General Stench – Page 15 – HappyStinkingJoy

Origin of Species… or at least of Testicals!

The garden was especially peaceful on this day. The air was warm and calm as the sun shed it’s midday light amongst the dense, prismatic vegetation. Adam, leaning against a large rock in the shade of a dragon’s blood tree, watched a distant tyrannosaurus rex just outside the garden feed on a wooly mammoth.

‘Glad those things aren’t allowed in the garden,’ thought Adam.

A rustle of brush behind Adam announced the arrival of Eve with the midday meal. Adam loved Eve, and he loved the fruit she harvested for the midday meal each day.

“What’d you bring today, Hon?” Adam asked. “Mango… I hope you brought some mango today.”

“Something even better,” replied Eve, blushing. “I brought something new.”

Adam had never seen Eve blush before. “Why are your cheeks turning red?”

“Uh, ’cause you’re naked,” Eve said. She handed the golden fruit in her hand to Adam and immediately went to the nearest fig tree. Grabbing a couple of fig leaves, she covered her “womanly” parts.

“What are you doing?” Adam asked.

“Try the fruit and you’ll see.”

“Why are you covering the parts of yourself that make you different from me?” Adam asked.

“Try the fruit and you’ll see.”

Adam looked at the golden fruit in his hand. Other than the single bite taken from it, the fruit was unblemished.

“Where did you get this?” Adam asked.

Eve pointed to the south and, realizing that her woman-parts were exposed, quickly put the fig leaf back in its protective position.

“Over there,” Eve said, nodding to the south with her head.

“I’ve been south and I have never seen a fruit like this.”

“Oh, it’s there alright,” Eve said. “The serpent showed it to me.”

“The serpent?” asked Adam. “The freaky long thing with no arms or legs that slithers along the ground with the fangs and stuff?”

“That’s the one.”

“Oh, okay, cool,” said Adam as he started to take a bite. As the fruit approached his lips, his brow began to furrow. The fruit froze inches from his mouth. “Hey, this isn’t from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, is it?”

“Well of course not,” said Eve. “We were expressly forbidden from eating that fruit.”

Adam furrowed his brow further and, hand on hip, glared at Eve.

“Okay, maybe it’s from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”

“Maybe?” asked Adam. “What, you have a death wish or something? We were expressly forbidden from eating this fruit or we will die.”

“Or touching it,” said Eve.

“What’s that?” Adam asked, his eyes growing wide.

“Or touching it,” repeated Eve. “We were forbidden from eating it or even touching it.”

Adam looked from Eve to the fruit in his hand. “Crap.”

“You might as well try it,” Eve said. “You already touched it, so if God is gonna kill me he’s gonna kill you too. You might as well get a taste of it.”

“You lied to me,” Adam said. “You… you…” and because Adam had yet to actually take a bite of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he could think of none of the really good words to scorn her with, “you… stinker!”

Adam looked at the fruit in his hand and, although he had lost his appetite, he took a bite. As the sweet flesh of the fruit burst to juice in his mouth, Adam realized that he was naked. He ran to the fig tree and grabbed a leaf.

“A-HEM!” came from the sky… and the ground… and everywhere.

“Crap,” whispered Adam, “it’s God!” Adam grabbed Eve by the wrist and forced her down in the bushes as he climbed in beside her.

“Why are you hiding?” asked God.

“I heard you coming and didn’t want you to see me naked,” said Adam.

“Who told you you were naked,” asked God. “Have you eaten from the tree I warned you about?”

“This is all your fault,” Adam whispered to Eve, elbowing her in the side. “Yes, but it was the woman you gave me who who brought me some, and I ate it.”

“How could you do such a thing?” Eve felt the voice of God against her flesh as goosebumps rose on her body against the vibrations of His words.

“The serpent tricked me,” she replied.

God rolled His eyes. Then God started doling out punishment for the serpent.

Meanwhile, Adam stared at Eve. Adam was sure that God would take his side on this matter. After all, Adam had been tricked by that stupid Eve to touch the fruit. Eve, succumbing to the long, seductive form of the serpent, had sold them both up the river. ‘Plus, she lied to me,’ thought Adam. Of course, he still took a bite of the forbidden fruit… all on his own with no physical coercion. Like most of the men to follow him, however, Adam decided at this point in time that he was going to do everything within his power to blame every ill in his life on the sex bore of his rib… and all men to follow fell to Adam’s fate.

Adam started to listen to the punishment appropriated for the serpent, and he realized that Eve and all of womankind was being punished just as much as the serpent. God then directed punishment to Eve and all of womankind.

“You shall bear children in intense pain and suffering; yet even so, you shall welcome your husband’s affections, and he shall be your master.”

Adam snickered. Eve was getting her due. Adam felt pardoned; he felt that God had forgiven the sins that Eve had led him to. Adam felt that silly little women was getting her just desserts, and Eve and all of her ilk would, throughout eternity, pay for the dishonest lies of the first woman taken from the rib of the man! Adam smiled.

…and then Adam felt The Shift. The Shift was the formation of two oval-shaped appendages springing suddenly from the groinish-area of Adam’s loin.

“What the…” Adam exclaimed as his hand fell to the new addition of his outward appearance.

“These, dear Adam, in addition to the life of sin and the need for repentance that lie ahead in your and your descendant’s miserable little lives, are a reminder of the affront to My name that you have allowed here today,” said God.

“But Eve…” said Adam.

“Yes, Eve has done much wrong,” said God. “But Eve is also in a vulnerable position when compared to you, my dear Adam. She is not as physically strong as you, and she is more emotionally unstable than you. So, in order to offset the differences between you and her, I am allowing the ‘dropping of the balls’.”

“The dropping of the what?” asked Adam.

“The balls… those things swinging about your fig-leaf-covered groin,” said God.

Adam touched the balls and asked, “Where did they come from?”

“They were attached to the appendix and were a significant force in the ability of humankind to remain immortal,” said God. “They will still play a significant role in the future of humankind, but having organs that were meant to be protected deep inside of the male body suddenly exposed for all of the natural world to rape… oh, woe it is to be ‘man’.”

“Eve and all of womankind are relegated to a position of inferiority and complacency when compared to man. Of course, the feminists will come along and try to disparage these facts,” said God. “The balls will act as an equalizing force in the battle between the sexes. The feminists will see the balls as a sign of repression and weakness and will strike against them. The insecure woman will see the balls as a sign of power through which they will struggle to find their own identity. The average woman will see the balls as a comical extrusion from the male body and America’s Funniest Home Videos will be born!”

“America’s Funniest Home Videos,” whimpered Adam.

