TODAY IS FRIDAY - MAY 29, 2009

THE MORNING SHOW
with
JIM & KAREN
on
SPIRIT FM

TODAY IS:

Today is Squoosh an Ice Cream Sandwich Day. No, don't squish it, squoosh it!

Today is Hug Your Cat Day.

Today is National Lovey Dovey Day. Decide how to celebrate it with someone special.

Today is International Day of U.N. Peace Keepers.

Today is Morning Radio Wise Guy Day, a day to honor all morning disc jockeys who help you get your day started. But you don’t have to do anything special.
Personally, I feel honored any morning you don’t throw your oatmeal at the radio.

Patrick Henry was born on this date in 1736. Patrick's favorite saying was "Give me liberty or give me death." He said it all the time. And sure enough -- eventually he got one of them.

On this day in 1912 the Ladies Home Journal fired 15 women for doing "The Turkey Trot" during their lunch hour. Proving once again a woman's place is in the home -- and a turkey's place is in management.

Bob Hope was born on this day in 1903. He died in 2003 at age 100

John F. Kennedy was born on this day in 1917.

Pink Flamingo Day - 1956 (others have it as June 23rd, go figure) Honors Don Featherstone, creator of the original Plastic Pink Flamingo. Shortly before the 50th anniversary of Featherstone’s flamingos, the manufacturer Union Products ceased production and went out of business, however, other versions of pink flamingos are still available from a few companies in the US.

Paper Clip Day - do you have the same habit I do of bending them into fun shapes
1942 - Bing Crosby recorded his version of “White Christmas.” It would go on to sell over 30 million copies.


THIS IS LIFE:

Q: You are over your dryer sheet budget and worry about not being static-free. Should you: (a) wear fewer clothes; (b) tell everyone that "clingy" is the latest style; or (c) reuse your old dryer sheets?
A: Tightwad Living magazine says you can dab a bit of liquid fabric softener on an old dryer sheet and reuse it several times.


IN THE NEWS:

Serious Threats
The U.S. is warning that it will respond to North Korea's nuclear threat... just as soon as it deals with the threat to "Jon and Kate Plus 8."


AOL Spinoff
Time Warner is set to spin off AOL sometime this week. It's marketing slogan will be: "AOl: We're the New GM!"


Stimulus Whine
Michigan is complaining that it hasn't received much of the stimulus money... I guess that $50 billion we just spent for a worthless auto company doesn't count.

After running out of options, Chrysler headed to bankruptcy court yesterday morning. And — this isn’t good — it headed there in a brand new Mitsubishi.

President Obama had less than a one-hour warning before North Korea's nuclear test. That's not bad when you realize he gets no warning when Joe Biden's going to go off.
President Obama is in Las Vegas. So if things go well at the tables, General Motors just might make it.

O.J. Simpson is appealing to the Nevada Supreme Court hoping to overturn his convictions for armed robbery and kidnapping. Good idea. Having something like that on your record can really hurt your image.

The Vatican has launched Pope2You, an iPhone app that lets users view pictures of POPE BENEDICT XVI, send virtual postcards of him to friends, and read his speeches and messages.

Luxury brands are finding it profitable to think small for products ranging from cigars to perfume bottles. Case in point: Nubs, a shorter luxury cigar.

At four inches, Nubs are kind of like half cigars. And at $6.50 a piece, they cost about half as much as a typical cigar. They've caught on, doing close to $8 million in its first year. Those are really big numbers for a brand right out the gate.

Nubs are among several luxury products going small to make it big. Just like most everyone else, wealthy people aren't spending like they used to, either, so high-end restaurants are expanding their appetizer menus, expensive hotels are promoting shorter stays, and even perfume is going petite.


Trade Secrets:
More than ever, consumers are assessing just how much they get for a dollar spent, and some once-trendy brands are increasingly perceived as a waste of time and money. A brand perception survey by Brandindex from January to April found that some brands, like Starbucks and General Motors’ Hummer are not convincing consumers that they offer value. Hummer came in dead last in a survey which is based on about 300,000 online interviews with consumers who are 18 and older.

