That's the TRICON food pyramid, but it looks to me like something from a 007 movie! Chew on that for a while!

I overheard my most-qualified source lecturing her dining partners (who appeared to be her ever-so-patient parents and grand-mother) regarding this shocking information at a restaurant (not a KFC store, by the way) just last week.

I get ALL my best tips this way. If you think the suits are going to give you the straight scoop about what a corporation is up to you need a dose of reality. It's the "little guy", working in the trenches, who REALLY KNOWS what's going on in a big company these days, not the corporate management .. heck they're all out playing golf!

Sometimes, when eavesdropping like this, as you may have experienced yourself, the exact words can be a bit fuzzy. For example, when the waitress asks what you want for dinner you may temporarily tune out the conversation you were so rudely forced to overhear. When you pick it up again, a few minutes later, you're sometimes not sure if they are even talking about the same topic! To a qualified reporter it doesn't matter. Mike has an undergraduate degree in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Washington, and an MBA (Finance) degree from Southern Illinois University, in case you didn't know. So, he's fully QUALIFIED to REPORT on BUSINESS MATTERS!

Following the best journalistic traditions of the NBC broadcast news department (where they just make up stories about exploding gas tanks) he is always able to fill in the details with additional "careful research". This of course, is made infinitely easier now that we have the internet (you don't even have to leave the house, except for that initial eavesdropping part, and if you have good radio scanner you can stay home even for that). Also, he has an extremely fertile imagination. This is critical when the inevitably missing or otherwise unverifiable details rear their ugly heads. Nothing can deter his relentless, constant search for the TRUTH (or a plausible theory, which is good enough for most people)!

She said "The word 'Chicken' does not appear on the menu!" Now I'm reasonably certain she was talking about KFC (although, now that I think about it, there was no chicken on the menu of the restaurant where we were dining at the time.) We were again interrupted by the pesky waitress, so I may have missed a few words at this point. But if you think about it really think about it the girl's right!

Our government regulates this food-labeling thing with ski-masked soldiers who drop in on long ropes from fleets of black helicopters. From what I heard, they went to EVERY KFC store in the dead of night and checked all the menus and obliterated (secretly, of course) the word CHICKEN from the menu.

Whoa partner!! What does all this mean to the astute, knowledgeable investor? Or, what does it mean, if you are not naturally such a person, to one who is at least wise enough to seek professional advice, such as you are now reading?

Well, sure you can buy the "4-piece lunch meal deal" or an "8-piece dinner meal" .... but remember, it's NOT CHICKEN and they don't claim that it is! It's a biologically-based, genetically-altered, hormone- laced, protein-like "food substitute" that the evil scientists at KFC, or the even more evil TRICON corporate headquarters "scientists" figured out how to "breed".

Don't get me started on what's in other TRICON products [Tacos and Pizza]. Have you ever seriously pondered, or even given a New York minute's thought, about where they get "cheese" for tacos & pizza? At our local yuppie/fancy-gourmet grocery store cheese is $10.95/lb [and up]. Recently, I have seen some ads for pizza with over 4 pounds of cheese for only $5.95!! It doesn't take that Greenspan fellow to know that this doesn't ADD UP! Maybe the Donald (Trump) can work a deal like this with his cheese supplier, but remember, he's the King of the Deal. The little people? Forget it! You can't even get 40 to 50-year-old US Government surplus cheese that cheap (legally, at least). If you think that those left-leaning, strong-unionist, post-NAFTA cheese- heads in Wisconsin would or could make cheese for that price you have another thing coming. The Global Free Trade New World Order Economic Environment is pretty damn wonderful (especially if you're on a budget, and we are, now that we play golf). Of course, the US, even after the WTO conference, still has a 100% tariff on Roquefort (from France) but I haven't ever liked it, or even seen it, on pizza or in tacos (except maybe at one of Wolfgang Puck's places in California) so who cares?

And that CUTE TALKING DOG with the BIG EARS?? That's NOT COMPUTER GRAPHICS!

The TRICON "food technologists", by the way, are all ex-tobacco company researchers and scientists. I'm not 100% sure (yet), but based on the information available (or that soon might be made available), it's a sure bet that they add Nicotine to EVERYTHING THEY SELL. Heck, since there is none in there naturally it surely must need some, whatever the product. Of course, they saw what happened to the tobacco companies over the past few years (and especially last year), so all the reports and documents on this topic have been destroyed or shredded. I hope you know that's why I can't actually show them to you.

