In Rio de Janiero, Buy Guns, Get Free Homes

A Brazilian gun dealer has offered to give a free home to the first five customers of the New Year if they buy any quality rifle from his gun shop. Jose Arma de Fogo says he got the idea from a news item he picked up off the Globo International newswire where a Kansas City, Missouri real estate broker is offering a free gun voucher to anyone who signs a contract to purchase a house in the Kansas City, Kansas area.

In Brazil, standard real estate is extremely affordable and in fact, a home on a small plot of land can actually cost less than a decent gun. In recent years, illegal gun traffickers in the favelas have driven the price of guns to black market levels not seen since the 1970’s. For bona fide gun dealers in Rio, it is difficult to sell guns for anything less than a small fortune. In order to increase traffic to his gun store, Arma de Fogo bought five one-room houses in the Precludo de Violencia suburb of Rio and is offering the homes to the first five customers who purchase any gun worth more than 15,000 Reais.
Taking his cue from Arma de Fogo, Ricardo Negotiante is offering a similar deal to anyone who purchases a car from his used car lot in Bairro de Tapeador. Guns aren’t the only thing in the favelas of Rio that are more valuable than real estate. In fact, a used 1974 AMC Gremlin can fetch as much as 20,000 Reais or more, depending on whether or not it has a back seat.

While Kansas City real estate brokers are offering guns to entice buyers to buy homes in the area, and Brazilian gun dealers are using houses to entice purchasers into their gun shops, one Chinese real estate broker takes the prize this year for being the most creative in its offer to prospective home buyers with the following promotion: “Buy a House, Get Free Wife.”

A company out of Beijing has all avenues covered. It has contracted with a matchmaking agency to hire their “unwanted” girls as sales persons. It is now encouraging future homeowners to date the sales girls and if “magic” happens, they will give a prize of RMB 60,000 (Chinese Yuans) toward the purchase of one of their condominium apartments. Someone did the math and determined that the company stands to make much more money in bonuses from the matchmaking company to get these “unwanted” girls married off than they would spend giving it to potential apartment buyers.

What a year it has been. Guns and houses, houses and wives, can it get any more romantic than that? Why, yes it can. In fact, in February of this year in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Brian Zinn of the General Coin and Gun Exchange offered his male customers a deal they just could not refuse: “Buy your girl some diamond earrings, and get yourself a free gun.” According to Zinn, the more expensive the earrings, the bigger the gun. Once the word got out, the women of Eau Claire were the ones telling their lovers to take advantage of the deal. Seems the women in Eau Claire really love big guns.

So there you have it. Just when you thought you knew the value of something, it gets all blown to hell by some creative salesperson trying to make sense of this crazy, mixed-up global economy. For those who are without the funds to purchase guns, houses, used cars, or diamonds, there are still some things you can afford so that you get something free in exchange. Just take your sweetheart down to the local Waffle House and buy yourself a waffle, because for a limited time only, you can get another waffle free.

Top Ten Medical Questions of 2009

It’s that time of year again when every conceivable list known to man is counted down before the big ball drops and ushers in a new year of question making. We combed the internet for the most common questions asked of the medical community, and here is our unofficial and indefinitive list of the top ten medical questions asked and answered in 2009.

1. Cerebrum and Cerebellum – what’s the difference?

None, they are the same thing, only one is spelled in Latin and the other is spelled in French, like Antecedent and Antebellum.

2. Why do men have nipples?

Good question. We all know why women were given nipples but why men? Well, as the story goes, God had just finished up making Adam and left him nippleless. When God then took one of Adam’s ribs and made Eve, he gave Eve nipples so that she would be able to nourish the children she and Adam would make together. Adam threw a hissy fit; he wanted nipples.

The conversation went something like this:

Adam: Hey, just a cotton-pickin’ minute there God. I notice something a lot different about Eve. She’s got a bigger chest than me and a couple of cool round things in a rosy hue sitting atop them. I want what she has.

God: Pretty cool, huh? I call them nipples.

Adam: I don’t care what you call them, I want some.

God: Would that I could Adam, but I don’t have enough rosy stuff left to give you nipples like Eve’s.

Adam: Then just give me what you got.

And so, Adam got nipples but they were not even close to being as impressive as Eve’s.

3. Why do foods that are bad for us, for instance, sugar, taste so good, and foods that are good for us, like fish oil, taste so bad? Is this a cruel joke?

The short answer is yes, it is a cruel joke. But scientifically speaking, there is a reason for these anomalies, and that reason is if sugar tasted bad, how could we even attempt to make a decent bar of chocolate?

4. How soon before we’ll be able to get our pharmaceuticals directly from drinking tap water instead of having to go to the pharmacy and pay to get them?

