Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Leggo my Eggo...or I'm gonna kick your a**!

Apparently, it has finally come to pass: there are not enough Eggos to go around. The wildly popular breakfast waffle is in shortage for the foreseeable future, due to flooding in Kellogg's Atlanta bakery. Estimates to catch up on inventory shortage put mid-2010 as the target point.

So, to reiterate, the world will be down on their Eggo's until late spring. Maybe those folks who notice this will be able to mix in some fruit or a bit of exercise during this unfortunate shortage. Perhaps the intake of bready, doughy food that can be eaten with one hand while negotiating traffic en route to work with the other hand will be reduced enough for traffic safety and flow to improve. Possibly, there could even be a Eggo Flip Flop Choco Nilla Waffle reduction that could cause some of America's more corpulent children to throw a fit just long enough to burn some of the 200 calories per serving (before syrup) that these gut bombs contain.

Nahhh. USA! USA! Make more fat kids who don't give a crap in class. USA!

( http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/108191/leggo-your-eggo-theres-a-waffle-shortage )

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The Charlotte Observer recently printed a list of salaries for NFL quarterbacks for the 2009 season. Eli Manning of the New York Giants led the list with a $16.25 million salary for the year, followed by USC grad and Cincinnati Bengals QB Carson Palmer, trailing by a mere $80k. Eli won a Super Bowl a couple years back, and Palmer has his team in front of his division, so some of those are justifiable. Let's visit the ones that aren't.

67-year old Brett Farveverevrvrrve (eighth-highest salary, $12.5 mil) leads the league with a 107.5 passer rating and his team is 8-1. That one is good. Sage Rosenfels (28th, $3.82 mil) is the man that was brought in to start for the Vikings before Favre un-retired again. That one is not good. Jake Delhomme of the Carolina Panthers (23rd, $6.08 mil) has thrown thirteen passes to opposing players, and his team is horrible. But the winner (or, Biggest Loser) is...former Bronco Jay Cutler.

Cutler whined his way out of Denver, prompting the team to trade him to the Chicago Bears. Cutler demanded (and was given) a shiny new contract that pays him $14.67 million, fourth-highest in the league. This year. The fourth-year quarterback has managed to lead the league in one category: interceptions, with 17 thus far. He has also guided his team to a sterling 4-and-5 record.

Cutler has joined many athletes in contributing to the founding of the Crabtree Corollary. Athletes who believe they are bigger than the team games they play end up stinking up the joint, negatively affecting the fan base, and generally souring people on the sport they play. Next up, 7DB fave Larry Johnson, now a member of the Cincinnati Bengals. Watch LJ knock the Bengals out of the playoffs in the first round after creating a cancerous atmosphere in their locker room, then leave a comment on the bottom of this column to commemorate said event.

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The Congressional Budget Office has announced their estimate of the House's health care package to save America costing approximately $849 billion over ten years. After the ten years, some folks are anticipating it paying back small portions of the outlay to the federal government.

Without going into the merits (or lack thereof) of the bill, the idea of this plan eventually putting money back into the tax coffers is laughable. I seem to recall state governments around the country saying that state-run lotteries would 'supplement' education funding, then slowly pulling away the funding that the lottery would supplement, then slowly pulling away portions of the lottery revenues to 'payback' the state for its educational overruns, then blaming lottery officials for not meeting revenue targets. All the while, educational standards suffer, and teachers and support staff are paid like burger flippers. Is there any doubt that this will come to pass with health care? Any at all?

I wish I could have submitted budgets for projects at work and told them they could make money in ten years, knowing full well that cost overruns are acceptable and probable. Then again, I wish that puppies could fly, and that hamsters could do accounting. Oh wait...the CBO.

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There is a company, probably one of many, that will vet names of babies for people for a fee, making sure the children are not inadvertantly named something that would expose them to ridicule. While not touching the last names proferred, first names are often misinterpreted or chosen because they 'sound nice', and this can cause problems. Today's Translation in Great Britain is here to solve this problem.

Many remember the Chevy Nova, a muscle car produced in the 70's by GM. The Nova had a 'shooting star' marketing campaign and sold fairly well, but not so well in Mexico. Why, you ask? Simple. 'Nova' in Spanish means 'no go'. Therefore, GM was trying to sell a car entitled 'no go' to a seemingly skeptical public. Same idea behind naming babies.

For example, America's favorite couch-jumping idiot and his new wife had a baby. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes elected to name their baby Suri. There is a bit of a problem with that name, it seems...

"It sounds incredibly nice, but in Japanese, we found it means pickpocket," said Jurga Zilinskiene, Today's Translation's chief executive, whose first name means "farmer" or "earth worker" in Greek.

Suri also means "turned sour" in French, "red" or "fire" in Farsi and "horse mackerels" in Italian - not exactly the words parents want associated with their little darling.


The first punchline about this that came to mind involves The Church of Scientology welcoming a pickpocket into the fold, then realizing they are over the limit. Resisting those jokes, realize that this little girl will probably have enough issues to overcome due to her very...um, 'interesting' parents, but to now add on being named for something sour in French, and something called a horse mackerel in Italian just seems like piling on.

Which is what we're here to do.

Suri can always go hang out with Apple Martin, she of Gwyenth and Coldplay's Chris fame, and Zuma Rossdale, from Gwen Stefani and Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale. This may help her to feel more normal...unless she travels to Kyoto.

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Lastly, to summarize the real estate market nationwide, and more specifically in cash-strapped Detroit, Michigan, the deal of the century recently took place.

The Pontiac Silverdome, once home to the Detroit Lions and many major concerts and events, was recently sold for...$583,000. Thousand. Barely a half a million. A building paid for by the citizens of Michigan to the tune of $55.7 million just 35 years ago, sold for peanuts, just to get the $1.5 million in annual upkeep expenses off of the books of the city of Pontiac.

Councilman Everett Seay said he expects someone -- possibly a prospective buyer turned down in recent years -- to file a lawsuit to block the sale.

"The citizens of Pontiac deserve better," Seay said. "This is pennies on the dollar (of what it cost). It goes to show how bad times are ... Worse, we don't even know who bought it."


The sale was executed by sealed bid, leaving an unnamed Canadian company as the winning bidholder. The Canadian company is planning to bring a soccer league or franchise to the building, but no one can contact the new owners, as no one knows who they are yet.

I have a newly found affection for Michigan, having recently married one of its most beautiful citizens, but I cannot doubt that the city of Pontiac is reeling for reasons of its own doing. It is named after a defunct automaker, for pete's sake! If Pontiac, MI took on a new moniker, perhaps one that would be attractive to the new soccer team, they could start in to a new future. Maybe call themselves Manchester City, since they have a good reputation for soccer...just don't use that silly 'FC' in front of the name. FC East Detroit doesn't have a good ring to it.

1 comment:

  1. Had fun reading this post my friend! From Eggos, to the Nova, to baby Suri... :) Nice mention of your lovely bride in last paragraph!

    ReplyDelete