Now here's where the plot thickens: It seems, according to my well-placed source, that TRICON operates a huge fleet of windowless, rudderless, unnamed, unregistered, rust-bucket factory ships, staffed by ex-workers from the Russian nuclear industry. To increase profits, the workers "voluntarily" go unpaid for two or three years at a time, until revenues exceed expenses (they're sort of used to it.) These "ships" are floating all the time in international waters, away from the many temptations of filthy, disgusting, low-life port towns that require lot's of liquid assets (they have plenty of vodka on board). Since they are so far from temptation the crew needs virtually no cash whatsoever (except for personal safety gear, as noted below).

Ecology Note: The term "floating" should be considered just a figure of speech, when used to describe these "ships". These structures were originally designed by Howard Hughes and the CIA for recovering Russian nuclear subs that "vanished" at sea (yeah, sure they did). The GLOMAR EXPLORER (check it out if you don't believe me! I read the book!) was the prototype. They are very hard to see, because most of the vessel is below the waterline, due to the water leaks. They constantly have bilge pumps running to insure they don't sink completely, at least during the two hours per day when there is adequate power. Keeping the boat afloat is important, so the crew can continue to breath. Otherwise, they'd have no reason to do so, since the "product", in its current form does not actually require oxygen in even remotely the same concentrations required by humans.

On the average factory ship operated by TRICON about 5,600 gallons of fuel oil from the leaky engines and leaky fuel tanks, along with the full "output" of the crew, mixes with the bilge water every day. As part of their extremely aggressive risk management / liability limitation program, which is run by two ex-executives, one from Allstate Insurance, and the second from the HMO industry, the bilge water can't be traced to the TRICON ships! These guys are very smart.

The company's risk reduction engineers designed and rigged up a very long flexible pipe thingy that is connected to a remotely controlled submersible vehicle (US Navy surplus). This device has a very sensitive microphone array that automatically tracks the Love Boat (and also a few tankers run by Exxon) by listening for "party sound signature profiles" (popping champagne corks, clinking glasses, laughter, slot machine payouts, etc.). Once in range, a valve at the end of the pipe is opened and the effluent is discharged in the wake of the decoy ship prop-wash.

Nobody seems to care about this, since the passengers (on the Love Boat) and crews (on the Exxon tankers) are all so drunk they can't see better than 20/800. At that level of visual acuity (which is an almost constant condition once they are a half-mile or more out of port) they can't really tell the difference between the Love Boat's own garbage and its own oil slick and the "miniscule amounts" that TRICON ships add to the mixture. The EPA or Coast Guard or some other government agency fines the Love Boat a few million dollars a few times per year but they don't care. They just call it a PORT TAX and stick on your bill. If you've ever been on a cruise, you know the very last thing you do before dis-embarking, is to settle up your bill. You pay or stay! Remember that guy on the cruise ship in the Mediterranean a few years ago who was pushed off the side of the boat tied to a wheel chair? The cruise line said, and the media bought it hook, line, and sinker, that it was terrorists. I happen to know that it was some drunken accountants in the purser's office who found out the guy's Amex card wouldn't clear! This was hushed up, of course. TRICON laughs all the way to the bank every time the feds slap the Love Boat with a big fine!

I digress . . . back to the stock tip. Because they are in international waters, these factory ships are not subject to the control or regulation of ANY GOVERNMENT (protector of the common man) FROM ANY COUNTRY. These factories "grow" (read:create) these so- called "chickens".

The code name for this product, and its many derivatives, is FooPS: (food protein substitute).

The combination of genetic alterations they figured out how to do, and other environmental factors (mostly ecologically "efficient", cost-saving "shortcuts") have resulted in "birds" that now have all sorts of (so-called) "defects", like:

3 LEGS - This is where it all started, and it seems like a GOOD thing, and a step in the right direction, (no pun intended, well maybe it was if Rukeyser can do it why can't I?).

