You Americans Need To Learn To Spell!

Chicago -- Team Leader Jyoti Chattanoogakrishna, 35, is appalled at all the selling errors he sees in resumes received at an area engineering firm. "We hire a lot of temps and I read resumes weekly. They just have no idea. What happened to memorization? I've spoken English since I was five, and have never misspelled anything since I was seven."

Not only that, Jyoti can see the college educated engineers have little idea of subject verb or object. Adjective and noun get mixed up, says Jyoti, pointing to a Principle Engineer. "The man is a Principal Engineer!" He has not seen 'whom' used correctly either. "And what is with this "myself"- business. 'He gave myself a raise,' said a fellow the other day. What happened to me?" Jyoti declined to explain apostrophes, he was getting too worked up by that time.  

Dog walkers fight bicyclists

Cincinnati, OH -- Faced with angry bicyclists ringing their bells and yelling "bike on your left" while they walk the 30 feet or so to the dog park entrance, dog walkers decided to retaliate. The mayor had refused to paint a cross walk or make the bicyclists walk this stretch.

The solution they came up with is to put "dog mines" on the path to slow down the cyclists. The dog poop is simulated in the photo passed around at a community meeting at an area Kroger store with a cafe. "Jim" (no last name) came up with the mock photo.

The plan is to be put into action on the first cool Saturday. That way the poop can be collected at home a few days ahead and stored outdoors.

Remastered Hand-holding Songs Selling Well

London -- Hand-holding Songs from the 1960s by a group called The Beatles are selling well, reports Apple and Apple (the Beatles' Apple). The albums that sounded good on LP and single now sound almost as good in their remastered form. The first four albums contained songs appropriate for the teens of the 1960s. Recorded at the time when toilets were banned from TV shows and moms and dads had separate bedrooms, the love songs often tell of "me" and "you", though one is titled She Loves You, a clever third person lyric for the times.

The recently released “1” collection now features promotional videos of the songs. The videos may be partly in black and white, but all but three of the songs are in stereo and some are even in 5.1 surround stereo. In this case, you get a little 3D depth of the stereo mixes. Vocals have been moved to the center in most songs so that they would be iTunes and iPod friendly as well. Beatles experts prefer the new mixes on speakers.

Regular Flavor is No Flavor!

Cincinnati, OH-- Area siblings Buffy and Jody have gone through all the flavors of oat meal mom had in the cabinet. Finally there were two left before shopping day.

It turns out there is no flavor at all in there! Being resourceful kids, they added five spoonfuls of brown sugar to each of their bowls.

Birder Guards His Territory

ALton, IL -- Local Birder Bill Constable is leading a group of women and a couple of pairs of retirees to see local birds. Ducks and shore shore birds were out there today.

Of the troupe of birders, Muriel Hemingway is almost certain that Bill is after one of the women. "Have you noticed how he discourages unattached males from joining on our birding outings?" Discussion at the ladies rest room at the Alton Lock and Dam museum focused on the fact that all four of the women had ailing husbands. "I bet he goes after the one of us that us becomes a widow first. We have been doing this five years, and he will easily go another ten. Bill is only 62, my husband is nearly 70." Kathy Crosby noted that Bill had not actually made any amorous or even friendly moves to any of them. "All he talks is birds. When sex comes up, it is only of the nesting activities of the birds." 

Steamed Mayors Send Angry Letter to Atlas Maker

Brussels, Belgium -- In a meeting of mayors from across the globe, there to discuss communications issues, Mayor Fritz Bohmsen from Essen, Germany and Mayor Carl Johsnon from Adelaide, Australia, came to sit together at lunch. They had introduced themselves at breakfast and got to some small talk. The communications seminar had put them to sleep anyway. Fritz started chatting about maps and Essen. The iPhone map has no sides, so you can clearly see Essen centered on the phone map. However, a school atlas in English puts the city in the seam of the map.

The Adelaide mayor was speechless. The same problem with the same atlas publisher had been bothering him for years. They immediately sought out all the mayors of "cities stuck in seams" and circulated a petition. They demand the atlas maker to form a focus group to work with map makers and editors to dig out these lost cities from the seams.

Carl, on the left, pointed out that the National Geographic atlas below, though still lacking in information and a bit plain in the white color, was doing a better job. He was OK with Kangaroo Island being split in two, as the connection of the island to Adelaide was quite easy to see.

Area Man receives another AARP petition

Little Rock, AR -- Area man Jim Beam, 65, received yet another AARP letter that claimed to be a "petition". Jim has been a member since he was 63, the year he started social security.

The letter is sitting in Jim's pile of bills. Carol used to pay all the bills. She died the first year he was retired. "Carol prioritized all the bills. College donations went into the OPTIONAL pile but stuff like this went into the round file." Still, it is the only piece of mail Jim got this week that looked even slightly interesting. That and a fishing gear catalog, but that was already filed into recycling paper. Jim does not fish in October anymore. He might go along and see what the guys from the old work place are hunting but does not own a gun.