Categories
Satire/Farce

Auntie America v. The Frenchys

Ban all things French; Send Back the Statue of Liberty.

Poor Auntie America. Her lap-dog, Media, kept barking and barking at the Frenchys’ house across the pond. Now, even Auntie’s husband, Uncle Gov, can’t take the noise and has started to threaten the Frenchys with gross, unmindful rhetoric.

But Auntie forgets just what our long time friends, the Frenchys, have meant to us. The supported us during our property dispute with the Englunds so many years ago. We, in turn, gave the Frenchys a couple of ideas on how to redecorate their own garden. The Frenchys have influenced the way we speak, the way we dress, and even the way we drink and eat, what with all the fine wines and cheeses they bring over to our pot-luck dinners. And the Frenchys have been ever so grateful to us since we helped repair the damage of that horrible storm back in the 40s.

Yes, the Frenchys can be arrogant. They are, in this situation, looking out for their own interests, before ours. And we often don’t understand their foreign ways, but, no doubt, we’re appearing the same way to them. Auntie America would do well to remember that a difference of opinion with her neighbors is no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water. Let’s not fight with a neighbor that we’re not at war with, Auntie. And let’s keep the nice statue that they gave us that sits in our front lawn. It means so much to both families, and it brightens the place up.

But that is just the way Auntie America is. I guess one could say it like this: It is Auntie American to belittle an ally over a disagreement.

Categories
Essays

Wendy's Fresh Catch

!!!UPDATE!!! – This entry is 4 years old! If you’re looking for a review of the fish sandwich Wendy’s introduced in 2008, read the new review.

Well, local Wendy’s are now serving fish sandwiches. I don’t know if this is just for the Lenten season. I hope not, because, while I don’t eat red meat and am trying to give up eating chicken, I am addicted to Wendy’s French Fries. <topical humor>I’m sorry, Freedom Fries.</topical humor> Anyway, Wendy’s also serves Dr Pepper, always have, unlike the schizophrenic McDonald’s in the area, which run about 3 to 1 against having it. What’s worse is that Taco Bell had just recently solidified it’s Pepsi-block of soda selection, meaning that instead of Dr Pepper, Taco Bell offers some crap called Wild Cherry Pepsi. Oh, the horror.

So Wendy’s is probably my favorite fast food. The Spicy Chicken Sandwich is probably the best chicken sandwich made on an assembly line somewhere in Peoria, period. But, as noted, I’m waffling on the chicken. I keep meaning to give it up, but that would mean that I would have to have a garden salad or a baked potato whenever I went to Wendy’s, just to get my French fries and Dr Pepper. A baked potato and French fries? Please. So, I’ve always had fantasies about the legendary Wendy’s Fish Sandwich. (I have a very mundane fantasy life.) I just knew Wendy’s would make it better than any other fast food chain.

Incidentally, it has recently come to my attention that I mispronounce “Wendy’s.” Apparently, I am unable to combine the simple phonetic combination of “when” and “dees.” I say, “wind” and “dees.” This has caused me much embarrassment and soul searching. I don’t even hear the difference when others say the two words. One, of course, means that conditions are brisk and breezy; the other is the best fast food chain in America, but it sounds the same to me.

So, one can imagine my excitement that the mythological Wendy’s Fish Sandwich finally arrived on our Long Island shores. I am deeply saddened to tell you that it sucks. Sucks balls nasty. Okay, not really balls nasty, but it ain’t good. The fish is the standard chopped up white fish that all American’s enjoy in our fish sticks, and, in fact, the breading is similar in constancy to a high school cafeteria’s Friday Selection. The similarities to high school food do not end there! The fish patty is soggy and limp (yet the coating is crispy when bitten into. Isn’t modern science amazing?), and the taste is bland and, well, really bland. They throw the obligatory single iceberg lettuce leaf that is a signature of all Wendy’s sandwiches, add a bit of tartar sauce, and put it on the always tasty, always moist, potato bread bun. The bun is the best part, but the tartar sauce wasn’t bad.

Sigh. So that still leaves the lowly McDonald’s Filet O’Fish as the best drive-thru fish sandwich out there. Checker’s is close, but they only offer it around Lent. Burger King just went through another test-market-liked-this-one-better change of their secondary menu items, which made their once huge, meaty BK Big Fish sandwich into an almost perfect clone of the Filet O’Fish, but the McDonald’s still remains champ because their tartar sauce has dried onion in the mix. Oh, Wendy’s, where did we go so wrong?

And yet, I will order it again, the next time I visit Wendy’s, in the naïve hope that my purchases will speak to the boys upstairs that there is a market for this type of thing. And I’ll probably ask ’em to throw a slice of cheese on it, too. Because, really, all I’m looking for is a sandwich to go along with my fries and drink.

Categories
Rant

Eye on whom?

