Today I found the following e-mail in my inbox:

Dear Nick,

How come you haven’t written anything about the horrible injustice that is the $700 BILLION DOLLAR bailout of stupid people? I’d love to see one of your cartoons about this topic too, but I’d also be interested in hearing what you seriously think about the bailout.

~Scott

Scott, you bring up a good point—I tend not to write about politics and so-called “important issues” very much. That’s because topics like the financial bailout (whose proper name is the Kick Taxpayers In The Balls Act of 2008) get covered on every other news site, blog, and cocktail napkin in the country, so I figured everyone wouldn’t mind reading about something more refreshing for a change, like ketchup theft and workplace drinking games.

But fine, I give up. I’ll give you all my two cents on the financial bailout. In short, it sucks. In long, it suuuuuuuuuuuuuucks. In fact, it sucks so much that, for the first time in history, I actually wrote to my Congressional representatives and told them not to vote for it if they still want my vote in November.

What exactly about the financial bailout plan has earned my boundless ire? Well, by default, I tend to oppose any federal legislation that would spend $700 billion on anything. You can spend a mere $85 billion to bail out an insurance giant and I might not bat an eye. And you might be able to get away with spending $500 billion on a war nobody likes anymore. But $700 billion dollars is where I draw the freaking line.

See? There’s the line, and I just drew it.

So why do I have such a problem with the government spending $700 billion dollars on what essentially amounts to a blank check to the financial industry to continue being a bunch of retarded monkeys? Well, for one, consider exactly what else could be done with that much money. $700 billion dollars can buy a lot of things, such as:

• A check made out to me in the amount of $700 billion dollars.
• $700 billion in cash in a suitcase for me.
• 15 minutes alone with Hayden Panettiere to do anything I want.
• Portugal.

The other problem I have with this bailout—and likely the only thing I’m going to say in this entire VERY SERIOUS ARTICLE that makes any sense—is that it doesn’t help the people who need help the most. No no, I’m not talking about homeowners struggling to keep their houses. I’m talking about midget helicopter policemen. Nowhere in the entire text of the bailout bill is any reference whatsoever made to midget helicopter policemen. In fact, at second glance, a whole lot of other people aren’t being helped by this bill, including:

• You.
• Me.
• Us.
• Everyone we know.

Indeed, unless you know someone who works in the financial industry or who somehow benefits from the merciless death of the U.S. dollar (e.g. terrorists—and I hope you don’t know any of those), chances are that you can’t think of a single person who’d benefit from a bailout bill whose text does not include the line “The Federal government will write a check to each American in the amount of $5,000″ and instead says (and this is a direct quote from a paraphrase of someone I heard talking about the bill) “Neener, neener. Thanks for the bailout, chumps. Love, Wall Street.”

Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for me to get off my soapbox which is really just a regular cardboard box because I’m too poor to afford a soapbox thanks to the economy. And hopefully this will teach you all never to request that I talk seriously on any serious subject ever again. Seriously.

Like many bargain-hunting Americans, I can’t say that I’m particularly loyal to very many brands. I’ll buy Ragu spaghetti sauce if it’s on sale, Prego if it’s not, or just eat a tomato if they’re both too pricey. Heck, I don’t even favor one particular supermarket! I’m even less brand loyal when it comes to clothes, cars, and computers. But if you look back over my expenses over the last five years, there’s one name that’ll keep popping up every couple of weeks without fail. That name is Shell, as in multinational oil company Shell.

But here’s the weird part: I don’t even feel particularly loyal to Shell. Probably the only reason they still have a monopoly over my gasoline dollars is because my mom insisted on only using Shell gasoline as I was growing up. That, and after I got my first car, the three closest gas stations to home were all Shells. Now that I live in a different city from where I grew up, I still get my gas exclusively from Shell. And the other day, as I passed a nearby Texaco station that was selling Regular for 10 cents less than the Shell station at which I’d just refueled, I asked myself a startling question: Why am I still buying Shell gas?

After that, I considered the following facts about the Shell stations in my city:

1. Shell gas is consistently a few cents more expensive than Exxon, Texaco, and the no-brand gas stations like Free State.
2. The three closest Shell gas stations are actually a little bit out of my way now. The closest one to “my way” is generally the pricier of the three.
3. The Shell gas stations are not as well maintained as those of the other brands. Frequently the windshield squeegee liquid is empty or really dirty at the Shells I frequent, and either the air or vacuums are out of order half the time.
4. If I ran a gas station, I would call it “Cheap Ass Gas.” But that’s beside the point.

Perhaps another reason I still maintain my Shell “loyalty” is because I thought it was a superior gas back when I first purchased my MINI Cooper. That’s because many MINI drivers on the internet recommended Shell’s V-Power premium gas over other brands and grades. Now that I drive a Mazda3 that only needs Regular, do I still need to get that Regular from Shell?

After presenting myself with these questions, I did some research on gasoline brands to see if other folks had thoughts or scientific evidence as to which gasoline brand was the best. About five minutes into my research, I stopped being an idiot and remembered that all major gas brands share refineries and pipelines. So while Shell might be refining that oil, Exxon and Citgo may be the ones selling it. And in the next state over, the reverse may be true. When it comes to gasoline, gas is gas.

What may make a difference, however, are the additives that each brand adds to its fuel. You may have heard of Chevron and Texaco’s Techron additive. In fact, some people seem to swear by Techron. Others favor Shell’s additives, and still others can be found who prefer virtually every other brand of gasoline because it’s supposedly better for their vehicles. And while I couldn’t find any scientific studies to confirm my hypothesis, I found no general consensus that one brand of gasoline performed significantly better than others.

I did, however, find several brands referring to themselves as Top Tier Gasoline because they use more than the EPA minimum recommended amounts of detergents to help keep your engine clean. But again, I found no scientific proof that more detergent keeps your engine more cleaner.

The only real difference between gas formulas that I found is that, quite consistently, those which are 10-15% ethanol provide much worse gas mileage that those that are 100% Made in the Middle East or Perhaps the Gulf of Mexico gasoline. Unfortunately pretty much all of the fueling stations around here have switched to some blend of ethanol.

Will I keep using Shell gas after discovering all this? Possibly, though mostly out of habit. I may experiment with other brands to see if there is any noticeable difference in performance. Don’t worry, I know not to buy from Citgo since the only additives they put in their gas are communism and anti-American sentiments.

