Text Leveling System

The Bad Day Book

RDQ:	3677	Max Word/Sent	70	Total Words	2620		Diff Words	963
Lex	1110	Ave Word/.Sent	19	Hi Freq occurs	1835	70%	Hi freq	356	37%
AR	9.0	Long Sentences	43.7	Low Freq occurs	233	8.9%	Low freq	200	20.8%

How to be sure you're having a bad day
 "Go ahead; have a bad day. You deserve it!" - Plato
Every day millions of people ask themselves, "Am I
having a bad day?" While this is really a stupid question,
it is, nonetheless, important because having a bona
fide bad day can have some benefits. For example, it can
give a person an excuse for being ornery, crabby, and
rude to everyone around him. It's also important to
know if you're having a bad day, because in the event
you're NOT having a bad day, it can be proven mathematically
that you must be having an OK day or maybe
even a GOOD day, which could have important implications
for you. It could mean your luck is changing, so
now maybe instead of having things fall out of the sky
onto your head and having your pets die, or instead of ]]
winning the lottery but being unable to find the ticket,
today you should consider mortgaging the house and
betting the whole wad on whoever's playing the Yankees.
The fact is, if you're NOT having a bad day you may
be having a "pretty good" day or even conceivably a
"very good" day. This could be a rare opportunity to
really annoy other people by getting a cheesy grin on
your face and being obnoxiously cheery. Now, I'm not
suggesting that you go hog wild or anything, especially
if all you're having is a pretty good day. Frankly, you
probably should go a little slow if you're making life altering
decisions, especially if you're doing it on the
basis of what you're reading because this book is mostly
a bunch of baloney. But, since we started out talking
about whether or not you are in fact having a bad day,
we better give you some clues. The following are some
clues:
26 Sure signs you are having a bad day
Those of you who enjoy reveling in misery may actually want to try some of these bed things on purpose to sort of start the old bad day ball rolling.
1. Today you catch a skunk in you squirrel trap.
2. The police officer who just pulled you over for a traffic ticket, suddenly runs back to his car and calls for backup.
3. You wake up in the morning to find that your butt cheeks have mysteriously grown together.
4. a new form of bacteria has been attacking your bank account.
5 Seagulls score 37 direct hits on you during your walk from your car to the office where you're having your job interview.
6 As you flush the toilet in the morning, half asleep you thumb gets caught between the lever and the porcelain. It will require the entire fire department to free you.
7 You wake up at 5:30 in the morning to the sensation of warm water splashing on your face. The source is your Great Dane Sparky who can't sleep because of his enlarged prostate and he wants a snack.
8 Just as you're leaving for work, you cat Muffy comes flying through the air hissing, lands on your face and scratches your ears into something that looks like angel hair pasta with meat sauce. ]]
9. You sit down for a quick breakfast before work and a football splashes onto your table since your kids are having a game in the kitchen.
10 You sit down for breakfast and thousand of screaming Arabs surround your table making gestures and screaming. Down with you! and Death to you!
11 Hustling out to your car on the way to an important meeting, you grab your cell phone and lunch and as an after thought you grab a chocolate candy bar which you later figure out must have been a powerful laxative.]]
12 The birds are chirping. You wake up and gaze longingly at your wife of 15 years. She gazes back just as the first rays of morning light burst through the window striking your beloved on her sculptured nose and turning her instantly into a bat.
13 You watch an TV as your lottery numbers are called. Ten Million Dollars! You've finally won! Out of pure joy you run and leap out of the house, do a somersault off the porch, and instantly get flattened by a loaded garbage truck.
14 While water skiing with friends, the Loch Ness monster hikes your shorts.]]
15 You have been waiting for your car to be fixed. Just as the mechanic is letting it down on the jack, the instant the wheels hit the concrete, for some reason the jack explodes back up smashing your car flat against the garage roof.
Note: Depending upon how you feel about your car, this could actually be an indication of a good day or maybe even a very good day.
16 Sleeping out on the range, you are enjoying a spectacular meteor shower when one comes screaming to earth and makes an 80 foot deep crater right where you used to be.
17 You put your credit card into the atm machine and get your money.]]
You glance up and notice you're surrounded by men in black.
18 You put your card into the ATM machine and instead of cash a fake hand comes out and whacks you over the head with a rubber hammer.
19 You put your card into the ATM and instead of cash, a flock of moths flies out.
20. You put your card into the ATM and the  comes out shredded.
20.5 You put your card into the ATM and instead of cash coming out you get a pie in the face.]]
21. You put your card into the ATM and instead of cash a squirt gun comes out and hits you in the face.
22 You put your card into the atm and instead of real cash, it gives you Monopoly money.
23 You put your card into the atm, a trap door opens, and half a ton of gerbil poop buries you.
24 You take your seat on a full plane bound for Asia and sliding into the seat next to you is a man who looks a lot like a walrus and is that big for his snack has a bag of garlic cloves.]]
25 You wake up in the gutter to find a garbage truck parked on your lip.
26 The giant they just transferred into your cell doesn't speak English or any other language you recognize.
Is this Bad Luck or Stupidity?
This is an important question. Bad luck is likely to change eventually, however, stupidity tends to persist. So you might want to take the following test.
How long has you string of bad luck lasted.
Just for today so far.
A week or two.
As far I know, through multiple reincarntations.
Do nice well meaning people try to help you.
Occasionally.
Frequently.
Whenever you walk into a room everyone immediately drops whatever they are doing and grabs things on the shelves and wall.
Have you stopped eating with a fork because you keep jamming meatloaf into you eye.]]
Can you  out drool your St Bernard?
Do your family members show their friends how the flashlight beams shine through both of your ears?
Sometime in you past did you stop to think and forget to start again.
Having taken this test, you are now in a position to analyze the results and hopefully determine whether your bad luck stems from genuine bad luck or if you are having permanent bad luck because you are an idiot. Good luck.]]
Seven indicators it could be a bad day if you're a cow.
The milking machine is malfunctioning causing the amount of suction to quadruple.
The farmer came this morning to gently rub some balm on you tender udders right after cutting up hot peppers.
You hear on the news that milk prices are plummeting and beef prices are soaring.
You are reminded today that the vet is coming to check you follicle.
