Thursday, May 21, 2009

Recession reminder: Use caution when microwaving your baby!

For the second time this week our local newspaper has published the The Associated Press Economic Stress Index. It's beginning to stress me out. The AP Stress Index is a map of the U.S. showing those areas of the nation suffering from the greatest levels of stress based on such things as unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcies.

Because of the extreme mental anxiety now affecting nearly six times as many counties as was being experienced just last September (some with unemployment exceeding 25%!), I thought it might be wise to remind us all to take precautions when microwaving babies, incidences of which are certain to rise so long as the economy continues to sink.

People residing in such "hot pockets" as Merced and Imperial Counties, CA, Wilcox County, AL, Oscoda County, MI. (see map for more) may want to pay particular attention when zapping young ones in the Amana.

Here then is that reminder of baby microwaving safety as published here last September:

Twenty seconds at power level six?

How many of you have put something in the microwave for a minute or so to heat and gone about some other business only to realize several minutes later the microwave is still running? And when you check it to see, it still has 7 minutes, 37 seconds to go! I do this occasionally, the result of inattentiveness when entering my heating time.

Sadly, twenty-eight year old China Arnold has just learned such carelessness will cause her to spend the rest of her life in prison without chance of parole.

The fact that Arnold admitted during her trial she had been drinking and arguing with her boyfriend about whether or not he was the father of her one year old daughter, Paris Talley, did little to save Arnold for the death of that daughter. You see, Paris was killed by over microwaving.

China claims she is innocent. Maybe she is. Knowing, as I suspect many of us do, how easy it is to enter a wrong time, maybe China Arnold, distracted by drinking and fighting with her boyfriend, mis-entered the time she intended to zap little Paris by punching in 20 minutes instead of 20 seconds?

2 comments:

D.K. Raed said...

Interesting map. How do you account for your own low low low foreclosure rate of .44%? All that military base expansion?

And YIKES about microwaving! I think we've all heard about the occasional small doggie or cat or frog, but never a baby! It never ceases to amaze me how low a human will go when they think they have power over another living thing.

Then again perhaps my celebratory fresh squoze oj w/vo has impaired my judgment. Just to be safe, I will unplug the microwave for the rest of the night.

Dada said...

Yeh, I suspect the couple of $billion the gov't is spending on the huge enlargement of Ft. Bliss has much to do with our low foreclosure rate.

At the least, I KNOW it has much, much to do with expanding roadways which get congested faster than they can build 'em.

Why, the multi-million $$ expansion of the local Army Medical Center, Wm. Beaumont, expects their new Labor and Delivery wing, which was doing ca. 100 deliveries/mo. in late 2006 to be popping out 250/mo. by the end of next year.

Which has me mulling over a new non-profit, one which we will encourage people to donate their old microwaves. "Microwave Recycling for Death, Eradication And Disposal, or "MR DEAD" as it will be known. That should help neutralize the huge population surge El Paso is under going now and in the immediate years ahead.

It's just too bad they don't make larger microwaves (adult sized).

OK, OK, before anyone gets upset: I was just being hysterically satirical.