Last week’s month’s decade’s Punny Poll was a quick little survey to see how everyone’s enjoying the comics I’ve been throwing up with each article. With a nearly 90% approval rating, I think it’s about time for the comics to run for political office! Almost 20% of you said I should go as far as to quit writing articles altogether and just do comics. While I admit that my ongoing battle with writer’s block often makes this tempting, I just don’t see Punny Money becoming a comic-only endeavor anytime soon.

In the wake of all this disastrous weather we’ve been having lately, and to go along with my recent anti-hurricane wall proposal (which I hear has been read by researchers at MIT on a placemat in their cafeteria), I thought it’d be interesting to see how everyone’s finances have “weathered” Mother Nature’s recent fury.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Everyone knows at least one person who does it. Maybe it’s your senile old grandmother who doesn’t think anything of it. Maybe it’s a co-worker who does it at lunch.

Maybe you do it yourself.

No no, I’m not talking about masturbating. (At least I hope I’m not.) I’m referring to the practice of concealed condiment collection—i.e. “stealing” ketchup and sugar packets and all those other little individually packaged seasonings you might find at a variety of restaurants.

This isn’t a new concept by any means. Historical documents dating back to the 1500s talk about routine executions being carried out on the streets of London when a person would try to hide a thimble of jam under their wig while departing the local tea house. Nowadays many people don’t even consider it a crime to stuff a few extra packets of jelly in one’s purse at the local IHOP. At the very least, plenty of folks agree that’s it a victimless crime. After all, you’re stealing tiny amounts of secondary ingredients from business owners and large multinational corporate minions, most of whom have swimming pools filled with unwanted condiment packets.

Of course, for every person who thinks absconding with restaurant condiments is on the up-and-up, there’s another who considers it outright theft. The latter group typically argues that condiments that are distributed for free by restaurants are meant to be used at the restaurant, similarly to how most all-you-can-eat buffets don’t allow you to remove food from the restaurant.

On the other hand, the average condiment collector will use a variety of reasons for justifying his or her habit:

• They’re practically worthless.
• I’m only taking a few.
• I’m not hurting anyone by doing it.
• If restaurants didn’t want people taking condiments, they shouldn’t make them available.
• It’s just freaking ketchup!

Personally, I’m somewhere in between the two arguments, but I can already tell you what the anti-collector’s response would be to some of these excuses for legitimizing covert condiment confiscation.

• They’re practically worthless or I’m only taking a few. Restaurant condiments aren’t as cheap as you think. Bulk ketchup, for example, runs around 3 cents a packet. Even if a giant chain negotiates that down to a penny each, it’s still 1% of the price of those Dollar Menu fries.
• I’m not hurting anyone by doing it. What if your boss told you that he or she was taking 1% of your pay and eating it? You’d be pretty upset! Each time one of these condiment packets is taken from a restaurant, that’s money out of the pockets of everyone. And since executives and managers set pay rates for lower employees, you can probably guess who’s going to be impacted the most.
• If restaurants didn’t want people taking condiments, they shouldn’t make them available. If that’s your argument, you should insist on paying for your condiments the next time you dine out. Or even better—bring your own!
• It’s just freaking ketchup! Sure, it starts with ketchup. Then it might escalate to bigger things like toilet paper rolls from the restaurant bathroom, or cars from the parking lot. I’m pretty sure I read a government document stating that most terrorists got their start stealing barbeque sauce from McDonald’s.

Another common argument you’ll hear from condiment collectors: it saves them money. Well, so does stealing groceries from the supermarket; but you’re not going to walk out of Wal-Mart with a 24-ounce bottle of mustard tucked under your coat, are you? If anything, you’d save a lot more money by not dining out in these restaurants in the first place.

But since both sides of the condiment coin have their points, I think the best way to settle this argument is with a compromise. Perhaps if condiment collectors agreed to reduce their activities to only certain items and in very limited quantities, the condiment crusaders wouldn’t mind it as much. As for what condiments are okay to collect and which ones aren’t, I would propose the following lists as guidance:

Condiments That Might Be Okay to “Collect”

• Condiments you can’t recreate at home or buy in the store (e.g. Taco Bell’s sauce).
• A reasonable number of necessary condiments when you’re doing take-out (e.g. not 42 packets of honey when you only bought a hamburger).
• Duck and soy sauce. I’m pretty sure both flow abundantly through the rivers of Asia.
• One bonus condiment of your choice each time the employees are jerks or idiots.

Condiments You Shouldn’t Be Stealing From Restaurants

• Standard condiments like ketchup and mustard. Just go buy your own at the store.
• Pricier but still standard condiments like barbeque sauce and salad dressing.
• Napkins. That’s just being a tightwad.
• Salt and pepper shakers. Generally you don’t want to take condiments that are in reusable containers.
• Table centerpieces. Yes, I’m sure there’s someone out there who yanks flowers from restaurant tables.
• Silverware. Not even plastic sporks unless you’re doing take-out.
• The Heinz truck that just pulled up to the back of the restaurant. Yeah, that’s hijacking.

If we all work together to keep restaurant condiment costs low, we can help ensure that future generations will have access to marvels such as Wendy’s 99 Cent Super Value Menu. But if rampant condiment theft continues unchecked, we’ll become reliant on foreign sources of ketchup which will cause prices to skyrocket, and soon you’ll be wishing you could dip your fries in crude oil instead.

As Gulf Coast residents prepare to do battle with yet another tropical menace, a few questions may come to mind. For instance, why in this era of polio vaccines and internet pizza delivery have we not found a way to prevent hurricanes? I mean, they’re just large masses of condensed water vapor with some snazzy visual and sound effects.

Well, it’s not like science hasn’t tried. According to the Wikipedia article on the subject, artificial attempts to dissipate hurricanes have included everything from dropping a tarp across the ocean to block evaporation to blowing the things to hell with nukes. Unfortunately, as hurricanes are made by God when He is really really angry, nothing that man has constructed can stand up to them.

Until now.

Instead of attempting to destroy or dissipate a hurricane, we should instead try to block or redirect them to locations nobody cares about. The simplest way to accomplish such a task would be to build a giant wall in the path of the hurricane.

Now I know what you’re thinking: What is Nick smoking today, and where can I get some? But I assure you that I’ve put a lot of thought into this, and I think an Anti-Hurricane Wall could help prevent trillions of dollars in property damage, not to mention countless lost lives.

