Expiration Dates

Today I brought home a couple of bagels from Bruegger's Bagels and noticed that the bottom of the bag had an expiration date stamped on it ~ Jul 13 '06.
Now, come on. I know that we have taken this expiration date thing to an obnoxious level, but to put it on a brown paper bag? What is going to happen? Will the bag revert back to a tree? Poor sap.

I also get confused with dates saying "Purchase by:_____ and Use by:______"
What if I DON'T purchase it by the earlier date, yet I use it by the "USE BY" date?
I feel a little manipulated here.

I'll keep cough medicines around for a while because I use it for 3 doses and I'm over the cough. So in another year, I'll need it again. For $8.95 for this little bottle, I want to use every ounce of it. Sometimes I'll take it over to a friend's house if the expiration date is drawing nigh and offer it like a house-warming present instead of wine...or Mad Dog 2020.

A few months ago I found a small rash on my arm that I must have gotten from pulling weeds..so I looked in the medicine cabinet and found an anti-itch cream but the bottle told me that I couldn't use it after 8/06..and it was Sept. 1st!!
Rats! If I had only procured this itch 24 hours earlier I could have used it!
OK, I still used it but in the back of my mind, I was constantly on the look-out for some weird curdle on my entire arm to my head because the lotion was officially "expired". (I know to NEVER mess with the dates of use on MILK...thus the analogy.)

One day recently I decided to clean out my non-perishable items. I always thought that if something were packaged in a can, it never perished..thus the name.
But alas, my nephew Brian had come over and being BT-OCD (BT= "Big time") obsessive-compulsive VERY disorder...he started flying thru the cupboards' occupants and FREAKING OUT just because the soup had a 4/99 date on it. It's SOUP...lots of salt as a preservative, for pity sake!! I think the jar of mayonaise that read 2/88 really bothered him and he refused to eat the tuna sandwhich I had prepared for lunch.

I believe that there are some other things that should have an expiration date on it that are missing:

A) Re-runs from 1965 Bonanza episodes
B) Chairs that have had the legs broken off more than 7 times.
C) Blogs that are older than 5 days

But one expiration date that I AM looking forward to:
Jan 20, 2008 ~ No not the Super Bowl...a New President