Help Me! Throw Me A Life Saver

As I was talking with some co-workers last week, we wandered to the subject of Life Savers. Yes, Life Savers that delicious little treat that comes in a roll, that’s the one I am talking about. (Wild Cherry is the best one by the way)

  

The conversation was short and the question concise. Has a Life Saver’s candy ever saved a life? I personal don’t believe that this candy has ever saved a life. The candy may have enhanced a few taste buds here and there over the years but save a life, it's not like it's a miracle drug. I do know for sure that Groucho Marx did throw a Life Saver to Thelma Todd as she went overboard in the movie Horse Feathers. (it didn’t appear to save her by the way)  So why is it named Life Savers?

The Life Savers was invented by Clarence Crane in 1912 as a “summer candy” that could withstand heat better than chocolate, not as a life saving device. Source: Wikipedia

So if this candy has not saved a life then I believe that the name should be changed to “Not a Life Saver, Just Plain Candy.” They could put the “Not a Life Saver” on the front of the candy and on the back they could put “Just Plain Candy”.  The poor ole Life Savers company has been bought and sold many times over clicky the little link provided free of charge to see some history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_Savers#Timeline

Maybe Mars' the current owner of Life Savers should heed this advice and change that name since in the U.S. we are sue happy (please Mars don't sue me I am just telling a story). Americans are more than happy to sue a company that allows us to by a hot beverage in a foam cup that we must hold in our own hands and drink from, this cup which could allow the said same hot beverage to be spilled on us (due to operator error "Stupidity") causing a burn. After being burned (by our own fault or because some of us don't have opposable thumbs)we in turn find a lawyer who is not chasing ambulances (or has just finished chasing an ambulance) and sue the company for not warning us that the beverage was hot in the first place. Here is how I would label the container (Hey, dummy, yes you holding the cup, this drink is HOT!!! Don't spill it on yourself)

Mars' should think hard about this. I think it might be false advertisement on their part calling the candy Life Savers since I am pretty sure you can’t use their candy for a personal floatation devise. Just a thought. Mars, I will tell you were you can send the check for me saving you all that money.

Leon

Images from: Yahoo Images

Slow Down or Else!

My hats off to all MDOT http://michigan.gov/mdot, County Road Commissions, and City Road Workers in Michigan who in the winter time keep our roads as clean as they can in the frozen tundra. (No sleet, nor snow, or blazing heat will keep these diligent people from their raod duties)

 (This is the county that I live in)

These guys are the same ones that patch and maintain the roads in late spring and early summer. Soon it will be road repair time again in this great state and Michigan’s state animal the traffic barricade will be coming out in droves. (They can be worse than deer)

When the state animal is on the highway the state traffic laws say that you must slow down while your driving through the construction zone. Now if that is not a good reason to slow down let me give you another. Construction workers are usually a tough bunch of guys (Sometimes girls) that can cause you a great deal of pain when they beat you over the head with a road sign.

I respect construction zones and road workers because I used to work for an excavation company that did road projects. (story time boys and girls)  I was the company’s estimator. One day I was told by one of the owners to go manage a street project until the foreman arrived to relieve me.  I drove over to the site and took up sign duty while the road was being milled.

  (There I am with the road sign) 

(Milling is where a big machine comes in and breaks up the asphalt into little chunks so we could reuse it as base in place of gravel. I was excited, I had always wanted to run the sign and tell people stop and go at my whim (Power rush). The milling machine was moving and we had part of the road blocked with safety tape because this is a big machine and we did not need civilians getting in the way because it was dangerous and someone could get hurt.                         

Well the boss showed up and I turned my duties over to one of his crew men. The boss got out of his truck and walked by one of the barricades inspecting the milling work that was being done. Well this guy in a pick up truck decided that he was in way too much of a hurry and drove through  the safety tape knocking over a couple barricades and opening the road to unwanted traffic.(Why would anyone want to get in the way of that milling machine?)

