This guy could revolutionize the announcements industry. If someone asks, “how much for a drink”, the flight attendant could rightfully say, “Didn’t you listen to the announcements?”
Wastes of Time
BMI Scam, or Not
“Eat right and get plenty of exercise and if you do you will be healthy”. That is what the health experts of yesteryear told us. Well today they have slightly modified it. A few years back they came up with a system called the body mass index or BMI (for the busy people among us). The BMI is calculated using a persons weight and height and will inform them if they are underweight, a proper weight, overweight, obese or “about to die”.
A second of thought should reveal the major flaw in this system. Think back to fourth grade P.E. class when Mr. Harris told the class that ______ weighs more than fat. The whole class was stunned because fat people are very heavy. If you could not fill in the blank it was “muscle”. Now if someone is muscular and calculates their BMI it will put them, at the very least, in the overweight category. In researching this, I entered the heights and weights of several famous people. George W. Bush, our most fit President ever, as he has been declared, has been deemed overweight. Kevin Garnett of the Boston Celtics had a number that was too high and Terrell Owens of the Dallas Cowboys is well on his way to obesity. Of all the heights and weights for professional athletes that I entered, only one fit in the normal range and it was Lance Armstrong.
In thinking a little more about the BMI and the people who came up with it, a very good question pops into my mind. Why do you need to have an index number tell you if you are unhealthy, can you not just look at your nasty body? The only situation I can think of is that someone is blind and cannot use their hands to feel the lard growing on them. I surmise that the BMI people came up with the system out of boredom, because they are nutritionists and Sesame Street has been doing their job for them for a few decades. “Eat vegetables. Stop shoving burgers in your face.” That kind of thing. Or maybe they thought that announcing a new way to calculate exactly how lazy and gluttonous we are would scare some people into changing.
On the other hand, as a former “obese/about to die” category member I will tell you this – “Use your eyes and your brain.” I was 325 lbs. and thought that my extremely high BMI number didn’t mean much because I had a good amount of muscle too. I didn’t take into account that a lot of that muscle was hanging over my belt. And who was I kidding I hadn’t lifted weights in years. (By the way, Dont worry about my BMI I used this video to trim down.)
I have come to the conclusion that if you get paid to play a sport that doesn’t involve a bicycle or bowling pins you can ignore the BMI. Everyone else can still ignore it because we have things like mirrors and small children to tell us we are fat.
The Saviors of Detroit (Real Power Wheels)
A few problems these guys just solved:
No one carpools
Too many gigantic gas guzzlers on the road
People can’t get credit to buy cars
Not seeing kids bolt out from behind cars
and many more…
I want one of those things
Wasp Week pt. 4: Cartoon Bear
I was walking through the woods one day when I saw the biggest beehive I have ever seen. I had always wanted to taste honey straight from the hive and it looked like no one was home. I thought it was strange that I didn’t see one single bee around this beehive, but I decided that it was the perfect opportunity to fulfill my lifelong dream of tasting super-fresh honey.
I climbed up the tree that the hive was in and set myself on a branch by it. I reached over to try to figure out how to get inside it when I saw a bee come out of it. The bee headed straight for me and I slapped it out of the air. Then suddenly I could hear what I couldn’t hear a second before, it was the buzzing of what must have been thousands of bees. I decided that was a good time to get the heck out of Dodge. I quickly dropped out of the tree just as the hordes of bees emerged to protect their domicile. Once I hit the ground with a thud, I figured, “Hey, why not see what the absolute fastest I can run is? That sounds like fun.” As I started to run it felt like I wasn’t even moving, but my legs were just spinning in the air for a second. By the time the bees caught up with me I was moving at an extremely fast rate. I turned back for a split second to see how close they were and it appeared that they had gathered in a formation that looked like a cannon. The bees in the front retracted backwards and then quickly forward and when they did that, a large group of bees from the middle would blast towards my head. I had to tuck my head inside of my shirt to dodge them. I thought I had already reached maximum speed but when I saw them get ready for another shot I somehow increased my speed to about 4 times faster than it was before.