“Oh, my son,” laughed God. “The balls will be both your best friend and your worst enemy. And you will provide to all of humankind more laughs through your balls than you could ever, throughout a thousand lifetimes, imagine.”

Adam looked at the protrusion from his groin and whimpered. Surely this all had to be some sort of horrific joke. Suddenly, Eve grabed Adam’s balls with her clenched fist. She tugged once, softly, and said, “You ready to go start our new life of sin together?”

“Screw you!” exclaimed Adam. He was going to have no part of this new life of sin and regret.

Eve squeezed and pulled at the new appendage between her fingers. Nausea fell upon Adam’s being; from the tip of his toes to the top of his head, he felt pain as Eve pulled at his balls and led him in the direction she desired.

And so it has been ever since…

Yeah, probably not entirely Biblically correct, but his is how I see it going down. Much more believable than evolution, isn’t it? 🙂

Evolution… seriously?!?

There is a lot of information available in this world of ours that disputes or contradicts the theory of evolution. One that comes to mind is the complexity of the human mind and all of the emotions associated with humanity. The human mind, however, is a deep subject and not one many people are willing to research or put a lot of thought into. Apparently our minds aren’t evolved enough to comprehend the mind… or something like that. But why make evolution so complicated? There is a part of the human body (or at least about half of the human bodies) that is much easier to understand than the brain and proves, in my opinion, beyond a reasonable doubt that evolution is nothing more than, to be honest, a bunch of poppycock. If you want to take on a liberal thinker and dispute their irrational theories on evolution, there is only one word that needs to come out of your mouth : testicals.

Testicles, testes, gonads, nads, cojones, juevos, balls, nuts, marbles, twins, “the boys”; whatever you call them, there is no single ( er, double?) organ of the body that goes further to disprove the theory of evolution than the testicles. If you dispute this, you have never been kicked in the balls. Anyone who has had his testicles touched in any way, shape, or form that is not with the greatest of tenderness knows that the testicles are an organ that really should be located somewhere inside the body… and not just on a cold day.

According to the theory of evolution, we have opposable thumbs thanks to many small changes in in our DNA over many thousands of years due to influence and pressures from our surroundings. There was this little fish/reptile thingie that crawled out of the primordial stew that was one of our earliest ancestors. This little fishy cousin of ours (from here-on referred to as Larry… and Larry refers to all ancestors of man) was the first to make the break from living in the water to living to land.

Larry had to adjust and evolve to his new surroundings. As inadequacies were found in Larry’s physical make-up, his internal workings registered the need for improvements and, over time, his DNA changed. So, Larry developed opposable thumbs. Larry also grew hair on his body to protect him from cold weather. Larry learned to walk upright on two feet. As Larry learned to use clothes, the hair became less important and, on most of Larry’s descendants, hair is only in a few varying places around the body. The amount and location of these hairy spots change over the course of a human’s lifetime, which also shows that evolution is a bunch of phewy… we lose an inordinate amount of heat through our head, and as we age we need to conserve more body heat, so old guys lose hair on their head and in turn lose more body heat which results in premature death through balding… yet the inside of men’s noses and ears stay nice and toasty due to the new hair that sprouts in these areas as we age!?!

Thanks for nothing, Larry!

Anywho… you can’t tell me with a straight face that one of the first things Larry did as he climbed naked out of the water and made his “one small step for mankind” wasn’t introducing “the boys” to some inconvenient obtrusion that he tried to walk over. Can’t you just see it? Little Larry crawling out of the water and looking at the beauty of the land before him; the fine sand of the beach between his toes, the warm sun beating down on his back, the small rock in front of him that he just knowshe can walk over… WHAM! right in the cojones… and Larry doubles over in pain!

And we have opposable thumbs?

When Larry racked himself for the first time, he wasn’t thinking about opposable thumbs. He wasn’t thinking about the need to pick things up. He was thinking about how not to vomit from the intense pain that was created by the rough treatment his marbles had just endured! Larry’s internal workings should have immediately started on a resolution to this problem. His internal workings should have said the following, “I need one of two things to happen: either suck the nads up somewhere in the body where they are safe from harm, or grow me some kind of permanent codpiece!”

I spoke with a co-worker of mine about my idea to share my opinions on testicles, and this coworker told me that my observations were irrelevant. “Sperm has to be maintained at a certain temperature in order to survive,” he told me.

Ok, so here I am thinking about how incomprehensible it is that a kangaroo can grow a pouch to support its offspring in one of the most secure environments known to man, and yet, through the evolutionary process, man has not found a way to make his sperm a little more tempature-tolerant… or found a way to add a little “air conditioning”… for “the boys.”

Yet here we are, thousands of years later, with one (or two) of the most sensitive of all internal organs dangling freely between the legs of most men.

DANGLING FREELY!

I realize that America’s Funniest Home Videos would probably not be in existence if it weren’t for the obligatory nut-shot… but I could do without America’s Funniest Home Videos!

So, if evolution did not lead to the formation of the twin brothers swinging between the legs of most men… what did? Well, it’s obvious! It was a God with a wicked sense of humor… which will be the subject of the next post 🙂

Happy New Year!

What did you do for New Year’s Eve? Did you party? Did you make some resolutions that you will never keep? Did you check out the blue moon? Did you even stay up until midnight to watch the new year come rolling in? I’m going to share with you how I spent part of my New Year’s Eve.

I had to work for part of the day. Our office closed early (1pm) and it was a pretty uneventful morning. We did a little potluck at work amongst those of us who actually worked and I made Cincinnati chili. Never heard of Cincinnati chili? Neither had I until I came across the recipe in the local newspaper. Sounded interesting. Tried it, liked it, will probably have it again. Anyway, the potluck was a success.

After work, me and the family went shopping. We were getting some munchies for our little New Year’s celebration and some seafood for the Cajun boil we were having New Year’s day. Well, we decided to avoid Walmart because, well, Walmart sucks. On a normal day, Walmart sucks. On New Year’s Eve day I imagine Walmart super-sucks, so we went to Family Thrift (which is a Nash Finch grocery store… and Nash Finch sucks too, but they usually have decent seafood.)

Anyway, so we go to Family Thrift and we suddenly realize that, as much as Walmart sucks, Walmart really does have the lowest prices. Family Thrift just kind of sucks, but Family Thrift is sooo overpriced that it’s not even close to funny. So, we’re walking around picking up crap that is like twice as expensive as it would be at Walmart when we get to the seafood counter.

Now, usually for the Cajun boil, we get shrimp and snow crab (along with the corn, sausage and potatos.) It just so happens that Family Thrift is out of shrimp and snow crab. So, we check out the king crab.

