TODAY IS MONDAY - MAY 18, 2009

THE MORNING SHOW
with
JIM & KAREN
on SPIRIT FM

TODAY IS:

Buckle Up America Week

National Backyard Games Week

National Transportation Week

Memorial Day weekend is coming up and it’s traditionally the day people break out their boats on the lakes. It also happens to be Safe Boating Week.

This is International Pickle Week – A time to celebrate the eating of them or if you have ever been in one. Personally, I get into more “jams” then I do “pickles”.

Today is International Museum Day. It's also Visit Your Relative Day, so you can kill two birds with one stone by going to a museum and visiting your mummy.

Today is Visit Your Relatives Day, the beginning of the family reunion season. Of course, if everybody did visit their relatives today, nobody would be home for their relatives to visit.

This is National Public Works Week. Heck, the public works every week. Why not have something different like Government Works Week?

No Dirty Dishes Day all hail the paper plate!

2004 - Randy Johnson, age 40, became the oldest pitcher to throw a perfect game. Many men in their forties relive that dream every weekend with Nintendo Wii Sports.


IN THE NEWS:

GM Dead Letters
About 1,000 GM dealers will get UPS letters this afternoon, informing them that they're going to be shut down. Of course GM dealers are used to getting bad news on Friday afternoons, that when they're usually informed of the latest involuntary GM car recall.


Insurers Bailed Out
The U.S. Treasury is giving $22 billion of bailout money to several life insurance companies. When asked why they didn't have some kind of emergency fund for the economic downturn, the insurance company executives said they didn't want to waste money on some crazy insurance policy.


Insurers Bailed Out II
The U.S. Treasury is giving $22 billion of bailout money to several life insurance companies. In return, those companies have promised never to send a salesmen to any Treasury official's home ever again.


President Obama held a poetry night the other night at the White House. When former President Bush heard about it he said, "Now that's torture."


President Obama has reversed direction, saying we should not release dozens of interrogation photos. The matter has not been decided yet. I understand the photos are being reviewed by Donald Trump.I think all this publicity has gone to Trump's head. Today he held a press conference and said some Burger King guy could keep his crown.


Interesting - Recession Items Flying off the Shelves - It’s not all doom and gloom in the U.S. economy. Some products are bucking the recession and flying off store shelves. Sales of chocolate and running shoes are up. Gold coins are selling like hot cakes. So are gardening seeds. Tanning products are piling up in shopping carts; maybe more people are finding color in a bottle than from sun-worshipping on a faraway beach. Strong sales of Spam, Dinty Moore stew and chili. Recession shoppers also are drawn to items that make them feel safe, both personally and financially.

“The focus on the family hearth is something that has happened in nearly every recession. It’s, ‘How can I have more fun at home?”‘ said Paco Underhill, whose company, Envirosell, monitors the behavior of shoppers and sellers across the U.S. and in other countries.

“People are much more focused on their homes and their immediate happiness and they’re buying things that they can use themselves — seeds, fishing equipment. Lipstick and chocolate are small rewards that make you feel better.”

This nasty recession we’re in has millions of people scaling back their summer vacation plans, but there is one growth area in the travel industry that seems to suit the times perfectly. Campgrounds are going gangbusters, reporting a surge of visitors who can’t afford to go the standard air-car-hotel route this year. As a nifty NPR story points out, tent camping is up by 10% this year, and RV camping is robust as well, reflecting a broad trend toward modest, inexpensive vacations close to home. If the economy remains depressed, could this be the summer that old school camping reasserts itself as the quintessential family vacation?

Here are some camping tips:

1. When using a public campground, a tuba placed on your picnic table will keep the campsites on either side vacant.
2. The guitar of the noisy teenager at the next campsite makes excellent kindling.
3. Enough dirt will get tracked into the tent on the first day out, that you can grow the food you need for the rest of the trip in rows between sleeping bags.
4. You will lose the little toothpick in your Swiss Army knife as soon as you open the box.



Twitter News - There’s a grey kitty with white spots named Sockington — @Sockington on Twitter — that just cruised past the 500,000 follower mark without barely mussing his whiskers. Known as Socks for short, the kitty lives near Boston with his human, Jason Scott. Check out this account of the cat’s triumph.

