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A proclamation

In an effort to reclaim my weekends, from now on Saturdays will be “Website of the Week” day. I’ll simply post a link and a short blurb about a site that has caught my eye. Feel free to email me suggestions about sites to feature.

This week’s website:

Go and tell this guy where to go.

Readership is always down on the weekends, anyhow. I might as well save my precious words for peak time. It seems that most of you tune in to WAIW? when you’re at work getting paid. Shame on you. I’ll still probably do some regular posting on Saturdays, when so inspired.

With this proclamation we now have two scheduled days here at WAIW?:

Saturdays – Website of the Week

Sundays – A…

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Working age

At the factories I visited abroad, the average working age was around 20. At the factory in NY, it was probably in the late 40’s. In developing countries you are pretty much washed up as a garment worker when you reach the not-so ripe ol’ age of 25….

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ME vs. Garment Workers; Jason Kidd vs. ME

The average garment worker I met in Asia makes my clothes for somewhere around $60/month, or $720/year. Let’s say I make $30,000/year (not counting my stipend from my sugar momma wife). Their annual income is 2.4% of mine. Crazy, huh? I’m rich!

Now let’s move to the factory in Perry, NY, I visited that makes jerseys for the NBA. Let’s say that the workers making the uniforms make $30,000/year just like me. While at the factory, I saw Jason Kidd’s name being stitched on his uniform. Kidd makes $17.2 million/year. The workers that make his jersey earn about .14% of his annual salary.

I’m not sure that these comparisons are immediately useful to my purposes here. But what it makes me…

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Happy birthday to my wife!

Ain’t she gorgeous?

Annie

And what better time would there to be to share this reading that Annie and I wrote, which was read by a friend during the wedding? None. Here you go…

10 years ago…

Bill Clinton is starting his second term.

In Roslin, Scotland, scientists announce they cloned a sheep. Her name is Dolly.

Chicago Bulls win their 5th championship. Michael Jordan is still awesome.

There is no Google.

The world is introduced to an 11-year-old magician in training named Harry Potter.

Titanic rocks the box office.

I walk Annie across the “Old Gym” floor during lunch to ask Kelsey if he’s going to the homecoming dance. I still take credit for hooking them up.
Annie tells Kelsey to pick her up at her house to go to the…

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Guerrillas fighting for bananas

Happy bananasWhere’s your banana from?

If it’s from Colombia it might have a bit of blood on it.

From CNN.com:

Banana producer Chiquita will pay a $25 million fine and serve five years’ probation for once paying millions of dollars to groups in Colombia considered by the U.S. to be terrorist organizations, a Department of Justice spokesman said Tuesday.

Colombia ain’t Ohio. If you are going to do business there, you are going to have to get your hands dirty. I’m not for hiring soldiers of fortune, unless they are these soldiers of fortune, but to me it seems as if our government isn’t entirely above the practice either.

I like bananas in my smoothie, on my cereal, split and topped with ice cream,…

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MADE IN AMERICA

“ACO Welcomes Kelsey and Annie Timmerman”

The sign is weird. It’s the first time we’ve seen Annie’s new name.

We’re greeted by a reporter from the local newspaper. Lorraine is excited that we came all the way to Perry, New York, to see where my shorts were made. She doesn’t act like this is a weird thing to be doing at all. She thinks it’s neat. I like Lorraine.

Lorraine describes Perry as such: “I always tell people that the south side of town smells like cookies and the north like manure.”

The cookie smell comes from the Archway factory and the manure smell comes from the surrounding dairy farms. Archway cookies remind me of visiting my grandma Timmerman. I’m not sure if the woman ever…

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A legalese lesson in pluralization

“Unless the context otherwise indicates, words importing the singular number shall include the plural number and words importing the singular number shall include the singular number.”

I read this today while reviewing a contract at my 3-day a week Day Job. After which I poked out my eye with a knife. And of course, in this case the singular use of “eye” means both eyes and the singular use of “knife” means one knife.

Like other things, too much legalese will make you go blind….

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