Be careful this Monday... After all, it is Monday the 27th...

What? You didn't think Monday the 27th was unlucky? Let me guess, you're one of those unlucky Friday the 13th people, aren't you... Well think again!

It all comes down to the numbers... Insurance numbers, to be specific... Analysis of insurance claims show Monday the 27th to have a statistically higher incidence of accidents than other days: 5% more to be exact... Insurance claims went up both February the 27th and March the 27th earlier this year... And those didn't occur right after a big holiday weekend! So it is the lack of sleep from being out shopping or partying all weekend... Or perhaps it is because of Monday falling so close to the end of the month and everyone is trying to meet those end-of-month deadlines... At this point, no one really knows...

Regardless of the cause though, you be careful you there... You know how unlucky those Monday the 27th's are...

Thanksgiving is here! Which means most people in the U.S. will be gathering with friends and family to share a Thanksgiving meal... Which makes for a lot of food! How much, you ask? Well, the Census Bureau would like us to consider the following:

• 265 million turkeys will be raised this year in the United States... Minnesota tops the list raising than 45 million of them! And if that isn't enough, the U.S has already imported over $6 million more in live turkeys so far this year - 96% of them from Canada!
• 664 million pounds of cranberries will be raised this year in the U.S... Wisconsin is raising more than half with over 375 million pounds... And once again, Canada is supplying even more, with over $1.3 million in cranberries imported this year!
• Over 1.6 billion pounds of sweet potatoes - otherwise known as yams - we raised last year... How they can count all the cranberries this year but not all the sweet potatoes remains a mystery... Maybe it's because the potatoes are underground?
• 1.8 billion bushels of wheat will be produced in the U.S. this year... And over 30 percent of that comes from two states: Kansas and North Dakota...
• 768,000 tons of green beans have been contracted for production this year... Wisconsin, not being content with cranberries, is producing more than half of them!
• 3 million tons of sweet corn have also been contracted... Keeping the interstate rivalry going, Minnesota is producing a third of those, but they don't say how much of that will be creamed...

All of which adds up to a whole lot of food... And given some conditions in the world, I - for one - and thankful that this food is plentiful, readily available, and part of it is going to end up on our dinner table tomorrow...

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Grape Guy may have squeezed out a new record.

An American man caught 116 tossed grapes in his mouth in three minutes in what he hopes will become a new Guinness World Record, according to a Nov. 13 Associated Press story.

Steve "the Grape Guy" Spalding, 44, of Dallas, Texas also set a personal record for endurance grape catching, using his mouth to catch 1,203 grapes thrown from a distance of 15 feet over half an hour, according to publicist Deanna Brown.

No Guinness World Records officials were present at Spalding's grape-gobbling attempt, carried out Thursday in Australia overlooking Sydney's iconic Opera House. But Brown said observers had filmed Spalding's attempt and would be submitting forms to Guinness officials in the hopes of creating a new record for speed grape-catching -- the most grapes caught in the mouth over three minutes.

Meanwhile, reports are that "Watermelon Guy" is still in critical condition in a local hospital.

It all started with a medical study on aspirin and heart disease at Johns Hopkins University... The goal was to document the affects of aspirin on platelets in the bloodstream and how those affects benefit people with heart disease or at risk of a heart attack... The problem was that the participants had to refrain from smoking and from eating or drinking items that affect platelets... This included caffeinated drinks, wine, grapefruit juice, and chocolate...

"We knew they would offend," Diane Becker of the Johns Hopkins University's School of Medicine said... "Some people said to us, 'I can do anything but I can't stay off my chocolate...' If people said, 'I will try my very best,' we said, 'OK do your very best, but it is crucial that you don't eat chocolate for 24 to 48 hours before you come in for testing...'"

Well, once a chocoholic, always a chocoholic... "Nobody ate like a chocolate chip. If they were going to eat it, they ate some chocolate," Becker said... "It went all the way from from a chocolate chip cookie to someone who ate a gallon of chocolate ice cream with chocolate chunks and two chocolate-chip cookies at one sitting..." So they had to cut them from the medical study...

But they took their blood anyways, and that made them do a new small study: A study on the affects of chocolate on platelets! And believe it or not, they found chocolate helps! The blood of chocolate eaters is slower to clot than the blood of the volunteers who resisted chocolate and there is less thromboxane (a platelet waste product) in their urine... Basically, it does the same thing as aspirin for heart health, just to a much lesser degree...

(It may not help as much as aspirin, but every little bit helps, right?)

Since Christmas is just around the corner, and since there has been a power shift in Washington, D.C., here's a helpful guide to assist you in keeping the political parties straight this Christmas:

Republicans say "Merry Christmas!"
Democrats say "Happy Holidays!"

Democrats get back at the Republicans on their Christmas list by giving them fruitcakes.
Republicans re-wrap them and send them to in-laws.

