Toast

1

Santa delivered a new toaster to our house this Christmas. It's a Proctor Silex, made in China. It came with a 24  page instruction booklet, most of which described really bad things that might happen, if you made toast the wrong way.

The booklet may have been written by the same lawyers who write those TV drug ads that warn certain people: "ProToastEx may cause headache, nausea, lack of breath, immediate death." This is the simplest toaster that Santa could find: all white, two slots, one push button and one control knob.

  The 24-page booklet did not mention an obvious design flaw, as shown above:  the electrical plug-wire enters the toaster at the front, where the controls are. In order to plug it in easily, the controls need to face the wall. This glitch may have occurred  because they do not make much toast in China.

2

While making toast in the new gadget the day after Christmas, I read the story about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up a plane landing in Detroit. Umar's name had been entered in something called the  Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment or Tide. There are about 550.000 names there. I didn't know that, did you?

That is one Tide we'd all like to see go out and never come back.  There is a "sub-Tide" called Terrorist Screening Data Base with 400,000 names on it.  Then comes a sub-sub-Tide "no-fly list." There are only 4,000 names on that, which did not seem like a lot.

As a result of this incident, I'm betting that many Americans  will now have their  own "no fly" lists with their own names featured prominently on top of them. They'll never fly again, which is too bad. It's hard to compete globally, when you won't get on an airplane. (Note to self: Buy Trailways Bus stock).

3

Here's an idea: maybe airlines should have to publish a list of people who are on each flight for all passengers to see. If you are on a flight with someone named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, coming from Nigeria, paying cash and not checking any bags, you can make up your own mind about taking that flight.

Some people might think this idea is undemocratic, uncivil and prejudicial. Umar's own father would not be one of them; a well-known financier, he notified authorities himself about the danger his son posed.

4

Santa also gave me a book called "When China Rules The World." It says that the US is decadent and China is strong, getting stronger. If Mr. Umar Farouk Abdulmutalab was caught in China, he would already be toast.

5

Even though our new toaster had a plug that came out of the wrong end, it made really good toast on the first try.  I continued reading the news, while eating the near-perfect toast about a new "reality" TV show. This show is about an obese family, in which everyone weighs over 300 pounds. It's all about when, how, how much they all eat and whether they can stop doing that. I'm not making this up.

Reading about this obese family show, got me thinking about China again. I've been to China six times.Whenever I went there, I ate like an emperor and still came back home lighter than before I left.

    I never saw any fat Chinese people; my colleague Joe and I were the fat people there.              

      It might make some sense for that obese family to live in China for a couple of years. Maybe reality TV is part of that decadence that the 'China Rules" author kept mentioning.

                                                                                6   

 The book's basic  premise is that Americans are debt-obese. If we keep consuming with money borrowed from China, their economy will surpass ours by 2027. By 2050,  our whole country will have been Made In China.

     At that point, we really will be you know what.