Archive for May, 2008

Holy mackerel. How much guilt are you dealing with when you pay a parking ticket 32 years after you get it?

Police in this Upper Peninsula town had forgotten about the $1 parking ticket written on Sept. 1, 1976. But the woman who had found it on her windshield hadn’t.

The ticket, a $20 bill and a note arrived at police headquarters last month in a plain white envelope with no return address.

The note read: “I always had good intentions of paying it. I put it aside and every once in a while I would come across it and said ’someday I’m going to pay it.’ Now I think it’s time.”

How many times do you look at a $1 parking ticket and think about paying it? Seriously? She must have been dealing with some serious guilt to make her send $20 and a not that asks them not to track her down. Respectable, I’m not sure, but forgetful, yes.

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Who makes a cake like this? Can I get one for my pet gorilla at Dairy Queen?

Jenny, recognized as the world’s oldest living gorilla in captivity, celebrated her 55th birthday Thursday with a four-layer frozen fruit cake and banana leaf wrapped treats at her wooded home in the Dallas Zoo.

Her caretakers say she’s having a few joint issues and her eyesight isn’t what it used to be but she still looks good for an old ape.

“It’s a special milestone for us,” said Todd Bowsher, curator of the zoo’s Wilds of Africa exhibit. “It signifies that we’ve made great strides in veterinary care, nutrition and animal husbandry.”

Seriously… Do gorillas in the wild find four-layer frozen fruit cakes in the jungle? Heck, do they find anything “cold” let alone frozen? I don’t know, as I am no expert, but I don’t think you can claim you have made great strides in anything when you give wild animals frozen treats and call it an “advance” in nutrition.

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What are you using your stimulus money for?

Eight in 10 Americans believe that the government’s $110 billion effort to help consumers will not boost the economy, according to a poll released Friday.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll conducted April 28-30 found that 82% of Americans believe the stimulus package will fall short – compared to 70% in February.

Me? I am getting some much needed dental work done, for myself and the kids. I got my stimulus money today, and our appointments aren’t for nearly three weeks, but I bet I still spend mine faster than you do.

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I bet some people on Wall Street actually peed their pants today when Greenspan spoke. They do that you know. Greenspan farts and those people react.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Thursday that the worst of the credit crisis is over, according to sources who attended a speech he delivered in New York.

Greenspan also said house prices still had a long way to fall and that it was unlikely they would stabilize by year-end, according to meeting attendees who provided Reuters details of the speech at the Alternative Public Strategies Conference.

Don’t you miss the days when someone retired and actually stopped working? Why are people still listening to him? Isn’t he part of the reason the “credit crunch” happened in the first place?

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Having a bad week? Questioning your abilities as a parent? This guy shouldn’t be. He should be taking names and kicking ass. The authorities involved in this case should be held accountable.

If you watch much television, you’ve probably heard of a product called Mike’s Hard Lemonade.

And if you ask Christopher Ratte and his wife how they lost custody of their 7-year-old son, the short version is that nobody in the Ratte family watches much television.

The way police and child protection workers figure it, Ratte should have known that what a Comerica Park vendor handed over when Ratte ordered a lemonade for his boy three Saturdays ago contained alcohol, and Ratte’s ignorance justified placing young Leo in foster care until his dad got up to speed on the commercial beverage industry.

Even if, in hindsight, that decision seems a bit, um, idiotic.

When the 7-year-old was tested at the hospital less than 90 minutes after he and his father were escorted from the stadium, there was NO TRACE of alcohol in his system.

Then why did they take his son? Bastards.

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Talk about contradictory positions…

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said U.S. financial markets are emerging from the credit crunch that many economists believe has pushed the country to the brink of recession, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“I do believe that the worst is likely to be behind us,” Paulson told the newspaper in an interview.

The brink of recession? Warren Buffett says we are already there.

Warren Buffett, the world’s richest person, said on Sunday the U.S. economy is in recession, “as I define it.”

