When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? (13 page)

VINNY: Now you’re talkin’. Let’s go to my house.

NADIA: Okay, but no sex. Understand?

VINNY: Fine by me. But can I at least jerk off? I waited all day.

Join us again tomorrow on As the Turd Whirls, as Trent has to decide whether to blow the mailman in exchange for free stamps.

THE FARMING RACKET

Farmers are on government welfare and you pay for it. Good year, bad year doesn’t matter. They still get money. In a bad yeardrought or floodsthe crop is poor, incomes drop, farmers can’t make their payments and they need financial help; you pay for it. In a good yearfavorable weatherthere’s a bumper crop, prices fall, income drops, farmers can’t make their payments and they need financial help; you pay for it. Either way, farmers win, you lose. Oh well, I guess we should be grateful; at least there’s plenty of tasteless food, all safely sprayed and filled with contaminants. You know, “Bless us, O Lord, and these, thy gifts …”

CELLULAR CHITCHAT

You know what I don’t understand? People on the street having casual conversations on a cell phone. Casual stuff. Walking along, just visiting.

“So how’s Ellen? Good. Tell her I said hello.”

Too casual for me. You know what a cell-phone call oughta sound like?

“Hello, Tony? Listen, my pants are on fire. I’m going’ to the fire house. What? Take my pants off? Good idea. Thanks. Listen, say hello to Ellen, will ya? I gotta go, my bush is catching fire.”

Now that’s a fuckin’ cell-phone call. Not this shit:

“So, what are you doin , Joey, watchin’ TV? Really? I was only guessin’. What’s on? Oh, I saw that. Try another channel. Yeah, go ahead, I’ll wait.”

Try to find a phone plan that provides more than just free minutes. See if any companies are offering free brains.

IS ANYONE THERE?

(Phone rings)

MAN: Hello. Philosophy Department.

CALLER: Is Jack there?

MAN: Well, what do we mean when we say, “Jack”? Is there really such an entity? Or is Jack simply a description? A label. There are coundess people who call themselves Jack. Can they all be doing so accurately? And by the way, where is this “there” you speak of? As I listen to you, I experience your voice as a physical sensation within my head. Certainly Jack isn’t in there. Wherever your entity called Jack is, it’s probably safe to say that that is where he is. At least for the moment.

CALLER: I just would like to speak with Jack.

MAN: I’m sorry, Jack was killed this morning. Or was he? After all, here we are, talking about him. Is he truly gone? One way of looking at it would be

{Click!)

IT’S NO BULLSHIT!

AN ASTOUNDING COLLECTION OF AMAZING STORIES FROM THE SECRET FILES OF BELIEVE IT OR ELSE MAGAZINE. READ THESE ASTONISHING FACTS AND FEEL YOUR FUCKIN’ BRAIN MELT.

The sun does not really give off light. It merely appears to give off light because everything around it is so dark.

The Belzini tribe of South American Indians will eventually be extinct, because they initiate their young by putting them to death at the age of three.

During her entire sixty-four-year reign, Queen Victoria never once went to the bathroom. She said she was holding it in for a more appropriate time. Her words were, “We don’t have to go just now.”

Indianapolis, the capital of Indiana, is actually located in Brazil. It only seems to be in Indiana when viewed on a map.

When the Alexander Farkington family moved from Boston to San Diego, they had to leave their dog, Peckerhead, behind. Miraculously, two weeks later the dog showed up in Key West, Florida. Mistakenly, Peckerhead had taken Interstate 95 south instead of getting on the Massachusetts Turnpike.

Contrary to popular belief, Babe Ruth did not call his famous home-run shot. He was actually giving the finger to a hot-dog vendor who had cheated him out of twelve cents.

Incredibly, there was no Hitler. There is no record of any such person. It’s true, there was a little German man with a small moustache who combed his hair to one side and started World War II. He also killed six million Jews. But he was not Hider. He was, in fact, a shoemaker named Hank Fleck.

A cheetah is actually slower than an armadillo. It only appears to be faster, because the armadillo moves so slowly.

Unbelievably, a goldfish can kill a gorilla. However, it does require a substantial element of surprise.

It’s now possible to travel completely around the world without money or credit cards. You must be prepared, however, to walk and swim extremely long distances.

A forty-two-year-old man from Ballbender, Wyoming, drove a riding lawn mower backward from Vermont to Argentina. The trip put him under such stress that he is now incapable of thought.

