in the parking lot.

COLUMN: The Ivy-Covered Walls of Learning

By Tobin Barnes
Occasionally, justice is served.

I know, because lately I’ve been on the receiving end.

Let me explain my bout of comeuppance duly meted out.

This summer, my wife was plagued with a nasty bit of poison ivy. Actually, I’m sure she’d beg to differ as to the “bit” part because it tended to drive her nuts.

She went through tubes of cortisone cream, rolls of guaze, and many pads of sterile bandages trying to bring the affliction to an end. But seemingly, tamping down one outbreak only led to another. It went on for many weeks.

During this tribulation, my simple solution, “Just don’t scratch it,” was never much appreciated.

But I couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about. The closest I’d ever come to widespread skin irritation was when I used to caddy as a kid.

When walking the boundaries of the course or down by the creek, we often came in contact with something we called “itchweed.” We never knew what this stuff really was—not much into botanical nomenclature at that age.

Mostly, it would get on our legs when we weren’t watching out for the stuff, but sometimes it’d also attack our hands and arms when we’d reach down to pick up a ball out of the deep rough.

But we found that if we didn’t scratch the initial itch, it would soon go away. Lesson learned—anyway, as far as itchweed was concerned.

So, lesson applied to my wife’s case: “Gees, just don’t scratch it.”

It was like, what’s wrong with her? If she’d just leave it alone, it’d go away.
But as I indicated before, this advice quickly threatened to strain our relationship.

Eventually, her outbreak subsided.

Then, Pow!

I get the mother of all poison ivy outbreaks. It’s a case to make hers—in my eyes, anyway—seem a mere dalliance.

It started in a massive swath across my neck and collar bone area. (I’m thinking my dog, Matty, got into the stuff, and after I petted her, I must have rubbed my neck—the inflamed part was in the shape of fingers on a hand.)

After that, it jumped to about fifteen other smaller outbreaks across my upper body. Ah Chihuahua!

I may have spread it by toweling off after showers. Now I just drip dry like a piece of laundry, and that, along with massive doses of cortisone cream and spray seems to be helping somewhat.

I don’t intend to demean other people’s truly grave afflictions and suffering, but this was more hell than I was bargaining for after giving one loved one some good advice and another a few pats on the head.

And though I’ve been referring to this as a poison ivy attack—which is probably the generic cause most people’s minds leap to—maybe it’s poison oak or sumac, instead. Or maybe bitter vetch or angry anise or even p.o.-ed pansy. I just don’t know.

What I do know is that I’ll never belittle another’s suffering again. And I just might not pet my dog again until after we have a heavy freeze and all the plants die for the season.

And there’s a foot of snow on the ground.

And I’m wearing gloves.

Did You Get That?

Boyfriend Upgrade 5.0

Dear Tech Support:

Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a slowdown in the performance of the flower and jewelry applications that had operated flawlessly under the Boyfriend 5.0 system. In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs such as Romance 9.9 but installed undesirable programs such as NFL 7.4, NBA 3.2 and NHL 4.1. Conversation 8.0 also no longer runs and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. I’ve tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems but to no avail. What can I do?

Signed,
Desperate

Dear Desperate:

First, keep in mind that Boyfriend 5.0 was an entertainment package while Husband 1.0 is an operating system. Try entering the command C:/ I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME and installing Tears 6.2. Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Guilt 3.3 and Flowers 7.5. But remember, overuse can cause Husband 1.0 to default to such background applications as Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0 or Beer 6.1. Please remember Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will create Snoring Loudly WAV files. DO NOT install Mother-in-law 1.0 or another Boyfriend program. These are not supported applications and will crash Husband 1.0 to default to the program Girlfriend 9.2, which runs in the background and has been known to introduce potentially serious viruses into the operating system. In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program but it does have a limited memory and can’t learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to enhance his system performance.

Good Luck,
Tech Support

from Computer humor found here.

Go Big Red

Roy Wilson says it took awhile after their move to a new house, but he's finally got his lawn put in.

Time to Update

Palin Pick

Office Memo

(Sent by Roy Wilson)
EFFECTIVE AUGUST 1, 2008

NEW OFFICE POLICY

Dress Code:

1) You are advised to come to work dressed according to your salary.

2) If we see you wearing Prada shoes and carrying a Gucci bag, we will assume you are doing well financially and therefore do not need a raise.

3) If you dress poorly, you need to learn to manage your money better, so that you may buy nicer clothes, and therefore you do not need a raise.

4) If you dress just right, you are right where you need to be and therefore you do not need a raise.

Sick Days:
We will no longer accept a doctor's statement as proof of sickness. If you are able to go to the doctor, you are able to come to work.

Personal Days:
Each employee will receive 104 personal days a year. They are called Saturdays & Sundays.

Bereavement Leave:
This is no excuse for missing work. There is nothing you can do for dead friends, relatives or co-workers. Every effort should be made to have non-employees attend the funeral arrangements in your place. In rare cases where employee involvement is necessary, the funeral should be scheduled in the late afternoon. We will be glad to allow you to work through your lunch hour and subsequently leave one hour early.

Bathroom Breaks:
Entirely too much time is being spent in the toilet. There is now a strict three-minute time limit in the stalls. At the end of three minutes, an alarm will sound, the toilet paper roll will retract, the stall door will open, and a picture will be taken. After your second offense, your picture will be posted on the company bulletin board under the 'Chronic Offenders' category. Anyone caught smiling in the picture will be sectioned under the company's mental health policy.

Lunch Break:

* Skinny people get 30 minutes for lunch, as they need to eat more, so that they can look healthy.

* Normal size people get 15 minutes for lunch to get a balanced meal to maintain their average figure.

* Chubby people get 5 minutes for lunch, because that's all the time needed to drink a Slim-Fast.


Thank you for your loyalty to our company. We are here to provide a positive employment experience. Therefore, all questions, comments, concerns, complaints, frustrations, irritations, aggravations, insinuations, allegations, accusations, contemplations, consternation and input should be directed elsewhere.

The Management

GOP VP Choice

clipped from laughlines.blogs.nytimes.com Aired Friday night on NBC: Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is John McCain’s choice. Here’s what we know about her: her name is Sarah Palin. Actually, it was kind of a smart choice. McCain went with a woman because he didn’t want to have to be in a position to have to get C.P.R. from Mitt Romney. Palin and McCain are a good pair. She’s pro-life and he’s clinging to life. Today President Bush called Governor Palin and congratulated her. Bush told Palin the job of vice president is very important because as vice president, you get to tell the president what to do.