My boss seeing what the knucklehead did, in a fit of rage ran to his truck and a high speed chase ensued. My boss was trying to catch Crash Vanderkoot. Crash had to much of a head start and lost my boss. Lucky for that moron that my boss did not catch him. (This is why I say respect road workers because they will hunt you down and if they catch you, it won't be very good for you. Hope the life insurance is paid up)

I thought about this incident for a while and have come to the conclusion that we need a punishment to fit the crime and this is why I am in favor of first time offenders having them hold the stop and slow sign at a construction site for eight hours. Maybe they will earn some respect, slow down and obey the law next time after they get this close up experience with fast moving traffic. Now, for second time offenders I say up the ante. We will take them and put their feet in a bucket and fill it with concrete and once hardened they will be placed as close as possible to moving traffic on a busy highway for 24 hours. (Sort of a human barricade) I think the offenders will get the drift. Good readers when driving in the construction zones please slow down because you never know if I will be watching and the workers will appreciate it. I would hate to have you wake up one morning and find your vehicle wrapped from bumper to bumper in safety tape.

Leon

Images slightly borrowed from: St. Joseph County Road Commission

and photosearch.com

http://www.fotosearch.com/

Can't Believe Everything that You See!

This is a very clever illustration by an unknown artist. Must be Japanese since America ranks 16th out of 30 in the fields of Math and Science of the world's largest industrial nations. I hope it was an American who designed this. Thanks Tilelist for the illustration.

American women that are of child bearing age please encourage your little ones to study math and science so we can start to reverse this terrible trend.  Buy them a chemistry or an erector not an X-Box. Who knows maybe we are one womb away from a great discovery.


Leon

What's There to Do With That Hairdo?

Well, my revealing this article below to you readers shows I will read just about anything.

http://shopping.yahoo.com/articles/yshoppingarticles/758/what-your-hairstyle-says-about-you-according-to-guys

After reading the article and learning more about what a woman's hair is telling us men than I cared to learn.  I decided to pick some celebrity mug shots and tell you what I think their mug shots are telling me.

 "I am confident and incarcerated."

 "Do I look like a killer?"

 "Ha, I don't feel good! I'm jailed in America."

 "Boy, that was one tough girl!"

"I may have killed them, just a little bit."

 "So what if I done it!"

Images by: Yahoo Images

Special thanks to the celebrities and police that made this blog possible. Keep up the good work. I am talking to law enforcement not you celebrities.

Leon

Don't Push What Button?

This is an image of the interior of the Space Shuttle Atlantis. Can you imagine being a rookie astronaut pilot and trying to fly this beast? I can see it now if I was the rookie. "Hey Charlie, were is that auto pilot switch again I gotta use the can".  This thing has more buttons than politicians have lies. I'll bet they don't have problems with their satellite TV up there. "Charlie which screen get ESPN again?" Maybe on the next space craft, NASA could add a few more buttons. Can you imagine what the owner's manual looks like, it must be like a New York City phone book? "Where is the flux capacitor, again?"

.  

All fun aside tell your Congressmen and Senators to keep funding NASA because a lot of good things come from our space program. Things that we use everyday and take for granted today, were inspired by products used in the space program, things like contact lenses. If we stop funding our space program America will fall even further behind in Math and Science to other countries. Let's make sure our citizens are up to task. Research jobs create manufacturing jobs sooner or later.

Check out more photos at:

http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-121911a.html

Click this link to see things that were invented because of our space program:

http://kearth101.radio.com/2011/07/21/list-stuff-we-use-everyday-that-was-invented-from-the-space-program/


Leon

Hello "Mcfly" Are You Listening?

  George McFly

Well corporate America I sure am tired of the the way you have been behaving lately. I believe I speak for America too. The greed, corruption , and plain incompetence that is being radiated from you behemoth leeches is too much. You are bleeding America of it's wealth generating capabilities. Today I wish to address poor service and underhanded fee schemes. I am going to pick on cell phone providers with this blog.

Here is a list of grievances that I wish you would address: 

1) (Hidden fees) Stop trying to trick people with your small print and hidden fees, fees that your lawyers help you hide in the contract documents. (Cell phone providers you know darn well what I mean) Be honest put all the fees in bold, Man up cowards, earn the business don't steal it! 

How many of you readers hate your cell phone providers? I have heard lots of complaints about this industry over the past year. The complaints were mainly about poor service.You (the consumer) wish that you could get a new provider, but you're stuck with the current one because most of the big ones require you to make a commitment to them of a year or longer. (But they don't commit to you) They entice customers with low introductory rates for a few months and flashy phones for making a deal with the Devil,

once the deal is done and if you aren't happy to bad! (remember that contract you signed in blood?)