The pyramids are not really old. They were built in 1943 as a joke by drunken Italian soldiers on leave in Egypt at the time. All photographs of the area taken before that time have been retouched.

The sky is not blue. It merely looks that way because blue is the name we have given that color.

Two times two is not four. It is nine. Actually, everything is nine except seventeen. Seventeen is actually six.

Placing a two-hundred-pound pile of cooked garlic, dogshit and chocolate chips on the doorstep of your newly purchased home will keep your enemies away. However, it will not prevent your new neighbors from considering you a family that bears watching.

The record for the greatest amount of Jell-O in one location belongs to Lemon Lime, Minnesota, where residents poured twenty thousand boxes of Jell-O into a lake and heated it, just to claim the title. Most of them are happy with the results. However, some local residents, diving in the shallow areas, claim to have hit their heads on small pieces of fruit cocktail.

BELIEVE IT OR ELSE, BUT IT’S NO BULLSHIT!

Buy This and Get One of These: Act Now

Here’s one more thing you don’t need that costs too much and won’t last long. Even if you’ve never had credit before; even if you owe money: even if you re bankrupt; even if you don’t intend to pay; we don’t care. Thousands of customers come back to us year after year, and they all say the same thing: “Please, give us our money back!” Remember, it costs a little more, but it doesn’t work as well. And, it’s loaded with things you can’t pronounce. Special prices for senior citizenstriple. Don’t forget, we’re big enough to give you a good screwing and small enough to smile while we’re doing it.

SMART SHOPPER

Usually, when you go to someone’s house they offer you coffee. They say, “You want some coffee?” I tell them, “No thanks, I have coffee at home. But I could use a little pancake mix.” I try to get things I need. If I don’t need coffee, I’m usually prepared with options:

“Do you have any of those Chef Boyardee SpaghettiOs? The ones with the little hunks of weenie in ‘em? Good, I’ll take a couple of cans of them. Large, if you have em. By any chance, you don t have any Hebrew alphabet soup, do you? No? Okay. I didn’t think so. How do the wax beans look today? I see, the produce didn’t come in yet. Well, I guess you better just give me a couple of rolls of toilet paper and some Glass Wax and I’ll be on my way. I have to get over to Farley’s house and do my drugstore shopping. He’s havin’ a special on gauze pads.” Be a smart shopper. And don’t forget to bring your coupons.

FRUIT-FLAVORED TEAS

I would like to talk to you about fruit-flavored teas. These would be teas that are flavored like fruit. Fruit-flavored teas. You need to understand that. These are not fruits. They’re teas.

But they taste like fruit. All right? They have names like strawberry kiwi, lemon berry, orange mango, wild cherry, blackberry and cranberry. They taste like fruit. And they sound like fruits, too, don’t they? They’re not. They’re teas. Fruit-flavored teas. And frankly, I don’t understand this.

Personally, I’ve always been of a mind that if you’re looking for fruit flavor, if you’re genuinely interested in something that tastes like fruit, and you find yourself in the tea section, you’re probably in the wrong aisle.

My advice is, if it’s fruit flavor you’re after, play it safe, go ahead and get some fruit. I have found in my experience that fruit almost always turns out to be a reliable source of fruit flavor.

Another good place you may wish to look for fruit flavor would be in fruit juice. Fruit juice is made by squeezing the juice out of the fruit. Apparently, the juice that runs out of the fruit has a fruit flavor. Perhaps that’s why they call it fruit juice. It doesn’t taste like tea. For tea taste, you would need to get some tea.

So let’s sum this up: If it’s fruit flavor you want, you can’t go wrong with fruit. Or, as I’ve pointed out, fruit juice. Don’t be ordering tea. Tea has a tea flavor. It’s not like fruit. It’s more like tea. If you want tea, I say order tea. That’s a different experience. It’s known as “having tea.”

Have you noticed, by the way, there are no tea-flavored fruits? Take a clue from nature.

LEAVE MY CHOCOLATE ALONE

I don’t understand why a chocolate dessert should include raspberries or strawberries. Intrusions of that type spoil the dessert. Leave the chocolate alone; it was doing fine by itself.