I knew I definitely could not keep up the pace for much longer and luckily I saw a nearby pond. I headed over to it and jumped in. Serendipitously I found a hollow reed that I could breathe through. When I put it above the surface the bees filed down the hole straight into my mouth. The surprise of this and the pain from having my tongue get stung, caused me to jump clear out of the pond. I took off running into the sunset with the bees flying behind me and lurching forward every second and a half to sting me which caused me to jump in the air and yelp in pain. It was a rough day.
Wasp Week pt. 3: Killer Bees
When I was working at a service station with a friend one fine summer day, I saw a bee fly into our little building. It was slow day and no one really seemed to need oil changes or gasoline and as you know by now, I have always enjoyed taking the life of insects. I decided to annihilate this bee to stave off the boredom. He flew behind the blinds in the window and I smashed the blinds into him.
With the satisfaction of a job well done still hanging over me, I had a quick thought of a news report that I had seen the day before. They said that killer bees had been found migrating through the area. I also recalled that the bee I had just disposed of did not look like the usual bee. I went back over to the window to find that I hadn’t even fully killed the bee it was shaking and buzzing a little still. The way he was moving brought to my mind some sort of bee Morse Code. I crushed him again and made sure he had gone to the after life.
As soon as I was sure he was dead I told my friend to close the front door and I closed the door that led to the garage. I stuffed our oil rags under the doors to block the gaps and while I was doing that I saw other bees begin to fly around our station. My friend and I both got excited at the prospect of seeing a real swarm of killer bees and we were really excited to not get killed by one. We armed ourselves with a can of hornet spray and watched bees climb all over the windows. We sprayed a few of the bees that figured out that the door to the garage had more gaps at the top of the door.
I wish we could say that the windows were blacked out by bees, because that is the mental image I had when I pictured a swarm of angry killer bees. In reality it was somewhat unimpressive and only a few hundred bees seemed to care that I had crushed their friend. Twenty minutes later the bees were all gone and we still hadn’t seen a customer. I like to remind myself that even though they didn’t cover the windows they were still angry killer bees.
Wasp Week pt. 2: Hornet Battle
I was out mowing the lawn one fine Saturday morning when I started mowing near a fence post for the chain link fence around the backyard. I had noticed a few hornets flying around the yard earlier and I know there were quite a few nests hanging off the side of the house. As I got the mower very close to the post I suddenly felt a stinging sensation, right on my left forearm. I smacked at the culprit with my bare hand and when he hit the ground I used all my fury to crush the life out of him on the lawn. Just when I had destroyed him I felt another sting further up my left arm I reached back and grabbed the new stinger and threw him onto the driveway where I stepped on him. I really hate being stung and it just makes me downright angry. I was in this state of rage when 4 or 5 other hornets swooped by my head. I said, “That’s it” and I went inside to get a bottle of bug spray. I came back out and saw that there were what looked like 30 or so hornets swarming around the lawnmower. Normally I would say, “Forget that” and head back inside until they left, but I was still fuming mad from the previous 2 stings. I had vengeance on the perpetrators but now I wanted to kill their whole family. I went over to the mower and sprayed three of them off of the handle. To my delight the bug spray worked fairly quickly. One of them shot straight for my head when I sprayed him out of midair. More of them tried the same trick and met the same fate. I would also swing at them with my hand and knock them to the ground where I would kill them. I was en fuego, I could not miss, I do admit that I must have looked like a madman to any neighbors that may have been watching, but in my hood it might be a bonus to appear unstable to your neighbors. I had cleared away almost all of them when I noticed some more of them coming out of the fence post. “Ahaaa!!”, I thought, “I have found the nest.” I must have angered them earlier by vibrating the nest with the mower. They didn’t have to come out and sting me, I am a rational guy they could have just asked me to steer clear of the post. But no, they took it right to the physical confrontation level. Well now they would all pay with their lives. I walked over to the fence post, smacking hornets out of the air as I made my way. When I got to the post I immediately started spraying down the hole in the top. Hornets were scrambling towards the top and when they got there they would drop dead. The hornets trapped underneath them would keep climbing and would push their bodies over the edge of the top of the post. It was really cool looking. When the dead ones dropped over the edge the lower hornets would get hit by the spray and die. Oh sweet, lopsided, over-reactive justice.
