If it's not one thing, it's another...

ONE THING:

GOIANIA, Brazil - Police on Thursday accused a Brazilian man of killing and dismembering his 17-year-old British girlfriend, taking pictures of her body parts with his cell phone and stuffing her torso in a suitcase.

She wasn't really his girlfriend, was she? I don't have a girlfriend, but I can figure that if I did, I wouldn't have an overwhelming desire to dismember her and stuff her in a suitcase. Maybe "girlfriend" is the wrong term here.

ANOTHER:

I noticed today that Exxon-Mobil reported earnings ...

Exxon's second-quarter net income rose 14 percent to $11.68 billion, or $2.22 a share, in the quarter.

All the while we kept hearing the stories of how the cost of exploration and supply and demand and the value of the dollar were the chief drivers of the price of gasoline. Now we see that maybe ... just maybe ... they lied to us. Perhaps they were screwing us. Not for nothin', I'm just saying, maybe they were screwing us. Maybe. Can you smell that?

Meanwhile, here are some facts to chew on over your morning coffee or afternoon snack or wherever you read this nonsense, much as I hate to cloud the issue with facts ...

Exxon pulled in $11.68 billion in profits in the second quarter on Thursday, the highest quarterly income ever recorded by a U.S. company. That includes Wal-Mart - for all you Wal-Mart haters out there. Protest the next time an Exxon-Mobil gas station is proposed in town as vehemently as you protest a Wal-Mart and you'll be showing me something. Nitwits.

Exxon earned over $128 million a day, or nearly $1,500 a second during the quarter. The company said that was after it paid $4,100 a second in taxes and $14,700 a second in expenses to run the business. Ya gotta run the business, right?

Exxon's quarterly earnings were slightly larger than the annual gross domestic product of Afghanistan, which was $11.63 billion in 2007, according to the World Bank. We're bombing Afghanistan, so maybe Exxon-Mobil headquarters should be on high alert?

With Exxon's quarterly profit, one could potentially buy Gap Inc., Ford or Starbucks, which have market capitalizations of $11.67 billion, $10.76 billion and $10.69 billion, respectively, according to Reuters data. Starbucks? The coffee, per gallon is probably as expensive as gasoline. It's cheaper to drink oil.

Exxon's quarterly earnings translate to roughly $38.33 per American. Buy yourself something nice.

$11.68 billion could buy roughly 2.95 billion gallons of gasoline, 179,692 new Cadillac Escalades, or 15.57 billion individual Snickers candy bars.
Have a Snickers. They're satisfying. If you could run your Escalade on candy you could be onto something.