Democrats let their kids open all the gifts on Christmas Eve.
Republicans make their kids wait until Christmas morning.

Republican parents have no problem buying toy guns for their kids.
Democrats refuse to do so. That is why their kids pretend to shoot each other with dolls.

Democrats' favorite Christmas movie is "Miracle on 34th Street."
Republicans' favorite Christmas movie is "It's a Wonderful Life."
Right-Wing Republicans' favorite Christmas movie is "Die Hard."

Republicans first began thinking like Republicans when they stopped believing in Santa Claus.
Democrats became Democrats because they never stopped believing in Santa Claus.

Democrat men like to watch football while the women fix holiday meals.
On this, Republicans are in full agreement.

Every once in a while someone reports on progress being made on creating an invisibility cloak... Well, in spite of the best efforts by scientists and engineers at major universities all over the world, the butterfly got there first! Specifically, the Greta Oto - otherwise known as the Glasswing Butterfly... Covering most of Central America and the northern part of South America, this butterfly has wings that are mostly transparent... You can see right through them! Take a look:

Ever seen a political campaign in America? Even after it's over you're reminded for weeks because of all the little roadside political ads scattered liberally across the landscape... But now, those signs are worth their weight in food! Sticky Fingers Rib and Barbecue house will give you a free appetizer if you bring in one those little signs! Chain co-owner Jeff Goldstein said "just think of those leftover campaign signs as oversized, roadside gift certificates..."

So if you live in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, or Tennessee and happen to live near a Sticky Fingers restaurant, go out and grab a political sign - the offer is good through Wednesday, November 15th...

With the results of this year's mid-term elections hanging on the result of a Senate race in Virginia, people are going over the votes with a fine tooth comb... So more and more people are noticing one district where no votes are being counted... Specifically, Precinct 502, District 3 is the problem - no one ever votes there... Not only were no votes cast there yesterday, when voter turnout was higher than normal everywhere else, but there have been no votes counted there since the district was created!!!

Why, you ask? Because the entirety of District 3 is underwater in the James river!!!

This matters because the computers counting the votes for the entirety of James City County recognize the precinct... If the precinct exists, there has to be votes to count... Since 0 votes are reported, the computer thinks the ballots are outstanding and not only reports that precinct as still pending, but also the absentee ballots for the entire county, and therefore the entire county as a whole is reported to the state as incomplete!

Ah well, the real ballots for the rest of the county are there when people go looking, and for the Registrar of James City County, it makes one precinct easy to count...

Seems like companies don't do anything these days without checking the numbers... The poll numbers, that is... If enough people aren't interested, the company doesn't act... Which is when it gets interesting... How do you know the people mean it when they say they are or are not interested?

Take health surveys, for example... Simon Chadwick, a market-research consultant, says polling people for health issues can be especially tricky because some groups of people simply won't talk about some subjects... When doing a study for a pharmecutical company, he found that people admitting to erectile issues in the US were enough to make the company interested... So they went international... "And it turns out that erectile disfunction doesn't exist in Mexico," he said... "You can't get an answer on that topic. You know? It exists in Canada, but it apparently doesn't exist among the French-speaking Canadian."

So if you want to avoid a disease, just read up on the polls, and then go where it isn't!

There are some who say keeping up with the Joneses is hard... Well it just got harder... Yesterday the Joneses set a world record for the largest gathering of people with the same surname!

It all started when Welsh broadcaster S4C decided to sponsor and attempt to break the world record set by the Norbergs in Sweden... The got 583 Norbergs together... The Joneses shattered that by getting 1,224 together at the Wales Millennium Centre last night! Better still, the event topped and entire week - Jones week, of course - of events as people from all over the world gathered in Wales...

And this was no boring gathering... The event was hosted by Blue Peter presenter Gethin Jones and former S4C presenter Gwenllian Jones... It also included a variety show called Jones, Jones, Jones... The Joneses were entertained by pop star Grace Jones, opera singers Dame Gwyneth Jones and Gwyn Hughes Jones, West End star John Owen-Jones and also heard from Sir Tom Jones (who didn't count because his real name is Thomas Woodward) and fellow singers Bryn Terfel Jones and Aled Jones...

Each person at the event had to present identification to observers from Guiness and other independent observers... And like Sir Tom Jones, those who had changed their names or had hyphenated names, while welcome to attend, did not count towards the record attempt... No matter, any and all Joneses are welcome in this family...

So now if you want to keep up, you better have a large family...

The longest-running game show on US tv will never be the same. That's right, after 35 years, Bob Barker plans to retire from "The Price Is Right". He has hosted "The Price is Right" since it began its long run back in 1972, through 35 straight seasons. I suppose now at 82, he's entitled to slow down a bit from taping 5 shows each week! Have a great retirement, Bob!