Boxes and bags, corn, beer, and mistakes, but not necessarily in that order

Charge me with two counts of laziness last night. I broke my own no copy and paste axiom and did not censor the names or address of the defendants, but I protected the innocent with a false name: “Amy Blevins.” I have amended the post, below, and this is what should have run last night.

Beer goggles

Duke graduate John Cornwell, inventor of the beer dispensing fridge should have called me before the big game. Gladly would I have served as go between for Cornwell and the beer big guys (Miller Lite seems to be his favorite). And my rates are close to minimum wage. A commercial featuring the fridge pitching a can through a television would crush the competition! Think of it: the Super Bowl onscreen fizzles into smoke and electricity, while Cornwell slowly turns around and looks over, scowls at his creation, turns back, but looks again over his shoulder with a quivering lip and leaps over the couch, hugging the fridge “I can’t stay mad at you,” Cornwell sniffs. Sure, there’s always next year, but you gotta strike while the iron’s hot.

An improved beer can launching refrigerator will be available for $1500 to enthusiasts who contact Cornwell through his website (http://www.duke.edu/~jwc13/beerlauncher.html), but will Pepto-Bismol fit in the queue for the morning after?


Ads on bags

To tread old water, an obvious idea eluded me during my bag the bags blog (http://myblogservations.blogspot.com/2007/02/new-business-ethics.html). Shopping sacks are the perfect advertising vehicle, especially in malls, where buyers store hop with bright or sheik statements on purchase luggage. They’re also another status symbol. What socialite wouldn’t want everyone to know she can afford Nordstrom? Shhh! No one has to know about the sales rack. Another revelation struck shortly after blogging, Wal-Mart offshoot Sam’s Club sacked the sacks since the beginning. Yes, the ’Mart is evil, yet brilliant for boxing up bulk items at the checkout. Besides reusability, boxes boast better weight distribution, are often easier conveyance, they don’t squish your squishables (bread) or break you breakables (eggs), they don’t rip your fingers off during lifting, and hold more goods than their plastic and paper predecessors. Why not institute these in grocery chains? It only makes cents.

Corn shooting up; beef, poultry, and pork to follow

Just how much more will we pay at the check stand? A bushel of corn costs $3.20, up from last year’s $2. But the scarcity doesn’t end there:
Meat and poultry production will fall as producers face higher feed costs, the department predicted in its monthly crop report. Corn ethanol fuel, which is blended with gasoline, is consuming 20 percent of last year's crop and is expected to gobble up more than 25 percent of this year's crop.
The Associated Press
With questionable environmental benefit (see my earlier corn blog; http://myblogservations.blogspot.com/2007/03/yellow-is-new-green.html) and hitting America’s softest spot—our stomachs—on ethanol’s resume, I vote for corn as merely a gasoline additive. Only when it’s more efficient, its manufacture is sustainable, and its use doesn’t bloat the grocery bill, should ethanol enjoy exclusivity.