Walgreens Prescription Label: "You So Crazy!"
A Florida woman is suing Walgreens after reading notes on her prescription referring to her as "crazy" and "psycho." Janey Karp has been fighting depression and anxiety with the help of medication, but was shocked to find a computer printout from her pharmacist with the insults.

Says the news bulletin (with nary a snicker):

In an entry dated March 17, 2005, the word "CrAzY!!" was entered in a field reserved for patient information. Another field from Sept. 30, 2004, stated: "She's really a psycho!!! Do not say her name too loud, never mention her meds by names & try to talk to her when ..." The remainder of the information was continued on another page, but was not included with the printout.

"I was devastated, humiliated and embarrassed," Karp said. "I honestly couldn't speak. I was trembling."

Karp's very, VERY serious lawsuit accuses the national chain of defamation, negligent supervision and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

"I'm so private that I never talk about my medications and now they're telling me that I'm psycho, crazy," the devastated, humiliated, embarrassed and "so private" Karp said…to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel...which daily reaches an average of 664,345 readers in Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton alone.

Bovine Bride Bobblehead a Runaway Hit
Remember the 'Runaway Bride'? No, not the very-definition-of-a-lame-movie movie of the same name. We're talking about Duluth resident Jennifer Wilbanks, whose disappearance last April, only days before her scheduled 600-guest wedding, prompted a national search. You remember. She turned up in New Mexico, claiming to have been abducted and raped, only to recant her story soon after, saying she fled because of "certain fears" controlling her life.

Well, like Wilbanks, her bobblehead dolls disappeared quickly last weekend during an ice-hockey promotion in her hometown, CNN reports. The five-inch dolls came complete with tiara, veil, sweatshirt and sneakers. The minor-league ECHL team named the trinket the "Runaway Bride Any Similarity to Actual Persons is Unintended and Purely Coincidental" Bobblehead Doll.

"The dolls, given to the first 1,000 people through the doors at the Gwinnett Gladiators hockey game, were gone in about 10 minutes."

What's In Those Oscar Goody Bags?
Contents of the official gift bag of the 78th annual Academy Awards for nominees:

• Tara and Sons pearl and diamond necklace
• Packet of personalized M&Ms with the nominees names printed on each sweet
• Firefly mobile phone for the kids
• Kay Unger vintage silk kimono worth $500
• Year's supply of exclusive Manni olive oil
• Krups premier espresso machine
• Cashmere travel blanket worth $1,495
• Two nights, plus surfing lessons, at the St Regis resort in Monarch Beach, California
• Yoga sessions
• Spas
• Entire days of beauty treatments

For Best-Actress Nominees only:

• Kodak camera with the actress' initials studded in $20,000 worth of diamonds
• Victoria's Secret bra and panty set with a removable gold and diamond brooch

For nominees' dogs (Really!):

• Luxury dog bed
• Invitation to Doggie Daycare, where one Tamar Geller "will introduce dogs and their companions to her innovative methods for creating a better relationship."

With the contents worth an estimated $150,000, the IRS has said that Oscar nominees and presenters must declare all contents of their goody bags on their tax returns.

Miller No Longer Promoting Beer as 'Official Beverage of the Knuckleheads'
After decades of innovative marketing that brought beer's share of the alcoholic-beverage market to about 61 percent in the mid 1990s, brewers fell into a pattern of "sameness in message, sameness in look and sameness in our products," Miller Brewing Chief Executive Norman Adami told attendees at the annual Nightclub & Bar Show on Monday. But as consumers began to look for more personalization and sophistication, Adami noted, the business failed to catch on quickly enough. Brewers stuck to the mass-advertising formula of bikinis and bad jokes. (Miller is no exception.)

"It is as if we were promoting beer as the official beverage of the knuckleheads," the executive said.

As a result, the growth of wine and spirits is "significantly outpacing the growth of beer," with the exception of imports and microbrews, which continue to grow at a good clip.

As such, and in order to combat the same destiny as hipster-beloved PBR (production of which, oddly enough, was transferred to Miller on a contract basis in 1999), Schlitz and Schaefer, Miller is overhauling the packaging and marketing of its big domestic brands, including Lite, Genuine Draft and High Life.

Yeah, that should help Miller with its image.

'Best' Accidental Discoveries
Wired magazine's "The Best: Accidental Discoveries":

10. Potato chips
9. Silly Putty
8. Vulcanized rubber
7. Brandy
6. Microwave ovens
5. Artificial sweeteners
4. Penicillin
3. X-rays
2. LSD
1. Viagra


Thrilling Reality Entertainment! Voyeuristically Watch Milly, Tilly and Penny on Webcam!
Forget Angelina, Britney and Madonna (please?!?!)…Milly, Tilly and Penny are the new entertainment superstars. And they have their own live Webcam.

The three chickens — you read that right — have become unlikely Internet stars thanks to a Web site that shows them clucking 24 hours a day.

Hencam.co.uk, which shows the birds laying eggs, squabbling and scratching around, has pulled in more than 17,000 visits as of Monday, reports The Guardian.

Neil Whitaker said the idea came to him while he was chatting with friends in — where else? — a pub.

According to the site's "henblog," Milly has laid nine eggs, while Tilly and Penny have yet to lay.