As a matter of fact, recent water test results from every major U.S. city show that if every American drank just 2-3 glasses of tap water a day, they would be able to lower their cholesterol, keep their blood pressure within normal limits, maintain an erection for at least 2 hours, and cure their depression. However, drinking any more than the daily allowance could trigger all sorts of abnormalities in the human body. For instance, men could begin to develop breasts from too much estrogen in their drinking water due to an increased consumption of soy products, especially in California.

5. I read somewhere that you can become allergic to a person just as much as you can become allergic to dust mites. Is this true?

While there have been rare cases of people finding it necessary to divorce because they develop ugly rashes while in the presence of their spouses and there are no dust mites to be found, this is rare and most doctors can spot a fake case of hives a mile away. So, if you are thinking of using this as an excuse to get out of a crappy marriage, you’re out of luck, at least from a medical standpoint.

6. What is the Glycemic Index and if someone wrote a book on the Glycemic Index, would the book contain an additional Index or would the entire book be an Index? And if so, what would the book be about?

We do not know.

7. Why does food smell so good when it goes into our bodies but smells so terrible when it comes back out?

This has to do with the molecular bonding of foods. When all food is molecularly bonded before eating, it has to send out an enticing aroma to make the intended ingester want to eat it. However, once that same molecular structure is introduced to saliva, it begins to break down the good-smelling cells in the food, replacing them with bad smells. All the way down the esophagus and into the stomach, saliva is mixing in with the molecular structure of the foods making them more and more stinky, and by the time the food comes out the other end of the spectrum, it is at its smelliest, and there is no way to reconstitute it to its original aroma.

8. Can you get athlete’s foot even after you’ve quit playing sports?

That’s like asking if you can get “tennis elbow” if you don’t play tennis or if someone can really be a “pain in the butt.” The answer is yes.

9. Why do we have hair under our arms but not under our knees?

Because when we perspire, sometimes we do not know whether or not we stink. The simple perspiration smell test involves lifting up your arm and turning your head to the side and catching a whiff of underarm odor. The hair under your arms is there to keep the odor you emit intact until you are able to determine whether or not you need to either shower or apply another coating of anti-perspirant to the area. Since we cannot reach down far enough to smell under our knees, the most practical place to have this odor-trapping hair is under our arms.

10. My nose looks like it belongs on a moose rather than a human. Can it be improved by plastic surgery?

Plastic surgeons, contrary to popular belief by many Hollywood stars and starlets, are not miracle workers; however, you may be able to find one who could at least reduce your nose down from the size of a honker to the size of a snout.

While this list is by no means meant to be exhaustive of all the swell questions we found on the internet about our bodies and the medicines we use to medicate them with, it is the beginning and, hopefully, if we’ve just helped one person understand the reasons behind the more simple bodily functions, we have done our job.

UGG Boots Sales Surpassed by New Line of FUgly Boots

Just when you thought boots couldn’t get any uglier, along comes a line of boots that are truly the ugliest boots on the planet. “FUgly Boots,” says their maker, Fingdern Smogadenser, “have been described by consumers as looking like two wet, mangy rats that fit snugly over the feet.”

“We honestly don’t know why anyone would want to buy them and can only guess that they are outselling UGG Boots because Americans have absolutely no fashion taste,” said Smogadenser, from Finland.

Makers of FUgly boots are expected to come out with a summer sandal to compete with Crocs, aptly named FUgly Feet, featuring a cut out for the big toe only on each sandal.

Fox News Best at Dumbing Down America

Results of a preliminary study conducted by the Institute for the Dumbing Down of America (IDDA), Fox News Group has come out way ahead of any other television network news provider as having phenomenal success in creating misinformed, less intelligent human beings over the past ten years.

According to Dr. Bo Gusfindings, “folks who have been getting their news from shows such as The Glenn Beck Show, The O’Reilly Factor, On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, and Hannity were less able to correctly answer simple third grade questions than those who got their news from alternative news sources.

One study participant, when asked if she thought global warming was a real threat stated robotically, “global warming is the biggest scam perpetuated on people.” (Points were deducted from her score for using perpetuated rather than perpetrated.) But moving on, this particular Fox News viewer then gave her reasons for why she thought global warming was a scam:

1. Right now it is so cold where I live that I can’t even go outside, and I live in Houston. Can you believe it snowed in Houston? In the winter? If snow is cold, it can’t be warm, right?

2. They say the ice at both poles is melting and making the oceans rise, but the oceans rise and fall all the time. It’s called tides.

3. Global warming people just want me to buy green products, but my favorite color is blue.

When Gusfindings was pressed as to why he thought adults who watched Fox News were becoming less intelligent, he cited several factors. “For one thing,” he said, “these viewers are being shown misinformation in the form of photos and stage props, such as blackboards and white boards, while simultaneously being told half truths and misinformation. What this does is confuse the Fox News viewer, who has to decide whether to listen to what is being told him or watch the visual aids. This type of news broadcast leads to a repressed thinking pattern caused by willing the viewer to do two things at one time.