The lady working behind the counter says, “The king crab is on sale for $15.99 per pound.” We really don’t want to spend $15.99 per pound for much of anything, so I happen to notice a little freezer with prepackaged crab in it. “That’s king crab bits and pieces,” says the counter lady.

Now, I don’t know exactly what “bits and pieces” means, but I do know that the “bits and pieces” are about half the price of the stuff behind the counter. For some reason, this difference in pricing makes me mad. I know this sounds stupid, and it probably is, but the “bits and pieces” look about the same as the stuff behind the counter yet there is a drastic difference in price… and I smell some stupid marketing ploy… and stupid marketing ploys tick me off.

“Why would we pay twice as much for the non-bits-and-pieces stuff,” I practically yell at the wife. Now, it’s not the wife’s fault by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m really yelling at the lady behind the counter indirectly by yelling at my wife directly… it’s a beta male thing and the wife, God bless her, is used to it and takes no offense.

Now, the point I’m making is that we’re gonna buy the bits and pieces because buying the $15.99 crap would be stupid. The lady behind the counter seems to think I’m looking for a deal.

“I’ll tell you what,” the counter lady says, “I’ll let you have the king crab for $15.99 per pound, but that’s as low as I can go.” She is dead serious.

The lady behind the counter seems to think I’m looking for a deal… and semi-retarded. I don’t even bother looking at the counter lady. I don’t want to know if she really thinks I’m stupid enough to fall for the fact that she is offering me a “deal” price that is the same as the sale price she quoted to me only moments earlier. I don’t want to know if she is offended at the fact that I indirectly yelled at her by directly yelling at the wife. I just want to pay for the overpriced crap we have in our cart and I want to go home.

So, we check out, get to the car, and start for home. Now, the wife has this brilliant idea to pick up some McDonald’s for supper. That’s right… New Year’s Eve and me and the family are having McDonald’s for supper. You can’t live in Nebraska and not have at least a touch of trailer trash running through your veins.

“Alright,” I think to myself, “at least it will be quick. Yep, a couple of minutes in the drive-thru and we’ll be on our way.”

We place our order, pay at the first window, and proceed to the second window to pick up our order. A total of about 60 seconds have passed. So, we’re sitting and waiting and excited to start our night of board games and snacking (yeah… we’re party animals.) A couple of minutes go by and I’m starting to get a bit upset. The adolescent people working on the other side of the sliding window won’t even make eye contact. What’s taking so long. This is “fast food,” for crying out loud. Finally, the zit-faced teenage girl who should be handing us our food opens the little sliding window and says, “Uh, your order isn’t, like, ready… so could you, like, pull forward and we’ll, like, bring it to you or something?”

“Uh… ok,” I say. How could some fast food be not ready? Isn’t the purpose of fast food to be ready? I pull forward and am getting pretty hot under the collar.

“How can it not be ready,” I yell at my wife.

“I don’t know,” she smiles.

“What the hell,” I yell. “Do they need me to go in there and make it myself?”

“I don’t know,” she smiles.

We sit out there for almost 15 minutes. Meanwhile, cars behind us are pulling up to that stupid window, getting their food, and driving around us.

“What in the hell are they ordering that is so much faster than our order,” I yell at the wife.

“I don’t know,” she smiles.

Finally, some skinny teenage boy comes rushing out the door of the restaurant with our order out in front of him.

“Here you are, Sir,” says the boy, his voice crackling and I can’t tell if it’s because he’s nervous or if it’s just because he’s a teenage boy. “Sorry for the wait.”

By this point I can’t even look at the boy ’cause I’m so upset. I’m afraid if I look at him I’m gonna start yelling at the wife again… and she’s had enough for one day.

“Uh… ok,” I say to the boy, take the food, and drive away. I’m so ticked, I don’t say anything the whole way home. When we finally get to the house, we head to the dining room to dig into our McDonald’s feast.

After getting my part of the order out in front of me, I ask, “Can someone pass some ketchup?”

“Looks like we didn’t get any ketchup,” says the wife. “I’ll go to the kitchen and get some.”

I can feel my face turning red. I am on the brink of really letting the wife have it when I think better of it. It is, after all, New Year’s Eve. Instead of yelling or cursing, I begin to weep. My salty tears fall silently on the fries in front of me and are every bit as good as ketchup… or so I tell myself.

That is how I spent my New Year’s Eve. I have spent all time since then doing everything I possibly can to avoid contact with the outside world which seems hell-bent on driving me insane.

Happy New Year!

Stinking Nebraskans and Their Stinking Low-Beams!

I spent some time back in Montana over the long Thanksgiving weekend. Spending some time driving in a normal state made me realize how ridiculous drivers are in Nebraska.

In Montana, especially eastern Montana, there are a lot of deer. A LOT OF DEER! When you drive in the rural areas after the sun’s gone down, you have to constantly scan the sides of the road looking for any sign of movement. I lived in Montana for most of the first 22 years of my life; I hit two different deer on two separate occasions. If you live in Montana and you drive at night, you will almost unavoidably hit a deer. Something that Montanans realize is that it’s a heck of a lot easier to catch the glint of a deer’s eye in the headlights if your headlight beams are on high. Thus, people in Montana, when approaching another car at night, usually dim their headlights about 4 to 5 seconds before passing the other car.

Nebraskans (and, to be honest, Wyomingites are even more anal about this than Nebraskans) start flashing their headlights from high-to-low in an effort to get you to dim your lights at anywhere from 1/2 mile to 1 mile away. This means these morons are flashing you at 30 seconds to 1 minute away! Seriously! If these old Germans have such poor eyesight that they need oncoming lights on dim at this distance, they should have their licenses taken away… not only because they are increasing the risk of roadside hazards becoming unexpected surprises, they also just annoy the CRAP out of me!

These light-flashing idiots used to get to me so bad that I would wait until I was about 4 or five seconds away before I would dim my lights just to make them mad. Of course, this backfired, because the light-flashing nincompoops started sticking it to me. By “sticking it to me” I mean that they would wait until the last second and then hit me with all that they’ve got… high beams, low beams, and if they got ’em, fog lights, all at once. The blinding brightness usually lasted well after the other car passed and made me even madder. I actually considered turning around and running the idiots off the road on more than one occasion, but doing hard time because grandma Schultz ticked me off on her way to make butterballs at church wouldn’t sit well with the wife. Instead of tinkering with my blood pressure more than need be, I have attempted to learn to conform to the local idiotic driving patterns.

And then I went to Montana and re-experienced night driving the way it should be: safely avoiding the hazards at the side of the road. On our return trip, it started getting dark right about the time we arrived in our local driving area… and I once again had morons flashing their lights at me from up-to a mile away.