The first time "3 legs" happened it was a serendipitous "accident". However, because of sub-standard laboratory practices, "3 legs" (and the other aberrations detailed below) just kept happening. Despite a cursory look at the matter, the lab technicians could not say exactly what was going on or why it was happening. Even though they didn't have a clue as to why, it kept happening anyway. Like Cold Fusion, these folks saw a golden opportunity and as scientists and their PR types are wont to do: they labeled it "science".

"3 Legs" formed the genesis for the first "break-through". The TRICON scientists blew some smoke up the collective a**es of management and obtained "black budget" internal funding (at least $78.5 million, for FY 99 alone) for more "serendipity". By the way, the "black budget" funding shows on the TRICON SEC filings as "business lunches". You can bet these corporate big wigs weren't dining at KFC, Pizza Hut, or Taco Bell.

Candace's brother, a senior chemical scientist for Kodak (still making silver-based photographic film, so they're DOOMED ... SELL KODAK, NOW!), confirmed :"This sort of thing happens all the time!" Just after he said that, the battery on my cell-phone went dead and I lost the connection. I couldn't call back to clarify whether he meant the "science" part or the blowing smoke part, but either way, that's an EXACT QUOTE. If there's any question about what he meant you'll just have to ask him. As far as I'm concerned, it's a 2^nd source confirmation. Counting my original source, the "girl", who I didn't really talk to, (but a good reporter is a good listener . right?) Jeff was the second person I talked to about this.

If you've ever seen a 3-legged dog, you know they walk sort of funny - but since these poor FooPS'es are packed cheek-to-jowl in the above-mentioned factory ships, they don't actually have a real mobility problem, 3 legs or not. Now, be honest with yourself, how many choices does a "chicken" really need? TRICON lets them stand still, which they seem to prefer about 98% of the time, or swim around, if they have an urge to move from one side of the bilge to the other. You'll learn later how TRICON has generously made the swimming option even more fulfilling for the FooPS'es.

FooPS'es are created, hatched, housed, and "grown" in the bilge, where the some of the fuel oil absorbs through the skin and permeates the flesh-like "meat". This oil absorption tendency eliminates a few gallons of bilge oil (per FooPS) that would otherwise have to be secretly dumped at sea behind the Love Boat, as described earlier.

TRICON is a global corporation. It has hundreds of these factory ships located close to their restaurants (but all at least 12 miles out!). This is not for freshness, since a FooPS can last for decades if properly stored in lead-lined cryogenic freezers. Rather, proximity to market results in HUGE transportation savings, since the FooPS, after their full development cycle is completed, are very heavy (oil weighs about 6 pounds/gallon) and quite costly to transport long distances. Except for ValueJet, ALL common carriers classify them as hazardous cargo, and naturally, there is a premium that goes with that.

TRICON is working on "self-delivery", wherein the FooPS will eventually be "programmed" to jump overboard, on a moonless night, and swim (they love that) directly to the nearest beach (sort of like hatching turtles, but in reverse, and a FooPS is not so helpless on land), whereupon they will be loaded into surplus oil tanker cars and taken directly to the nearest KFC. LOW COSTS ARE KING at TRICON.

Global presence also lets TRICON come to the aid of other corporations who are not as careful with the environment as is TRICON. For example, over the past few years, from time to time, they have rented (yet another revenue source!) about 800-thousand FooPS'es to Exxon. Following an oil spill they jump excitedly and happily in the water like your 8-year old at the country club swimming pool (remember, they love to swim in oily water). Though each FooPS unit doesn't absorb much bilge oil (just 10 to 12 gallons each, per day), TRICON makes up for this with the number of FooPS'es it is able to deploy. As you will see in a few paragraphs, FooPS'es have no feathers, and because oil is absorbed there are no ugly pictures of poor, pitiful shore-birds or seals and their pups wallowing helplessly in their death throes on the beach with those big eyes looking straight into the camera, (assuming the TRICON ship, with its load of FooPS'es can get there first).

The press (and even Green Peace) doesn't even bother to show up once they learn of the factory ships arrival on the scene, since there's no "news interest" in filming thousands of FooPS'es frolicking joyfully in a 20-million gallon Exxon "oopsie doopsie". What kind of news is that?

Once the job is done, the FooPS'es are "recalled" (the exact method is a secret) and most of the saltwater is flushed from their systems. The oil stays in the FooPS flesh, but TRICON is worried about your health, so too much salt is a no-no! They return to the bilge happy as pigs in you know what, and anxiously await their next adventure outside the windowless hull of the rusting hulk. So, you can't say that TRICON doesn't at least TRY to help the environment, and your health too!!