Eye on al Qaeda image from CNN.comWhat the hell is wrong with CNN (and by extension, all our American media outlets)? This little propaganda gem was found on their web site today. The linked article goes on to talk about how cable news might be playing some role in helping the Bush administration link Saddam and al Qaeda without any real evidence to support it. Well, duh.

Categories
Short Subjects

An Imagined Dialog Highlighting the Differences between Morals and Ethics

Fast Food Patron: I’d like a fish sandwich, please.

Counter Person: (smiling) Oh, are you Catholic?

FFP: Hmm? Excuse me?

CP: Oh, I’m sorry. It’s Friday during Lent, and you’re ordering fish. I was just asking if you are Catholic.

FFP: Oh, ah, no. (smiles) I never eat red meat. I always order fish.

CP: (disappointed) Oh…

Categories
Silliness

The 7-11 Straw Incident

Suddenly, inexplicably, I was in the mood for a Super Big Gulp. I used to have a Super Big Gulp, 48 oz. of pure caffeinated, bubbly sugar water, 5 or 6 times a week, but then I got into the coffee habit to cure my caffeine fix, so now I’m down to only one Super Big Gulp per month. Last Thursday, my time had come.

We were at the Nautilus Diner in Massapequa, and there’s a 7–11 just east of it. I went in expecting the usual assortment of sodas and was sorely disappointed to find that Dr Pepper was not one of the dozen sodas I could choose from. Taco Bell recently changed from Dr Pepper to Wild Cherry Pepsi and have pretty much lost the biggest reason that I ever eat at Taco Bell in the process. I take my soda consumption pretty seriously. I resigned myself to Pepsi, which is my favorite soda bottled or canned, but Dr Pepper is my favorite fountain soda. I take my soda consumption way too seriously.

Anyway, this was also one of the growing 7–11s to decide that straws are their most valuable consumable. I could take all the cups and lids that I wanted, but the straws were only available at the cashier’s counter. Since I have estimated that straws cost 7–11 less than 1/10 of 1 cent, even the admittedly low-profit margin on all convenience store goods led me to believe that the difficult access to straws was a weak kind of anti-theft device. Because you could easily walk out of 7–11 without paying for a Big Gulp or Slurpee, but HOW WOULD YOU DRINK IT without a straw?

Finally paying for my Pepsi Super Big Gulp, an amazing bargain at 99 cents, I noticed that all the straws at the counter were for Slurpees, which, for the uninitiated, meant that the straws were all cut to have little scoopy-spoons at one end. This makes drinking soda with them next to futile, because it severely lowers the vacuum power of the straw. I asked the young, pierced man behind the counter if he had any regular straws that I could have. He took out a Slurpee straw and held it next to the Super Big Gulp container. I wasn’t too sure what he was doing, but I figure he was just going to give me a Slurpee straw and damn the torpedoes. Instead, he went off to the side with the straw. Then he took a pair of scissors — I swear this is true — and cut the scoopy-spoon neatly off the bottom.

Needless to say, I, being the good WASP that I am, took the straw with a thank you. I was going to have my Super Big Gulp, because, after all, I take my soda consumption very seriously.

Categories
Rant

The Trojan President

I am showing my age here, but I remember vividly hating Reagan and his gang of buffoons. He was the Teflon President; nothing the press nor Congress (a Democratic Congress at that — there I go showing my age again) could say or do would diminish Reagan in the eyes of his handlers or the public. Reagan is now treated as a mythic, god-like president, an untouchable, redoubtable, unquestionable presence in the 20th-century world stage. And I miss him.

I haven’t changed my mind about his awful presidency. Nor have I come to believe the pundit-wisdom that he was responsible for the fall of the Evil Empire. He led the nation into an intractable conservative mode of thought that we haven’t been able to shake off, despite all reason and moral clarity otherwise, for nearly 25 years. Yes, he was bad and made my nation poorer in the process, but, Lord, I miss him, because he was original.
Now our puppet president is just a super-condensed rehash of the original. Want moralist Ed Meese? We’ve got fightin’ John Ashcroft. Want a dab of George Schultz, Al Haig, and James Watts? Hey, glom them all together in Dick Cheney. Sure, the cast today is more colorful than the pasty-white team that was the Reagan administration, but pound for pound W’s crew is just as reactionary as Reagan’s. Reagan, too, reduced our rights and invaded our privacy, and set it all to the sweet music of the dawning of a new morality. Reagan, too, blithely ran up deficits while cutting taxes for the wealthy, calling it economic stimulus. Reagan, too, deregulated industry just enough to feed the vultures, but never enough to ensure that trade was fair, nor that prices were truly market driven.

But this is all name-calling. So what? Who cares? The only reason that this is pertinent to me is that we’ve been issued what can only be called a Civil Defense warning, by our Office of Homeland Security, to duct tape our doors in case of terrorist attack. Department stores in Virginia have run out of stock, so if you live in that area, let me know. Long Islanders are apparently more blasé about the warnings. We have plenty in our stores. I’ll send you a roll or two at cost. No need to profit over groundless fears.