I wanted to get this straight once and for all. Tonight, I went to several states’ DMV websites, including Nebraska and Wyoming, to find out what the law is regarding distance for dimming headlights when approaching another vehicle. Nebraska did not list a specific distance. It did list a distance of 200 feet when approaching another vehicle from the rear but it didn’t list a distance for forward-approaching vehicles. 200 feet from the rear was the same distance I found on several other websites, except for the Wyoming site which put this distance at 300 feet. The funny thing is (and I don’t mean funny in the sense of “ha ha” but more in the sense of making you want to stick a red-hot steak knife into your eyeball) the distances on the sites I visited regarding the correct distance to dim you lights when approaching another vehicle from the front ranged from 300 feet to 500 feet. The Wyoming site stated 500 feet.

So, you might ask yourself, how long would it take for two vehicles to meet each other from a distance of 500 feet… considering a speed of about 55 mph? Thanks for asking! The Wyoming Driver Manual, on page 75, states… and I quote… “You should dim at least 500 feet (about four to five seconds) before meeting an oncoming vehicle.” I kid you not!

So, let’s see if we can get Adventurer Rich’s situation all straightened out. I have been dimming my headlights in a very legal fashion and should have increased the safety on the road (due to potential roadside hazards) in the process. The stinking knuckleheads that blast me with all that they’ve got are, in reverse, breaking the law because they think I am breaking the law (which I’m not) and causing a danger to me and anyone in my car by obscuring my vision with their temper tantrum… not to mention that they are tempting fate that I don’t have a temper tantrum of my own, turn around, and run their sorry butts off the road!

Let’s see if we have learned a little lesson here. If you are driving on one of the many rural highways in western Nebraska or eastern Wyoming and you come across a gent who refuses to dim his lights at 1/2 mile away, proceed with caution. If you get to anywhere from 10 to 4 seconds away and he then dims his lights, remember that he is acting in a completely legal fashion. If you, at this point, decide to blast him because he didn’t dim his lights when you wanted him to (law be damned!), accept that he may very well turn around and do everything within his power to see you run off the road (which would be no more illegal or put any more life in danger than you did by blasting him with your headlights.) And the number one thing that I hope you have learned is this: if you would even consider flashing your lights at someone when they are 1/2 mile away in an attempt to get them to dim their headlights… you need to turn in your driver’s license, Grandpa, ’cause you shouldn’t even be on the road!

Winter Oreos?

What’s the deal with this year’s “Winter Oreos”? My wife recently bought a pack of Winter Oreos because our whole family loves nothing more than chocolaty wafers stuffed with sugar-enveloped lard. Mmmm. What strikes me about the Winter Oreos is the color Nabisco decided on for the lard filling.

What colors do you think of for winter? I think, of course, of white, but the filling in an Oreo is normally white, so that wouldn’t work for a “seasonal variation.” Blue also comes to mind (I don’t exactly know why… I think it’s because companies market winter stuff in blue; you know, like all the stupid snowman decorations with the blue hats and blue scarves… you never see snowman decorations with a scarf that happens to be a lovely shade of chartreuse.) One color that doesn’t naturally pop into my head for winter is… red. Nabisco has decided that red lard is a good way to represent winter?!? Does anyone get this? Seriously, red = winter?!?

I’m reminded of my days hunting as a young man with my father in western Montana. Early morning, before the sun’s up, nestled in a patch of juniper awaiting the sun and the coming of the deer. The sun peeks over the horizon, casting brilliance on the snow-covered ground but leaving the air frigid; and here come the deer. Shots ring out and the deer scatter, leaping with unrelenting fury away from certain death… except for the one unlucky chap who takes a slug through the spine. The hit deer falls immediately and is still. My father and I approach the motionless, warm body. As we approach, the large buck’s head moves ever so slightly in our direction. The buck’s eyes, open-wide and full of fear, lock on my father and me.

“You gonna take care of him?” asks my father.

My shot is the one which struck true. I unsheathe my hunting knife and kneel beside the paralyzed buck. I make it fast, slicing quick and hard at the throat of the deer with my sharp knife. A flood of warmth bursts over my hand as the buck’s large eyes roll back into its head; his head relaxes as his last breath escapes his mouth in a mist of white against the cold Montana air.

I stand back and observe the scene. The buck, almost a winter’s worth of meat for our family, lies still. The blood from his throat slowly stains the surrounding snow crimson. And all the while, I’m thinking to myself, “Oh, oh, oh, ice -cold milk and an Oreo cookie. They forever go together, what a classic combination…”

Seriously… red and winter?!? I think the folks at Nabisco are just cheap. You know they are going to have red filling at Christmas (and probably at Valentine’s Day), so instead of having to mix up a batch of blue lard, they just started the red Christmas (Valentine’s Day) lard early and think we consumers are retarded enough that we won’t question what red has to do with winter.

Well for you, Nabisco, I am seriously questioning the red!

Stinking Flu Season

It’s that time of the year; it’s the dreaded flu season. Most of my life, I have been able to avoid the flu. I guess I must have been blessed with an unusually healthy immune system… that is until this year. I guess approaching 40 means a rapid decrease in the ability to be immune. As I write this post, my entire family is touched by the flu (except for my oldest son, who seems to have inherited the immune system of my youth.)

Now, usually when one or more of the kids is sick, my wife provides the nurturing care necessary for the boys to find their way back to full health. It’s not that I don’t like to help, it’s just that… you know… oh, who am I kidding… I don’t like to help. I love my boys, but I’m a guy. I hate dealing with whining, I loath the thought of catching something from them, and cleaning up puke in the middle of the night will, in each and every instance, lead to me puking myself!

Well, with our current bout with the flu, my wife has it pretty bad, and so does our 6 year-old. The wife has to take care of him all day, so I have relented and agreed to watch after him at night (he’s usually too fevered to whine and I’m already sick, so I ain’t gonna catch what I already got.) Yes, there has been the cleaning-of-the-puke at around 2 in the morning for much of this week, but, being sick myself, I find that I feel somewhat better after the puking that follows the cleaning-of-the-puke of my son, so it all works out.

I do want to point out that giving chocolate to a sick child before bed when that child is likely to throw up at night and that child has a light colored carpet in his room is not a good idea. The first night it was Oreos, and it took a fair amount of bleach and a more than fair amount of elbow-grease to get the black sludge out of the carpet.

“Did you give the boy chocolate before bed last night?” I asked the wife the next morning.

“He had some Oreos,” she replied. “Why?”

“Well, chocolate puke is hard to clean up…”

“He was hungry, and I’m sick, and the Oreos were handy, so sue me!”

“Not a big deal,” I whispered, ending the conversation.