The top 10 brands and the percentage of consumers who said they offer the most value for your money:

10. Target (50.7)
9. Whirlpool (51.9)
8. Lowe’s (52)
7. Subway (52.1)
6. Johnson & Johnson (53.7)
5. Rubbermaid (57.9)
4. Google (59.4)
3. Craftsman (61)
2. Discovery Channel (62.5)
1. History Channel (63.8)
The bottom 10 value brands and the corresponding consumer ratings:
10. Nieman Marcus (-19.4)
9. Citibank (-21)
8. 7-Eleven (-21.2)
7. Abercrombie & Fitch (-23.9)
6. Perrier (-24.6)
5. AIG (-28)
4. Red Bull (-29.6)
3. Starbucks (-30.2)
2. MTV (-34.5)
1. Hummer (-36.1)



Smart is so cool! - An Iraqi-born 16-year-old reportedly has cracked a math puzzle that has gone unsolved for over 300 years.

Mohamed Altoumaimi, who immigrated to Sweden six years ago, took only four months to find a formula that explains a sequence of calculations known as the Bernoulli numbers, a code that had stumped some of the best experts in the field, Agence France-Presse reported.

Altoumaimi said after his high school teachers were skeptical about his work he contacted professors at Uppsala University, one of Sweden’s top institutions, who confirmed his formula was correct and offered him a place at the university, AFP reported. The teen opted to continue his general studies but planned to take courses in advanced mathematics and physics this summer, AFP reported. I’m still trying to figure out Rubik’s Cube and that Sudoku thingy.



Improve Your Cellphone Battery Life. Check out these tips to extend your cellphone’s battery life.

• Turn Off The Vibrate Feature - The energy required for turning the tiny motor which causes the phone to vibrate is almost double to that required for the same phone to ring.
• Turn Off Back Light - If you do require to use the back light then its best to keep your back light time out to no more than 3 seconds.
• Use Cellphone Just For Talking - Avoid playing games, using the built in camera feature, listening to music, instant messaging or surfing the web.
• Reduce Volume Level - Another way to increase your cellphones batteries is by lowering down the volume for the ring tone and by turning of unnecessary sounds.
Turn Off Your Cellphone When Necessar
Take Care Of Your Cellphone Battery - If possible try to fully charge your batteries nightly at minimal once every three days.



Report: Americans Not Wearing Enough Sunscreen-More Women Than Men Wear Sunscreen. The survey, conducted by Consumer Reports, found that 31 percent of Americans do not wear sunscreen if their going to be out in the sun. Women report using sunscreen more than men, but admit that they do not routinely apply it to their children.
The people surveyed provided a wide range of reasons why they do not apply sunscreen, some of them include:

Stinging or bothersome sensation in the eyes
The “stickyness” factor when it comes to the sand
The cost of the sunscreen
What about construction workers? They seem to get as red as lobsters. Don’t
forget to check the expiration date of your sunscreen. I learned the hard way that
old sunscreen loses its protective properties.



Hooray! A U.S. health official said a swine flu vaccine could be
available as early as October, but only if vaccine production and testing
run smoothly this summer. The government will have to review the
safety and effectiveness of what’s produced, and decide if a
vaccination campaign is warranted. Anybody looking for a summer
job? Help Wanted - person willing to contract the Swine Flu to prove
that our brand new kind of vaccination is effective. Perks include
getting paid and NOT getting sick. October is about the time seasonal
flu vaccine campaigns generally get rolling.



Eating for two? New guidelines are setting how much weight women should
gain during pregnancy — surprisingly little if they’re already overweight.
Once a woman’s pregnant, the guidelines issued Thursday aren’t too different from what obstetricians already recommend, although about half of women don’t follow that advice today.

Among the new recommendations:
—A normal-weight woman, as measured by BMI or body mass index, should gain between 25 and 35 pounds during pregnancy. A normal BMI, a measure of weight for height, is between 18.5 and 24.9.
—An overweight woman — BMI 25 to 29.9 — should gain 15 to 25 pounds during pregnancy.
–For the first time, the guidelines set a standard for obese women — BMI of 30 or higher: 11 to 20 pounds.
–An underweight woman — BMI less than 18.5 — should gain 28 to 40 pounds.
Isn’t it something that’s hard to control and just whatever happens happens?