This oil absorption (from whatever source) also eliminates the need for any oil during cooking, since there's already oil in there. FooPS units are self-basting when roasted, which is pretty safe, but KFC discovered that dropping the FooPS into frying oil is actually quite explosive! You may have seen that goof-ball Emeril Lagasse on the Food Network. Well, early in his career, before he was too famous and therefore too expensive, TRICON hired him to develop recipes and cooking methods that could be cheaply "ramped up" to thousands of restaurants staffed by pimply-faced teens that don't read or understand English (both in the US and abroad). When he dropped that first FooPS in the traditional vat full of cooking oil .... well that's where "BAM!!!" came from. TRICON, reeling from the loss of the test kitchen, fired him on the spot. You know the rest.

Placing the FooPS units on the counter for 48 to 50 hours or more at room temperature results in perfectly cooked Original Recipe ... Extra Crispy takes 72 to 100 hours. If you let it sit another 8 to 10 hours beyond that it will switch between Original Recipe and Extra Crispy on roughly the same cycle, all by itself, indefinitely. This is called the "Binary" (sometimes referred to as "two-state") cooking mode. If you've always wondered how they keep those bins fully stocked, and yet there seem to be no customers in the restaurant eating the stuff, without ever seeming to throw any product out, now you know!.

Don't worry about having un-refrigerated "chicken" out that long. Remember, IT'S NOT CHICKEN. Despite what that self-proclaimed know- it-all, Martha Stewart, said about it on her show and again (quite maliciously) in her newspaper column, the TRICON product is really mostly SAFE, when you use the proper asbestos gloves and when all the other handling precautions embossed directly on the carcass are followed to the letter. (There is no actual packaging � "it's nature's perfect product")

A FooPS will break into cooking sized pieces all by itself after just a short while on the counter at room temperature. One TRICON scientist described it this way:

"This is a vast over-simplification. Actually we don't understand the process completely ourselves, and we "invented it!. But they just sort of lose their muscle tone, then the tendons and cartilage, which hold the "bones together, self-destructs. Once that process is completed, the outer flesh rots, and voila! Pieces! All in an hour or two!"

Once this happens these parts are below a "critical mass" size and pose no further explosive or biological hazard (if left to their own natural self-cooking destiny).

Therefore, no mixing of one FooPS unit's germs with those of another unit's germs (in the so-called deadly "fecal soup" mix) is ever required. That "crap" you saw years ago on 60-Minutes about "fecal soup" is mostly eliminated, because the internal organs which harbor these germs (see more about this below) are "deleted".

There is some risk of cross contamination once the second and subsequent piece(s) reaches your own digestive organs, assuming you have more than one. Who can have just one? I heard that Princess Di was able to do this, but she had plenty of problems, and this was just one of them! Now that she's out of the picture if you can show me such a person I guarantee you it'll be an anorexic fashion model, like Kate Moss or Alley McBeal or someone like that.

Most people either aren't aware of the risk, since they don't read the legal mumbo-jumbo, which recommends you have only one piece, on the back of the purchase receipt, or they just feel it's worth taking anyway. As the slogan says, it's finger-lickin' good, but be sure to remember the asbestos gloves are required ONLY before cooking! You don't want to lick asbestos. That would be recklessly dangerous!

A few paragraphs ago I said "check-to-jowl" to refer to the "tight packing" during the growth period. I was speaking figuratively of course, since FooPS'es don't actually have cheeks or jowls (yet). But this is only because checks and jowls were deemed inedible in any form except as ingredients in sausage, sauces and "cheeses" for pizza, and perhaps some sort of roughly ground material (it could be "cheese" or "meat", I'm not sure) for tacos. Both of these were tried with limited success in only a small test-market.

4 HEADS - They still have work to do here I haven't actually seen "heads" on the menu yet, but who knows? Until such time as the menu is clarified I strongly advise you to look very closely at each of the 27 pieces in a bucket. There are some things in there that you can have a hard time identifying, especially when it's "extra crispy". It may not be the crust that's extra crispy.