The next night, a second volley of black ooze from the bowels of hell, more bleach (thank God for synthetic-fibered carpet), and more elbow grease.

The next morning, I sheepishly asked my wife about the boys before-bed snack.

“He helped himself to a Rice Krispie treat from the snack cabinet.”

Together we walked into his room and checked his garbage can. There, in the center of a pile of disgustingly-used Kleenexes rested the bright blue metallic wrapper of one CHOCOLATE Rice Krispie treat.

“Ok, fine, I’ll pay more attention to what he eats before bed!” my wife assured me.

The next night, the puke was relatively clear. Cleaning up this night’s puke was a joy, because I could feel the love of my wife in the work.

The next morning, I noticed a melted, untouched ice cream sandwich on a plate on the dining room table… an ice cream sandwich with vanilla ice cream and CHOCOLATE wafers.

“Uh, what’s this,” I asked the wife while pointing at the melted black and white glob of waste on the plate.

“Oh, that was the boy’s before-bed snack last night,” she said. “Guess he didn’t want it. Why?”

“Never mind…”

Last night was a nice night for the boy and I. He did not puke. He fell asleep on the the living room couch, so I slept awhile in the recliner. He looked so peaceful on the couch that I didn’t want to move him. We both woke up a couple of hours later with fevers. I felt quite chilled. I decided I would carry him to his bed and give him some Tylenol. As soon as I picked him up, I could feel the fevered-warmth radiating from his tiny body; it felt good.

After placing him in his bed, I begrudgingly turned to get the boy his Tylenol.

“Dad,” his weak voice whispered.

“Yeah, Buddy.”

“Will you lay with me for awhile?”

“I love you, Son,” I said as I snuggled up with his little radiator of a body.

We both fell asleep for who knows how long. When I finally woke up, my fever was gone and his was at an all-time high. Feeling like a horrible parent (yet strangely comfortable), I went to get the boy his Tylenol.

Now that flu season actually has an impact on me personally, I have come to realize that I may need to work on my sensitivity. I have also learned that I may need to, during this time of the year, remove all traces of chocolate from the house.

Well, I think I better wrap this post up. I can feel my fever coming back and the chills are really kicking in. I skipped giving the boy his Tylenol before bed. I got me a “heated” bed with a Cars comforter, a ton of stuffed animals, and not much spare room calling my name

Stinking McDonalds:)

I remember growing up in a small Montana town. I remember a small Montana town without a McDonald’s. I remember, on any trip that my family took, eating out at McDonald’s and a trip to McDonald’s being an exquisite experience! We would each order two fat-encrusted hamburger patties slathered in mounds of special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions served on a whimsical sesame seed-encrusted bun and enclosed in magic Styrofoam castles! With this magical burger, inside the “to go” sack that contained the wonderful burgers and their irresistible deep-fat fried french fry counterparts, rested a seemingly-endless pile of small packets of ketchup! A fry not covered in a conspicuous covering of the wondrous tomato-sugar mixture was not worthy of finding its way to your mouth. I remember that, after a trip to McDonald’s, my mom would not purchase ketchup for several weeks because we would rely on the small packets of ketchup from McDonald’s to provide our ketchup needs for several weeks after a visit to the restaurant chain 🙂

Flash forward to the year 2009. You are going through the drive-through at your local McDonald’s is an effort to provide sustenance for your body in an extremely rushed environment. You order a burger and fries and, most likely, some form of liquid refreshment. You pay at the first window in a clinical manner not reminiscent of your youth… you pull up at the second window and are hurriedly handed a grease-spotted bag containing the magical food-items ordered a few moments previously at the large order-stand at the back of your local restaurant… you drive away in a rush to get home and enjoy this meal in a friendly environment. Often, you will reach your hand inside the warm, moist bag to pull forth a limp fry. This fry will make it to your mouth… and, even more satisfying, your stomach… and in the front of your mind you are thinking about how good that burger will taste when you get home… and how good that piece of deep-fried potato will be with a little KETCHUP!!! And then you get home and… guess what… you forgot to ask for the STINKING KETCHUP… SO YOU HAVE NO STINKING KETCHUP!!!

Oh sure, you may have some ketchup in the fridge, but that just isn’t the same. The ketchup in the fridge is cold, and you had to purchase it seperate from the McDonald’s food… and purchased cold ketchup just doesn’t seem to go quite right with fast food. You need those little packets of ketchup that have been heated by resting against the heat-lamp-warmed food in the greasy bag on the ride home.

You can’t tell me that McDonald’s doesn’t take into account the cost of ketchup when they price their products! They budget a certain amount of those little bags for each customer for each purchase. So, when you go to McDonald’s and forget to ask for the ketchup, they are literally RIPPING YOU OFF! When you consider that there are even some freaks out there who do not partake of the ketchup while enjoying their fries, then you really start to get enraged. There are people who don’t take full advantage of what they are paying for and yet the staff at McDonald’s is still now being trained to not give me my stinking ketchup unless I ask for it?!? What’s next… the drink that comes with the “value” meal? You get home and realize they didn’t give you your Diet Coke (’cause we all know that a McDonald’s meal is a healthy choice as long as you order a Diet Coke). You will have to turn around and go back to the restaurant. Can’t you hear the response already:

“Well, you didn’t ask for it, so I didn’t think you wanted it.”

Ok, so let’s say you aren’t brain-dead like me and you actually remember to ask for the ketchup at the drive-through window. They don’t ask you how much you would like; instead, they look and rummage around for a good 20 – 30 seconds (as if no one ever asks for ketchup and you have just interrupted the magical flow that makes fast food fast). When they finally find the hidden vault of the nightshade-delight, they reach in and grab what looks like a large handful of the wonderous packets. They shove them in the bag (in an apparent attempt to wedge as many of them as possible in between the actual fries) and throw the bag in your general direction. Apparently asking for ketchup makes you somewhat of a nuisance. The really strange thing is, when you finally get home, you discover that large handful of packets that appeared to be placed into your bag is actually only four packets. Four (4) packets! Four packets is not enough to get me through a small bag of fries let alone the super-sized version that I let the fancy graphics on the stinking drive-through order-stand talk me into! You would think the amount of time and money that McDonald’s apparently spends on training its employees the make-it-look-like-a-handful-while-only-grabbing-four-bags technique could be better utilized by, oh, I don’t know… GIVING US AN ACTUAL HANDFUL!?!

