I know, I said I wasn't gonna post until Saturday, but I just had to pass this along:

!!! BREAD IS DANGEROUS !!!

Research on bread indicates that:

1. More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users.

2. Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests.

3. In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever, and influenza ravaged whole nations.

4. More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread.

5. Bread is made from a substance called "dough." It has been proven that as little as one pound of dough can be used to suffocate a mouse. The average American eats more bread than that in one month!

6. Primitive tribal societies that have no bread exhibit a low incidence of cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, and osteoporosis.

7. Bread has been proven to be addictive. Subjects deprived of bread and given only water to eat begged for bread after as little as two days.

8. Bread is often a "gateway" food item, leading the user to "harder" items such as butter, jelly, peanut butter, and even cold cuts.

9. Bread has been proven to absorb water. Since the human body is more than 90 percent water, it follows that eating bread could lead to your body being taken over by this absorptive food product, turning you into a soggy, gooey bread-pudding person.

10. Newborn babies can choke on bread.

11. Bread is baked at temperatures as high as 400 degrees Fahrenheit! That kind of heat can kill an adult in less than one minute.

12. Most American bread eaters are utterly unable to distinguish between significant scientific fact and meaningless statistical babbling.

 

 

 

In light of these frightening statistics, it has been proposed that the following bread restrictions be made:

 

1. No sale of bread to minors.

2. A nationwide "Just Say No To Toast" campaign, complete with celebrity TV spots and bumper stickers.

3. A 300 percent federal tax on all bread to pay for all the societal ills we might associate with bread.

4. No animal or human images, nor any primary colors (which may appeal to children) may be used to promote bread usage.

5. The establishment of "Bread-free" zones around schools.

 

This article was written by B.S. Wheatberry in a desert after consuming mass quantities of yeast bread then realizing his canteen was empty.

That is not, however, why I dub myself "no longer uninitiated."

I bought my computer about 3 weeks before joining BZ. Or it might have been a year before. Or the year after. I can't really remember, just that it was for my birthday. $800, and it's not worth half that much now.

When I evacuated my apartment ahead of Katrina (August 27, 2005), I unplugged the CPU and left with it, but not the monitor or peripherals. This turned out to be a good thing, because the roof over my top-floor apartment didn't hold, and while I didn't get any brackish floodwater from Lake Pontchartrain <PON che trane>, there was mold all up & down the walls when I got back.

Peripherals can dry out. CPUs can not.

In any case, the computer itself has not been plugged in since the day I evacuated. Why? Most of the outlets at the rental house where I have been staying for the past 9 months (a whole other story) are of the 2-prong variety, and have no grounding plug.

Well, with my impending move back, I'd decided to make good on that promise I made to myself to upgrade my computer, if only to make Ultima IX run better (even though I haven't played it since 2004).

Last night, I bought a stick of RAM for $100 at Circuit City and installed it myself. Right now, I'm pretty sure I have a half-gig of RAM in it.

This is significant because, despite my technical expertise, I'm rather scared of the inside of a computer case.

The only times I've ever opened the case were to:

1) install a Cisco wireless network card to access the school network while I was in grad school at the University of Akron, back in the Spring 2003 semester.

2) directly cool off an over-heated power supply last summer. I have since learned the virtues of not letting the temperature in my apartment go above 85° and of sufficient circulation space behind the box.

And now 3) install a stick o' RAM. Wow, to think in a few months, I could be building a new box from scratch or something.

Just not with that RAM, as that motherboard is likely very antiquated.

Like the computer chair I refinished last weekend (86 years old, and has weathered two Cat IV storms (Audrey 1959, Katrina 2005)), just not as durable.

Okay, time to do something that resembles what I'm getting paid to do.