Buffett’s comment was at odds with a U.S. Commerce Department report last week showing the economy grew at a 0.6 percent annualized rate in the first quarter.

So, who do we believe? Yeah, that’s what I thought. I have no idea either.

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I don’t mean to sound too rude here, but even if someone filled a Mountain Thunder wine bottle with dishwashing liquid, shouldn’t somone, anyone, have noticed the consistency of the liquid when it was poured for the customer?

Two women were hospitalized after a New Zealand cafe mistakenly served dishwashing liquid as mulled wine, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

Chico’s Restaurant Ltd. in the mountain resort of Queenstown on South Island pleaded guilty to a charge of selling food containing extraneous matter — the chemical sodium hydroxide — that caused injury, the Southland Times newspaper said.

…

“A check by cafe management indicated that a mulled wine container had unfortunately been filled with dishwashing detergent,” McKenzie told the court.

An investigation showed the two liquids had been mixed up after 5.2 gallons of dishwashing liquid was delivered in a container formerly used to hold “Mountain Thunder” mulled wine.

It sounds to me like someone had a little too much to drink, and it didn’t involve the customer or the dishwashing liquid.

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Banking regulators have been trying for years to impost more rules on the banks that provide credit card services. Although I am usually against most federal regulatory interference, this is one area where I think something has to be done.

The Federal Reserve on Friday joined other U.S. banking regulators in backing new limits on certain billing practices by credit card companies.

The Fed approved a proposal that would generally prohibit credit card companies from increasing the annual percentage rate on a customer’s outstanding balance. It would also ban companies from reaching back to prior billing cycles when calculating the amount of interest charges in the current cycle, a practice known as double-cycle billing.

…

The new plan would also bar banks, thrifts and credit unions from assessing a fee for paying an overdraft on a checking account, debit card purchase or ATM withdrawal unless they give consumers the right to opt out of overdraft payments.

The proposals also attempt the halt the practice of raising interest rates on a balance when a cardholder fails to make payments on an unrelated bill. The proposal bars banks from changing rates on existing balances, but can tell customers 45 days in advance it might raise rates.

I know many people who have been shafted by credit card companies. Granted, no one gets into credit card debt without knowing what they are getting into, but the way banks are screwing with interest rates on the cards is astounding.

I have a credit card that I have never been late in paying. I have never missed a payment. I have always paid above the minimum due. What happened to me? The bank raised my interest rate because of another issue was not related to my account with them at all, and then, when I paid off 1/4 of the balance, they lowered my credit limit because I was a risk. Ha!

It’s time someone put some limits on the banks. There is no reason for 32% interest rates on credit cards, and there is no reason to screw with people who are actually trying to pay the damn things off.

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I had no idea that JP Morgan Chase & Co. executives were fortune tellers.

JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) does not expect the U.S. financial crisis to end soon and will remain very cautious, its top executive said in comments published by a German weekly on Saturday.

“We can only speculate how deep and how long the recession in the United States will really be and how that in turn will impact banks,” James Dimon told “Welt am Sonntag.”

Seeing that the United States is not yet, by definition, in a recession, I find it hysterical that he is actually talking about how deep and how long the recession (that doesn’t exist yet) will last. Just once I would like people to be honest. Just once I would like people to tell the truth. Why make comments like that? Talk about fear mongering.

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Watch out for the snack police. This is absolutely ridiculous.

A judge in southern Ohio must decide whether to send a man to prison for sharing a Little Debbie snack cake. The case involves 21-year-old Timothy Caudill, who last year was held in a residential community corrections program in Nelsonville for breaking into a bar.

While there, prosecutors said he bought the oatmeal creme pie from a vending machine and shared it with a fellow inmate who was on restriction and wasn’t allowed access to snacks.

Did the guy know the other inmate wasn’t allowed to have a snack? You do realize, if he gets his probation revoked for sharing a snack cake, he’ll get more time in prison than first time sex offenders. Ouch. I wonder if they have have a registry for snack cake offenders in Ohio?

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