The best place to start testing an Anti-Hurricane wall would likely be the Gulf of Mexico as it’s home to vital oil refineries and lots of people dumb enough to live below sea level. Here’s how an Anti-Hurricane Wall would work in the Gulf:

1. Build a giant wall between Florida and Mexico. The wall would have holes near the bottom to allow sea traffic and dolphins to travel through it freely.
2. The wall would be made of tough anti-hurricane materials such as plywood and bungee cords.
3. When a hurricane reaches the wall, it would run into the wall and would—much like a person or rambunctious kitten impacting a wall—fall down and start crying or something.
4. Eventually the hurricane would give up and go home or at least to some other country that can’t afford an Anti-Hurricane Wall.

See, isn’t that simple? Of course, building an enormous Anti-Hurricane Wall the size of the Gulf of Mexico would present a few challenges:

• The wall would need to be about 500 miles long if built from, say, Key Largo, Florida to Cancun, Mexico.
• The wall would need to be about five miles high as that’s about how high the outer portions of a hurricane tend to reach. Sure, the eye of a hurricane can reach almost twice that height, but if the surrounding part of the storm can’t get by the wall, neither can the eye.
• Building a 2,500 square mile wall in the middle of the ocean could be quite expensive. Even if we used some 10% off coupons at Home Depot, it would likely cost around, oh, $100 billion for the 70 billion square feet of plywood and other materials needed to build this thing. But considering that Hurricane Katrina did over $80 billion in damage by itself, this thing could pay for itself in a couple of years.
• Insurance companies could probably be convinced to pay for some or most of the wall as they’d stand to save the most from blocking hurricanes from making landfall.

Of course, there are a few negative consequences to building the Great Wall of the Gulf of Mexico. For example, I don’t think Cuba would see much sunlight ever again, and they might not like that (especially since they’d be on the wrong side of the wall). Plus some people would argue that the only wall we should be building in that region is across the U.S. border with Mexico, though I would argue that hurricanes are at least a little more dangerous than illegal immigrants. Oh, and heaven forbid a hurricane managed to knock down the wall; the ensuing tidal wave would likely wipe out the entire Gulf Coast, but let’s not dwell on the negatives any longer.

Depending on the effectiveness of the Gulf Coast Anti-Hurricane Wall, I would later recommend constructing one off the U.S. East Coast since, well, that’s where I live and I think I deserve giant protective walls as much as any Texan or Louisianian. So start calling your senators and representatives today and ask for Anti-Hurricane Walls before it’s too late. Oh, and let them know that plywood’s on sale at Lowes this week: buy 5,000,000, get 5,000,000 free!

Whether you’re a fan of the young guy and the old guy or the really old guy and the mildly-attractive girl, there’s little denying that this coming presidential election will bring about either a great deal of change or a great deal of everything staying the same and getting worse, likely both. Both major candidates have outlined how their administrations would tackle the big problems facing our economy, and each has fully convinced me that if we elect “the other guy” that our nation will suffer from a nationwide financial collapse not seen since that tower of one-dollar bills I was constructing fell over when the air conditioning turned on.

Or maybe things won’t be that bad. It’s really too soon to tell. But what it’s not too soon to tell is that a great deal of money-related dilemmas will go unaddressed regardless of who we elect. Here now are some of those issues in no particular order.

1. Lazy people make more money than me. Neither the Republican nor Democratic candidate has outlined plans for rectifying the horrible monetary atrocity that is Joe Stevens (name changed to protect the real idiot, Scott Phillips). You see, Joe works three offices over in a similar role to mine. He started at the job the same month I did. Yet Joe makes 20% more money despite only doing half the work I do because he’s as dumb as a brick. More important than gender-equal pay should be intelligence-equal pay—all the smart people get paid a lot more than the stupid ones.
2. Candy store child beggars. Every time I go to the candy store now, there’s always some little punk kid in there who comes up to me asking for a dollar. Since I rarely carry any cash, I can usually honestly say “Go f*** yourself, punk” without feeling like a jerk. But the real question is this: Why don’t these kids have a dollar for candy? Our candy industry must be in tremendous peril if kids don’t have candy dollars. Either major financial subsidies for chocolate farmers are needed, or the government must consider issuing “candy grants” so that these kids can get their freaking gumballs and lemon drops.
3. A tiny sandwich at college costs $7. My wife recently transferred schools and was horrified to find that a quick-serve sandwich that she could make for about 50 cents at home was on the school cafeteria’s menu for $6.99. That’s almost seven dollars! And that’s almost 10 dollars! Whoever is elected to lead this country must take a firm stand against profit-hungry universities and tell them “Dammit, don’t be chargin’ no 50 bucks for no two pieces of bread with a slice of baloney!”
4. American cars still suck. The new President needs to tell American automakers to stop sucking, perhaps by issuing an executive order to Ford that it must make every car as awesome-looking and well-equipped as the Batmobile.
5. People are still retarded with their money. Despite the recent and ongoing recession scare, most Americans haven’t learned a thing about financial responsibility. I propose that the next President increase the income tax to 90% and use the money to buy people the things they really need first—affordable housing, a college education, and a car that isn’t a Mercedes when you’re only making $15,000 a year. And yes, I’m advocating Super-Big Government at this point because most of the country has proven that it’s as responsible with its money as a five-year-old in a toy store.
6. Deal or No Deal is still around. Presidential veto, executive order, secret assassination—something to get this piece of crap game show off my television. Seriously, why are people so fascinated with this show? It’s just a guessing game with large dollar signs. And speaking of television…
7. Yet another year without a new Star Trek TV series. By my estimates, each month that the world goes by without a new Star Trek television series being produced, our nation is losing upwards of $500 trillion dollars in generated revenue. Our new President must command Paramount to produce a new Star Trek series. Oh, and make sure former Trek producer Rick Berman gets sent to Guantanamo Bay or something so he can’t screw this one up too.
8. Rampant prostitute inflation. While the U.S. inflation rate is hovering somewhere between 3% and 5%, several important staples are skyrocketing in price at 20-50% per year—things like gas, milk, and especially hookers! My buddy said that the same whore who used to charge just $100 an hour just upped her prices to $150 an hour last week. That’s a 50% increase right there! The Federal government must do something quickly to help ensure that the rich and poor alike have equal access to street walkers, or our nation may fall into another Great Unsexed Depression.

I urge you to e-mail both major candidates and insist that their economic plans be revised to address these burning issues, lest their prophecies of financial turmoil if we elect “the other guy” should come true!

Over the course of the last several months, I’ve been conducting an informal study on when the best time is to go grocery shopping. The purpose of this study was to determine exactly when one should go grocery shopping in order to obtain the best combination of fresh produce, smaller crowds, fast service, and cheaper prices.