Even if they are not actually found in the bucket meal-deal, there is some evidence (very subjective, but easily as reliable as anything else in this report) that the extra heads are secretly sold to McDonald's as "nuggets" as an additional source of TRICON revenue. (This is a LESSON: READ and LEARN! The RICH JUST KEEP GETTING RICHER!) Once in McDonald's hands they undergo further transformation and refinement going from raw, simple "nuggets" into "McNuggets" by way of secret McDonald's processes at secret overseas McDonald's factories". I plan to have a FULL REPORT on this next year, as soon as I can adopt (or rent) one of the 5-year old orphan children that work at the factory and pump them for detailed information.

There is some more good news here: There is no evidence that Kathy Lee Gifford has anything to do with staffing this factory. She seems to have finally gotten her life in order.

(Up to) 6 BREASTS - This is the "meatiest" part of a FooPS, (if it's not overcooked.) I don't want to dwell too much on this topic, since this is a family oriented Christmas letter after all, but there is RELATED NEWS:

Be sure to read my upcoming in-depth stock investment advisory on PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES. I'm studying it very carefully right now. Now that they have decoded the entire human DNA chain, TRICON's exciting development is sure to drive PLAYBOY's cost for modeling fees WAY DOWN, since they will be able to fill the a page with only ONE playmate, whereas before it took as many as THREE! From what I've read Hef's really getting excited about twins and triplets. For both TRICON and PLAYBOY this is a long-term thing, since the first "development" work is only now beginning, and it will take at least 18 years** before they can get models of legal age.

** That's 18 years unless present law changes: Now that I'm almost 50, I'm just fine with 18 years as the youngest age for this sort of thing, but speaking as an investment expert, and even the IRS agrees with this, 18 years is considered LONG TERM. "Business is Business", so you can expect TRICON to mount an active lobbying campaign with Congress to get the law changed. However, that Orin Hatch goof-ball, whose Senate committee TRICON must convince, is still in an uproar over that Lewinsky thing, and he just won't let it die! My recollection is that Monica was 18 when her 15-minutes started and she was mid- twenties when it was over (so it was a long 15-minutes, to be sure). Isn't that a coincidence? (Speaking of 18 ."Tri", as in TRICON, represents 3 .. 3 divided into 18 is 6 . And 3 sixes is "666" .. is there anything about THAT you should worry about?) As far as I know, Monica, even when she was only 18, had only the normal complement of breasts, so Hef's not likely to be interested in her. (And that darn Hatch: He's still mad about Clarence Thomas, too the guy just lives in the past!!! He would not be a very forward thinking President.) So don't expect much relief on the 18 issue, even though TRICON has promised to put one of its factory ships at the north end of the Great Salt Lake, not far from where Thiokol makes make those O-rings and solid rocket fuel that cause NASA rockets to blow up. Hatch is sure to stick to his conservative position, at least until the election is over or he drops out (which will happen soon enough).

Regardless of the time frame, it's, as usual, more revenues for TRICON, lower costs for PLAYBOY - a WIN-WIN situation by any measure! Take the long-term view! Just think about what your portfolio would look like today if you had bought a measly 100,000 shares of MSFT 18 years ago, like I advised at the time (in case you weren't a subscriber to my newsletter then).

There will be other tie-in sales opportunities as well, including PLAYTEX and Victoria's Secret. Heck, you've got to be able to sell a "6-holer" for more than the standard "2-holer". Maybe not three times as much, but at least twice as much. Again, it's a LONG TERM thing. The potential consumers of this product just don't need them yet. In fact, they aren't even BORN yet, at least in sufficient numbers to define a big market opportunity. By the time they do, who can say what alternate technology will have taken it's place. But, my friends, you have to have faith in the American system and go with the best information available at the time. The long horizon will give them plenty of time to develop some sort of Pokemon type game (FooPSemon?) and get the market whipped into a real feeding frenzy.

By the way, if you think this discussion is sexist because it doesn't mention any ROOSTER PARTS, get a life. (I just mentioned FooPSemon, didn't I?) First of all, you can't get ROOSTERS at KFC (as far I know.) Business is Business! This is not about ROOSTER PARTS. I'm only the messenger so don't get mad at me. Since the TRICON process generates FooPS'es directly, ROOSTERS are no longer needed. Candace has been telling me that for years, and however reluctantly, I'm resigned to accept it as my destiny.

