Saturday, July 01, 2006
Altered StatesWe had a pre-holiday picnic at work yesterday. Somebody brought an industrial-sized cake, probably from a warehouse store like Costco, big enough to feed 200 people before hamburgers and hot dogs, or 500 people after. Or the entire population of Uganda for a week. Since the theme was Independence Day, the cake was made as an American flag, white frosting with half-strawberries for the stripes and whole blueberries for the stars.
The cake looked great, except that someone (probably one of the tax accountants) pointed out that were only 49 blueberries arranged on a 7x7 grid, and wanted to know who had "deducted" a star. According to IRS rule 142.76.5.3 in section 7E of the U.S. Tax Code, revision 2, we were not eligible for a star allowance unless we resided in the state in question for at least 45 consecutive days in the previous two months, or the commuting distance is 30.7 miles or greater, whichever comes first. Therefore the violator was subject to a maximum of 2 years in jail and $100,000 fine. We explained to him that no, the cake was really made that way with only 49 blueberries to start with, and the stars were supposed to be the white spaces between the blueberries, not the blueberries themselves. He was skeptical, but said he would research further and issue a ruling in 60 days.
In the meantime, we got busy trying to figure out which state was missing. A bad apple in the group said that at our company, what's missing is the "State of Enlightenment." We said that was too geeky and told him to go back to his computer chess game. Or was that a Sudoku puzzle, I forgot. But how do you go about assigning blueberries to states? There were a few obvious clues: The smallest blueberry went to Rhode Island. California got the weird-looking one that tasted oddly sour. Washington was the plump, juicy, wet one. On the opposite end was Arizona, the dry blueberry shriveled almost like a small plum. By this process of elimination, we got to the 48th blueberry before the accountant told us to get back to work because American productivity was already declining at an alarming rate.
This much we now know. The missing state is either Hawaii or Alaska, states that we usually leave off the map -- we did check, there was no little piece of cake inset to the left or bottom of our big cake. One state is big, cold and oily. The other is sunny, warm and clad in bikinis. And only one of those two gets a blueberry. If anyone has an idea for how to decide, let us know quickly. We are afraid that by next week, the entire cake will be moldy and blue all over.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 8:59 AM
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I am curious. Inquiring minds want to know: Which blueberry did you pick for my state? Is that the one with the bow tie?
# posted by 
: 02 July, 2006 11:15
: 02 July, 2006 11:15
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Welcome to the Pharmamx.com Family!We invite you to visit us at www.pharmamx.com and find our great medicine prices. We provide serious and first class service to all our customers 24/7. If we do not carry a medicine you need just let us know and we will be more than glad to assist you!To show you our gratitude for past purchases and to offer you one more reason to continue purchasing with Pharmamx.com we are offering a limited time 30% discount included on all our medicines. We will keep on giving you the best price and service in the market. Welcome and enjoy your visit to Pharmamx.com.
# posted by : 03 July, 2006 08:35
: 03 July, 2006 08:35
Jon,
Our cake wasn't big enough to include Canada. They deserve a plum instead of blueberries.
Connecticut,
I don't recall exactly, but I think Connecticut got a raspberry.
Anonymous,
Thanks for the invite. Do you sell enhancers and Floo-Bees too?
Our cake wasn't big enough to include Canada. They deserve a plum instead of blueberries.
Connecticut,
I don't recall exactly, but I think Connecticut got a raspberry.
Anonymous,
Thanks for the invite. Do you sell enhancers and Floo-Bees too?
Alaska should get the blueberry. You should use pineapple or a coffee bean for the eternally warm. Besides, they're islands. One of our smaller islands is larger than all of them!
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