For instance, on The Glenn Beck Show, Beck uses many visual aids to get his point across such as white boards, black boards, and giant note pads on easels. In one case, while misspelling the word “Oligarhy” on a blackboard, Beck was telling his viewing audience that America was turning into an “Oligarchy” and tying it in visually with words like ACORN Style Organization, Obama and Hidden Agenda, among others. Said Gusfindings, “this is a perfect example from which to gather our information for our studies.” After showing this particular video to the study participants, Gusfindings gave each of them a simple comprehension test to determine what they learned, and these are the results:

1. How do you spell Oligarchy? 100% answered “Oligarhy.”

2. What is a hidden agenda? 95% answered “true” that it was a practical joke played on the President by his children.

3. What is ACORN? Answers ranged from “I don’t know” to “why do they spell it with all capital letters?”

4. Who is Obama? 97% of the answers cannot be printed here, but suffice it to say that only the “N” word was spelled correctly.

In addition, Beck stages skits featuring things like dousing an actor on his show with supposed gasoline while impersonating scary things Obama might say, and then threatening to light a match to set the actor on fire. This type of subliminal thought transference leaves the viewer coming away from the images believing Obama to be a very scary and psychopathic leader who looks a lot like a white guy.

Gusfindings was asked what, if anything, can be done to reverse this unsettling trend of dumbing down America by these types of faux news channels. He had this to say, “short of tying these folks down and making them watch real news reports where a newscaster actually reports the news without injecting his or her two cents’ worth into the stories presented, and short of taking away viewers’ television sets altogether and making them actually sit down and read a newspaper, I’m afraid this trend will continue to escalate until the majority of Americans will only be able to communicate in bits and bites, and by bites, I do mean that literally.”

Senate Democrats Should be Sent to Reform School

In the wake of the systematic butchering of the Senate version of the health care reform bill almost single-handedly by Sen. Joe Lieberman (Dem/Ind/Rep/Lib-CN), it has been suggested that not only Lieberman, but all Democrats should be sent to Reform School to learn the meaning of the word reform.

Let’s review. According to several sources, including the latest census polls, approximately 47 million, or roughly 1 out of 3 Americans, are without health insurance in this country. That isn’t counting the folks who are underinsured. Healthcare reform is not an issue of “should it be accomplished?” It is an issue of “when will it be accomplished?”

The original intent of health care reform called for by President Obama would effectively accomplish three important things:

1. Make healthcare insurance coverage affordable to all;

2. Extend coverage to all regardless of pre-existing conditions and not allow denial of coverage for certain procedures; and

3. Improve the quality of health care for all through investing in updated technology and focusing on preventive care.

Sounds easy enough right? Just give those pesky insurance companies a little incentive to become a little more competitive in their premium pricing by offering a public health option that would allow all those uninsured folks who can’t afford the more expensive private health insurance premiums to buy into a government program, allow folks with existing medical conditions to be able to buy affordable health insurance, and allow coverage for more than just being sick, i.e. coverage for preventive healthcare screenings. Right. And therein squats the toad.

Insurance companies like making their huge profits year after year and sitting on their piles of money. They weren’t about to take this lying down, well at least, if they did take it lying down, they’d want to still be on top. So what did they do? Well, they took some of those profits and they gave them to charities all over the world to show what nice guys they are so that the government would get off their backs. Ha ha, just joking to see if you are still paying attention. Actually, they are using some of those profits to buy themselves some high-priced lobbyists, PR professionals, and attorneys to ensure (not insure) that no one, especially some poor out-of-work slob, will get the opportunity to actually afford the product they are selling, because, God forbid, he might get sick and need to file a claim. And you know what? It’s money well spent because it seems to be working!

With the help of most Democrats, the lobbyists are winning with their lies and their deceit. They are systematically making a mockery of our legislative process. And the bill passed by the House is but a mere memory in the wake of what has become a Senate bill that, if it were to be passed today, would:

1. Hand over millions of premium-paying customers to the very insurance companies originally targeted as being the culprits who put us in this mess in the first place, by making it mandatory for all Americans to carry health insurance coverage, whether they can afford it or not. And no guarantee that the premiums won’t rise and it won’t be business as usual once the bill is passed.

2. Allow coverage for pre-existing conditions; however, allowing the insurance companies to charge much higher premiums for high-risk policy holders, making it difficult for them to afford the policies and once again, forcing them to remain uninsured and come under the ire of the government for not carrying health insurance.

3. Not provide a government option, be it public option or a buy-in to Medicare at an earlier age for those who cannot afford private health insurance, which would, of course, force the insurance companies to become a little more competitive in their pricing.

What a deal huh?

