Thursday, June 26, 2008

I don't feel like joking, but I will anyway

1. I went to Wal*Mart today to buy some cleaning supplies because I am moving soon. (Just to another place in Moscow for a month, then somewhere in Boise.) While I was in the packaging tape aisle, I saw that they were selling large cardboard boxes. I was baffled, because in my experience, if you want large cardboard boxes, you can go to any business you want and they'll happily hand them over to you for free. I bet even the stockboys at Wal*Mart would give you a carload of boxes, unaware that they were depriving their store of $1.49 per box.

2. I think tabloids employ Celebrity Weight Estimators. When you see a headline like "250-POUND KIRSTIE ALLEY IN HOSPITAL," accompanied by an unflattering photo, you know that they didn't go and ask Ms. Alley how much she weighed. No, they got the photo, then asked some guy to sit down with his rulers and his equations and start calculating. "Given that Kirstie Alley is five-eight, and her waist in this picture is approximately 22% of her height…"

3. Do you think the guys in the Spanish Inquisition ever got indecisive about what torture method they should use? There doesn't seem to be much reason why you'd break one guy on the wheel and beat another on the soles of his feet, but then I'm not an expert in torture techniques.

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