When I get a chance I’m going to spend some time looking up natural appetite suppressants that don’t cost an arm and a leg. Off the top of my head the only advise I can think of is that someone once told me hat caffeine is an appetite suppressant, but then it’s also a natural diuretic and the man is already taking a diuretic for his heart. Too much of that could be considered cruel and unusual punishment.

I haven’t played Monopoly in well over a decade, but I don’t remember seeing that card. My leg is a little sore from being pulled.

Dear Mr. Grim Reaper,

So far this year you have taken away my favorite dancer and entertainer Michael Jackson, my favorite actor Patrick Swayze, and my favorite actress Farrah Fawcett.

Just so you know, my favorite politician is Barack Obama.

This has turned into a real problem with the remotes for the TV, VCR, and DVD player. We have a convenient, easy-access (for everyone but baby) place for ONE remote, but the remotes for the DVD player and the VCR have to remain on top of the TV - which kind of defeats the purpose of having a remote, in my opinion.

My wife and I were looking at a bunch of sales in preparation for Christmas when I found the solution. It’s an Emerson 8-Device Universal Jumbo Remote. Since it can handle 8 devices, it shouldn’t complain about our modest setup. The extra large buttons mean that those of us who have trouble seeing close up should still be able to use it (a feature sadly lacking in the DVD remote), and, as an added benefit, the keys glow in the dark, so finding the remote in a dark room shouldn’t be an issue.

The way I see it, the only potential problem is getting it programed and then teaching the “technologically disadvantaged” members of the household to use it. For $7, I’m willing to give that a try.

A Girl Potato and a Boy Potato had eyes for each other,

And finally they got married, and had a little sweet potato, which they Called ‘Yam.’

Of course, they wanted the best for Yam.

When it was time, they told her about the facts of life.

They warned her about going out and getting half-baked, so she wouldn’t get accidentally mashed, and get a bad name for herself like ‘Hot Potato,’ and end up with a bunch of Tater Tots.

Yam said not to worry, no Spud would get her into the sack and make a rotten potato out of her!

But on the other hand she wouldn’t stay home and become a Couch Potato either. She would get plenty of exercise but not too much so not to be skinny like her Shoestring cousins.

When she went off to Europe, Mr. and Mrs. Potato told Yam to watch out for the hard-boiled guys from Ireland and the greasy guys from France called the French Fries. And when she went out West, to watch out for the Indians so she wouldn’t get scalloped.

Yam said she would stay on the straight and narrow and wouldn’t associate with those high class Yukon Golds, or the ones from the other side of the tracks who advertise their trade on
all the trucks that say, ‘Frito Lay.’

Mr. And Mrs. Potato sent Yam to Idaho P.U. (that’s Potato University ) so that when she graduated she’d really be in the Chips.

But in spite of all they did for her, one-day Yam came home and announced she was going to marry Tom Brokaw.

Tom Brokaw!

Mr a nd Mrs . Potato were very upset. They told Yam she couldn’t possibly marry Tom Brokaw
because he’s just…

Are you
ready for this?

Are
you sure?

*

*

OK!
Here it is!

*
*
*
*

A
COMMONTATER

What bothers me, however, is the fact that it seems almost impossible to do that with auto insurance quotes. If you call an insurance agent on the phone and try to get a quote, you are almost guaranteed to get an answer like, “I can’t give you a quote over the phone”. Why not? They can take my information over the phone just as easily as they do in person, but if they get you in the office before giving you a price, you’re much more likely to go ahead and buy it.

President BARACK OBAMA was invited to address a major gathering of the American Indian Nation two weeks ago in upstate New York .

He spoke for almost an hour about his plans for increasing every Native American’s present standard of living. He referred to his time as a U.S. Senator and how he had voted for every Native American issue that came to the floor of the Senate.

Although President Obama was vague about the details of his plans, he seemed most enthusiastic and spoke eloquently about his ideas for helping his “red sisters and brothers.”

At the conclusion of his speech, the Tribes presented Obama with a plaque inscribed with his new Indian name, “Walking Eagle.” The proud President then departed in his motorcade to a fundraiser, waving to the crowds.

A news reporter later asked the group of chiefs how they came to select the new name they had given to the President.

They explained that “Walking Eagle” is the name given to a bird so full of crap it can no longer fly.

1. the mouse eventually refuses to respond at all and you MUST replace the batteries.
2. out of sheer frustration at having to click the mouse button 4396841 times just to complete an ebay search you finally throw the mouse across the room, resulting in the need to replace the batteries, the mouse, AND that nice, expensive mirror, or
3. you are able to finish what you’re trying to do online so you can drive across town and buy a stupid package of batteries.

I’ll be heading into town for batteries before long.