In order to make this a genuine, science-y study, we decided to make the comparisons between shopping trips as standardized as possible. So for each time period, our crack team of scientists (i.e. they were on crack at the time) went to a series of grocery stores and purchased the same five items at each location:

1. A gallon of milk
2. A loaf of bread
3. A roll of toilet paper
4. Five red delicious apples
5. The trashiest news tabloid available

Today, the Punny Money Analytical Institute of Lasers and Mathematics is proud to announce the results of this study. Here is a sample of the results broken down by time of experiment.

Tuesday at 6pm

Tuesday at 6pm was determined to be the worst possible time to enter a grocery store due to a variety of factors. Tuesday evening appeared to be a popular time for homemakers to give cooking dinner from scratch the one-finger salute and instead opt for a trip to the nearby grocery store’s hot food bar.

Upon arrival at the grocery store, our scientists discovered that parking spaces were a rarity—scooped up by rabid soccer moms and agitated businessmen within 2/10ths of a second of becoming available. Three scientists and one Nissan Sentra received minor injuries on one trip during this testing period.

Inside the store was no better; check-out lines often extended back into the shopping aisles, making it difficult to locate and obtain the toilet paper and magazine. However, most fresh items were still relatively fresh, and dishes at the hot food bar were being continuously replenished.

Average Shopping and Checkout Time: 24 minutes
Average Checkout Price: $15.37
Average Product Quality: Fairly good, though most news tabloids were previously leafed through by customers waiting in long lines.
Pros: Hot foods were freshly made. Several dinnertime meal specials were available.
Cons: That bitch who had 14 items in the 10-item-or-less lane. Who does she think she is?

Thursday at 2pm

Most grocery stores were discovered to be eerily empty at 2pm on any given weekday other than Friday. Our scientists determined that this may be due to people who have real jobs (unlike grocery store scientists) typically are at work at 2pm on a weekday afternoon. The only exception to this rule proved to be people who work at grocery stores, as not only were the stores devoid of most customers, but it was pretty damn hard to find more than one employee in the whole place. This resulted in seven times the normal wait for assistance in locating hard-to-find items.

In some instances, as few as half a dozen customers in a store at 2pm proved to be overwhelming to the lonesome store clerk, sometimes resulting in multiple customers being queued in the only open checkout line for 15 minutes or longer. The typical customer shopping at this time was an 80-year-old woman doing her shopping for the next 5 years and paying by personal check.

At the same time, shopping aisles were easy to navigate, and most fresh items were still fresh from being stocked earlier in the morning. If anything, selecting the trashiest tabloid available was difficult because many new ones had just arrived at the stores only hours earlier.

Average Shopping and Checkout Time: 26 minutes
Average Checkout Price: $16.08
Average Product Quality: Decent, though that one old lady must have molested every apple on the stand before deciding to get oranges instead.
Pros: Empty store. Great time and place to have a laser tag fight if you could manage it.
Cons: Most of the store staff was likely in the back room watching soap operas.

Friday at 1am

Just 11 hours after the Thursday afternoon shopping excursion proved enough to produce an entirely different shopping experience. Of the grocery stores involved in this experiment, only two were open this late (24 hours a day, in both cases), so the results only take into account averages from those two stores.

Weekday late-nights proved to be just as futile a venture for those requiring customer assistance as shopping on a weekday afternoon but for entirely different reasons. That’s because late-night grocery stores are typically manned by stoned teenagers. In fact, in one instance, our grocery scientists determined that they could have walked out of the store without paying even after loudly announcing “I am stealing all of the items in my cart” within three feet of several checkout clerks, all of whom were busy gazing pensively into the lasers of their checkout scanners.

There was no such item as “fresh” food at 1am on a weekday night. After all, most stores restock later on in the morning, so pretty much everything had been sitting out for at least 20 hours at that point. Most produce shelves were bare, save for a handful of midget unripened bananas and bruised apples. The only available milk gallons typically expired within the next 3-6 days instead of the usual 10-12 days. And for some inexplicable reason, the toilet paper just wasn’t as soft as it is during the day. For this reason, several more marked-down items were usually available.

Fortunately the shopping aisles were all but deserted, and the stoned teenagers had some sort of pre-programmed, almost robotic ability to scan items twice as fast as normal.

Average Shopping and Checkout Time: 10 minutes
Average Checkout Price: $14.97 (or zero, if they’d gone through with it)
Average Product Quality: Miserable. The oranges were, in fact, browns.
Pros: A lightning-fast shopping experience.
Cons: Produce you wouldn’t feed a hobo. Plus, it’s one in the freaking morning and everyone else with any sense is in bed.

Saturday at Noon

This is not the time you want to go grocery shopping for five measly items, our scientists determined. In addition to the normal crowds of weekday evenings, most parents also bring their school-aged children along, and most of these children would have rather been in school than being dragged around looking at candies and toys their parents won’t buy for them.

Checkout lines were always horribly long because the typical customer on a Saturday afternoon is there to buy most of the next week’s groceries. Navigating shopping aisles was like tip-toeing through a mine field of screaming children and other once-a-week shoppers.

Item freshness varied, as some produce appeared to have been restocked that morning while many others would likely sit there unreplenished until Monday morning. Specialty departments, such as Meats or the Bakery, were unmanned. Most of the tabloid magazines were starting to look raggedy.

Average Shopping and Checkout Time: 27 minutes
Average Checkout Price: $16.52
Average Product Quality: Varied from good to awful.
Pros: Uh… none really.
Cons: There are a million better things you could be doing with your Saturday afternoon. Everyone’s children misbehave more than your own, especially in grocery stores.

Wednesday at 8am

Bingo. The grocery shopping jackpot.

Specifically Wednesday morning, more than any other weekday morning, proved to be the optimal grocery shopping time. Parking, shopping, and checking out all proved to be quick and simple. Grocery store staff were rested, friendly, and helpful. Most fresh items had been restocked in the previous few hours and were still at their freshest.

Perhaps another point worth noting is that most of the grocery stores examined started their new promotion week on Wednesday, so hitting the store on a Wednesday morning provided the best opportunity to stock up on sale items before they started disappearing from store shelves.

On occasion, the express checkout lanes would fill with people purchasing just one or two items—typically store-brewed coffee and a lunch item for later that day. In these instances, a person with five or more items was sometimes served quicker stepping into a standard checkout lane.

Average Shopping and Checkout Time: 11 minutes
Average Checkout Price: $14.12
Average Product Quality: Freshest and best.
Pros: Super-fast shopping time, and items as fresh as can be.
Cons: Most people leave for work at 8am, so this might not be the best time to go shopping for you.