I mean, here I am, innocently sitting at my table, waiting for a nice chocolate thing with lots of whipped cream and chocolate sauce to arrive, and I find that some asshole in the kitchen has decided to show off by throwing a bunch of strawberries around. Chef’s ego! Strawberries belong in strawberry shortcake, not in chocolate desserts.

I wouldn’t want a bunch of chocolate in my strawberry shortcake, would you? No. Ergo, I don’t want strawberries hangin around my chocolate cake.

Chocolate cake is called chocolate cake for a reasonit’s chocolate. Leave it alone. Put the strawberries in a nice sherbet if you must. Or put em in a bowl by themselves, over there near the raspberries. But please don’t spoil my chocolate.

Hey, chef! You want to exercise your ego? Weave the berries into fabric and make a strawberry chef’s hat. Be as creative as you want, but stop fucking with my chocolate.

P.S.People who dip sweetly tart stawberries into liquified chocolate, wait for it to cool, and then eat the whole thing ought to be placed in mental institutions. What you should do is this: Drink the chocolate before it cools, then put the strawberries on your kids’ cereal.

And while we’re at it folks, nuts have no business in ice cream. Ice cream should be creamy. Nuts interrupt the creamy idea. Chunks of nuts don’t belong in ice cream. Put ‘em in a little bowl by themselves; put ‘em in a candy bar; stick ‘em up your nose for all I care, but leave my ice cream alone. And, in general, please folks, stop fucking with my desserts!

EUPHEMISMS: Food and Restaurants

Euphemisms and politically correct speech have also infiltrated the food and restaurant businesses. We may as well begin with the inflated job titles, since they seem to be showing up everywhere we visit.

In a truly absurd departure from reality, at some point waiters temporarily became waitpersons, as if waiters and waitresses were somehow sexist terms. For a while there, a few of them even became known as waitrons until everyone involved simply refused to call them that. Now they seem to have settled on servers. These servers are said to be on the waitstaff. Wait-staff seems forced, doesn t it? And it goes without saying, no restaurant to

day would dare allow a cook to cook the food; instead, the cuisine must be prepared by a chef.

An important factor to keep in mind with all of this restaurant and food talk is yuppie pretentiousness. I was in a Yuppie joint last year where the cover of the noontime menu, instead of saying menu, actually had the words lunch solutions. There I sat, unaware that I even had problems, and those nice folks were ready to provide solutions. Once again, I feel the need to emphasize that I actually saw this. Every example I offer you on these euphemism topics has been personally observed.

And before we get to the food itself, I just want to remind you that you can usually determine a restaurant’s price range by noticing how it advertises. If it uses the word cuisine, it will be expensive; if it mentions food, the prices will be moderate; however, if the word eats is employed, rest assured any savings you make on the food will be more than offset by high medical expenses.

Now, on the subject of food itself, I’m sure you know that certain foods have been altered. I don’t mean genetically, I mean euphemistically. They tried to do it to prunes. The California Prune Board wanted to change the word prunes to dried plums, because research told them that women in their thirties reacted more favorably to the phrase dried plums. California women in their thirtiesdoes that tell you enough?

And the poor prunes were not alone. A long time ago the same thing happened to garbanzo beans. Apparently, someone thought the word garbanzos sounded too much like a circus act, so they began using the older name, chickpeas. Also at about that timeagain, for marketing purposesChinese gooseberries became kiwifruit. And since it was obvious feminists would never use an oil derived from rapeseed, we were all introduced to canola oil. And just to round out our meal, the reason Chilean sea bass became so trendy a few years

ago was because it was no longer being called Patagonian tooth fisb. That item needs no comment.

And let’s not even mention capellini, which became angel-hair pasta, Jesus! Angel hair. And by the way, who was it that took the perfectly nice word macaroni and started calling it pasta in the first place? That sounds like more of that marketing bullshit. Never underestimate the relentlessness of the marketing people. Because long before we had yuppies, consumer goods had been getting image upgrades from the marketers.

For example, seltzer water has variously been known as seltzer, carbonated water, soda water, club soda and, finallyenter the yuppiessparkling water. Sometimes these days, the label on the sparkling water says lightly carbonated. Of course, that means they had to find a name for water that wasn’t carbonated, and since noncarbonated sounded far too ordinary, the trendier restaurants decided on flat water. There are even a few places that refer to it as still water. It’s subtle, but it’s clearly a decision that when it comes to beverages, flat may possibly be seen as negative.