Edition 9-13-04

 

A little girl says, "Daddy, I wish I had a little sister."

Trying to be funny, the daddy says, "Honey, you do have a sister. You just don't see her because when you are coming in the front door, she is always leaving through the back door."

The little girl thinks about this and remarks, "You mean like my other Daddy does?" 

Make cleaning grease splatters on the wall behind the stove easier. First, clean the painted or tiled wall behind your stove. Then spray the entire area with a generous coat of furniture polish and wipe well with paper towels. You will then be able to wipe future grease splatters off easily with a dry sheet of paper towels. 

Remove glue from fingers. When using superglue, keep a bottle of acetone-based fingernail polish remover handy just in case you get glue on your fingers. 
FLFLHTC: Keep this in mind if you doing the Clinton Intern test.

One Saturday afternoon, I was sitting on my lawn chair, drinking beer and watching my wife, mow the lawn. 

Amanda from next door was so upset at this that she came over and shouted..." you should be hung." 

I took a slug from my bottle of Corona, wiped the cold foam from my lips, lifted my darkened Ray Ban sunglasses, stared directly at this nosey woman and calmly replied, "I am, that's why she cuts the grass." 

The male praying mantis often loses his head - literally - after courting the female. The latter is known to decapitate the earnest suitor, and she often completely devours him. 
FLFLHTC: After the the last joke I think I'll just leave this one alone.

The # symbols is often referred to as a "number sign" or "pound sign." Its actual name is an octothorpe. 

 Sep 10, 2004 (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News via COMTEX) -- Harley-Davidson stirred the hopes of Milwaukee job seekers Thursday by taking applications at the Milwaukee Urban League.

The typical turnout is 30 to 50 applicants, said Hollmon, who is president and chief executive officer of the agency. Thursday, 440 people showed up.

"This just shows the tremendous need, the tremendous demand for jobs in our central city," Hollmon said. "For people to stand in line for this amount of time is a testament to how much they want to work."

It also was a testament to Harley, which has a reputation as a solid manufacturing employer at a time when the Milwaukee area has lost 33,000 factory jobs in the last five years.

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER 

Friday, September 10, 2004 · 
 By CARSON WALKER ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER MINNEAPOLIS -- The family of a man killed when Bill Janklow sped through a stop sign and hit his motorcycle wants the former South Dakota congressman to pay civil damages - not the federal government.

Ronald Meshbesher, attorney for the family of Randy Scott, asked U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery at an appeals hearing Friday to return the family's wrongful death lawsuit to state court in Minnesota.

Scott's family wants the case returned to Minnesota, where Scott lived and where the lawsuit was filed, so they can seek money from Janklow through punitive damages, which are not allowed in federal court.

Janklow, 64, resigned from Congress in January after being convicted in South Dakota of second-degree manslaughter and other charges stemming from Scott's death. He has appealed his criminal conviction to that state's Supreme Court, which has not yet ruled.

The Aug. 16, 2003, crash near Trent, S.D., ended Janklow's political career. He had dominated South Dakota politics for three decades, first as attorney general, then a four-term governor and finally the state's only member of the U.S. House.

Meshbesher asked Montgomery to overturn a judge's ruling that Janklow was on duty when the accident happened, which made the U.S. government, not Janklow, liable for damages.

But he argued that Janklow, not taxpayers, should be responsible for financial damages anyway because he admitted to being a speeder and had been ticketed or stopped dozens of times. It was only a matter of time before he caused a serious accident, Meshbesher said.

Montgomery said she would likely rule on the appeal in a month or two.

On July 1, 2004 Masterfoods (the maker of M&Ms) announced it would run the promotion again in the Fall of 2004, vending the pink and white candies in September, October, and November. The corporation has promised a minimum donation of $250,000 to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation no matter how sales turn out, and they have established an upper limit of $650,000 for its donation. 

It is therefore not true that every time someone buys a bag of the pink and white confections that 50 cents will go to the Foundation, because there is a limit to the corporate benevolence Masterfoods is willing to expend on this promotion. The candy maker has capped its 2004 potential donation at $650,000, which means once 1.3 million bags of the pink and white candies are vended the campaign is over. (This is the same as the 2003 campaign, which also topped out at $650,000.) 

This sort of promotion is known as cause-related marketing — the manufacturer chooses a worthy cause, then ties a particular product to a donation scheme dependent upon sales. Through this promotion, the manufacturer gains far greater publicity for its act of generosity than if it had merely cut a check and handed it over to a charity, the product picks up positive associations in the minds of consumers that last well beyond the campaign, shoppers are moved to select the designated product over that of a competitor's or to purchase more than they otherwise would have, and consumer guilt over "sinful" products (like candy) is counterbalanced by the impression such purchases contribute to the greater good. 

Cause-related marketing is experiencing a sharp upswing, so expect to see more tie-ins between products and charities on your next few shopping expeditions. 

Barbara "cause and market effect" Mikkelson 
FLFLHTC: Bottom line buy the damn candy and support a good casue.

 

 

Word of the Day

vacuous \VAK-yuh-wus\ adjective

1 : emptied of or lacking content
*2 : marked by lack of ideas or intelligence : stupid, inane
3 : devoid of serious occupation : idle
Example sentence:
Alyssa was told that her blind date was well-read and articulate, so she was disappointed to discover that he was a vacuous bore.
Did you know?
As you might have guessed, "vacuous" shares the same root as "vacuum" — the Latin adjective "vacuus," meaning "empty." This root also gave us the noun "vacuity" (the oldest meaning of which is "an empty space") as well as the verb "evacuate" (originally "to remove the contents of; empty"). Its predecessor, the verb "vacare," is also an ancestor of the words "vacation" and "vacancy" as well as "void." All of these words suggest an emptiness of space, or else a fleeing of people or things from one place to another. "Vacuous" first appeared in English in the middle of the 17th century, literally describing something that was empty, but then acquired its figurative usage, describing one who is lacking any substance of the mind, in the mid-1800s.

http://www.merriam-webster.com