Our scientists also made another shocking discovery during the course of their investigation. According to several of the grocery store tabloids they purchased, Bigfoot seems to have secretly married Keira Knightley in a wedding ceremony atop the Empire State Building. Stay tuned for more developments in this breaking story, just as soon as our scientists get back from the store.

Think back to the olden days of May and June 2008 when all anyone could talk about were those blasted economic stimulus rebates. The general consensus at the time was, yes please give us money, but don’t expect it to help the economy one bit. That’s because everyone feared that the U.S. population would suddenly grow a collective brain cell and decide to save and invest their money rather than go out and spend it on giant TVs and Nintendo Wii systems.

Fortunately, us U.S. Americans proved to be just as stupid as ever with sudden influxes of cash, and the economic stimulus package seems to have worked exactly as it was planned: the economy grew by 3.3% in the second quarter of the year, pretty much putting a nail in the coffin of recession fears. It seems people really did blow their stimulus checks on skydiving lessons and Hannah Montana concert tickets, once again fueling my fears that any wacky crap I write here seems to come horribly true.

So what’s next for the economy? Is this the “all clear” signal we’ve been waiting for? Can banks go back to giving out $800,000 mortgages to Wal-Mart cashiers? Should you start direct depositing your paycheck at your local shopping mall again? The answer to these questions is a resounding… prossably, a word I just invented meaning both probably and possibly. That 3.3% figure may very well be a fluke, the eye of the hurricane that may soon leave the U.S. economy under 12 feet of water and I.O.U.’s to other countries. Or it might truly be an indication that the worst is behind us.

Either way, there’s little hope at this point that people have learned from their financial mistakes of the last decade or so, so I fully expect this economic crisis will continue to repeat itself every 10 or 15 years. Of course, if you really want to be one of those people who learns from their mistakes, then please make sure you’re walking away from this chapter of American history with the following notes on your cheat sheet:

1. Don’t spend money you don’t have on things you don’t need. If you’re ever tempted to max out your credit cards with a shopping spree at your favorite clothier, please consider wearing the clothes you already own instead. Or just go naked, but only if you’re an attractive woman.
2. You can’t afford that house. You know that huge house you want over there? Yes, that one I’m pointing at right now. You can’t afford the mortgage payments on it. Don’t ask me how I know; I just know. You can afford that house over there. Yes, the one next door to the crap factory.
3. You need to save some money. Remember a few months ago when everyone was losing their jobs and lining up for unemployment and soup kitchens and living under freeway on-ramps? If you don’t, consider yourself lucky. The next time a financial crisis rears its ugly head, if you don’t have a cash cushion tucked away somewhere, you might be one missed paycheck away from being out on the streets.
4. You can’t rely on the government to bail you out every time. There are likely a lot of people for whom those stimulus checks were the only thing keeping them from utter financial turmoil… at least for now. Don’t expect Congress or the President or the Tooth Fairy to save your broke ass every time your bank account is getting empty. Instead, learn to secure your own financial future, and assume for all practical purposes that the government isn’t even there at all—well, except when it wants its tax money.
5. You need to stop listening to what everyone else is saying about the economy and start looking at your own economy. Employment could be as high as 20%, but if you’re in a high-demand job making good money, investing wisely and spending cautiously, you’ll likely be able to weather even the worst of nationwide financial disasters.

Stay tuned to see what the third quarter of 2008 brings for the economy. And since my prognostications of late seem to come eerily true, I’d like to forecast that July through September will see ridiculous financial growth brought on by me winning every major lottery jackpot in the nation and then spending all of the winnings on constructing the world’s tallest and longest sandwich extending across the entire length of the Mojave Desert (a.k.a. the country’s largest sandwich toaster).

Long-time readers will know that I have a penchant for eating. In fact, I just finished eating the entire country of Denmark. Okay, perhaps not Denmark, but a much smaller country nobody really cares about. Suffice it to say I like the yummies.

Usually around mid-afternoon at work, I’ll get the craving for a snack. Over the years, I’ve dealt with this craving in a variety of ways, including:

• Ignoring it. This is what I do about 98% of the time. Part of this is due to my desire not to gain 300 pounds, and part of it is due to my desire not to lose 300 pounds… sterling. Get it? It’s a currency joke. That would have killed at the World Bank. Anyway…
• Being prepared for it. A couple of years ago, I usually made sure to have a supply of snacks on hand at work for when this craving called. My favorite emergency food supply consisted of a six-gallon tub of assorted snackery including pretzels, cheese puffs, and other stuff with no nutritional value whatsoever. I had to give up this plan, however, as I would sometimes polish off the entire tub in one day if things weren’t going well at work.
• Giving in to the vending machine. This is probably the worst way to deal with mid-afternoon snack cravings. I’ve only done it a few times in nearly five years and always because my brain and stomach just wouldn’t shut up otherwise. I try to keep my wallet low on cash just so I’m not tempted to go the vending machine route at work.

There’s one more snack-attack counterattack tactic that I’ve been employing for the last couple of years: giving in to the communal snack box. Working in a computer lab environment, the head of the lab often goes out and buys snacks for everyone else who works there, usually asking for a small donation put into a change bucket to cover the cost of the snack. For instance, our current “Lab Daddy” purchases boxes and boxes of packages of pretzel bites and requests a donation of 28 cents each time you take a bag to help cover his costs.

It occurred to me earlier today, while eating my sixth bag of lab pretzels in as many days, that this little enterprise is quite ingenious and perhaps a bit profitable. Where does the profit come in? Consider how the normal computer lab pretzel exchange works:

1. Choose your snack. Several varieties are available!
2. Put 28 cents in the Pretzel Fund.
3. Oh wait, all you have are dollar bills.
4. The Lab Daddy just saw you take some pretzels. You better put in something or you’ll look like a cheap jerk.
5. You repeat this each time you go for a bag. The 28-cent requested donation becomes 72 cents of profit for Lab Daddy.

Now I know Lab Daddy isn’t really out to make a profit on this; he’s just being really nice and saving us from having to spend a dollar on the same bag of pretzels in the company vending machine. And despite the “honor system” in place, I’m sure not everyone is putting in their 28 cents per bag. A more sinister person, however, such as yourself, might see this as the perfect opportunity to squeeze a few extra pennies out of your day job. Assuming you have trustworthy co-workers, it just might work too!