Farmer Bob sprayed roundup on you pasture by mistake.
You have a recurring dream in which you see your face in the little dot pattern on a basketball.
Farmer Bob messed up again and fed the cows vegemite instead of corn silage.]]
Seven indications that a dentist can expect a bad day.
Today's appointment schedule is filled entire with people on strict onions only diets.
You just finished some masterful jobs on some fillings, you tell the patient to spit, and all his teeth come out into the little sink.
A group of your patients rise up in rebellion and start en mass drilling your mouth as pay back.
Today it was announced that someone has invented and successfully]]
tested a new miracle pill to help people grow new teeth.
All your patients today are lawyers.
All your patients today are 3 year old lads.
You have a bad crown in you mouth and have to go the dentist for a root canal.]]
What are the causes of bad luck?
While it's true that there are many causes of bad
luck, of course, the most common cause is being a meathead.
Sadly, however, if we accuse everybody who buys
this book of being a dork, it may have a negative effect
on our sales, so, much like pop psych gurus we're going
to pretty much avoid the hard stuff and try instead to
give you what you want to hear. So for purposes of this
book, whenever we talk about dorks and idiots, you can
safely assume we're absolutely NOT talking about you.
We are definitely talking about the other dorks and
meatheads out there. Take for example the guy who
can't get the child-proof packaging materials off from his
dynamite so he can use it only as directed, so he shoves
it into the microwave and puts the setting on "thaw" for]]
a few minutes thinking this will melt the glue and allow
him to get into the package from the wrong side. What
an idiot.
Some of you are way ahead of me here realizing the
obvious fact that a match or lighter would do the same
thing much faster while using less energy than a
microwave but that's not the point. The point is you
know this guy is going to blame the fact that his crew
didn't get the road finished until after snow flew on his
bad luck.
Now, the night shift guy who is sleeping in the back
of the pick up truck filled with dynamite during all this
could legitimately blame his hearing loss or death on his
bad luck of being assigned to work with this other dimwit,
but we all know that the real reason is his own
stupidity for taking a nap in the back of a truck at a
construction site. As you all know, he is actually darned
lucky that his buddies were too preoccupied with the
child-proof packaging to notice that he was asleep, or he
might have wound up with his shoe laces tied together
or a frog in his lunch pail or even worse.
Where Does Bad Luck come from
(People are curious, so we provide this history.)
In the fall of 1776 a young Hessian farmer by the
name of Rolf was weeding his cabbages and rutabagas on
the Bavarian countryside dreaming of Wiener schnitzel,
brown German beer and the lovely frau Jennifermeister.]]
Unbeknownst to him, the king, who we shall call king
Rutherofrdstein III because his real name escapes us,
was in deep financial doo doo. To the misfortune of
thousands of young, military aged Bavarian guys, he had
struck a deal with his cousin George III of England to
receive a galleon-load of dough in exchange for sending
a couple of boatloads of cannon fodder to help put down
the rebellion in the British colonies.
Poor Rolf had the very bad luck of weeding alongside
the road at the precise moment when the King's
guard rode by looking for stout young men. They
snatched him to go fight for God and country in the
British colonies.
One might think this was unusually rotten luck and
mumble something like, "Poor Rolf." This, however,
actually turned into a spate of good luck on Rolf's part,
since back in Bavaria, that very fall, the plague invaded
the village, blight struck the rutabaga crop, his sweetie,
Jennifermeister , it turns out, had been cheating on him
with a plumber's assistant all along. Rolf, however, was
able to keep all his happy, cherished memories of her
untarnished because he was illiterate and couldn't read
the letters from his Mom warning him about what a tart
she was.
Fast forward to the winter of '78-'79. It was
Christmas Eve and the Hessian infantry was hunkered
down celebrating like a bunch of drunken college cheerleaders
on spring break. Sadly; poor Rolf was outside
freezing because he had guard duty. Since he was so
large he needed a special sized uniform and since his
uniform hadn't come, he had no choice but to wrap
himself up in old tabloid newspapers and wrap his
bleeding feet in rags and whatever else he could find to]]
try and stay warm. To add insult to injury, it was raining
and it was Christmas Eve. So, there he was freezing and
dressed in rags at the precise time that Washington and
his men crossed the Rubicon and launched the famous
surprise attack heard round the world.
As Washington and his men sprung from their
hiding places, Rolf jumped up in surprise, aimed his gun
at the nearest Continental soldier and pulled the trigger.
Since the Hessians couldn't afford training, his shot
went wildly into the air killing a goose, which had been
flying by. While this was very bad luck for the goose it
turned out to be unusually good luck for Rolf because
the Starving Continentals took one look at Rolf and
assumed that because of his uniform he was one of them
and that he was shooting the goose for Christmas
dinner. And so Rolf ran around in total panic looking
like a Continental soldier with an empty gun while all of
his comrades were either killed or captured. Since they
thought he was a Continental, and since he had shot the
main course, when the shooting stopped, Rolf got to
hang out and eat goose with the Americans, which, as it
turns out was much more pleasant than being shot or
captured.
So as you can see, you should never associate bad
luck with bad luck because you can never really be sure
it really is. It might actually be really good luck
disguised as bad luck or it might be really bad luck
disguised as moderately bad luck or something we
haven't even thought of. In this case Rolf made some
great buddies and ultimately decided to stay on and
settle in New Jersey. Eventually, he married and
changed his name to Rolf Springsteen and started a band
with the squeezebox he made from his old foot rags. All]]
this happened to him when he could have been hoeing
rutabagas in Bavaria stressing over a philandering girlfriend
and dying of the plague.
The other thing we can easily glean from this story
is that the king caused much of Rolf's bad luck, and
since the king is a politician, we can conclude that
politicians, especially the President, cause much of the
world's bad luck. Take for example my friend Cathy
Murphy's wedding. Cathy and her groom chose for their
wedding Memorial Day weekend because it was a
government holiday and there was no school. After
Cathy's parents spent over twenty thousand dollars for a
blow out wedding on that particular Memorial Day, it
rained cats and dogs. So you see, we need to hold those
politicians responsible for everything bad that happens,
especially the weather.]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: No support