As of this morning, 502,110 people were apparently spellbound from such Tweets from Sockington:

“and so I slept and then I walked around and then I slept again and then I darted into another room for no apparent reason and just stared for a while…”



Just plain amusing - David Grant is a vet who answers questions in his towns local newspaper. The most recent question: I HAVE two four-year-old guinea pigs. They are female litter mates but one is heavier than the other and has developed slightly sore feet. Could being overweight be the cause and have you any suggestions as to what could be wrong? How on earth can you tell a guinea pig has sore feet?! Would you notice a difference in it’s walk? Are her shoelaces left untied for a looser fit? OH, the answer if a listener actually wants to know…I WOULD have both guinea pigs checked over and weighed. Your vet will want to examine their diet and the cage that you keep them in. Good quality hay and special commercial guinea pig food plus greens should contain adequate amounts of vitamin C.



Idol Chat - We all have our reasons why one or the other will win so here’s why Adam won’t win and why Kris won’t win according to USA Today:

Adam Lambert’s cons include:
-Blue hair, eyeliner and nail polish.
-Fan backlash that comes with Simon Cowell and media declaring Adam the winner too early.
-Gokey’s fans are more likely to root for Kris now that their man is out.
-His professional experience in musicals and on stage bothers some fans who want “Idol” to crown a true amateur.

Kris Allen’s cons include:
-Married status hasn’t helped him win crucial female votes.
-He was never one of the early anointed favorites, missed out on judges approval
-Probably has never played a venue the size of the Nokia Theater L.A. live.
-Low-key married dude from rural Arkansas = terrible tabloid material



The U.S. Mint introduced its new Indiana Lincoln penny Thursday in Spencer County, Lincoln’s childhood home. The one cent coin is the second in a four part series depicting the stages of Lincoln’s life, and hundreds were lined up to get them. The front still retains the image of Lincoln, but the tails side shows an image of a young Abe sitting on a log reading a book, a perfect illustration of Lincoln’s love of books and his belief in the value of education. To learn how you can pinch your pennies and save visit www.pinchingyourpennies.com It features sharing ways on how to save money in all aspects of life, ready-made shopping lists, online deals and more. Anybody save pennies or have you forgotten that it actually has some monetary value?



Top 10 World’s Happiest Places from Forbes - According to a new report released by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), a Paris-based group of 30 countries with democratic governments that provides economic and social statistics and data, happiness levels are highest in northern European countries.
Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands rated at the top of the list, ranking first, second and third, respectively. Outside Europe, New Zealand and Canada landed at Nos. 8 and 6, respectively. The U.S. did not crack the top 10. Switzerland placed seventh and Belgium placed tenth. The poll asked respondents whether they had experienced six different forms of positive or negative feelings within the last day.
Some sample questions: Did you enjoy something you did yesterday? Were you proud of something you did yesterday? Did you learn something yesterday? Were you treated with respect yesterday? I think the answer to those questions depends on what day there asked on. If asked on a Monday then most likely yesterday, being a Sunday, you did something fun, learned something at church, were treated with respect at church, and so on. Ask me on a Sunday and my answers will be even better, but please don’t ask me on a Tuesday which would force me to recall yesterday which was a Monday and we all know how Monday can go!



Food Fight! -Andrew King got a text message in his third-period class: There’s gonna be a food fight at lunch.

Other Jackson High School students heard the rumors in the halls. So when first lunch period began around 11 a.m. Thursday, students at the Mill Creek school say, tension filled the air, teenagers looked from one to another.

Then a carton of milk flew through the air and splattered on the floor.

Fight on.

Before it was over, a package of Cup Noodles had been launched, along with fruit, chocolate milk, Tater Tots, sandwiches and coffee cake. One student emptied a condiment tray of relish over another student’s head, according to one witness.
“Once food started flying, it was all over the ceiling and floor,” said King, a junior, who estimated that more than 100 kids took part. “It was pretty great.”
After the melee, 14 students, including King, were expelled. Administrators also suspended the May 23 senior prom. Brandon Peltier, a junior, said once the initial milk carton flew, he grabbed a large bowl of whole fruit from the lunch line and started lobbing oranges, kiwi and apples. He was expelled along with the other students.

King said a flying tomato slice stuck to his face. He spotted a friend across the cafeteria and hurled a Tater Tot. It was a perfect strike. He was nabbed by a teacher when he raised his arms triumphantly.

Senior Sandy Crissinger said she and some other drama students watched the fight from the cafeteria stage. “Oh boy, it was quite a scene,” she said.

She said teachers and administrators quickly closed the doors to the cafeteria and ordered students to start cleaning up the mess. Yes, wrong behavior, I just want to know have your or anybody else ever been in a food fight? What’s it like? Is it really as fun as the movies make them out to be? What would your choice of culinary weapon be? I’d choose meatloaf for distance lobs and tapioca pudding for close combat.



