Creative Endeavors, The Home of BoxcarOkie.com

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:  “For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.”

A bad day to be a frog.  CBS or NBC, I cannot remember, is now reporting that frogs are dying all over the planet.  Increased temperatures in the water, foster the growth of a fungus-viral type organism that is killing them off at an unprecedented rate, some 40% of the worlds species of frogs have either died or have completely disappeared.

These are the little guys, natures’ survivors, that made it thru the Ice Age, planetary collisions and collapse of entire eco systems in the past, for possibly millions of years.  When all the dinosaurs were toast, we still had the lowly little frog.  Now their days seem to be numbered, time is running out people, best wise up and do something.

San Antonio, Texas.  News from the America that Mr. Bush says “has no problems.”  More and more families are turning to food banks and public assistance because of high food prices and an ailing economy.  The San Antonio food bank helped nearly 316,000 families in the fiscal year that ended in June.  That was up 85% from last year.

The problem is just not a local thing it is global.

Now we are seeing entire countries outsourcing their problems.  Nations like Kenya, Cambodia, and Georgia, for example are proving that they cannot provide carrying out of basic functions of statehood.  Assorted aid agencies, international charities and philanthropists are replacing traditional donors and government influence.  Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation are increasingly taking over key state functions, providing for the health, welfare and safety of citizens.

I hope they leave a little for us in the end.

ExxonMobil posted second quarter earnings of $11.7 billion, the largest quarterly profit ever recorded by any company.  ExxonMobil also posted the previous record setter which was 11.6 billion in profit in the 4^th quarter of the year 2007.  Americans are using 800,000 barrels less oil per day now because of extreme cost and conservation and yesterday the American refiners announced that they were not the bad guys … “We are only making 3 to 4 cents profit” on a gallon of fuel, and that their profits are down 85% over last year.

Yeah, I believe that, like I believe in …….. Well, y’know the rest of it, dont’cha?

Nissan says that next year it will introduce a gas pedal that pushes back when it sense drivers are accelerating too quickly.  The “ECO Pedal” system is said to improve fuel efficiency by 5% to 10%.  What I need is a wallet that will grow a new gasoline dollar each time I take one out, something like a lizards tail.  You can think on that one for awhile, this ends today’s science portion of the post, boys n girls.

The computer mouse, which turned 40 years old this year, will be obsolete in three to five years.  Touch screen programming, joysticks and possibly facial recognition will replace it.  We had mouse problems this past week, but we discovered the culprit was right here in the office all the time.

Now I like this one.

Metro officials are using police style laser type radar guns to track the speed of buses in Washington DC area.    Over the past year Metro bus supervisors have issued 152 speeding citations to drivers ….  Even though the bus drivers know the location of the daily speed traps in advance … Now that is pretty bad, you KNOW where they are going to be, and you still get caught speeding?

How many dollars does it take to protect the Presidential candidates?  It takes or is estimated to take, $40,000 per day for each of them, and the bill for this expense will be some $106 million this year alone.

John the farmer was in the fertilized egg business. He had several hundred young layers (hens), called “pullets”, and ten roosters, whose job it was to fertilize the eggs.

The farmer kept records and any rooster that didn’t perform went into the soup pot and was replaced. That took an awful lot of his time, so he bought a set of tiny bells and attached them to his roosters. Each bell had a different tone so John could tell from a distance, which rooster was performing. Now he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report simply by listening to the bells.

The farmer’s favorite rooster was old Butch, a very fine specimen he was too.  But on this particular morning John noticed old Butch’s bell hadn’t rung at all! John went to investigate. The other roosters were chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing. The pullets, hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover.

But to Farmer John’s amazement, old Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn’t ring. He’d sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one. John was so proud of old Butch, he entered him in the Renfrew County Fair and he became an overnight sensation among the judges.

The result…The judges not only awarded old Butch the No Bell Piece Prize but they awarded him the Pulletsurprise as well.

Clearly old Butch was a politician in the making: who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most highly coveted awards on our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the populace and screwing them when they weren’t paying attention.

Vote carefully this year… the bells are not always audible.

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