Here’s some pregnancy tips:

–What is the most common pregnancy craving? For men to be the ones who get pregnant.
–What is the best time to get an epidural? Right after you find out you’re pregnant.
Fatal Things to Say to Your Pregnant Wife:
“Not to imply anything, but I don’t think the kid weighs forty pounds.”
“Well, couldn’t they induce labor? The Super Bowl is on the 11th.”
“Fred at the office got this nasty paper cut. Boy, that’s gotta hurt.”



A survey says that Americans spend more than eight days yearly in the bathroom. Not all at once. In addition, they say that while women really do spend more time in the bathroom than men, the difference isn’t all that great. And I call bogus on that one. Go to any public place with a stopwatch and stand outside the bathrooms to see how long it takes a man versus a woman. Oh, and if someone leaves the table the next time your dining out, claiming they need to make a phone call? They might be fibbing. One in four of those surveyed acknowledged making a false excuse when they really were headed to the ladies or men’s room.



Ask and you shall receive - In Fort Smith, AK, a guy showed a gun in his waistband and demanded money from the convenience store cash register. The clerk said that he couldn’t do it, whereupon the robber said he needed the money for insulin. And that’s when the clerk gave the robber $40 from his own wallet. The robber ended up shaking the clerk’s hand and promising to stop by again in thanks. See? All you have to do is ask.


It Just Might Work! - Energy Secretary Steven Chu stunned the audience at a London scientific conference Tuesday with a radical but simple proposal to combat global warming: Paint all the roofs of all the buildings in the world white.
If we did so, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist said, and if we also made sure the world’s roads and sidewalks were light-colored, it would have the same effect on global warming as taking all the cars in the world off the world’s roads for 11 years. The idea is to harness the “albedo effect” — the theory that a reflective planet warms up less as heat from the sun is bounced back into space.
Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium, said the calculations are based on work done at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he used to work and where three researchers concluded last year that changing surface colors in the world’s 100 largest cities would offset 44 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions.



I’m tired of talking about it, but here you go anyway. American Idol Controversy!!! The big controversy is the allegation that AT&T employees in Arkansas helped people vote for Kris Allen on “American Idol,” and thus may have influenced the outcome. Fox denies that there was any undue result, although they admit that the employees did show people how to do “power texts” to submit ten votes at a time. This would be a scandal on the level of “hanging chads” if there was any importance at all to the “American Idol” voting.



Hugging is the new “Hello” for teens - students have broken down the hugs by type:
There is the basic friend hug, probably the most popular, and the bear hug, of course. But now there is also the bear claw, when a boy embraces a girl awkwardly with his elbows poking out.

There is the hug that starts with a high-five; then moves into a fist bump, followed by a slap on the back and an embrace.

There’s the shake and lean; the hug from behind; and, the newest addition, the triple — any combination of three girls and boys hugging at once. Amy L. Best, a sociologist at George Mason University, said the teenage embrace is more a reflection of the overall evolution of the American greeting, which has become less formal since the 1970s. “Without question, the boundaries of touch have changed in American culture.” Hugging appears to be a grass-roots phenomenon and not an imitation of a character or custom on TV or in movies.



Ketchup On Hot Dogs Ain’t Right
BOSTON (Wireless Flash) – Putting ketchup on a hot dog is the biggest mistake a sports fan can make. Just ask famed sports radio host Eddie Andelman, who’s eaten thousands of hot dogs and claims to have a PhD in the ballpark staple. According to Andelman, the only condiments a real sports fan needs on their hot dog are onions, relish, and mustard, and those who glob ketchup on their weiners are “sick.” He says ketchup ruins the taste of a hot dog and should be banned from the ballpark. What’s your list of “wiener rules?” For me, the onions have to be finally diced; relish can over power the taste of the hot dog so you must apply it sparingly or not at all.



Quirky Characters Sell Products - Just ask Warren Dotz, co-author of Ad Boy: Vintage Advertising With Character (Ten Speed), which features more than 500 of the most outrageous, quirky characters from ads over the decades.

According to Dotz, ad characters are often so identifiable; they have no problem slinging products. He remembers being mesmerized by Mister Softee, the ’60s ice cream icon as a kid, which often left him begging his mom for a cone. Dotz says ad stars that have stood the test of time include Mr. Clean, The Kool-Aid Man, Green Giant, Smokey The Bear, and The Michelin Man, who are still used today by advertisers. Ad Boy hits shelves this June. I like those scrubbing bubbles. I’d have them as a friend on my Facebook.