My food...My choice

Don't ask me why I read labels on my food and drinks. I haven't a clue. Maybe I think I'll find something good in the bad or discover that one special ingredient I'm missing from my USDA vitamin list.

Total Cereal has a great label. They are telling you that you have no reason to read their label. In huge letters, it says, 100% of what you need today. Quick, easy and allows me to finish my comics instead of looking up what the heck Niacin is.

I'm wincing at the makers of anything "fruity" in their drinks. I keep seeing,"This contains 2% REAL fruit juice. TWO percent? I get more juice chewing on my watermelon flavored Hubba Bubba gum than when I drink 8 ounces of their liquid. (Hubba Bubba..ANYONE?...ANYONE?)

Enough of this labeling. Let's just call it what it is. If you order a Double Whopper with cheese, don't expect anything but a big label in block letters stating,

"Eat more than 10 of these in a month will lower your life expectancy by five years less than if you ordered the single Whopper. Order the large fries along with it and you will live one day less than if you went to Wendy's and ordered a Double Baconator."

It is that simple.

Forget marketing the healthy and non-healthy labels to us. We are smarter than that I hope. Just tell us our life expectancy on each thing we eat and let us choose our own path. If I want to know the carbs/protein ratio of a energy bar, then so be it. What I truly want to know is this peanut butter and chocolate equivalent of a Milky Way will give me enough energy until I can have another salty nut energy bar with chocolate and peanut butter. I'm kinda easy like that.

At Denny's: The equivalent of a Grand Slam Breakfast or a Fruit bowl with yogurt. Hmmmm, I don't even care of the price, (they are both $3.99) I just want to know does one allow me to live to see my grandkids graduate high school or long enough to see another election year.

My decision: So leave me be with the nutritional labels.

This is not about eating right. This is about wanting to know what choices I am making before I make them. The irony is that WE ALL know what is good and bad before we choose. We always have.

We just use their labels to help US help ourselves. Low fat doesn't mean it isn't inundated with sugar. Cholesterol free doesn't mean it doesn't have fat. High in Protein doesn't mean its not high in sodium. There is a reason there are millions of blogs, books and articles about eating right...NO one can tell you what you already know.

We choose the Whopper cause it tastes good. We choose the salad because we had the whopper yesterday. We choose the "NUTRITION" bar cause it looks like a Snickers Bar. We choose the Vitamin Water cause it says, VITAMINS, not cane sugar, crystalline fructose, citric acid, caffeine and ester gum extract as its label.

....and I? I choose to write early in the morning because Wendy's isn't open until 11am.

Taking the wrong way on the right-a-way

Love my gadgets. If it's digital or has an LCD screen, I'm thrilled. If it can complicate my life with the promise of cleansing my frustrations, I buy it without remorse. Early adopter? HA. I buy the gadgets before they go on sale and pay 50% more than if I waited 24 hours.

The current GPS (Gentleman's Perception System) in my car has helped me many times navigate through the trials and tribulations of NYC and beyond. I've used it to find restaurants, gas stations and the nearest bookstore.

However, I recently used it to find a office address and ended up going down the wrong way on the one way street.

No, I'm not blind nor am I ambivalent to paying attention to HUGE SIGNS that say WRONG WAY, I just paid a hell of a lot of money for this thing and DARN IT, if it says to turn LEFT with a convincing voice, I'm going to do it without hesitation and get my money's worth.

Sadly, the sign was posted to ensure traffic in a SCHOOL ZONE would be flowing accordingly to the children crossing the busy road during that time of day.

As scores of middle school children watched in dismay that my vehicle was passing them in the opposite direction of the buses, A young adolescent screams out,

"HEY, IT'S A ONE WAY YOU %*$(#*@."

Aww, the intelligence of our youth so aptly expressed in such a succinct way. I continued to pass him (cause my GPS still told me I still have 400 ft to go before turning right on Elm Street) so I responded back in the only way a shameful, embarrassed mature man would respond.

"HEY SMART *$$, I'm only going ONE WAY."

Sleep Walking Through a Business Case

Whether it is the Mattress Cowboys, 1-800Mattress or Sleepy's, after driving by strip mall after shopping plaza and see endless discount mattress and bedding outlets and stores, I'm lost..Someone find me a bed to nap in and explain to me how these places makes money?

We all love to sleep and personally, I have bought a few mattresses in my lifetime but we aren't talking about an investment in cars or houses. SOOO, how do they stay in business?

DO you ever think each weekend, "HONEY, It's Saturday, lets go get ANOTHER mattress because we haven't got one in like..um...5 weeks and the old one has crumbs in it."

or

"Sweetheart, do you have your old mattresses ready to go? I'll stop by the Serta outlet and pick up your new ones before I go to the dry cleaners."

Now don't get me wrong. I wake up every day with a stiff back and numb legs thinking maybe I need a new mattress.

But I don't actually GO BUY ONE. Do you? My next one is going to be either a Tempur-Pedic or Craft-o-Matic roll with the heated pads but I only have to call the 800 number from Ed McMahon to have that one delivered because NO one would get caught BUYING one of those in a STORE without a doctor's prescription. (wink)

POP QUIZ: When was the last time you went into a mattress discounter? Really..unless Party City was next door and you saw a fake brass bed that reminded you of your grandparent's bedroom set or because it was adjacent to an TGIF's and you had 30 minutes to kill before your vibrating paging coaster went off so you can get your THREE FOR ALL appetizer smothered in Jack's sauce.

But even if you and your significant other decided to digress to 1950's TV sleeping arrangements (DICK VAN DYKE, LUCY AND DESI.. et al) and move to separate rooms on the same floor with your own beds...THAT is still only TWO beds bought over a few years.

Yes, I could be thinking too much about this dilemma in a world where economic struggles run much deeper than box springs and bed skirts. But it IS these things that keep me up at night.....

or perhaps it is my insomnia caused by the fact I just need a new mattress from DISCOUNT BOB's?