I blame my ~~addiction~~… er… normal, healthy attachment to ketchup on McDonalds! They are like the drug dealer that used to hook you up with the crank for free, until you got addicted, and now expect you to pay for it. Ok, they really aren’t like a drug dealer selling crank… maybe more like sex and marriage. At first, you get as much as you want, so you become quite fond of it. Over the years, you get less and less until it gets to a point where you actually have to beg for it… or so I’ve been told by people in less-than-perfect marriages unlike my own marriage which has been, as of tommorrow, 15 years of perfection! Yes, my wife reads my blog 🙂

At McDonald’s, the staff has no problem asking if you would like to purchase anything else before the transaction is completed; the correct thing to do would be to ask if you would like ketchup with those fries. After all… one way or another… you’ve already paid for it!

Fundraising, or… “How Life Sucks When You Have a Boy Scout :)

I have been my oldest son’s Scout leader since he was a Tiger Cub. He is now in his first year of Boy Scouts working on his Tenderfoot. I have been a Scout leader for about 5 years, which is almost a year longer than I have held any single employment with any single employer in my almost 40 years of existence… how pathetic am I? Needless to say, the time of the annual “Popcorn Sales” is upon us. Oh, and how Boy Scouts of America (BSA) wants you to sell that popcorn! My oh my, it seems that perhaps the entire reason for Scouting’s existence is to sell that stinking Trail’s End popcorn!

I don’t get it… Girl Scouts sell those delicious little cookies for less than $5.00 a box. So, even if someone has already bought from a Girl Scout, they may be willing to buy a little more from another Scout; after all, who doesn’t love Thin Mints? In the past, when we have actually tried to sell this stinking popcorn, the biggest door-in-the-face we would get was, “Oh, I already bought from so-and-so,” or “my boss’s niece’s son is in Scouts and we always buy from him.” I think BSA needs to find a fundraiser where the garbage the Scouts sell isn’t so outrageously priced. I mean seriously, $15 for a box of microwave popcorn that (the last couple of years we have purchased and it) pops up like crap… seriously, there are always dozens of unpopped kernels and old maids in each and every bag; what a selling point.

After doing a little research, I have discovered why the higher-ups in BSA push for the popcorn sales. When a Scout goes out and sells (or, in many cases, the parents go out and sell) the – seriously – ridiculously priced popcorn and related crap, 30% of those sales go to the Scout’s troop, 30% goes to the Scout’s council, and 10% go to the Scout (in the form of worthless pieces of carnival-type trinket crap) . Seriously, the council gets 30%? For what… to maintain the summer camps that cost $200 or $300 per Scout to attend (and that doesn’t include all of the extra crap the Scouts have to buy at the camp to get their merit badges). Scouting is run by (I am under the impression) volunteers. I volunteer my time to Scouting… and I have never spent more of my own money “volunteering” for any other cause at any time in my life! I have to pay to go to the summer camp… and sleep in a stinking tent… and eat crappy food… and share a disgusting shower-type complex and filthy, falling apart toilet facilities with tons of other males (and there is something about many males that prevents them from being able to lift up a toilet seat when peeing… so if you have to go “#2”, which on a week-long campout, you will have to go “#2”, you are most likely going to be sitting in someone else’s pee… and when I actually catch one of these idiots peeing on the toilet seat, I will spend an undefined amount of time in a correctional facility for assault after rubbing said moron’s face on said toilet seat)… having a curfew at night of around 10:00 pm and getting up in the stinking morning at 5:30 or 6:00 am… all to help the camp manage the kids!!! And they have the stinking audacity to charge me!?! I should be charging them!

At least our troop doesn’t keep the whole 30% that is designated to the troop (at least they better not, because they don’t pay for squat). I believe the troop gives part of the troop’s profits back to the Scouts. The troop’s contribution, along with the 10% earned by the Scout, go into a fund that the Scout can use to pay for all of the camps and camping (our troop has come to the realization that the overpriced crappy trinkets that BSA tries to con the Scouts into redeeming their earnings for… which I’m sure is just one more way that BSA is trying to pilfer funds for unknown purposes; maybe BSA is building a secret underground facility for a refuge for all Scouts for during the 2012 phenomenon… are garbage) which are required for advancement in Scouting. At least, I’m assuming that our troop is giving a large percentage of their cut to the individual Scouts, because our troop seriously doesn’t pay for squat! All expenses for any activity that we do as Scouts are split evenly and paid by the Scouts and participating volunteer leaders… well, except for gas which is apparently solely the responsibility of the volunteer leaders. I’ve started charging every kid that needs a ride in my vehicle to any function a small fee (that never comes close to covering the cost of actual fuel used), which I feel is looked down on by the other leaders, but if they don’t like it, they can fire me. Seriously, I have no idea what our troop pays for, except, of course, helping those “down on their luck” pay for all the Scouting crap that the rest of us can barely afford (seriously, if my wife quit her job… and she ain’t making a physician’s salary… our family would qualify for all kinds of free crap: we’d get free school lunches for our kids, we’d get food stamps, we’d get free medical care at the “community service” clinic, we’d get scholarships to the YMCA [among many other places, I’m sure], and we’d get all of our Scouting costs paid for by the troop… and we wouldn’t have to sell a single canister of $50 chocolate popcorn that offers like 5 servings). Wow, I just really thought about what I wrote. Maybe my wife should quit her job… we’d be money ahead. Either my wife needs to quit her job… or she needs to leave my sorry rear-end and find a guy who makes above a free-school-lunch income 🙂

I am formulating a new life-philosophy. My new philosophy is: “If you can’t afford to pay for it completely out-of-(your)pocket, you shouldn’t assume that anyone else gives enough of a crap about it to help you out through fundraisers, so you probably shouldn’t do it.” I don’t mean to sound cynical or anything (yeah right, me not cynical 🙂 ) , but seriously, $25 for an 18oz bag of stinking trail mix?!? How are we supposed to sell this crap? And you want me to buy what: $15 for some sub-par enchiladas and crappy, Play Doh – tasting cookie dough to help send your kid to the private school that I can’t afford?!? Well, I guess if you buy mine, I’ll buy yours… but if you show up at my door trying to sell me some worthless crap, you had better be willing to buy some worthless crap in return!

If I could actually sell stuff that I thought was a complete screw-job without any sense of remorse, I’d probably be a successful Schwan’s Man or be selling endless amounts of Kirby vacuum cleaners. Is this what BSA really wants us to prepare our boys for: tedious, non-gratifying jobs in door-to-door sales? I don’t have the courage or confidence to sell crap door-to-door; how in the name of everything sacred and holy can I expect my 11-year old to do something that the thought of which makes me nauseous? I can’t… so it falls on my and my wife’s shoulders to help our son sell this garbage to people we know. Needless to say, a large portion of the people we know either have health conditions that prevent them from enjoying the benefits of ridiculously-overpriced popcorn products (diabetes and the like), moral stances against eating anything animal-related (and in their obscured minds, popcorn is not a vegetarian treat but an unholy monstrosity concocted of various animal fats and pelts… yes, these friends did far to much “experimenting” in their youths), have sons of their own in our troop, or know those friends of ours who have sons in our troop and have already purchased from those sons! Once again, if stinking BSA would find a fundraiser that wasn’t outrageously priced… you know, like Girl Scout cookies, where people are willing to buy more than one… it might not be quite so difficult for an average dude with an aversion to selling door-to-door to sell the stuff and save money on all of the crap BSA charges to be in Scouting!