Oh, and in case you ever find yourself on the other side of this delicious scheme, here are a few strategies to help make sure you’re not putting extra pennies in your Lab Daddy’s pockets:

• Use exact change, or take more than one. For pretzels that run 28 cents a bag, either put in a quarter and three pennies, or take three bags and hide the other two for later.
• Announce your intentions. If Lab Daddy is watching your pretzel pickup, and you only have large bills, toss one into the donation bucket in plain sight and say something like “That should cover me for the next X bags.”
• Bring your own snacks. This way, you know you’re paying 28 cents a bag for your pretzels. Just don’t forget them at home, and don’t go through them faster than you would the communal stash.
• Open a competing snack shack. Beat Lab Daddy at his own game by starting your own vending service. If necessary, price below your cost to start and you’ll drive Lab Daddy out of business. Of course, if you ever need Lab Daddy’s help with your work, expect him to change your account passwords and delete your files at random.

A word of caution before starting a communal snackateria at your workplace: Be sure to keep it on the down-low. Otherwise you might risk people from other departments sneaking through for a freebie. Or you might earn the ire of your workplace’s vending contractors who could see you as stealing their business; don’t blame me if you leave work late one evening only to be blocked in by 12 Coca-Cola machines.

Shawn Johnson, 2008 gold-medal Olympic gymnast and pint-sized jailbait, will be taking home a whopping paycheck of zero from the U.S. Olympic Committee this year. The same goes for swimming sensation Michael Phelps, beach volleyball vixens Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh, and fencing champ Mariel Zagunis.

Yet somehow, despite the cost of blowing tiny countries like Georgia off the map, Russia is still finding the extra dough to cough up a $150,000 cash prize to any of its Olympians who bring home the gold. Even Afghanistan just gave the country’s first ever medal winner a free house! In fact, the U.S. is one of few countries whose government provides no regular subsidies or payments to its Olympic athletes.

Somehow, though, I suspect Shawn Johnson and her fellow American gold medalists won’t have to worry about keeping roofs over their heads. Johnson, who attends a public high school in Iowa, is expected to score around $1 million in endorsement as a result of her accomplishments in Beijing. Michael Phelps already has six- and seven-figure deals with companies like Visa and AT&T.

For the typical American, a million dollars can go a long way. In fact, if invested wisely, a person of any age could live a decent life off the interest alone. Of course, tell that to any of the thousands of bankrupt former superstar athletes who may have once owned cars more expensive than our houses. Sadly, for Olympians like Johnson and Phelps, endorsements tend to fade as quickly as the Games themselves. And for gymnasts like Johnson, many of whom only get one shot at Olympic gold in the face of ever-increasing competition from the next generation, the sponsorships that follow from Olympic glory rarely guarantee an easy life.

Remember Kerri Strug from the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta? She still scores the occasional tiny commercial deal, but she’s held a variety of “common” jobs since her valiant performance on the vault that led Team USA to gymnastics gold. She’s been everything from an elementary school teacher in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. to an Olympic news correspondent. Shawn Johnson, despite her gold-medal performance on the balance beam in Beijing, probably won’t see endorsement deals quite as grand as Strug’s. Worst of all, by the time the London Summer Games roll around in 2012, Johnson will be 20 years old—ancient in the world of women’s gymnastics.

At least Johnson’s family has indicated that any money from commercial deals would go straight to her college education. But if she wants to keep living the life of a million-dollar Olympian, Johnson may want to consider a high-paying career track like medicine… or software engineering. How about it, Shawn? Get your comp. sci. degree and we can code the night away together…

As has been widely reported in all of the respectable financial media outlets, Olive Garden’s Never-Ending Pasta Bowl is back for a limited time. You may recall my last attempt to get my money’s worth out of Olive Garden’s Bowl of LIES.

This time will be different.

Much like an Olympic athlete in the months leading up to the Games, I’ve been preparing for this event tirelessly… sometimes eating up to seventeen meals daily just to ready my stomach for the most challenging task of its entire life.

You better believe I’m planning on walking away from this competition a gold-medal winner. Of course, my gold medal will be in the slightly less common composition of a giant wad of pasta sitting in my tummy. Hopefully gold-medal American gymnast Shawn Johnson doesn’t wander into the Olive Garden while I’m there; she’s so tiny that I might mistake her for an Italian sausage and eat her. I bet she’s pretty tasty too.

Tune in tomorrow as Punny Money Olympics Week continues, live from the stomach-pumping room at the hospital down the street.

It just doesn’t make sense. I’m not really a big sports fan at all. I mean, I’ll watch the occasional baseball or football game, and about the only sports I play are on a Nintendo Wii. So why have I logged over 20 hours of Olympic watching in the last 10 days?

An even better question: why are the rest of you watching so many Olympic events with me? The rest of the year, I bet 75% of you run out of the room screaming at the sight of a sporting event on your television. And I know that virtually all of you would never dream of spending even 10 minutes watching sports like rowing or synchronized diving or rhythmic gymnastics if they didn’t have the word “Olympic” prepended to their names.

And the sporting events that Americans actually watch outside of the Olympics? They’re barely mentioned at the Summer Games. Baseball is just an afterthought as the American team is composed of minor-league wannabes filling in for major leaguers who wouldn’t dare leave their teams for weeks or even months in the middle of real American baseball season. Basketball gets some decent Olympic coverage—but America stopped caring about professional basketball about 15 years ago. And football? Yeah, that’s what the rest of the world calls soccer, so don’t expect to see touchdowns and two-point conversions at any Olympics on this planet.

So if we don’t watch fencing and beach volleyball and table tennis the other 1446 days of every four years, why are we suddenly glued to our TV tubes for two straight weeks to watch these bizarre sports, most of which America sucks at? I’ll tell you why (and finally tie this article into something money-related, lest I waste my once-a-year off-topic permit): the Olympics are an escape from the financial woes of our everyday lives.