But here’s a word of advice, don’t let it get to you. The more you worry about it, the sicker you’ll get, and as it stands now, since you started worrying about it before you sought help for worrying about it, you will not be able to file a claim for your stress-related illness as it will be deemed a pre-existing condition.

So I say that unless and until we send those Senators to reform school to toughen them up and get them some lessons in what reform really means, we will continue the flawed process of seeing any bill, no matter how impressive it once was, not only whittled down to mere inconsequence, but built back into a stronger pro-insurance company bill by those with the fattest wallets and the biggest mouths.

Woman Blames Glenn Beck Show for Premature Aging

Shelley Saround began noticing her hair going grey about a year ago at the age of 23. In just a few short months, she went from having a head of luxurious dark brown hair to looking like Grandmama on the Addams Family.

She went to the doctor when she started noticing that she was sprouting grey hairs on the top of her head, and the doctor asked her a series of questions like had she been under a lot of stress lately? Had she suffered any catastrophic news like a death in the family? Had someone scared the bejeezus out of her lately? “And that’s when it hit me,” she said. “Almost 3 months to the day that my hair started turning grey, I began watching the Glenn Beck show. Watching Beck, for me, was like watching a bad car wreck. You know there is going to be scary stuff to see and hear, but somehow you just can’t turn away.”

For three months, Shelley watched as Beck warned her about illegal aliens coming to America to take away her factory job, how the government was ready to take away more of her earnings in the way of taxes, how Congress wanted to take away her right to buy her own damned health insurance, whether she could afford it or not, and most of all, how her beloved America was being taken over by a bunch of socialists. Yes, Shelley was systematically being scared to death, slowly, but surely, and the result was a head of premature grey hair that she will never be able to reverse.

In addition to the grey hair, she began to see dark circles form under her eyes, another sign of premature aging. Now 24, Shelley finds it difficult to get a date with any man younger than 65. “I’m often mistaken for my mother’s mother. In fact, my mother has no grey hair at all. It is a bizarre situation to be in to know that had I just listened to my friends and not watched the Glenn Beck Show, I’d still have beautiful dark hair and I’d be dating my choice of men who are my age.”

“I know it’s too late for me,” said Shelley, “but I want other people to know that if it can happen to me, it can happen to them.” According to specialists in the field, no amount of turning Glenn Beck off or swearing never to listen to him again can reverse the awful consequences of listening to his fear mongering. The damage is irreversible.

And that nervous tic over her right eye? “Rush Limbaugh did that to me,” says Shelley. “But that’s another story for another day.”

Dr. Phil Offers Free Psychological Counseling to Tiger Woods

Dr. Phil McGraw, America’s favorite unlicensed psychologist and self-proclaimed therapist to the stars, has offered to provide Tiger Woods with free psychological counseling if it will help him “get real” again.

In an interview between Dr. Phil and Tiger last week on the set of The View, Tiger agreed to be asked certain questions by Dr. Phil in public so that America could get a first-hand look at what was really happening in Tiger’s life and understand the long recovery road he has in front of him. Here are the highlights of that interview:

Dr. Phil: Hi Tiger, I understand you’re in a bit of a mess right now, is that right?

Tiger: Yes, I am.

Dr. Phil: So tell us, what made you decide to lose all that weight in the first place?

Tiger: What weight?

Dr. Phil: Right. So how are you coping with the reports that your wife may be a shopaholic?

Tiger: My wife doesn’t have a shopping problem.

Dr. Phil: Well, I think we should get to the bottom of your fear of heights. You know, it’s nothing to be ashamed of son.

Tiger: I don’t know what you are talking about. I’m not afraid of anything except maybe you.

Dr. Phil: Interesting. What we’d like to do is have you medically examined to rule out tinnitus before we say the voices in your head are all in your head.

Tiger (turning to Barbara Walters): What the hell is he talking about?

Barbara Walters: Listen to him Tiger. He is the best on television, you know. Look what he did for Britney.

Dr. Phil: When you say you think your mother is smoking pot, do you mean metaphorically speaking?

Tiger: Smoking pot? My mother smoking pot? Are you deranged?

Dr. Phil: Ok, then, it appears to me that we need to get your wife here on stage and discuss the problem you all are having this holiday season as to where you two are going to spend Christmas day. Can’t you just split your time between your parents’ home and hers?

Tiger: Ok, I think I see what you are trying to do Dr. Phil. Look, it’s working. I’m a sex addict, ok? You figured it out. Now what can you do for me?

Dr. Phil: Tiger, hiding behind that wall you’ve built around yourself and not talking about your problems is self-defeating. What can we do to get you to open up to us?

Tiger(in tears) (to Barbara): Make him stop, please Barbara, make him stop.

Barbara Walters: Dr. Phil, another amazing breakthrough. How do you do it?

Dr. Phil: Right. Let’s ask the audience. “How many here believe that latent homosexuality exists in women just as much as it does in men?”