ATLANTA—Lawyers for Larry the Cable Guy have petitioned President Bush to issue a presidential pardon for Larry’s involvement in steroid abuse. Over the years of the Bush administration, many comedians illegally used HGH also know as Humor Growth Hormone, which helped comedians develop incredibly funny comedy routines.
Larry has denied the use of Humor Growth Hormone although fellow comedians Jeff Foxworthy and Bill Engval have testified in congressional hearings that Larry knew the hormone was placed in his food. “We have overwhelming testimony that Larry the Cable Guy willingly took HGH,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
Larry testified to the congressional hearing that he was aware that his wife was taking HGH some five years ago. “She was a riot, and if that’s from the HGH, then that’s funny stuff. I don’t care who you are.”
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Toaster Central Holiday Sales Expect to Buck National Trend
Las Vegas-Toaster Central is expected to buck the nationwide retail downturn with explosive retail sales during the 2008 holiday season. “We expect toaster sales to be, well, poppin’,” said CEO Garth Bryner who prefers to be called the Toastmaster General.
Toaster Central started as a Las Vegas retail store outlet in 2005 specializing only in toasters. “We had a great piece of land where the main freeway meets the beltway and a very unique concept to sell just toasters,” explained Bryner. The store, however, is not to be confused with “Just Toasters” which is a retail toaster outlet based in Schenectady, New York which services mostly the Northeast. Sales for Just Toaster had plummeted recently and the store may seek congressional funding to survive.
Meanwhile, Bryner’s Toaster Central has been booming at its first Las Vegas outlet. The Toastmaster General has created a name for himself with late-night commercials offering great deals on toasters similar to car ads. “We have blue toaster, red toasters, Elvis toasters, and most recently, the Tim McGraw toaster,” states one of his ads as the Toastmaster is decked out in boots, sport coat and an oversized cowboy hat. The pairing up of celebrity enorsements with the toasters has proven successful, especially in the Las Vegas market. Toaster Central is supposedly working with Miley Ray Cyrus and Taylor Swift on a future toaster deal.
Since the store’s beginning in 2005, they have expanded with 23 other stores mostly in western states, Mexico and Vancouver, Canada. “If there’s one thing that will be around whether the economy is booming or struggling, it’s toast,” explained Bryner.
Toaster Central started as a Las Vegas retail store outlet in 2005 specializing only in toasters. “We had a great piece of land where the main freeway meets the beltway and a very unique concept to sell just toasters,” explained Bryner. The store, however, is not to be confused with “Just Toasters” which is a retail toaster outlet based in Schenectady, New York which services mostly the Northeast. Sales for Just Toaster had plummeted recently and the store may seek congressional funding to survive.
Meanwhile, Bryner’s Toaster Central has been booming at its first Las Vegas outlet. The Toastmaster General has created a name for himself with late-night commercials offering great deals on toasters similar to car ads. “We have blue toaster, red toasters, Elvis toasters, and most recently, the Tim McGraw toaster,” states one of his ads as the Toastmaster is decked out in boots, sport coat and an oversized cowboy hat. The pairing up of celebrity enorsements with the toasters has proven successful, especially in the Las Vegas market. Toaster Central is supposedly working with Miley Ray Cyrus and Taylor Swift on a future toaster deal.
Since the store’s beginning in 2005, they have expanded with 23 other stores mostly in western states, Mexico and Vancouver, Canada. “If there’s one thing that will be around whether the economy is booming or struggling, it’s toast,” explained Bryner.
LooptiStraw Seeks Government Bail-out Funding
Battle Creek, Michigan—As another sign of the beleaguered economy, LooptiStraw is on its way to Washington in an attempt to dip into the government’s bail-out money. “Consider yourself enjoying a soda at a restaurant and your server doesn’t refill your glass,” explained LooptiStraw’s CEO Kevin Kooshamuck. “You keep attempting to draw attention to your empty glass by sucking air through your straw and the ice. That’s what we’re doing. We’re down to the last financial drops in our Coke glass.” The company is expected to ask congress for $28.6 million dollars in loans to keep the company operable and provide the capital infusion needed to survive the economic downturn.
For years, LooptiStraw has enjoyed financial success, but now sales are down and there’s no sign of straw sales picking up. “It’s likely we won’t get any financial help because of our ties to Halliburton,” explained their CEO. LooptiStraw is a Halliburton spin-off from the early 1990s when they decided to get out of the straw business.
“If LooptiStraw thinks they can come into Washington and ask for a fat government contract, they’ve got another thing coming,” explained a President-elect Obama’s spokesperson. “First it’s straws, then it’s credit cards, and student loans, well we will do all that but straws are at the bottom of the list.”
