Lately, when I don't get a response I am expecting and follow up on it, I often get "Sorry, your message got caught in my spam folder". Consider this:

1. You send someone (hereinafter called "the flake") a polite email regarding an important issue, knowing that it is the recipient's duty to address your concern and expecting a reply within a day or two.
2. A week goes by and you hear nothing.
3. You send the flake a second polite message; another couple of days pass, nothing.

At this point, most of the time you say "screw it" and forget the flake exists, as there are many alternatives.

Note I said "most of the time". But if the flake is the gateway to something you really want and there are not a lot of alternatives, maybe you go farther.

4. You get a little pissed off and decide to take further action, even if it means lightly stepping on the flake's toes. So you contact a third person who you know can put the flake on the spot; you tell this person what is going on and ask if he/she can help. The helper can and says "I'll give the flake a call and get back to you".
5. All of a sudden you hear from the flake, who apologizes profusely, even sends you a free sample of a product, after telling you your original message got caught in the Spam folder. You know he values this tool because "Spam" is capitalized. Most flakes are proficient at being flakes and many times nothing happens afterwards anyway; but that is beyond the scope of this item.

Sometimes step 4 is skipped. Either way, I now realize that the spam folder excuse is just that: an excuse – and it's BS.

The flakes have no excuse; it's their spam folder and it's up to them to set it up and deal with it in a way to not miss important communications. We have all this technology to help us get things done, not to use it as a stupid excuse.

I have a spam folder. I don't empty it without giving a quick look to the subject lines of the messages it contains. I am glad I do this because, a couple of times, I have caught items that I wanted or expected. It's a pain in the ass, but necessary. It's like going through your post office mail; you give a quick look and dump most of it.

"Your email went to the spam folder" is the 21st. century's "I got a flat tire" or "The check is in the mail" – 99.9% of the time, a lie.

Don't buy it. Nail the sommbitch!

Most of us know about a certain tiger who was compelled to submit to sex rehab recently. Too early to know if that is going to work (I doubt it); if it does, maybe it would be a good thing for a bunch of catholic priests.

But now, I learned about something else that struck me so hard I just had to write about:

Now we have these "experts" working on "rehabilitating" a female wild tiger because she killed people who stole her cubs, I am not kidding! Go to the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/world/asia/22tigers.html?th&emc=th and read the NYT article.

Some of these schmexperts are isolating tigers so they "grow to fear humans again"; if I were a tiger, I think I would attack if I were scared, so I really don't like the idea of tigers fearing me. Plus I think a tiger's fear is inversely proportional to its hunger at the moment.

Those of us who have seen the numbers know that rehab does not work, except in very few isolated cases. It's just amazing to see the things people dream up to put their energy and resources to work, as if there were not a ton of more important issues we should all be working on.

If this rehab thing is any good, I can think of several much better candidates: cub thieves, members of Congress, bank, insurance and Big Pharma executhieves.

Dear Big Pharma:

Your industry is truly amazing: your accomplishments include:

• the recent deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson (common sense from just reading the news, but here is a reference: http://www.naturalnews.com/026511_cancer_chemotherapy_doctors.html);
• through the years, you have killed more people than all terrorist organizations combined.

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FDA Promotes Unsafe Milk Due to Industry Pressure

I browse news about the FDA and Big Pharma a couple of times a week; I don't recall a single one of those browsing sessions not yielding one or more items about the crimes that these two - the FDA and Big Pharma - continue to commit. Here is one such item that particularly pissed me off, published less that a week ago – February 8, 2009. You can read the whole item here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-smith/fda-promotes-unsafe-milk_b_184886.html.

The title of this post, same as the title of the news item, says it all. I have been writing – on this blog and in my timos web site – about the scariest, most powerful drug cartel in the world, the USA Drug Cartel, not only the biggest and richest one but the best protected one, thanks to the FDA gang. This alliance between the FDA and Big Pharma makes the Italian Mafia look like a bunch of choir boys and girls.

[More]

... and keeps expanding business by perpetrating more crimes against Americans.

The Big Pharma disease mongers, not happy with being able to sell anti-depressants for use on pets, recently obtained approval from their partner in crime – the FDA, another bunch that should be behind bars – to promote the use of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs for use by children age 8 and up.
But wait, there's more: the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee has announced that infants as young as TWO years old need to be screened for high cholesterol!

Read these facts on my web site and try not to toss your cookies: http://www.timos.com/timos/timoCorner/timoArticle.cfm?locale=en_US&itemID=78.

Something else, curious, to say the least: just a few days ago, I took my granddaughter to a place called Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego. Imagine my surprise when, looking to get a cup of coffee, I am directed to the food concession for this hospital for children, which turns out to be part of America's biggest cholesterol palace – a McDonald's. Makes one wonder who gets a referral fee from whom.

This should be enough to shut down several government agencies, including but not limited to the EPA, the FDA, the USDA, and start over.

The Letter Written in the Year 2070 has been circulating since 2002, when it was first published. I just learned about it by chance, a couple of weeks ago, when someone emailed it to me. But I couldn't find an English version anywhere, so I did a translation.

This, you MUST see – and spread it around as much as possible. Just go to this page on my web site.

Some may think it's bullshit or a scare tactic. But it's a possibility. Don't miss it.

Hello there – long time no see.

For the last couple of months, I have been doing a lot of "writing", but not the usual kind. I have been translating articles from English to Spanish. They are now published on my web site at http://www.dircolombia.com/dc/sda/sda.cfm.

The purpose of that site is to connect the US public with the Colombian community both here and in Colombia, mostly for business-related issues (a lot of you know that Colombia is my native country).

Most people, even those who don't speak Spanish, have heard the adage "Salud, dinero y amor" – "Health, wealth and love". I recently started a new section of the site, using the adage as the section's title. That's what the 'sda' in the URL stands for.

The idea is to present material on those three subjects. So far, all but one of the articles come from 'Early to Rise' (ETR), which publishes the best daily email letter I have ever seen – I have been reading it daily for the last 3+ years. The stuff in that letter is excellent. You might want to check out at least some of the articles. If you do, you will find a link at the bottom of each one, where you can subscribe to the newsletter directly with ETR, if you wish.

So, it looks like I'll now be able to get back to creating new posts for this blog, especially about my favorite subject, FOOD/CUISINE.

See you soon,

Carlos (Timo)

Related to the previous posts about Revolting Comedians and Slob Imus:

If you want to have a good laugh, visit this site and see What We Call the News.

Recently, I received several error message e-mails when readers attempted to print entries on this blog; they were unable to print using the "Print" link that appears at the bottom of each entry.

This is not a problem with this blog: it only fails in Internet Explorer 7, not in other browsers. The blog converts the blog entry into an Adobe PDF file, which gives you a nicely formatted page you can print.

THE SOLUTION: install the latest version (8) of Acrobat Reader – it's free and only takes a couple of minutes. To do that, just go to the Adobe site HERE and follow the prompts.

The above is how I fixed the problem; now it works. I apologize for any inconvenience.

Carlos