Most people will probably admit that the Olympics provide a nice diversion from normalcy. After all, the Summer Games only happen every four years, so the Olympics are something special—not just some ho-hum boring annual event. But notice that I said the Olympics provide an escape specifically from financial woes. How am I drawing such a conclusion? Well, how else do you explain why we watch 16-year-old girls in skin-tight outfits swinging around on bars and dancing on balance beams only once every four years? Am I still not making sense? Okay, let’s look at it this way:

• The Olympic games are the most expensive sporting spectacles ever. Putting together a venue for the Olympic games is an expensive proposition. It’s estimated that China spent 12 yuan (approximately $293 gazillion U.S. dollars) to put together the Beijing games. Poor people like us, for some crazy reason, enjoy watching countries spend a ton of money on temporary things. In a few more days, nobody’s going to give a damn about the Beijing Water Cube or Bird’s Nest or Ping Pong Castle. Maybe we just feel good knowing that we use our personal money for more practical things like inflatable furniture and high-definition mailboxes.
• Most Olympic athletes are, and forever shall be, poorer than us. Except for the gold-medal winners of the big sports who are pretty much guaranteed cushy endorsement deals, 99% of the athletes you see at the Olympic games are dirt poor. Heck, most of the American Olympians are probably making less money than your typical four-year degree-holder. So yes, that guy from Botswana can run 100 meters while you’re still saying “100 meters,” but at least you have food on your table every night.
• Gold medals are shiny. Forget that many of these Olympic sports have National and World Championships that also award gold medals to top finishers. There’s something about the phrase “Olympic gold” that consistently pulls in those TV viewers. Perhaps if we awarded big hunks of precious metals to doctors, police officers, and sanitation workers, people might start caring about them a little more.
• The Olympics are a free vacation away from garbage TV programs. While technically the Olympics are reality television, it’s leaps and bounds above the other reality television NBC has to offer (except American Gladiators which is awesome so shut up). Sure, we could do something crazy like turn off the TV and go outside, but why would we want to do that when we can get over 400 different Olympic events beamed halfway across the universe into our living rooms for cheap or free.
• If you don’t watch the Olympics, you’re a Communist. The U.S. has so successfully commercialized the 2008 Beijing Olympic games—despite the fact that they’re being held in the most Communist country left today—that not tuning in and watching the Nike and United Airlines commercials would be like giving away your constitutional right to sit on your ass and watch other people exercise competitively. The Chinese are already trouncing us in the gold medal standings; you don’t want them to come over here and force their economic growth and prosperity on us, do you?

Essentially the Olympics become much less about the sport and far more about the spectacle—the super-expensive, gold-plated, sponsor-supported spectacle. I don’t know about you, but my wallet feels a little bit heavier just watching a few rounds of women’s floor exercises… well, at least until I start shelling out for assorted Shawn Johnson merchandise.

Another anime convention weekend away from home is another opportunity to live a few days the way mother nature intended us to—shelling out tons of cash at destination hotels and restaurants. This past weekend marked our first trip to the Baltimore Convention Center in three years, and boy how things have changed. Instead of being a noisy, obnoxious tourist trap, Baltimore has quickly transformed itself into a noisier, even more obnoxious tourist trap. Seriously, I expect Baltimore will be annexed by Hell itself within the next decade.

With home a 90-minute drive away, we had to rely on whatever food-like entities we could procure in the area for three days. We sampled a broad spectrum of culinary creations ranging from the barely edible to the questionably legal. Here now is a review of some of the food options we explored that await travelers hitting up Downtown Baltimore and the surrounding areas for a weekend of conventiony goodness, starting with the best and working our way down the depths of the Baltimore food abyss.

BWI Embassy Suites Continental Breakfast

We ate there: Friday, Saturday and Sunday for breakfast

I’ll start things off with the best of the food we encountered over the weekend, and it was just steps from our hotel room near BWI Airport. Included in the price of the room was a complimentary assortment of breakfast dishes served for several hours each morning. Options included typical fare such as eggs, sausage, chipped beef, cereals, breads, coffee, and juices as well as cooked-to-order omelets and—my favorite—make-your-own Belgian waffles. Oh man, those waffles were amazing. You just pour in your batter, close the lid, turn it around, and you’ve got yourself Waffle Heaven in two minutes. Available toppings included a giant barrel of butter, strawberries drowned in syrup, and a few other fruit choices that varied by day. My only complaint was that the timers on the waffle makers were kind of flaky. Sometimes they wouldn’t go off at all, while others they went off too early. Of the seven waffles I had over three days, three experienced minor issues. But still, this was a great treat that got our days started right.

Nick’s Rating: Completely un-poisonous!
Cost: $0 (approximately $30 value)

Burke’s Restaurant and Cafe

We ate there: Saturday for dinner

By late Saturday afternoon, around 20,000 convention-goers had mobbed every single restaurant within half a mile of the Baltimore Convention Center. We tried to get a table for seven at The Cheesecake Factory adjacent to the Inner Harbor, but the wait would have been nearly two hours. After walking a few more blocks, we stumbled upon Burke’s, a restaurant on the lower floor of some sort of comedy club. They were busy too, so our party was seated at two separate booths. The hostess quietly muttered that we guys were killing her.

The food at Burke’s was pretty good, though anything would have tasted good after eight hours of hard convention labor. I had a soft crab cake sandwich which turned into more of a two-pieces-of-bread-that-I-ate-first-and-then-I-ate-the-soft-crabs deal, but it was still tasty. I also ordered a side of potato pancakes with applesauce that rocked out in my mouth. My wife and I washed it all down with a bottle of white zin. Having become accustomed to the cheapest bottle of restaurant wine anywhere near DC running at least $20, we were surprised that this one only ran $12. We wished we had had two!

Nick’s Rating: Largely edible!
Cost: $25 for food (though our convention paid for that), $12 for alcohol

Potbelly’s Sandwich Works

We ate there: Friday for lunch (carried out)

Having been sent on an errand to the nearby Best Buy (which wasn’t as nearby as we’d thought), I swung by the Potbelly’s across the street to snag some lunch in an attempt to avoid eating whatever the Baltimore Convention Center itself was serving. The line was long, as Potbelly’s lines usually are at lunchtime. After 20 minutes or so, I finally emerged with two chicken salad sandwiches on wheat and a bottle of IBC Cream Soda. My wife loves that cream soda, so I got her one so she wouldn’t mind my flirtations with convention-going costumed catgirls as much. The sandwiches themselves were all right but a little light on the chicken salad. But at least it wasn’t Convention Center food…

Nick’s Rating: It was food!
Cost: $11

7-Eleven

We ate there: Friday for dinner

After a hard day at the convention, we were rewarded with a short walk to the nearby First Mariner Arena and a concert of my favorite Japanese band of all time, JAM Project. Before standing in line for the general admission seating, we took a walk across the street to the only quick-service food joint we could see—7-Eleven. I tried out the 2-for-$2.22 hot dogs while my wife went with the Polish Kielbasa which appeared to just be a hot dog painted gray. The one saving grace of these 7-Eleven hot dogs came in the form of my favorite button of all time—the “Push For FREE Chili” button. I’ve never pushed a button so hard and for so long in my life. Really, 7-Eleven would have made more money off of me selling the chili with a “Push for FREE Hot Dog” button. The dogs and chili themselves were mediocre (what do you expect?), but they kept us going for the next few hours of line-standing and concert-watching.

