In an effort to keep my readers on the ball, at the top of their game, or at least up to speed with the world around them, I thought that it might be helpful to use our time together this week to share with everyone some of the more interesting and memorable headlines that I’ve come across over the past few weeks, months, or even years! Obviously I peruse a multitude of media outlets each and every week in search of news headlines and various items that I can rant about here in true creative fashion for your benefit, but every once in a while that very special snip-it comes along that’s just too good to touch…

Below you’ll find a few of my absolute favorites – I hope you enjoy them at least half as much as I did!

Nestles Makes the Very Best…Fish Food

Although widely recognized around the world for an ever-expanding array of delicious sweets, it is a little-known fact to most chocoholics that the producer of their favorite sugary vice also holds a share in providing snacks for many creatures from under the sea as well! Nestles’ Aqua-Treats line of industrial-sized fish foods is utilized by research institutes and aquariums around the globe to provide an alternative source of nutrition that is both more affordable and manageable than traditional food sources, all the while making use of many of the same chemicals found in Nestles’ chocolates to maintain healthy and active lifestyles among animals in captivity.

Available in a variety of shapes and sizes to resemble the smaller species that fish prey upon in the wild, Aqua-Treats are a favorite treat at Sea World locations around the country.

Did Somebody Say, “McLawsuit”?!

Fed up with ongoing legal threats about their products being the leading cause of obesity in America, the Board of Directors of the world’s largest fast-food chain made a risky decision one balmy day in July in an effort to prove to the public once and for all that the pursuit of a healthier lifestyle was one that ought to be addressed on an individual basis rather than left in the hands of corporate executives. Come August 1st, some one hundred McDonalds restaurants located in the country’s largest metropolitan areas saw their menus take a bizarre turn as their most fattening and calorie-intense meals were replaced with low or non-fat alternatives such as fresh fruits and vegetables, along with a massive expansion of their current line of Premium Salads.

The change dominated appetites and local headlines for a solid two weeks until executives at the Golden Arches finally eased up and reverted back to their former fattening menus, all the while feeling pleasantly satisfied that they had proven their point.

1-900-Switcheroo

Although later disregarded as simply a grave computer error, toll-free numbers around the nation made an unscheduled change of course one afternoon in early April 2003 as a disgruntled technical engineer at one of the country’s largest communications corporations decided to have a bit of fun with the mainframe servers that manage call routing for a large number of businesses that offer toll-free numbers for their customer service and support call centers. By merely switching around a few numbers in the central database, callers of 800 numbers were incorrectly directed to the 900 alternative…and vise-versa…thus resulting in a bevy of customers who were either irate because they had been connected to various adult phone services or merely disappointed because they had not.

Lasting for roughly 17 business hours across two days before finally being resolved, the switch obviously ended up costing the technician his job, although quality control agents at several of the involved companies still vouch that it was some of the most intriguing call monitoring that they’ve done in a long time!

Nothing Pleases Those Ornery French Guys…

In late 2003, a season of the popular reality series Survivor had members of the French parliament up in arms when, after reviewing footage from the first ten days of the competition, they determined that the episodes displayed their country in an unfair light and demanded to oversee the production of the remainder of the season if the shooting was to continue. Unwilling to compromise the integrity of their franchise, CBS and creator Mark Burnett abruptly ceased production at their camps in Northern France and scrambled to create a substitute version of the season that was scheduled to debut only months later following Super Bowl XXXIII.

The new season was dubbed Survivor: All-Stars and although it was met by its share of mixed reviews by critics and fans alike, it was rated the most watched season ever, receiving Nielsen ratings within the top ten for every single episode and leaving the French green with envy…

Have You Hovered in a Ford Lately? Well, no…

Always determined to remain at least one step ahead of its competition, the Ford Motor Company announced plans in mid-February to revolutionize the transportation industry and virtually eliminate the threat of increasing fuel costs by introducing a new line of vehicles that are powered by regular water and actually float on a cushion of air above the ground. Mimicking the early concepts of the hovercraft from science fiction tales of days gone past, this modern adaptation used a much more compact design than its predecessor, making it roughly the same size as the average luxury sedan, and its high-tech hydraulic propellant system allowed the vehicle to reach safe speeds upwards of eighty miles per hour at a very affordable cost, thus causing quite an uproar among oil companies big and small.

In an effort to keep a stable economy, several unnamed governments came together and provided a large amount of compensation to the inventors of this new phenomenon in exchange that the idea would simply disappear and shortly thereafter, a major design flaw was announced that rendered the concept grounded until further “research and development” could be conducted.

Consider this informative collection an early gift from me – don’t forget to flip over your calendars tomorrow…