NO FEATHERS - This simple adjustment saved lots of time in the processing factory, and what good are feathers anyway? Have you ever seen a chicken actually fly south for the winter? Me neither. And my pillow is some sort of plastic! Feathers: GOOD RIDDANCE!!

By the way, the ever cost-conscious TRICON tried using Styrofoam peanuts as feed, but discovered it took a lot of spices to get even the most ravenous FooPS'es to eat them. Spices are too expensive. The "birds" (once they had 4 heads) tended to get confused about which head should peck at the peanuts. This was an inter-head central nerve-bus networking problem, attributed, by a malicious Bill Gates wannabe to an NT security bug. They ended up pecking at each other's heads, and since they couldn't see exactly what they were pecking at (once the eyes we're poked out) they wasted more energy trying to eat than they actually gained (like when you eat sunflower seeds that you have to shell yourself).

The pecked out eyes, and other holes in the heads caused by the "multi-headed peckers" (not a ROOSTER PART) are no problem, as far as TRICON is concerned. You can't see that damage, once the Original or Extra Crispy coating is on it, and most of us don't take the time to peel it off and look for holes. What possible gain would there be in doing that? Only a nut would do that.

For a short while they actually drilled EXTRA holes in the heads to serve as anchor points for the coating mixes. It was 1/4" holes for the Original Recipe coating and 1/2" holes for less fluid Extra Crispy coating. When the supervisors weren't looking, those lazy Russians just used .38 police specials and hollow point ammo, which they got from the Seattle Police Department surplus gun auction. They tried shotguns, which drilled about 200 holes at once, (the Russian that had this idea got an extra vodka ration) but even at such close range the shot hit more of the FooPS than just the head: Absorbed oil won't stay in a FooPS full of holes.

The gun noise gave the Russian's laziness away. Since the ship was now totally silent (during the long periods without power) the shooting kept the Captain (an ex-Exxon skipper) awake. He needed lots of sleep to get the drugs out of his system (a story for another day). The supervisors decided the Russians were always too drunk to safely use guns in such close quarters, although their Kevlar body armor suits (more details on this to follow) protected them from most of the stray shots, and it did nothing good for the hull. The ship already had enough holes in it.

Eventually refinements in the adhesive properties of the coatings themselves (a one-part, temperature sensitive epoxy was added) soon made this costly "head perforation" step completely unnecessary.

However, there were other obstacles that doomed the peanuts fate as a food source. They float, of course, and it was very hard for the FooPS to get a grip on the floating treats with their beaks. Every time they thought they had one, it would pop under the water, and then in a second or two, it would pop up somewhere else, where they least expected it.

There was a long running dispute about whether they should run Linux or NT. It was decided they should have been running Linux, by the same Gates hating loser who spread the unfounded NT bug rumor. Linux, the MS-hater alleged, can perform well on a lot less "processing horse-power" than NT (and God knows, the FooPS, mark II, only has the equivalent of an early Pentium III chip for a brain). They figured if the FooPS had more computing power it could have calculated in REAL TIME where the peanut would be popping up and grab it there instead of flailing around, wildly pecking at all of its siblings heads, and those of all the other FooPS units within striking range. The calculations require significant processing power: Factors such as water temperature, currents generated by the FooPS own movement and that of the others, barometric pressure, viscosity of the water, etc. - some of these factors are known today as "chaos theory". Now, NT creates chaos. It does not solve it. On the verge of the new millennium, who among us doesn't know that computer power comes in two forms: Faster hardware, or more efficient software. Hardware costs money. Linux is free, so maybe the guy was right.

If you've ever watched a chicken eat you know they can peck rather vigorously. A ravenous FooPS is a machine designed for KILLING, sort of like a shark is, so it could quickly do some serious damage to its siblings! And it's not just one head pecking, it's 4 heads, each pecking at a minimum of at least 3 others, all at the same time. If you can follow the action at all, and that is not easy to do, it is not a pretty sight.

The FooPS mark II, has an approximately a 10 inch "kill radius". Of course, the design goal was not to kill. The term was adopted based on real-life experience. The pecking now rarely actually kills any of the FooPS units or Russian workers. The Russians simply hold a FooPS at arms length, where, except for the most short-armed of them, the relentless pecks and blows don't connect with the Russians own head, body, or legs. But, their fore-arms, just about up to the elbow, are a bloody pulp that looks like an all-meat pizza sold by TRICON subsidiary, Pizza Hut, with double or even triple tomato sauce [with regular crust].