In the beginning of the video, Mr. Dobbs quotes the Senate Minority Leader as saying the bill is “a piece of … expletive deleted” and, after watching the report, I’m inclined to agree.

We don’t need to provide AMNESTY for illegal immigrants; we need to make it clear to them that “illegal” means AGAINST THE LAW.

Instead f offering the unlawful immigrants a tax break and first dibs on some benefits that legal citizens have to wait in line for, we should come up with a punishment that will make them think twice before illegally crossing our border.

Just one man’s humble opinion, since you asked.

After we finished laughing at that, we gave up and watched “It’s A Wonderful Life”.

This morning I was still thinking about the “non smoking cat” and I went back to ebay to ask the seller this question:

You said the item “comes from a household with a non smoking cat”. I’m curious how you got him to quit because our cat is up to two packs a day. He refuses to get a job and, between the cigarettes and the beer, I’m tired of supporting his habits.

:>

Have a great day.

The woman answered me a short while ago with this:

I found out that she had a fake ID and was sneaking out with the car keys at night. She would drive down to the local C-Store to purchase her smokes and hang out with her buddies. I sent mine to CAA. AA for cats

Is it too much to hope that Mickey and Goofy will kidnap him and they won’t be back?

Star Trek’s communicator was once a similar fantasy but with the advent of bluetooth enabled cell phones, they’re actually possible now. The folks at makezine.com have posted a complete tutorial detailing How-To Make a Star Trek Bluetooth Communicator

Here’s a video demonstrating the finished product.

Here is an example of her work. The high school was redecorating their library and allowed the art students to each take home a ceiling tile to decorate. She copied this dragon from the cover of a book she’d just read.

That same young lady has an interest in learning the process of animating. She has dreams of putting her artwork up for sale and eventually even creating her own cartoon (for television or the internet, I’m not sure).

I’m thinking seriously about getting her Smith Micro Anime Studio v.5.0 for Christmas. From what I’ve read about it, it would go a long way in teaching her the process of creating desktop animated shorts in the style of SouthParkStudios.com and JibJab.com. Anime Studio can also produce full-length animation for film, video or streaming over the web.

The more I think about it, the more I think I’d love to see her reaction to opening this and figuring out what it is. I’d also love to see what she could do with it.

My camera is limited to 30-second videos unless I want the image to be so small as to be useless due largely to the fact that it has a very small amount of internal memory and once that’s full it has to stop filming so it can dump the internal memory to the external card. That’s not as much of a handicap for the Aluratek Cinecam because it has a larger internal memory that my Canon camera. It makes a big difference when something is designed specifically for videos as opposed to something that designed for still pictures and the video functions are thrown in as an “extra feature”.

Sometimes when I stumble across the hallway in the middle of the night I’m not even awake enough to be able to find the handle to flush the toilet with. Sometimes I’ve caught myself wishing that the thing glowed in the dark or something.

Well, guess what I found for sale recently?

The Luminosity Toilet Flush Handle Night Light is exactly what I was thinking of during all those late-night restroom trips. This handle replaces a standard front-mounted handle. It has an automatic shut-off to preserve the (included) 9-volt battery and it glows in the dark.

This might even help out in a few months when we’re trying to potty train a youngster. The most difficult proposition there will probably be trying to convince the little darling that it isn’t a toy.

Barry’s colonoscopy journal:
======================
I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy.

A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis.

Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner. I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn’t really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, quote, ‘HE’S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BEHIND!’

I left Andy’ s office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called ‘MoviPrep,’ which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America ’s enemies.

I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous. Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn’t eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor.

Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about 32 gallons). Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes - and here I am being kind - like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.

The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, ‘a loose, watery bowel movement may result.’ This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.

MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don’t want to be too graphic, here, but: have you ever seen a space-shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.

After an action-packed evening, I finally got to sleep.

The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic. I was very nervous. Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage. I was thinking, ‘What if I spurt on Andy?’ How do you apologize to a friend for something like that? Flowers would not be enough.

At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the heck the forms said. Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked.

Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand. Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was already lying down. Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep. At first I was ticked off that I hadn’t thought of this is, but then I pondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house.

When everything was ready, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room, where Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anesthesiologist. I did not see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there somewhere. I was seriously nervous at this point.

Andy had me roll over on my left side, and the anesthesiologist began hooking something up to the needle in my hand.

There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was ‘Dancing Queen’ by ABBA. I remarked to Andy that, of all the songs that could be playing during this particular procedure, ‘Dancing Queen’ had to be the least appropriate.

‘You want me to turn it up?’ said Andy, from somewhere behind me.
‘Ha ha,’ I said. And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than a decade. If you are squeamish, prepare yourself, because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was like.

I have no idea. Really. I slept through it. One moment, ABBA was yelling ‘Dancing Queen, feel the beat of the tambourine,’ and the next moment, I was back in the other room, waking up in a very mellow mood.