Wow, now that I am almost done with my rant, I would like to say that, overall, I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with my son in the Boy Scout program. After all, I don’t want anyone to assume that I’m not appreciative of the spot reserved for us when meteors strike the earth and Yellowstone explodes in December of 2012 🙂

Football in Nebraska

Nebraska is known for producing very few things of value: corn, Johnny Carson, corn-fed beef, Kool Aid, corn syrup, the band 311, Dorthy Lynch salad dressing, ~~Larry the Cable Guy~~ (oh wait… I was mentioning things of value… scratch that), more corn, and the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Of course, an athletic director a few years back realized that “Cornhusker” bore a little too close of a resemblance to “corn holer” and, although I believe the official title is still Cornhuskers, most fans simply refer to them as the “Huskers.”

I want to mention right now that I may be putting my life in danger by writing this post. If anything happens to me, I hope with all sincerity that someone will look out for my family. I live in a state where making light jest of something as sacred as the state’s college football team may be considered sacrilege… similar to, say, crapping on the Qur’an in the middle of the Kaaba in Mecca, except I feel the punishment doled-out by the Muslims may be slightly more humane than the torture one would receive from Husker fanatics.

I moved to Nebraska in 1992; this was a move that I never expected to make and that has changed my life (in some cases for the better… in some cases for the worse) in monumental ways. I had recently graduated from college and was rapidly finding out that a business degree from Montana State University was a pretty worthless piece of paper. I was working for a relatively-large retailer as a management trainee. This is back when the first George Bush was President and the job market sucked (job market sucking… uh… deja vu?). Apparently the Bushes were masters at destroying economies and creating stinking job markets… but I lean right and Lord Obama isn’t exactly working any liberal magic to make things better.

TIME OUT: As I approach 40, one of the few things I have actually learned in my life is that all politicians of all makes, models, sexes, parties and colors SUCK. No matter how much wind they blow up your hiney, not one single one of them cares a wit about you, your family, or the general state of the Union. All they care about is either making a name for themselves in history, the power of office, the celebrity of politics, getting a little quality “cigar” time with portly yet cute interns, or money… or, in many cases, more than one of the above. In the happy stinking joy that is life, politicians create or support a large portion of the “stink” in all of our lives, and anyone who tells you different (especially if it’s a politician) is full of crap. The fact that Democrats and Republicans cannot, for the minuscule portion of a millisecond, put aside their stupid differences and do what’s best for the average American ( by the way, the AVERAGE American is just plain-old happy with their current health care coverage… thank you very much… and by average American, I do not mean average illegal alien from any country that is not America; to digress, however, it should NOT cost thousands of dollars to become a citizen… that’s CRAP… I have a couple of friends that are legal-status-challenged who would LOVE to become citizens, but they just can’t afford it) PROVES that politicians do not care about YOU! If any politician EVER comes up to you and tells you that he or she has your best interest in mind, he or she is boldly lying to your face (unless you have something he or she wants, like money… but he or she STILL doesn’t care about you, only what he or she WANTS!). Wow… got a little off track with this, didn’t I? Well, back to the game. RESUME PLAY:

Anywho, when I took my dead-end retail job right out of college, I quickly realized that I was going nowhere… until I received a call from a district manager in Nebraska. Apparently, there was a store in Scottsbluff, NE that needed an assistant manager… and trainees and full-time employees in Nebraska had no interest in the desolate wasteland that is the panhandle of Nebraska, so the district manager in Nebraska, growing desperate, had started calling district managers in other states until the district manager in Montana finally told him, “Uh, yeah, we got this loser… uh… trainee… who would be great for a store in Nebraska where no one else wants to go. We were trying to figure out what we were going to do with him… uh… where we were going to place him… and Scottsbluff would be GREAT for him… and us.”

So, never even having given a moments thought to Nebraska, all of a sudden I had a U Haul trailer on the back of my truck and I’m moving to what I think may be the land of milk and honey. Turns out, I was moving to the land of corn… plain and simple, corn. This was in September of 1992… 17 years ago… 17 GODFORSAKEN YEARS AGO!!!

I found a crappy little apartment in a scary little neighborhood and I started a life in Nebraska. One of the first things that I noticed was that, on any given Saturday, the town seemed to semi-cease to exist. Locally-owned businesses locked their doors. Every other building, whether house or apartment complex or business, hoisted a flag or a banner or some form of intrusive yard decor advertising allegiance to the University of Nebraska football team. I was astonished… and a little freaked out. It seemed the entire community… no, the entire county… no, the entire STATE (with large puss-like pockets of true-Nebraska believers spread throughout the entire nation… if not the world) stopped every meaningful motion of life on Saturday to worship a bunch of kids in polyester and plastic uniforms led by a vegetarian of god-like proportions. The meatless wonder was a fellow named Tom Osborne, and he was likened to the deity of the one called Bob Devaney, one who the mindless throngs of the Husker Nation call the Holy One. There is a legacy behind the entire story and history of the Husker Nation; a time-tested fable of generous leadership and outreach across an entire state that has stood the test of time and is worthy… oh, who am I kidding, for crying out loud, it’s a stinking game! A GAME! Much like chess, or checkers, or croquet… a game. And yet, you don’t see throngs of people filling stadiums to watch competing teams play Monopoly… but it’s the same concept: one person (team) using skills of little value in the real-life world that would actually benefit society against another person (team) with similar skills. People of all walks of life in all areas of the world get all worked up over sports, whether it be football, baseball, soccer or whatever. These fans live vicariously through the efforts of overpaid athletes, whether they just like watching a good competition or because they actually have nothing of any interest at all going on in their lives. Whatever the reason, I think the whole thing is relatively stupid. Not that I don’t enjoy watching a good game of some sort from time to time… but I don’t obsess. My entire week isn’t ruined if the Huskers lose. And in Nebraska, lives are destroyed if the Huskers lose.

