Live By The Sword, Die By The Sword

(The flying fickle finger of fate..)


Remember the Tylenol Scare?

If you are younger than 30 you probably don’t. It makes me feel old when I looked up the Tylenol tampering story and found out that it happened in 1982. Seems like just yesterday…

Just to refresh you memory, in the fall of 1982 some moron took Tylenol capsules off the shelves of grocery stores in the Chicago area and replaced the contents of some capsules with Cyanide poison. The idiot ended up killing seven people and causing a recall of all of Johnson & Johnson’s Tylenol products, ultimately costing the company over $100 million.

The only positive outcome was an industry wide change in the packaging of pharmaceuticals and many food items that continues today. There were a number of copycats that tried the same thing after the initial story broke and they never caught the person(s) that did the initial poisoning, but a second idiot, James Lewis, was arrested for claiming responsibility and demanding money in return for information to prevent further deaths.

Mr. Lewis finished serving thirteen years of a twenty year sentence for extortion in the late 1990’s. HE GOT LESS THAN HE DESERVED, IN MY OPINION.

This brings me to the recent story of Miss Anna Ayala of Las Vegas, Nevada--the Wendy's "finger-in-the-chili extortionist.

I hate to point this out, but Miss Ayala could be getting a raw deal in this situation since they can’t absolutely prove that she put the severed human finger in her bowl of chili, but since she has a past history of filing lawsuits asking for money over stupid circumstances I guess that I can't blame the authorities.

Like Johnson & Johnson, Wendy’s has taken a huge hit financially and can do little to prove that the finger didn’t originate in their chili—other than proving that none of their employees and suppliers are missing any fingers.

As for Miss Ayala, I have some advice…When you live by the sword, you risk dieing by the sword.

Know what I mean?