Vocabulary: Many difficult words

Language: Many descriptive words

Sentences: Many Long Complex

Text structure: Story/Poem

Inferences: Several Implications

Complexity: Several unrelated ideas

Concepts: Abstract/Complex Social

Table of Contents

Headings

Author's purpose: Obvious

Mature concepts: Mature thinking required with many distinctly unusual experiences

Features

Targets adult reader

Second Person

Difficult names

Topic

*Feelings, Behaviors

Low Frequency Words

absolutely	account	alongside	altering	analyze
announced	annoy	appointment	assigned	associate
assume	assumed	atm	bacteria	balm
baloney	basis	bavarian	blight	boatloads
bona	buries	cheesy	cherished	college
colonies	comrades	conceivably	conclude	concrete
construction	continental	curious	decisions	deserve
determine	dimwit	disguised	dorks	drunken
effect	enlarged	eventually	fide	flush
fodder	follicle	frau	frequently	galleon
garlic	gerbil	german	gestures	glance
glean	government	gurus	hessian	hessians
hoeing	hunkered	hustling	idiot	idiots
illiterate	immediately	implications	indication	indicators
infantry	injury	instant	instantly	insult
interview	invaded	jennifermeister	jersey	language
lawyers	laxative	legitimately	lever	lighter
likely	loch	longingly	lottery	malfunctioning
masterful	materials	mathematically	meathead	meatheads
meatloaf	mechanic	memorial	memories	meteor
microwave	military	milking	miracle	misery
moderately	monopoly	mortgaging	multiple	mysteriously
negative	nonetheless	obnoxiously	obvious	occasionally
opportunity	ornery	packaging	panic	particular
pasture	patient	patients	permanent	persist
philandering	plague	plato	pleasant	plumber's
plummeting	politician	porcelain	precise	preoccupied
president	prostate	proven	psych	pure
purpose	quadruple	realizing	rebellion	recognize
reincarntations	require	responsible	results	reveling
rolf	rolf's	roundup	rubicon	rude
rutabaga	rutabagas	rutherofrdstein	sauce	schedule
schnitzel	sculptured	seagulls	sensation	shelves
shoves	shower	silage	skiing	sliding
snatched	soaring	soldier	somersault	source
spate	spectacular	sprung	squeezebox	stout
stupidity	suction	suggesting	surround	surrounded
sweetie	tabloid	thaw	transferred	trigger
udders	ultimately	unable	untarnished	vegemite
wad	walrus	whoever's	wiener	yankees