In the early stages, unplanned and uncontrolled pecking deaths were a real problem because the initial beak-pecking velocity (on the speedier Linux models) was supersonic! (on a "standard day at sea- level", which they were, or just a little below). On the NT machines, speed was never an issue. Once the terminal beak velocity was slowed to below mach 1.0 the needless killing was reduced by at least 50% for the FooPS units, and by 90% for the workers. Well, that's what they told management, but the figures were close to that, within 20 or 30 standard deviations, at least. They used very wide crayons and dull #2 pencils on their charts to figure this stuff out so it's very hard to be too critical of their math.

The workers did much better relative to body core injuries after they started to wear Kevlar body armor suits (bought with their own funds drawn from their savings) from the very same supplier of the Seattle Police Department Civil Rights Enforcement Division. As noted earlier, the Kevlar kept them safe when they got out the guns. But a drunk Russian doesn't always remember to zip up his body armor, so sometimes beak or bullet still finds an uncovered spot near the heart: "So long my Russian friend."

They tried putting Kevlar protection suits on the FooPS'es heads and bodies, but it impedes the absorption of oil and "nutrients" from the bilge water. The reduced casualty rates resulting from the pecking-speed adjustment is now deemed sufficient to result in acceptable net yields.

Even though the heads don't really matter that much, given that the uses for these are, at this point all experimental, there was still tremendous pressure from the suits at TRICON to find a use for the FooPS heads and to solve the many problems in getting them produced in a form that ended up having some value left in it, after all the pecking. So the Captain and project manager called an all- day meeting (8 full hours) to "brainstorm". The drunken Russians, and the managers of the project all got together. The minutes of meeting were lost when a toilet paper shortage occurred on one long cruise so the details are a bit sketchy.

There were several hundred Russians, and an equal complement of managers present. Despite TRICON's strong emphasis on constant cost- monitoring and cost-reduction, it does believe in very close manager/worker relationships. One-to-one is typical on most ships, and since nobody gets paid, cost is not a factor. This way, if a worker is killed or otherwise rendered unusable, he can immediately be replaced with his manager, with no impact on production quotas. Missing managers are no problem, since they do no work anyway.

Two individuals (both Mormon's) were (initially) sober enough to provide the following re-construction of what transpired:

As large committees are prone to do, they spent a lot of time (7 hours and 58 minutes) developing an agenda. Then they had only 2 minutes to think about the actual problem and nobody was sober by then, so no one recognized the simple truth: It was really a BEAK design problem, not a computer problem. If the BEAK could be modified to stab the peanut the first time, they wouldn't have this computing power problem at all! (sort of chicken and egg problem, don't you think?). If a $20 point and shoot camera can auto-focus, NT should be able to locate a floating peanut, and in fact it can, but only once (the initial strike)! Since they overlooked this idea until very late, it was discarded right away, because they thought, "OK, let's give it an even sharper beak. One that would allow it to stab the peanut before it could disappear into the muck of the bilge, only to pop up who knows where. Then what? How will it EAT the peanut with the peanut stuck on the end of its beak? We'll need to increase the jaw opening solenoid strength. We designed the unit so that most of the power is on the CLOSING stroke, not on the OPENING stroke. As soon as it opens up, the peanut will pop off the beak, right back into the water, and we're right back where we started! This idea sucks!" So they all decided to put the beak re-design on the back burner, and they continued to fiddle with NT. They had another case or two of vodka left, and it says in right there in the Microsoft manual that it helps to be drunk when fiddling with NT, and they were, so they did.

Finally, one of the "suits" (who'd never written a single line of C++ or JAVA in his life) wisely decided enough was enough, and that there was just too much invested to reprogram, and that a too-pointy beak might cause lawsuits if it got lodged in some two-year olds' throat, although they could always deny anything about beaks since heads, of which a beak is a component, "aren't on the menu" (Ollie North called this "plausible deniability"). They stuck with the original beak design and they stuck with NT, which took nearly 100% of the cycles for it's own evil purposes, giving up just enough to compute the initial strike position but leaving nothing for computing the expected peanut pop-up position (PPUP). In disgust, they just gave up on the damn peanut bobbing problem. But there were still other things working against peanuts as a viable food source.