<---Milly

Avg. Consumer is Stupid (Not You, Dear Reader), Pt. 367
Did you know that full-on half of all malfunctioning products that consumers return to stores work just fine? Elke den Ouden, a scientist at the Technical University of Eindhoven in the south of Netherlands, on Monday reported her finding that half of returns and complaints are because the customer simply doesn't know how to operate the device.

Yesterday's Styrofoam Cup=Tomorrow's Plastic Spoon
Despite being made 95 percent of air, Styrofoam's manufactured immortality has posed a problem for recycling efforts, as more than 3 million tons of the durable material is produced every year in the U.S. Very little of it is recycled.

However, help may come from bacteria that have been found to eat Styrofoam and turn it into useable plastic, reports LiveScience.com.

Reports the science site:

Kevin O'Connor of University College Dublin and his colleagues heated polystyrene foam, the generic name for Styrofoam, to convert it to styrene oil. The natural form of styrene is in real peanuts, strawberries and a good steak. A synthetic form is used in car parts and electronic components. Anyway, the scientists fed this styrene oil to the soil bacteria Pseudomonas putida, which converted it into biodegradable plastic known as PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoates).

Resistant to heat, grease and oil, PHA can be used to make plastic forks and packaging film. And even though it lasts a long time, PHA biodegrades in soil and water, unlike Styrofoam.

Ah, Bless the Irish.

This Week's Toilet Humor News

• A pair of lungs -- believed to have belonged to a pig or sheep -- were found abandoned in a public toilet in the UK. "Police attended the scene but concluded there was nothing suspicious about the lungs." ...Aside from the fact that they were a pair of lungs left in a public-bathroom sink.

• Define "Filthy Politics," or Political 'Smear' Tactics (via Central Florida's Channel 6 Local News)

• …Sort of like Kevin Costner drank his own in that scene in Waterworld...only, like, for real… (via Sky News)

• "An argument over toilet paper overflowed into a fight, sending one motel maid to the hospital and another to jail," reports the Associated Press. (via Myrtle Beach Online)

• Flush Your Toilet Like a Rock Star!
Eric Herbst is a singer, songwriter, guitarist and now inventor. The innovator, whose songs have been recorded by Johnny Cash and B.B. King, has created the Foot Flush®, a retrofit foot pedal that makes your home toilet hands-free. The revolutionary new product, priced at $29.95, hooks up to your home toilet in less than two minutes without tools. Then you simply step and flush.

Beside the obvious health advantages of the Foot Flush, reports Yahoo Biz News, Herbst has received rave reviews for his new device from customers with back problems, arthritis, MS and other physical difficulties.

Explains Herbst:

After a gig, I grabbed a bass drum pedal and a piece of string and walked into my bathroom. My girlfriend said what are you doing? I tied one end of the string to the pedal and the other to the handle. When I stepped on the pedal it flushed. She said cool.

And thus the first Foot Flush was born.

Come On, Come On, Dooo the Four-Limbed Lo-co-motion with Me!
Researchers in Turkey say they have found five adult siblings who can walk only on all fours. The human quadrupeds may provide clues to how humans evolved to stand on two feet.

According to scientists, the three sisters and two brothers may offer insight "into the way our apelike ancestors moved." Human ancestors are believed to have begun walking on two legs more than three million years ago.

Discovered in a remote area of southern Turkey last summer, the family has sparked a scientific debate. Born with a genetic brain abnormality, two of the sisters and one of the brothers are thought to have only walked on all fours their entire lives. The two other siblings can walk upright for only short distances.

Says National Geographic:

Uner Tan, a neurophysiologist — a doctor specializing in the functions of the brain, spinal cord and nerves — at Cukurova University in Turkey, believes the siblings, who range in age from 18 to 34, are evolutionary throwbacks — a "missing link" to our forebears. Meanwhile, German geneticists believe the siblings' genetic abnormality may have knocked out the gene responsible for bipedalism, or two-legged walking, in humans.

Yet another team of researchers, including British evolutionary psychologist Nicholas Humphrey, say the cause is twofold: the way the siblings were raised and brain damage resulting from the genetic defect.

MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scans suggest the brothers and sisters have a form of cerebellar ataxia, a condition that affects the brain's cerebellum. In children, cerebellar ataxia leads to difficulties in balancing and coordination.

"The mother says all of her children, when they were infants, ran around on all fours before they learnt to walk," Humphrey added. "Not just ordinary crawling, either — these kids ran around like monkeys on their feet and hands."

The Turkish brothers and sisters walk on only their wrists or the heels of their hands, with their fingers held off the ground. This position appears to have saved their fingers from damage. (In fact, the sisters engage in both crochet and embroidery.) Chimps, our closest living relatives, use their whole hands and fingers for walking.

Known as a bear crawl, this form of locomotion is not unknown in children. But because the brain-damaged brothers and sisters would have had problems standing up, "there's actually quite a good chance that they would make the best of a bad job and remain on all fours," Humphrey said.

If this had happened in a Western family, "everything would be done to persuade and cajole the children to stand upright," notes Humphrey. The siblings' father, however, says he didn't regard the seeming handicap as something that needed to be corrected.

In fact, he told Humphrey he thought it was God's will that they should walk like that.

Cheers.