Mothers’ talk is key to kids’ social skills - -Mothers often get blamed for the way their children turn out, and a new study gives additional weight to that accusation. Research from the United Kingdom shows that the way mothers talk to their children at a young age influences their social skills later in childhood.
The study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, found that children whose mothers often talked to them about people’s feelings, beliefs, wants and intentions developed better social understanding than children whose mothers did not.
In the first part of the study, mothers were asked to talk to their 3-year-old children about a series of pictures depicting scenes such as a child coming out of school looking happy and people waiting in line. Children whose mothers talked about the mental state of characters in the picture tended to perform better on social understanding tasks, the researchers found.




Can You Catch Swine Flu From Cash? - It doesn’t get talked about much, but paper currency — the dollars, fives, 10s and 20s most people routinely touch every day — can spread viruses from one person to another. So if you have contact with money that an infected individual has also handled, there’s a possibility of catching the flu.

How likely is that? Despite the pervasiveness of cash in society, its role in transmitting illness has been the subject of surprisingly little study. But some recent research suggests that flu bugs can show some staying power (some strains up to 17 days) when they land on one of the countless bank notes that change hands every day. Tell ya’ what, the only way to really know is to have your listeners send you money. It’s a sacrifice you’re willing to make for the sake of science.



Free Chocolate on Fridays!!!

Who knew chocolate could be politically correct?

Apparently, Mars Snackfood US, maker of M&Ms, Snickers, 3 Musketeers, Milky Way and other American favorites, does.

The company has launched the equivalent of a filibuster to draw attention to competitors that substitute vegetable oil for cocoa butter in their products.
So, what’s in it for you? One of the biggest chocolate giveaways in history.

Every Friday through the end of September, you stand a chance of getting a free chocolate bar or candy because of the Mars Real Chocolate Relief Act.

Mars initiated the program last week, giving out coupons for chocolate treats to the first 250,000 people who logged on at RealChocolate.com on Friday and requested a coupon. The response was so large that Mars is doubling the chance for free chocolate this week. A half-million coupons will be given out on a first-come, first-served basis and mailed to those who qualify. Coupons are redeemable for any full-size Mars chocolate product and are limited to one per person per week.

What’s the purpose? According to Mars, federal regulations stipulate that the only source of fat (except milk fat) in a chocolate product should be cocoa butter. Mars says it uses only 100% cocoa butter and urges consumers to look at labels whenever they buy chocolate to be sure they’re getting the real thing.

Of course, while bringing consumers’ attention to chocolate standards, Mars is also trying to lift spirits in a recession-plagued nation, describing the promotion as “a massive effort (that) aims to spread joy across America by giving away as many as 7 million full-size packages of Mars chocolate.”
All we can say is: Bring it on!



XBOX Shoes Now On Sale!!!
Some console fans will spare no expense to show their loyalty to their chosen brand, but we're guessing the $2,500 price tag of these one-of-a-kind Xbox-themed sneakers will make even the most committed Microsoft devotee think twice.

The custom shoes -- which aren't endorsed by Microsoft or Nike -- are handmade by Sole Junkie, a California-based artist who specializes in customized sneakers. And they're not the most expensive ones he's ever made. "I have made shoes with 22k gold and diamonds on them," he told us in an interview. "I look at my creations as functional art...not just ordinary sneakers."

That would be functional in shoe terms, not in a gaming sense. Although you might hope that the $2,500 price tag would buy you cool Xbox interactivity, there's no hidden hard drive or controller functionality. Instead, the Xbox logos light up, courtesy of embedded fiber optics and a hidden switch.

According to Sole Junkie's eBay auction, "These are an exclusive pair...only one of its kind. Patent leather back with embedded fiber optic wiring in the shape of the XBOX logo. Battery placement is in the tongue as well as on and off switch that has 2 settings: Strobe or Constant light functions. Gradient lime swoosh faded to black. The toe is painted in a surreal Tiger Camouflage with accents of lime and bright green. These are a men's size 11."

Will they sell? He seems confident. "I have had offers already. They mention the beauty and artwork in it, not the price tag. Don't know how serious the buyers are so far."

But surprisingly, many Xbox fans aren't overjoyed at his work. "The video game community hates the price and the fact I may have taken a beloved iconic gaming system and butchered it," he told us. "On the other hand, I've had very positive responses from others...more than negative ones."

So, $2,500 shoes that do nothing? We'll pass. But if your collection of gaming memorabilia isn't complete without this unique footwear, don't let us stop you from jumping in.