Some within the straw industry question the reasoning for bailing out LooptiStraw. Until recent years, senior executives have enjoyed parties and social events in places from Las Vegas to Europe and Mexico. “They have spent so much money on parties without investing into research and development,” said an executive from a competitive straw company. Meanwhile, Japanese straw manufacturers have developed straws that are less expensive to produce, last longer, and have streamlined production plants to produce products with few defects and with production efficiencies.
Other foreign straw companies have placed pressure on the Michigan-based LooptiStaw with offering more straw designs that are popular with kids and Generation X parents. Some within the industry point to Loopti’s high salaries for senior executives, lack of capital investments into their straw factories, and dealing with a unionized workforce with extreme medical an other benefits, have created a financial strain that they are just now attempting to deal.
Economists say that the $2.84 billion dollar annual straw industry is an important part of the national economy. With the possibility of LooptiStraw’s demise, it will affect some 8,000 straw producer workers from the industrial belt of the U.S. to foreign operations in Mexico, Canada, and Argentina. The company also operates a customer service line based in India. “Just like all the other companies going under, LooptiStraw is likely to be listed with Washington Mutual, Mervyn’s, and all the other great companies who can’t survive our economic downturn,” said Cecil Myer of the think-tank Economic Reality.
For years, LooptiStraw has enjoyed financial success, but now sales are down and there’s no sign of straw sales picking up. “It’s likely we won’t get any financial help because of our ties to Halliburton,” explained their CEO. LooptiStraw is a Halliburton spin-off from the early 1990s when they decided to get out of the straw business.
“If LooptiStraw thinks they can come into Washington and ask for a fat government contract, they’ve got another thing coming,” explained a President-elect Obama’s spokesperson. “First it’s straws, then it’s credit cards, and student loans, well we will do all that but straws are at the bottom of the list.”
Some within the straw industry question the reasoning for bailing out LooptiStraw. Until recent years, senior executives have enjoyed parties and social events in places from Las Vegas to Europe and Mexico. “They have spent so much money on parties without investing into research and development,” said an executive from a competitive straw company. Meanwhile, Japanese straw manufacturers have developed straws that are less expensive to produce, last longer, and have streamlined production plants to produce products with few defects and with production efficiencies.
Other foreign straw companies have placed pressure on the Michigan-based LooptiStaw with offering more straw designs that are popular with kids and Generation X parents. Some within the industry point to Loopti’s high salaries for senior executives, lack of capital investments into their straw factories, and dealing with a unionized workforce with extreme medical an other benefits, have created a financial strain that they are just now attempting to deal.
Economists say that the $2.84 billion dollar annual straw industry is an important part of the national economy. With the possibility of LooptiStraw’s demise, it will affect some 8,000 straw producer workers from the industrial belt of the U.S. to foreign operations in Mexico, Canada, and Argentina. The company also operates a customer service line based in India. “Just like all the other companies going under, LooptiStraw is likely to be listed with Washington Mutual, Mervyn’s, and all the other great companies who can’t survive our economic downturn,” said Cecil Myer of the think-tank Economic Reality.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
FAST CARS AND FREEDOM
Fast cars are expected to drive, well, fast, right? However, if you’ve driven on a freeway in the Desert Southwest, you know that’s not always, and hardly ever, the case. We tend to expect the old Ford Ranger or Chevy Malibu to barely be clunking along, or the 1992 Pontiac Grand Am driving down Rancho Boulevard in Las Vegas on its last leg with a plume of smoke billowing from its exhaust, creating a cloud big enough to stop traffic. So the Corvettes, convertibles, BMWs, Porches, and other high-end cars are expected to have some get up and go. But by the time in your life that you are able to afford such a car, your get up and go has got up and left. Sure, there are some younger folks who were able to buy those cars while in the prime years of 20s and 30s, but now all the real estate agents driving Jaguars while wearing leopard-skin pants with three inch high heels are now trying to date guys not in the mortgage industry to pay for that car purchased during the fat years.
It seems nowadays that these fast cars are being driven by the snowbirds that are decked out in khaki shorts, oversized Hawaiian shirts, tennis visors, sandals with long socks, who are enjoying their retirement and the nice summertime weather in Arizona. As the driver gaggles along in the fast lane cruising at an impressive 45-55mph, always driving 10 miles under the speed limit to avoid a ticket, the line of cars behind him are pulling maneuvers only seen in Nascar races, which they have picked up from the previous weekend. This is how the economy of the modern rat race moves forward, surpassing the guys whose only concern is making it to the Indian reservation casino before the breakfast buffet ends at 11am. By modern calculations of getting up by 4:30am, reading the paper and having coffee, getting onto the freeways in time to be the leader of the freeway bottleneck during the morning commute, the average slow-poke snowbird can still make it to the casino buffet by at least 9am. 64-ounces of Diet Coke and three Cuban cigars later, he makes it to the casino with time to spare.
Now we have tons of speed enforcement cameras popping up along all the major freeways in metropolitan Phoenix. My initial thought is to use these cameras to ticket the lolly-gagger snowbird as he slows modern day progress. But this is hardly the case. Now we are expected to drive at a mind-numbing pace and follow in his slow driving misery as we hail back to the days of 55mph zones of the 1980s, only with tens of thousands of more cars on the roads as compared to then.
Between being watched by law enforcement cameras along the highways, our cell phone calls subject to being tapped, our privacy is slowly being stripped away. But where is the opposition for big brother watching our every move along the roads now, as there was such an outcry of tapping into our phone conversations? Arizona Governor Janet Napalatano has stated that the state revenue from speeding tickets captured by the freeway cameras will bring in some $50 million dollars, which helps to alleviate the several billion dollar state budget shortfall. What an impressive Democratic strategy of economic development by taking small amounts of money from many people creates a lot of money for one group – the government. We should all band together and make sure no one ever gets a ticket from these cameras and they have to take them down because the maintenance costs will be more than the revenue it generates.
At that point, the governor will then have to develop other methods to generate revenue without encouraging something that actually spurs economic development. Perhaps she can implement a “reverse lottery.” This is where the traffic cameras take a photo of your car and you are required, as a citizen of the state, to contribute to the state lottery. I’m sure that could pull in several million as the cameras take a photo of a vehicle every 10 seconds for the random reverse lottery. We could also place used Cool Whip containers at every cashier stand at the supermarkets where people can donate change to the Napalatano government instead of the Ronald McDonald house. If these systems don’t work then we’ll have to resort to “income pooling” in which everyone contributes his or her income to the gigantic state pool. The state gets the first cut and then the rest is re-distributed as determined by a complex computer system with a Cricket Wireless internet card. The money is then sent to everyone’s personal bank account according to the random amount determined by the computer.
I think our best hope is that our governor is drafted into the Obama administration into some sort of unimportant position like Secretary of Agriculture. How long has it been since we’ve even known who that is? And what does he or she do? Perhaps the worst thing that would happen is she would levy a tax on eggs and she can install cameras in every cage-free chicken farm to make sure the chickens have their due process rights before being subject to the execution board.
As for now, I’ll avoid the freeways as much as possible and wonder why in this day and age of cameras and Google Earth, that my truck was stolen from a central Phoenix parking garage in mid-day on a weekend, and we have no pictures of the jerk who took it. But if I drive my car over 60mph there’s going to be a photo of me cruising past some convertible snowbird puffing away at his Cuban while driving in the fast lane and blasting Tony Orlando.
It seems nowadays that these fast cars are being driven by the snowbirds that are decked out in khaki shorts, oversized Hawaiian shirts, tennis visors, sandals with long socks, who are enjoying their retirement and the nice summertime weather in Arizona. As the driver gaggles along in the fast lane cruising at an impressive 45-55mph, always driving 10 miles under the speed limit to avoid a ticket, the line of cars behind him are pulling maneuvers only seen in Nascar races, which they have picked up from the previous weekend. This is how the economy of the modern rat race moves forward, surpassing the guys whose only concern is making it to the Indian reservation casino before the breakfast buffet ends at 11am. By modern calculations of getting up by 4:30am, reading the paper and having coffee, getting onto the freeways in time to be the leader of the freeway bottleneck during the morning commute, the average slow-poke snowbird can still make it to the casino buffet by at least 9am. 64-ounces of Diet Coke and three Cuban cigars later, he makes it to the casino with time to spare.
Now we have tons of speed enforcement cameras popping up along all the major freeways in metropolitan Phoenix. My initial thought is to use these cameras to ticket the lolly-gagger snowbird as he slows modern day progress. But this is hardly the case. Now we are expected to drive at a mind-numbing pace and follow in his slow driving misery as we hail back to the days of 55mph zones of the 1980s, only with tens of thousands of more cars on the roads as compared to then.
Between being watched by law enforcement cameras along the highways, our cell phone calls subject to being tapped, our privacy is slowly being stripped away. But where is the opposition for big brother watching our every move along the roads now, as there was such an outcry of tapping into our phone conversations? Arizona Governor Janet Napalatano has stated that the state revenue from speeding tickets captured by the freeway cameras will bring in some $50 million dollars, which helps to alleviate the several billion dollar state budget shortfall. What an impressive Democratic strategy of economic development by taking small amounts of money from many people creates a lot of money for one group – the government. We should all band together and make sure no one ever gets a ticket from these cameras and they have to take them down because the maintenance costs will be more than the revenue it generates.
At that point, the governor will then have to develop other methods to generate revenue without encouraging something that actually spurs economic development. Perhaps she can implement a “reverse lottery.” This is where the traffic cameras take a photo of your car and you are required, as a citizen of the state, to contribute to the state lottery. I’m sure that could pull in several million as the cameras take a photo of a vehicle every 10 seconds for the random reverse lottery. We could also place used Cool Whip containers at every cashier stand at the supermarkets where people can donate change to the Napalatano government instead of the Ronald McDonald house. If these systems don’t work then we’ll have to resort to “income pooling” in which everyone contributes his or her income to the gigantic state pool. The state gets the first cut and then the rest is re-distributed as determined by a complex computer system with a Cricket Wireless internet card. The money is then sent to everyone’s personal bank account according to the random amount determined by the computer.
I think our best hope is that our governor is drafted into the Obama administration into some sort of unimportant position like Secretary of Agriculture. How long has it been since we’ve even known who that is? And what does he or she do? Perhaps the worst thing that would happen is she would levy a tax on eggs and she can install cameras in every cage-free chicken farm to make sure the chickens have their due process rights before being subject to the execution board.
As for now, I’ll avoid the freeways as much as possible and wonder why in this day and age of cameras and Google Earth, that my truck was stolen from a central Phoenix parking garage in mid-day on a weekend, and we have no pictures of the jerk who took it. But if I drive my car over 60mph there’s going to be a photo of me cruising past some convertible snowbird puffing away at his Cuban while driving in the fast lane and blasting Tony Orlando.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Favorite MASH quotes
I'm in the process of compiling quotes from one of my favorite shows, MASH. The sitcom that we've seen a gazillion times in reruns has such memorable writing adapted to the individual characters that makes it memorable. Here are some of my favorites, see if you can identify which character said each:
Frank Burns eats worms.
It's our Kim Lucky day.
..there's a little Captain Tuttle in all of us. You might say that together we all made up Tuttle.
It's home but we like to call it a tent.
"How much am I worth in cold, hard reality?" (Margaret) "I don't understand Margaret, do you need a loan?" (Frank)
"I didn't come here to be liked." (Frank) "You certainly came to the right place." (Radar)
"this song gives me goosebumps." (Margaret) "I'm the same way about Pennsylvania 6500." (Frank)
"We're cutting him open." (Hawkeye) "Just for stealing your underwear?"
"Let's hope it's a long and healthy hate."
"Colonel Clayton, this is General Blake."
"What's a nug, sir? A nug is a gun, sir."
Looks like the wind just broke his leg.
Frank Burns eats worms.
It's our Kim Lucky day.
..there's a little Captain Tuttle in all of us. You might say that together we all made up Tuttle.
It's home but we like to call it a tent.
"How much am I worth in cold, hard reality?" (Margaret) "I don't understand Margaret, do you need a loan?" (Frank)
"I didn't come here to be liked." (Frank) "You certainly came to the right place." (Radar)
"this song gives me goosebumps." (Margaret) "I'm the same way about Pennsylvania 6500." (Frank)
"We're cutting him open." (Hawkeye) "Just for stealing your underwear?"
"Let's hope it's a long and healthy hate."
"Colonel Clayton, this is General Blake."
"What's a nug, sir? A nug is a gun, sir."
Looks like the wind just broke his leg.
Oregon Waterfalls
Just outside of Portland along the Columbia River are great places to go hiking with spectacular views. I was there in mid-August for work and took advantage of the opportunity to get out and hike the waterfalls. Many of the trails wrap up the bluffs that overlook the river as they go alongside the tributary streams that feed the Columbia. Here are some photos I snapped.
"What does it take to get a guy like you into a car like this today?"
PHOENIX--Garth is now the owner of Ford Fusion. "I hope Brad Paisley and George Strait are not mad that I went to Ford Country this time around," commented Garth. Traditionally he has had GM vehicles including a Grand Am and Sierra trucks.
The Fusion is a pre-owned 2008 model with low mileage. It is a 4-liter engine with enough get up and go to bypass all the junkers crusing at 45mph on the 51 Hwy, while still being fuel efficient. It's a four-door model with a 5-speed manual transmission. Most importantly, it has one CD but for some reason is not able to play any classical or jazz music. "I'll have to take it in sometime and get that checked out, but it's not high on my priorities," said Garth. Until then, he plans on listening to country music, talk radio (but not Dr. Laura), and other music genres.
The car is a welcome change from the Sierra, which easily cost $80-100 in gas on a weekly basis. The Fusion's tank lasts well over a week. And it just happens to be the same color as the previous Sierra.
"The horn is excellent and I've already put it to good use driving south on 7th Street," said Garth during our interview.
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