Once they know they got you, they stick it to you. To the cell phone companies, if you provided great products at reasonable prices maybe you wouldn't have to lie and cheat us into staying with you. Honesty used to be the best policy in American business (But cheating, lying, and scheming seem to generate the most income today, isn't that right executive fat cats)  

2) (Serve Americans with Americans) Stop trying to service customers in America with people who live in India that speak English but couldn't tell you were Detroit is if they were standing in it.

 

You don't think we know that they aren't true Americans? (Nothing bothers me more than speaking to someone in India that doesn't know who the Michigan Wolverines are)  Nothing against those people in India , you just don't understand the culture. It would be like you calling customer service in America for curry recipes, I think you would be very disappointed when we told you to use Tabasco sauce instead. The next time you call your cell phone provider for service and get a foreign operator give them the real American test. Ask your operator if they saw the game of your favorite team last night just for fun. If they say yes, then say not last night, that's right they weren't playing last night, or were they, you're not from (You fill in the city) are you? You sound like your from South Phily. Are you from South Phily? See if they squirm.                                                         

3) (Spend some money training employees instead of exploiting them) Train your employees, retrain  your employees, and train them again so when I call they know what to do. I know Americans, you hate it when you get passed around from department to department and you never get your problem resolved. The next time I talk to a company I am going to ask to be transferred twice to any other department but the one I really want to talk to and then once transferred I will ask to be transferred back to the department that I really wanted to talk to in the first place. (Hey, it's going to happen anyway. Why not be ahead of the game) Take some of those profits from the outrageous fees you are charging and spend that money on training instead of stock dividends. (It's called value adding for any executives reading this)

4) ( Treat your employees like they are a valuable assets not just office furniture!) Stop acting like you own us when we work for you. Remember us is you and you are us. You just get paid more then the rest of us.  Without us there is really no need for you. It does not work the other way around. (Sounds a little like Dr. Suess)

 There was a time in American history when the employee was valued. Employees made the difference and were rewarded for doing so. We (America) must return to that day if we are to rise from the ashes that the government and corporate America caused in the last decade. Execs stop looking at  American labor as the problem, look at it as the solution. My hats off to every working American that goes to a place to work where they hate their job because the company does not engage with them properly. I applaud you!

Corporate America, we will have you start with these four grievances first and see how you do before we give you other task to preform.

Here are two Leonisms for you corporate fat cats: "A business is only as good as it's worst employee." and "Why not do it twice so we make sure it was done once?" 

To go along with the Leonisms I will share with you what the CFO of

once told me, "Sooner or later companies get the employees that they deserve."

You got that Mcfly?

Leon, the responsible capitalist


Images by: Yahoo Images and Wikipedia

Poor service provided by: Greedy corporate America

Sunday School

Terell Suggs is obviously suffering from Tebow envy. Click for the story:
http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/Terrell-Suggs-goes-out-of-his-way-to-bash-Tim-Te?urn=nfl-wp15161

Well Terell it must seem like it's not fair that the media is infatuated with Tim Tebow and his life style. Are you not getting enough press? Well let me change that for you. My good readers Mr. Suggs has 70 tackles, 7 forced fumbles, and fourteen sacks this year. (That's quite a year, Yeah!)

Terell also looks good in a Tux and purple really is his color. He has a warm smile not to mention his team is in the playoffs. So Terell with so much going your way can't you give Tebow a break? If he wants God to attend the game what's wrong with that? I think that it is only fair for God to be invited since the NFL uses His planet to play on. Am I the only man in American that doesn't feel intimidated by Tebow?

 You go Tebow. Don't worry I will keep defending you. I have lots of time on my hands since I am not in the playoffs nor was I invited to the pro bowl. So you keep Tebowing and I will keep writing. Let's see if they can handle the both of us.

 Sorry Tebow, I made your picture smaller than Terell's but Terell needs some attention right now. I hope you understand.

Tebow and Jesus get the job done click the link to find out how. After Tebow's last game maybe Terrell will invite Jesus to his next game.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/tebow-time-three-3-16-references-boffo-tv-172145772.html


Leon

Images: Yahoo Images