Wasp Week
I am nerdy and do enjoy a good amount of shark week on the discovery channel. Since it is warming up outside and bees, hornets and wasps are starting to fly around again, I think it is a good time to have Wasp Week.
Growing up in Texas, I would often be in the backyard with my siblings when we would hear cicadas screaming bloody murder and we would watch as a “cicada killer” wasp would stab its victim repeatedly in mid-flight while lowering it to the ground. The screeching cicada would be helpless as the gargantuan predator had swooped in from above and grabbed hold, never to let go until it was time to eat. When the screaming stopped the enormous wasp would carry away the not so small cicada. When we would see the cicada killers we would respect their space and not mess with them at all.
One day when I had just arrived at the pool that my friends and I used to frequent, I was walking around the pool with my shirt on still. My belly suddenly felt itchy so I reached in to scratch it. When my hand began scratching I felt what seemed to be an electric shock through my entire body that started from the end of my middle finger. I quickly pulled up the bottom of my shirt and started to shake it out when I heard a deep flapping of wings that vibrated the core of my soul. I soon beheld one of the largest “cicada killer” wasps I had ever seen. It flew up towards my face then went to make a getaway. In my moment of anger over being stung I wanted revenge on this buzzing beast and I grabbed a nearby child’s pool noodle and swung at the freakish monster. When the noodle actually hit, it felt like I smacked a baseball. The cicada killer fell to the ground and I ran over and stomped it to death with my sandals. I could have swore that it was about to lift my leg up before I killed it though, it was huge. To this day I still can’t believe that I was stung by a cicada killer and didn’t get carried away afterward.
GET RICH QUICK SCHEME!!!
i have a FANTASTIC get rich quick scheme thought up. it’s just the time needed to set it up would just get in the way of my 2 jobs and watching movies. If any one steals this idea then you owe me like half of whatever you make from it. and… if someone already came up with the idea and is looking for me… just point in some direction and tell him that “he just ran that way”.
So i have this idea for a book. it is a magic book…. no really… it is a book the “teaches you magic tricks.” magic card tricks to be exact. i figure to keep my unpopularity low i will include THE pack of cards with the book. It’ll say on the front cover “LEARN HOW TO DO CARD TRICKS MADE FAMOUS BY MAGICIANS” and then it’ll have a pack of playing cards…. OH YEAH… AND it has to be shrink wrapped. we don’t want anyone “stealing” any of our “secrets” without them paying for it. SO it is sitting there on the shelf in the book store. a kid comes in and yells “JEEPERS MOM A BOOK ON MAGIC. OH BOY I WOULD SURE LIKE TO GET THIS” and the mom says “Well i guess it IS your birthday next week, how much is it?” “$30” … no wait you always gotta have dumb prices at stores let’s make it “$29.97” so the mom buys the kid the book he is CRAZY excited to get the book home so he can learn how to do magic tricks to help him be able to make more friends because of his low self esteem issues. He finally arrives home, runs through the door, up the stairs, into his bedroom. he sits on the floor and can’t contain the curiosity any longer he rips off the plastic wrap covering the book, sets the cards off to the side, and flings the book open to see what wondrous tricks he can learn BUT all he sees printed on every page of the book is “SORRY A GOOD MAGICIAN NEVER REVEALS HIS SECRETS” … oh yeah did i also mention we have to have a no refund policy too.
Hero of the Day
I just read about Ed Barnett who wrote a letter to the IRS. Before reading his letter I hadn’t really thought about all the different taxes we pay in one sitting. I usually just complain about phone taxes when I see them and sort of had them separate from sales taxes and medicare taxes in my mind.