Nick’s Rating: Food was blah, button was fantastic
Cost: $5 (including a bag of chips)

Baltimore Convention Center Refreshment Stand

We ate there: At the brink of starvation—I mean, Saturday and Sunday for lunch

In the deepest, darkest depths of the BCC sat a seemingly innocuous refreshment booth serving a limited menu of burgers, hot dogs, fries, and other demi-foods. I traveled there first on Saturday mid-afternoon as work at the convention was furious and further journeying for food was not an option. I went for a pre-packaged Caesar salad while my wife had the “chicken tenders with fries.” The salad was mostly green and brown lettuce with a few stale croutons and two cherry tomatoes. It was a chore to finish, but I ate it all fearing that I’d malnourish myself and be rushed to a Baltimore hospital whose food would be about twelve miles below the bottom of this list. My wife indicated that the chicken and fries were, indeed, chicken and fries. I tried one of the fries and wished I hadn’t.

I returned Sunday just before takedown of the convention began looking to try the burger. When I arrived, I was told that the only remaining items were the cheesesteak subs. I ordered two, at which point I was told the following ingredients were no longer available:

• Sub rolls
• Cheese
• My dignity

Desperately hungry, I ordered it anyway and ended up receiving giant piles of processed shredded steak-ish meat covering hot dog rolls. It took almost 30 minutes to get through the whole pile, at which point I realized just how terrible the steak-ish meat really was. I mean, it was horrible. I spent the next 20 minutes in the restroom regretting the day that cow was ever born. The fact that the kind lady in the refreshment booth gave me over a pound of the stuff normally would have kept me quiet no matter how bad it was. But it was a new breed of bad, sort of like murderous gangsters who go on to become serial rapists who target blind people.

Nick’s Rating: Stomach-shatteringly awful
Cost: The usual BCC rip-off-because-we-can prices—about $25 on Saturday and $16 on Sunday for two people

The next time you find yourself in the Baltimore Convention Center area, be sure to carefully choose your dining options as there are plenty to pick from at a variety of price points. And if you’re planning to eat at the BCC itself, don’t forget to update your will first… or at least stay away from the Sunday leftovers.

I think it was about eight or nine years ago—and it happened overnight, perhaps on a Tuesday—that marriage became all about money.

Consider the case of RoseMary Shell and Wayne Gibbs. You can read the article for the full story, but here’s a quick summary of what went down in short-attention-span format:

1. Guy likes girl; girl likes guy. Guy and girl date.
2. Relationship goes nowhere. Girl moves away for $81,000/year job.
3. Guy proposes a year later. Girl accepts, leaves job and friends, moves back with guy.
4. Guy wants to postpone wedding. Eventually guy and girl break up.
5. Girl moves away, takes crappy $31,000/year job.
6. Girl sues guy, wins $150,000 from him.

It really makes you wanna run out and get engaged now, doesn’t it?

Anyway, I wanted to highlight this story because it provides a lot of great examples of how money and marriage can interact.

• The debt of one… The girl in the story brought a boat-load of debt with her going into the relationship, though she disputes just how much that debt was. When postponing the marriage, the guy indicated that undisclosed debt was one of the reasons. Lesson learned: Tell the poor schmuck you’re marrying if you have tens of thousands of dollars of debt.
• Beware of leaving your life behind for love. Regardless of how debt-saddled the girl in the story was, she was doing something about it by making $81,000 a year at her previous job. All it took was a shiny five-figure engagement ring to make her give it all up. (Though you have to wonder why this woman went from making $81k to $31k a few years later.) Lesson learned: Keep your financial future secure before, during, and after any major relationship.
• If you’re going to pay off someone else’s debt, know what you’re getting into. The guy in the story must be fairly wealthy if he can afford to pay off $30,000 of the girl’s debt and still have enough in the bank to give her an enormous engagement rock. (Or maybe he charged it all on credit cards.) Lesson learned: Marry her first, then give her lots of money.
• I don’t believe in pre-nups, but… how about a pre-pre-nup? The couple in this story could have benefited from continuing to lead their lives separately until their wedding day. This way, girl would have had her $81,000 a year job to fall back on, and guy wouldn’t be out $150,000. Lesson learned: Have a plan for what happens if the engagement falls apart.
• And about that $150,000 judgment… what the hell, jury? Engagements fall apart all of the time and you don’t see couples suing each other for six figures. (That doesn’t happen until the marriage falls apart!) In a way, I hope this ruling encourages couples to use their engagements more wisely to examine their relationships and finances; but in another way, what the hell??? Lesson learned: Stay out of Florida courtrooms. Heck, just stay out of Florida altogether.

Oh, and ladies, if you’re having problems getting your man to commit to the idea of marriage now, wait until he reads this article. If stories like this keep making headlines, I fully expect the divorce rate will plummet… because no one in their right mind would commit to getting married!

As was first reported on Punny Money (yes, weeks before even the freaking New York Times picked up the story), a shortage is plaguing gas station owners around the country. Fortunately for people with cars, that shortage isn’t of gas or overpriced convenience store food, but of the number “4.”

As you are certainly familiar with by now, the plastic lettering on gas station price signs have been getting a lot of exercise lately—sometimes changing daily in response to imaginary high demand and signs of political flatulence in the Middle East. Due to the sudden run-up in gas prices, however, many refueling stations were woefully unprepared for the urgency with which they would need number “4″ letters for their pricing signs. After all, it hasn’t even been a year since we last saw $2.xx gas.

This was all great fuel (hahaha) for a humorous fictional story on gas stations running out of number “4s” before running out of gas. Unfortunately the story has become a sad reality as lettering shortages really are striking gas stations nationwide. Wait, did I say sad? I meant hilarious!

Thankfully, relief is finally on the way for letter-poor service station operators as the President recently issued an executive order authorizing companies to drill for plastic lettering in panda bears and bald eagles.

As I mentioned earlier, the folks at the New York Times finally woke up long enough to report on this story that I first imagined back in April. April. Come on, guys. What’s next? The Iraq War really finished back in 2006, and you’re not gonna get around to reporting it until 2011? Sheesh.

Well, for up-to-the-minute news on everything that freaking matters, stay tuned to Punny Money. But if you want your news three months late and based in reality, then by all means—go read so-called professionally researched “news”papers… or as I like to call them, last-week’s-news-papers.