Groundless? No, that’s not the right word. Useless. Yeah, that’s the one. See the whole thing reminds me so much of the Civil Defense instructions that we received when we were sure that the end result of Reagan’s arms-buildup was nuclear war, that I just can’t take these warnings seriously. We were actually told, in the event that Soviets launched their arsenal of massive death, to dig shallow trenches in the soft earth and cover ourselves with something sturdy, like a wooden door. Yep. When over 10 feet of the Earth’s crust evaporates into fine dust particles to hasten a nuclear winter, we’ll all be very happy that we dug a shallow trench.

So, I’m thinking that duct tape around our doors won’t keep out the radiation or Anthrax or Smallpox or Halitosis or whatever those sneaky terrorists are going to unleash on us. I’m thinking that this is the media sideshow that takes away from what is really happening, and what really needs to be done. And what really needs to be done is voting these ingrates out of office, but it looks like it will be a long couple of years before we get to do that.

Categories
Short Subjects

Big Wheels

For some reason, this evening I was drawn to the memory of Tiananmen Square back in 1989, and the dull thud of our inaction towards China. Sometimes, I’m afraid to admit, I just don’t understand the big wheels that turn in the American approach to foreign affairs. Ever since Nixon, we’ve been trying to court the biggest abuser of human rights, because it is also the biggest nation of consumers. Now we’re using China as a wedge to get into the hearts and minds of the North Koreans, but China and North Korea are at the lowest point in their own relations with each other since before the 1950s. China is just once again using America as a way to show that they’re a world-team player. And America is still content to see China as a nation of 1.25 billion wearers of Nike sneakers and purchasers of McDonald Happy Meals.

My country paints odd strokes of huge monochromatic color over everything. Don’t these ravenous American (multi-national really) companies realize that China is the largest producer of pirated material? It’s a devil’s bargain.

We become so obsessed with seeing regions or countries or leaders in one way. It’s childlike in its breathtaking naiveté. Current thought would make one believe that there were Iraqis hijackers on the airplanes of 9/11, but there were not. No Afghanis either. A bunch of Saudis though. And Saudi Arabia is the country that exported the Wahabi form of Islamic thought to Pakistan. The Pakistani secret service trained Wahabi clerics and sent them into Afghanistan to successfully take over the country as the Taliban. The Taliban sheltered the al Qaeda and the exiled Saudi, Osama bin Laden. But oil-rich Saudi Arabia is an ally to the United States, according to our doctrine of being blind to real danger.

There is no real relevance to this post to anything current. Except maybe there is. Bush Sr. did nothing in the wake of Tiananmen, and later invaded Iraq to help our friends, the house of Saud, protect their tyrannical hold over their country. Maybe there is.

Categories
Short Subjects

Funny Onion article

Heh.

Categories
Silliness

National Sanctity of Life Day

Ah, what a wonderful National Sanctity of Life Day I had yesterday. To celebrate, I spilled my seed in my neighbors’ victory garden and painted babies and small children with clown makeup. Not at the same time, of course. That would be sick.

Categories
Rant

I laugh when it hurts

The Bushies are just so, so very funny. Please, join me in a hearty laugh.
John Ashcroft defends his civil rights record. Bwah-ha-ha! Oh, Lord, he says, “More eloquently than any attorney general before or since, Dr. Martin Luther King spoke of…” MLK was an attorney general? Ashcroft wouldn’t have thrown that rabble-rouser in jail a dozen times in as many days? Ha, ha, ha!

GW declares Sunday National Sanctity of Human Life Day. Oh, stop. No. No. Bwah, ha, ha! Non-Iraqi life for sure. Ha! No, get this, it’s the day before the 30th Anniversary of Roe v Wade! Whatta great joke!!! Mr. Fry-em-high-in-Texas is all for the Sanctity of Human Life! It’s a new holiday from the genius behind Jesus Day! Ah, ha, ha!

No, no, health care is too expensive, right? ::Giggle:: Why? ::Snicker:: Because of the amount that injured patients can win from their doctors in malpractice cases. Democrats charge that the changes would deprive patients of fair compensation, but Ari Fleischer, get this, says, “At a time when moms have to change doctors to deliver their babies, that type of division is not helpful.” Huh? What? Ha, ha, ha! Too funny!

But hey, GW is so compassionate that he listens to everyone in his administration. Especially Karl Rove. Oh, that’s not a joke. Damn. I’m done laughing. The biggest joke of the lot is that everyone says Cheney is president, but it’s all Rove. Try this little experiment: Do a Google search of Karl Rove and see how many times his grubby fingerprints are spotted on the Bushie agenda. Too bad we didn’t actually elect him. Hmmm… like shadow, like son.