When you get a Facebook status update like...

...it's time to cull the herd. You are the weakest link...goodbye!

Hint: By all means inform us of your new baby, new job or colon cancer, but for the love of God, keep your sniffles to yourselves. 400 updates a day is enough to make someone sick.


Click here to go to most recent posts.

Count your blessings

Today, I thought I'd write a feel good story. Not in the way you imagine. By describing how miserable I feel right now, you might want to reconsider your assessment of your own health. And if it happens to be worse than mine, well, then, maybe I'll feel a little better.

Leaving aside some of my more personal and chronic conditions (even though some of them and these are, indeed, chronic), the last couple of days I've been struggling with hemorrhoids, excessive gas, bloating, stomach cramps, constipation (followed by diarrhea), sore throat, cough, constant headache, and lower back pain that won't ease sitting, standing or laying down.

I wish these were all I had to deal with. Now, before you start (if you aren't already well into) thinking what a whiner I am, let me just point out that aside from the account I gave of the heart attack I had last year, I haven't bitched about my condition(s) in this blog. And I'm not really sure why I'm doing it now. Certainly not to garner sympathy--I don't have enough readership to make a lick of difference.

I know that sometimes when I'm not feeling great, hearing of someone else's challenges makes me feel lucky for not having theirs. So, maybe today, if you're not feeling well, perhaps you can feel grateful for being you. And if you happen to feel good today, sorry for possibly bringing you down. In retribution, I promise my next posting will be a humorous and or positive one.

Have a good one!...or at least a better one than I'm having.


Click here to go to most recent posts.

He's no Jimmy Carter

You've probably heard about the massive salmonella outbreak caused by peanut products in the U.S. The story just got more interesting. Stewart Parnell, the owner of Peanut Corp. of America, who was forced by health officials to recall 1,800 different products, has refused to answer questions in a hearing of the House of Representatives subcommittee investigating the affair on the grounds it may incriminate him. Probably a wise decision since he is as guilty as can be.

So far, about 600 people have been made sick and nine people have died from ingesting the tainted foods.

This peanut-brained, sick bastard knowingly and systematically pushed through as much product as he could even when tests showed his Georgia plant was laden with salmonella bacteria. His guilt was secured by investigators in a number of e-mails he sent, once pleading with health officials to allow him to "turn the raw peanuts on the floor into money".

Once again, we see an example of the almighty dollar being placed above human health and even human lives. The last thing I want is for this guy to go to prison. He needs to work his tail off for the rest of his life and be made to pay restitution to each and every victim. Would anyone disagree with me? Let's see if his high-priced lawyer gets him off with a slap on the wrist.

It's times like these that I miss the good, old days when an angry mob carrying torches and pitchforks could pluck a guy like him out of his home and force feed him a half dozen of his own peanut butter sandwiches. Well, maybe I'll settle for my Pepsi.

I feel sick to my stomach

Maybe I should make this a regular category. It seems that increasing numbers of things have this effect on me these days.

I just read that city aldermen in Calgary, Canada received a 5% pay hike. No, that's not the sickening part, although it doesn't make the stomach feel great in these trying economic times. Apparently, some of the aldermen were campaigning to scrap the increase, rightfully citing hard times as the impetus for letting the city keep the money. After all, times are just as hard for city coffers as they are for Joe Citizen.

The part that makes me want to throw up is that some of the others sitting around the council table who happily accepted the raise, say that the members who were fighting the increase were merely "grandstanding". Nothing like accusing those who would do the right thing of just trying to make the rest look bad. In effect, the shameful trying to shame the righteous.

I can't remember how many times in my life I got the same treatment. Once, when I was not yet established in a career, I was working in a very large printing shop, at the bottom of the ladder. When someone from a press crew was absent, a worker from the next lower rung would fill in for him. In my case, I got to be "roll man".

That job required that you check approximately 1,000-pound rolls of paper for nicks, stripping the roll down to where it was "clean" and then using a crane to lift and set the roll on the press. You also set up the roll to be spliced with the preceding roll as it finished, so that the paper would feed continuously. If you screwed up in either of these functions, the press would come to a stop and precious time, paper and manpower were wasted in getting started again.

On a particularly bad week, production-wise, our foreman came to chew out our crew and one thing he said was that on the times that I was working as roll man, the production rate was higher and the wastage was lower. I should mention that this particular press had three crews that worked around the clock. Anyway, it didn't take more than a few minutes for the regular roll man from my crew to come to me and give me shit for making him look bad. What kind of twisted thinking is this?

Something else from that job sticks out in my mind. There were a few guys who sometimes as they were finishing their shift would say to me in a very proud manner as I was arriving for my shift "I just f____ed the dog all day". If you're unfamiliar with this expression, it means "did nothing".