Andy was looking down at me and asking me how I felt. I felt excellent. I felt even more excellent when Andy told me that IT was all over, and that my colon had passed with flying colors. I have never been prouder of an internal organ.

ABOUT THE WRITER
Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist for the Miami Herald.
On the subject of Colonoscopies…
Colonoscopies are no joke, but these comments during the exam were quite humorous…… A physician claimed that the following are actual comments made by his patients (predominately male) while he was performing their colonoscopies:

1. ‘Take it easy, Doc. You’re boldly going where no man has gone before!

2. ‘Find Amelia Earhart yet?’

3. ‘Can you hear me NOW?’

4. ‘Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?’

5. ‘You know, in Arkansas , we’re now legally married.’

6. ‘Any sign of the trapped miners, Chief?’

7. ‘You put your left hand in, you take your left hand out…’

8. ‘Hey! Now I know how a Muppet feels!’

9. ‘If your hand doesn’t fit, you must quit!

10. ‘Hey Doc, let me know if you find my dignity.’

11. ‘You used to be an executive at Enron, didn’t you?’

12. ‘Gee, now I know why I am not gay.’

And the best one of all.

13. ‘Could you write a note for my wife saying that my head is not up there?’

The same site with the GPS system has these Foldable Noise Canceling Headphones on sale this week for 55% off.

These would be great for my laptop (once I get the CPU fan fixed) because that way I could listen to internet radio in the mornings while the baby is busy with her kids’ shows. Even at only 18 months old she’s a real music lover, but her tastes tend to run more toward classical music and big bands. Somehow I don’t think she’d appreciate Elton John blaring over her Veggie Tales video.

Obviously I have not yet had the opportunity to try out these headphones, but everything I’ve read about them so far says they should sound fabulous. They have received over 16 International CES and CTIA awards.

One of the things I really like about these is the fact that they fold up and can be stored in a smaller space than the headphones I have on my desktop computer. Those are always at risk from “curious little fingers”. These could be folded up and tucked safely away in a desk drawer or my camera bag.

This trip, someone screwed something up, because when I got to St. Louis I noticed that I wasn’t getting all my regular meds. A talk with the doctor revealed that they had decided to temporarily stop a couple of them, but there was one I am supposed to take 3mg daily and they were giving me 1. I tried I-don’t-know-how-many times to get that straightened out, but all anyone would say was, “But it isn’t in the computer that way”. I eventually got to the point where I wanted to grab them by the shirt collar and shake them while yelling, “THEN FIX IT!” Computers are only as infallible as the data-entry people who work on them.

I spent quite a bit of the trip staring over the driver’s shoulder looking at the GPS system he was using to navigate. I’ve decided that I want one of those. How cool would it be to be able to drive around a foreign country like Little Rock and not end up hopelessly lost?

Naturally, the minute I was able I went online and found sale on a Garmin nuvi 285WT Portable GPS that I could drool over. Unlike the one in the ambulance, this one has text-to-speech capability so that you don’t have to take your eye off the road. It will actually say things like, “Turn right in 500 ft.”

I wonder how long it’d take me to save up $200.

I really find myself wishing that machine had an external hard drive because as it is I can’t keep it running long enough to copy what’s on it to a machine that actually WORKS!

Strange, strange world.

Yesterday, however, after being transferred and hung up on twice she was informed that accepting payments is no longer one of their call center services.

Funny thing, though. Once they were told not to cut off our service or damage our credit rating because they refused a payment, suddenly they were more than happy to accept a payment over the phone.

I was up way too late most nights watching late-night television because I can’t sleep when I’m in the hospital. I’ve discovered that if you plan it right you can lie there and watch 4 solid hours of CSI, a couple of episodes of All In The Family, and a decent classic movie before it gets late enough that every channel is running an infomercial for diet pills that work, weight lifting equipment, kitchen appliances, or “natural male enhancement”.

It’s a great way to waste an entire day, but I wouldn’t want to make it way of life.

I just love it when things fall behind.

While I was still staring slack-jawed at the radio in disbelief, the voice went on to explain that the awards were actually decided upon in February, when the President had only been in office for one month!

What, one is forced to wonder, did Barak Obama do during his first 30 days in office that warranted such an honor. By my recollection, NOTHING. The person explaining this stupidity said that he was given the award based on what he MIGHT do, combined with the fact that he’s not George Bush.

Wait a second…

Let’s assume for a moment that I MIGHT stumble upon the secret to faster-than-light travel someday. Throw in the fact that I’m not Adolph Hitler or Benito Mussolini and I find myself wondering where my award is.

Given my impeccable list of qualifications, I’m sure that long distance movers everywhere are really pleased with how simple I might make their jobs someday.