They have what, a second or two to snag your eyeballs and attention? That's one reason why they deal in stereotypes: as shorthand to convey information about their products.

Also, I too have long wondered why men don't get more ticked off about stupid fat guy ads, especially the ones where the stupid fat guy is surrounded by hot women because he bought Product X. It's an insult to their intelligence.

I'm loving all the new health foods!

And I second the comment that coffee isn't horribly expensive when you make it yourself, even if you buy good-quality beans.

... is to peel off blue-collar workers and union members from the Democratic party's coalition and undermine the environmentalists who stand in the way of unrestrained corporate profit-taking. Drilling in ANWR is not going to make much of a dent in current oil prices because it will take years for those fields to come online and there isn't enough oil there to make a long-term difference in supply.

His stint as Mr. Conductor on the "Thomas the Tank Engine" TV series! Yup, the same guy who came up with the "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" monologue also hosted a gentle, low-key, sentimental kids show about talking trains. Every time my kids and I watched that show, the seven dirty words would be running through the back of my head....

My house is near the edge of a hill that overlooks a busy highway. We don't hear much highway noise inside thanks to our insulated replacement windows, but it is noticeable on the front porch. I'm always struck by how quiet it is on my back porch, since the house blocks the sound. But due to a quirk in local topography, my backyard neighbors get more highway noise than I do, even though they are further away from it. Their house sits at the top of a little valley that acts like a funnel for sound coming off the expressway.

Even a supposedly quiet office can be pretty noisy. It's amazing how loud computer fans are, for instance. My former officemate had a machine that sounded like a jet engine when she booted it up.

Don't even get me started on how the volume skyrockets for TV commercials! I'm not buying a product whose ads deafen me, thank you very much.

Intermittent noises like train whistles and the occasional siren aren't a problem (I actually like listening to the trains), but leaf blowers, gas lawnmowers and the like drive me nuts. Switching to a push or electric mower and raking leaves instead of using a blower are two simple things you can do to make your neighbors happy, and they're good exercise, too.

It flat-out stated that girls who wore shorts and makeup were "ripe for rape" because they were flaunting their bodies. Had the bishop's seal of approval, too. The Catholic pamphlet's purpose wasn't really to prevent rape; it was to control the dress and behavior of women. This Indonesian pamphlet sounds eerily similar.

Perhaps Indonesia should create a pamphlet for men that asks them to behave like civilized human beings and not rape every woman in sight. Nah, that would be culturally insensitive!

And before all of you he-man woman haters pile on me about this, any pamphlet that blames lipstick for rape is depicting men as being little more than animals who can't control their violent sexual urges. This is just as denigrating to men as it is to women.

Nobody? Didn't think so.

I'm always struck by how weak the wingnut right thinks Americans are. They assume we'll just curl up and die the minute an Islamic terrorist shouts "Booga booga!" at us. Yup, we can't possibly elect Obama because we have to shelter behind Republican Dad McCain to protect our frail selves from the scourge of the new caliphate or something.

All of their chest thumping and sabre rattling must be compensation for inadequacies in, er, other departments.

The mere thought that two lesbian gals could get hitched must be what drove Vitter into the arms of the DC Madam's hookers.

And the toe tapping in the airport restroom was actually a proposal of marriage, but Craig was too dense to realize it.

They blew off the EV1, which could have been commercially viable. But then upstart Tesla demonstrated that there was a market for electric cars, and gas prices rose, and their SUV/light truck business tanked, and they finally saw the handwriting on the wall.

Actually, GM is not as backwards as we sometimes think. They're doing some exciting stuff with sophisticated driver assistance systems, for instance; undoubtably there are GM research groups working on electric/alternative fuel car goodness, too. It's just that the forward-thinking researchers are hermetically sealed off in their own little world; meanwhile, the suits are only thinking as far ahead as the next quarter.

Two-piece undergarments were invented for a reason. Those one-piece girl's long johns would make going to the bathroom a logistical pain (unless there's an opening in the back that I can't see in the picture). A girl would have to take off her dress, take off her long johns, use the toilet, then put everything back on again.

When you couple this with the large number of wives and children per family, the lines for the FLDS women's bathrooms must stretch all the way across the compound.

Starbucks overexpanded and saturated a bunch of markets, particularly urban ones. (In my mid-size city, for instance, the downtown area alone has 9 Starbucks locations!) It was only a matter of time before management realized this and started closing their under-performing stores.