February 25, 2003
Tuesday Morning Quickies
I'm in class again, so all I have time for is a couple of quick ones.
National Geographic has a swimsuit issue out on the streets. Yep, the magazine where you used to be able to see topless women as long as it was educational (and the women were ugly) has decided to picture less (but not by much) of good looking women. This reminds me of another thing we owe the French - the invention of lingerie. I know that's got to gall a lot of people out there, but the invention of the brassiere alone is worth our undying admiration; toss in all the other wonderful pieces of women's foundational garments (motto: to support yet reveal the good bits) they invented and you can see why I won't speak an ill word of the French no matter how idiotic their leaders are.
This morning on the way to work, I was almost run over by a mail delivery truck. I was getting over to get off the freeway and the distinctively shaped truck was flying (given that I was doing 70 miles an hour, he had to be doing well over 80) up the right hand lanes. I was tempted to report the truck as stolen.
And in health news, researchers have totaled up the cost of the common cold and put the price tag at 40 Billion (that's not a typo) dollars in the US alone. Americans spend more money on doctor visits for colds (7.7 Billion) than they do on going to the movies (6 Billion) -- which when you consider that doctors can't do anything for colds shows you just how idiotic we Americans can be.
New research shows that most people have had a song stuck in their head at some point in their life. No word on how much people spend on doctor visits to have them removed. The leading problem songs are "Who Let the Dogs Out" and Chilli's "Baby Back Rib" song ("Pop Goes The Weasel" is a perennial parental problem) - and I'm sorry if those songs take up residence in your cranium after just reading the titles here. I can see I picked the wrong line of work - I should have gone into the field of pointless research and churned out study after study about what kind of clothes people wear (slutty yet sophisticated is "in"), attitudes towards celebrities (we love to hate them), and what people think about earthworms (we know they're important, but they are kind of gross and we don't want to spend much time thinking about them).
Posted by Kevin Murphy at February 25, 2003 08:32 AM | Fun