Foam peanuts, like oil, will float on the surface of the water. Since one of the main objectives of pumping was to rid the bilge of excess oil (that which the FooPS'es didn't absorb), the hose inlets for the pumps were affixed to a floating device that permitted oil to be sucked from the surface, rather than from the bottom of the bilge. They had already discovered there was lots of solid matter at the BOTTOM of the bilge (the crew's contribution), which clogged the pumps once the inlets reached a certain level, but they never could figure out an application for it at KFC, so they just keep the water above the sludge level of the bilges now. They are still looking at the deep-lying sludge as a refried beans substitute at the Taco Bell stores, and if this ever pans out, it's just more good news for TRICON.

Well, guess what? The floating peanuts would get sucked into the impellers along with the oil and jam them up, further increasing costs. For TRICON management, this is the straw that broke the camel's back. They finally dumped about 1,000,000 pounds of the peanuts in to the ocean, far away from the ship so they couldn't be traced. (We all know how many of those little white puffs it takes to make a pound: They had a LOT!)

Now the bad news: Unfortunately, they dumped the peanuts on the paths of migrating whales. To the whales, foam peanuts floating on the surface of the ocean look like the "popcorn shrimp" on the Captains' Platter at the local Sea Galley. I don't care what you say, no matter how strong a swimmer it is, no whale can stay under the water with a belly fully of foam peanuts! This is why Keiko is kept in a shallow tank - he just can't go very deep. Whales can't digest them, so once they get them in there, that whale is doomed to catch a wave like Brian Wilson (who looks like he and his daughter may have sucked up plenty of foam peanuts on their own) and roll up on a beach near you.

They took their one-time loss on the $40 that 1,000,000 pounds of peanuts cost, and the $78 that the bootlegged copies of NT cost too. They went with the free Linux. The name of the game here is TAKE COSTS OUT!

NO GIZZARDS - Rumor has it, other useless (mostly internal) organs can be "deleted" on demand too - like hearts, lungs, livers, and adenoids. Externally they can even delete those red wiggly things on some chicken heads that seem to have no purpose, but if they can get back on good terms with Emeril Lagasse, he might find a creative use for them too.

What EXACTLY is a GIZZARD for anyway? God put it there for a REASON (although we haven't yet found anyone we trust who knows what reason). Some animal rights activists, from Eugene, have taken the stand that this MUST BE A CRIME AGAINST NATURE! We tell both the GOOD and BAD here!

EXTRA FEET - The exact number of extra feet per FooPS is presently unverified. This was a "regional" test marketing development effort made especially for the BOOMING Indian, and Southeast Asian and Chinese market!, (now, thanks to the CLINTON administration, China is part of the WTO Empire, so sales will continue to rise. FACTOID: More than half of the existing 10,400 KFC outlets are outside the US, where they eat lots of strange stuff.)

One day a processing ship sank a bit too much because there was no power to run the bilge pumps, or the pumps were jammed with foam peanuts or something. The ships log was lost in the deep blue sea, so it's just a guess why. Once the water reached the gunwales, it was all over! The crew escaped in the limited number of lifeboats (which they had paid for themselves) but about 100,000 FooPS'es were not so lucky. They went straight to the bottom. Although it is solved now, at this stage of the development program, TRICON had not yet figured out how to make the FooPS'es survive without oxygen. Even with the extra feet, they couldn't make it to the surface fast enough to survive (they got the bends and exploded). So TRICON added a web material (like a ducks foot) that gave the FooPS surprisingly strong swimming capabilities. Once 100,000 or more FooPS'es had this material in place, TRICON was able to completely eliminate all bilge pumping, since the FooPS'es own paddling kept the ship afloat.

If feet ever catch on this country, be ready for the webbed feet, not just plain feet. It's like nothing you've ever had before! They're also talking to Frito Lay about them now. Frito Lay is trying to make an internet tie-in - something along the lines of "web-chips". I don't think Frito Lay gets the "e-thing" yet.

Speaking of feet, the Taco Bell scientists got word of what the KFC folks were doing. Look at what they genetically "engineered" in response: