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"It's too bad stupidity isn't painful." Volume 15, Number 22, May 30, 2010 Greetings, and thanks for joining me for another week. Starting us off are a few news stories you may have missed. First,mmm, mmm yummy! Reuters carried a Bit about a milkshake containing 2,010 calories -- equivalent to eating 68 strips of bacon or 30 chocolate chip cookies -- has topped a list of the 20 worst drinks in America compiled by Men's Health magazine. The Cold Stone PB&C milkshake, made with peanut butter, chocolate ice cream and milk, contains 68 grams of saturated fat and 153 grams of sugar, according to nutritional details on the company's website. "In terms of saturated fat, drinking this Cold Stone catastrophe is like slurping up 68 strips of bacon," the magazine said. I mean, they’re presenting it like it’s a bad thing… just sayin’.Next, sounds like a union job to me! The local government of Bolton, England, responded to a citizen's report of a discarded mattress off on the side of a road, sent an official to assess the scene. He wrote a work order for four men (a driver, an assistant and two supervisors) and a 1.7-ton construction vehicle, and the pickup was scheduled for the following week. When a Bolton councilman saw the schedule, he, with the help of a friend, drove a council van to the scene and hauled the mattress to a dump site. (How’d he get in office? The union’s gonna get after him!) [Daily Telegraph] Finally, speaking (or writing) of unions…. Among the health-insurance upgrades demanded by Philadelphia-area transit workers and agreed to by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority late last year was the removal of the 10-tablet-per-month rationing of Viagra and similar medications, to allow as many as 30 per month. (The final contract, reportedly even more beneficial to the union, was being voted on by union members at press time.) [Philadelphia Inquirer] California girls! A Californian woman with ink over 95 per cent of her body has been documented as the most tattooed in the world. Julia Gnuse, 55, got her first tattoo to cover up an unpleasant skin condition on her legs, reports The Sun. But she carried on until she covered her entire body and has been accepted by Guinness World Records for most tattoos. The pictures range from jungle scenes and cartoons to the cast of Bewitched on her buttocks. The skin condition which kicked off her project when she was 35 is called porphyria. It causes the skin to blister when exposed to sunlight. Having the tattoos does not combat the blistering but it means none of her scars show. Ms Gnuse, nicknamed the Illustrated Lady, said: "I did this for the reason of covering scarring from the blisters. They get as deep as three degree burn. "I had a friend, who is a plastic surgeon, who suggested tattooing my skin the same color to the scarring that I had, seeing if we can match my just pale-looking skin that I had." Related to the last Bit, one of my favorite books to teach was Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man, a collection of short stories based on a man’s tattoos that ‘come to life’ and each tell a story. I used maybe 12 of the 18 stories as springboards for discussion. Anyhow, I guess I am getting old as I don’t understand the attraction to in-your-face tattoos. Many are truly nice artwork and attractive, but to have someone serve me with an ink-covered arm or neck….. One reason I love Ray Bradbury is that he saw into the future. He once wrote "You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them." So, uh, what was the last book you read? A woman after my heart! Deborah Dillow of Bend, Ore., didn't pay her $150 bill from The Bomb Squad, a company that cleans up dog waste from people’s yards. After several attempts to collect her money, company owner Melinda Hofmann was frustrated. "I started to go back and write another note, but I just decided to give her poop back," she said. She started flinging it from the back of her truck onto Dillow's property. "I was flinging the poo all over her yard," she said -- about 30 gallons worth. "It felt really good, and I just kept doing it." She kept at it until police arrived. Officers charged her with criminal trespassing, criminal mischief and offensive littering. Hoffman, who has invested 10 years in her business, says she has no regrets. [KTVZ.com] A man identified only as "Mr. Pope" sued his ex-wife in Family Court in Queensland, Australia, to ask the court to force her to remove a bumper sticker from her car. It reads, "Men are idiots. I divorced their king!" (Hey, my wife has a similar sticker on her car! Hers reads “All Men are Idiots! I Married their King!) Pope was concerned that it would affect how his 13-year-old daughter felt about him when she saw it on her mother's car. "However, for all I know this may be the way the parents have always talked to each other," said Judicial Registrar Ian Loughnan. "Their daughter might say that her parents are idiots." He threw the action out, and ordered the couple to split the A$1,000 in court costs. [Brisbane Courier-Mail] Lesson Time. I recently ran across the following forwarded fact: “In WWII the US military planned to airdrop over France propaganda in the form of Playboy magazine, with coded messages hidden in the models' turn-ons and turn-offs. The plan was scrapped because of a staple shortage due to rationing of metal.” Why is this fact a lesson? First, Playboy magazine didn’t begin publication until 1953, years after the war ended. How many people forwarded the “fact” in spite of its untruth? Probably the same ones who forward political “facts” whether they are true or not. Finally, for years, faithful readers know I have called alcohol ‘liquid stupid pills.’ I worked in the primary prevention field for some time and learned all about it, but until I became directly involved in “the family disease,” it turns out they were all just words and concepts to me. The following six items are handpicked by me from a list of fifteen predictable events in pretty much every family affected by the disease: (1) Confusion, (2) Unresolved conflicts, (3) Deterioration of Relationships, (4) Pretending and distortion of reality, (5) Walking on ‘eggshells,’ and finally (6) Crisis after crisis after crisis. Admitting I have lived all 15 items and finally reached and am immersed in Level 6 as just listed above, I have sure had my eyes opened and learned a lot about the real character of people not just by reading and writing about them but by knowing them. Now, what to do…. (The full list can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/2dge542). Later.
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Berman's Bits
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