Maybe it’s because there are no professional sports teams here, or maybe it’s because eating too much corn makes one insane; whatever the reason, Husker fans are rabid. Don’t get me wrong, Husker fans are, for the most part, very polite (unlike, say, those semi-tarded Colorado Buffalo fans who key your car in the parking lot if they see license plates from the opposing team’s state.) Husker fans are not rabid toward the competition. Husker fans are rabid about… Husker football. Husker fans will boo their own team if things don’t go well. Old farmer Bob has all the insight and he’s just positive that if Nebraska brought back the option offense that things would turn around. And Old Farmer Bob isn’t the only one… EVERY husker fan thinks they have the magic answer that will help the team win. Retail sales in Nebraska actually slump after a Nebraska loss because, apparently, Husker fans are too depressed to spend money after watching the Blackshirts fail. Discussion about thoughts on next year’s team begin the second the previous season ends and last right up to… well… next year. The sad thing is, Nebraska has some other decent sports teams. The Husker women’s softball team always does extremely well. The college basketball and baseball teams (with a little support) could do well. You’d think, with the College World Series being in Omaha, that there would be more fans supporting the baseball team just to see them get some homefield advantage in the Series. The women’s volleyball team rocks! But the attention hog of Nebraska is Husker football.

So, once again, we start another football season and, once again, I am not going to go anywhere without hearing every local-yokel’s opinion on the Huskers. Sunday morning church will be filled with “Wad’ya think of the game?” and all week long it will be “How’ya think they’ll do?” Honestly, I really don’t care. I’m from Montana, so I’m more interested in how the Bobcats did (which is almost always horrible… yet they did kick the crap out of the Colorado Buffs the last time they met 🙂 ) than I am in anything the Huskers do. However, this is something I mostly keep to myself. After all, a public beheading at the hands of radical Devaneyists is something I try to avoid.

Yes, living in Nebraska as a person who has neutral feelings towards the Huskers leads to a lonely and secretive life. My only condolence is the fact that I hate the Colorado Buffs, and the Huskers are going to kick the crap out of the Buffs on Friday, November 27th, which is the day after Thanksgiving and the day before the horrendous atrocity which is to be my 40th birthday. I don’t expect to win the lottery, I don’t expect to have found any curious fountain of joy, and I don’t expect that my life will have taken a tremendous turn for the better by my 40th birthday… but I do expect that the Nebraska Cornhuskers will have reduced the Colorado Buffalo to the girlish weeping piles of worthless dung that they are… or great and sacred Heavenly Father above… I think I may actually shed a tear if the Huskers lose… nah… the Buffs suck and the Huskers ROCK… am I actually being converted? Has the fact that the Huskers have one of the most successful walk-on programs of all time (allowing kids from Nowhere, NE to tryout for their favorite team with the hope that they may actually get to live a little bit of the glory… and many actually do!) tainted me? Do I find it amazing that Bob Devaney actually reached across a state that is severely divided from those in the eastern, more urban, portion of the state that look down on all things rural to those in the western, more rural, portion of the state that are more closely compared to Wyomingites than they are Nebraskans? Has the fact that Nebraska has won 3 (it should have been 4 if not for bad officiating) Nation Championships since I’ve lived in Nebraska created any sense of wanting to jump on a bandwagon or two? For crying out loud… I believe I may actually be part of the stinking HUSKER NATION… Lord help me…

GO HUSKERS!!!

Happy Food Stamp Friday!

You all know what Food Stamp Friday is, don’t you? It’s the first Friday of the month after the government has started handing out all the free money to all the families who can’t quite make ends meet… well, free to the families who receive the money; not free to us taxpayers helping to support them. A good portion of these folks are seriously just a little down on their luck and, once back one their feet, they will start contributing to society again. Some of these people are physically or mentally disabled to the point that they will probably never be able to contribute to the capitalist machine in a manner that would allow them to earn a self-sustaining living. I, and I assume most compassionate Americans, have no problem assisting these people live more comfortable lives (there but for the grace of God…)

It’s not the above mentioned people that I have a problem with. The people I have a problem with are the people who “believe” they are incapable of contributing to society because life has been too hard on them and they feel entitled to the free food that you and I are buying for them. Here’s a little wake-up call: life, in many instances, sucks. Life is often nothing more than a big pile of stinking crap. However, there is more than enough happy and joy to go around… so get off your lazy rear-ends and start contributing. Use the government programs for what they were meant to be… a stabilizing force that helps relieve the stress of starving to death while you improve your position in life.

In the past, there was a slight stigma associated with using food stamps. All of the people in line behind you saw you pull out the brightly colored coupons and knew that they had helped you buy your groceries. Now, if you are on food stamps, you get the fancy EBT card. EBT stands for Electronic Benefit Transfer. It reminds me of other little programs the government has… like taxes. You know, every paycheck there is that line where your employer has magically made some of your hard-earned money disappear and it magically appears in a government account. Well, part of that money magically appears as a credit on a little credit-card-like piece of plastic carried by food stampers. Magically out of your pocket and magically into the pocket of someone else… and now the government is going to be handing out free health care? Yeah, I ain’t even going to touch that viper… So, now that the government is issuing little pieces of plastic that look like credit cards to steal from the middle class and give to the poor… and the needy… and the big, lazy trailer trash that has learned to milk the system (read: steal from you), how can you spot a food stamper?

Okay, so the way you can tell it’s Food Stamp Friday is to head on out to Walmart and see that it’s 5X busier than normal and you see husbands and wives, or sometimes just a guy and sometimes just a gal, and anywhere from 4 to 12 kids in varying age from newborn to about 16, and these groups of people are pushing anywhere from 2 to 5 grocery carts and taking up entire aisles for huge blocks of time while they decide which flavor of stinking Zinger they want. And, after anywhere from a 3 minute to a 10 minute wait behind these wonderfully colorful people, they decide that they just can’t decide and they get a box of each and every flavor of stinking Zingers… all on your and my tax dollar. And if you look carefully in their carts, you will find a bounty of prepared foods and snack items. Can’t these people buy something a little healthier? Can’t they buy a little pasta and some rice cakes, for crying out loud? Seriously, if the husband and wife are together on a Friday afternoon at Walmart with all seven kids in tow, you know ain’t none of them working, so you’d think one of them could take the time to prepare a healthy meal!?! Most of the time, at least half of the members of these families look like they could stand to lose a pound or two… or fifty. But, with all the Ding Dongs and Doritos and Mrs. Fields cookies and Little Juan burritos sticking out of the 3 grocery carts they are pushing around… you got to figure weight loss ain’t a priority on their agendas.

Ahh… Food Stamp Friday! Nothing like a trip to Walmart on Food Stamp Friday to make you appreciate having a liberal, socialistic President in office… except for maybe tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is Food Stamp Saturday, and that’s when the fun really begins…