When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? (14 page)

Never overlook pretentiousness. Pretentiousness is the reason we don’t drink water anymore; instead we hydrate ourselves. Hey, I’ll hydrate myself to that.

EUPHEMISMS: Buy This and Eat It FOOD LINGO

Food-advertising language. You’re familiar with the words. You hear them all the time: Fresh, natural, hearty, old-fashioned, homemade goodness. In a can. Well, if those are the words they want to use, let’s take a look at them.

Old-fashioned

When they say old-fashioned, they want us to think about the old days, don’t they? The old days. You know, before we had sanitation laws; before hygiene became popular; back when E. coli was still considered a condiment.

Homemade

Right next to old-fashioned in the warmth and nostalgia department is homemade. You see it on packages in the supermarket: homemade flavor. Folks, take my word for this, a food company operating out of a ninety-acre processing plant is functionally incapable of producing anything homemade. I don t care if the CEO is living in the basement, wearing an apron and cooking on a hot plate. It’s not gonna happen.

Same with restaurants. Homemade soup. Once again, it doesn’t matter how much the four-foot, amphetamine-laced waitress with the bright orange hair smoking the three Marlboros reminds you of your dear old mother, the soup is not homemade. Unless the chef and his family are sleeping in the kitchen. And if that’s the case, I’m not hungry.

Homemade is a myth. You want to know some things that are homemade? Crystal meth. Crack cocaine. A pipe bomb full of nails. Now we’re talkin’ homemade. If you need further information, check the notes of Timothy McVeigh. Old Tim knew how to cook up little homemade goodies.

Home-style

Sometimes the advertising people realize that homemade sounds too full of shit, so they switch to home-style. They’ll say something has home-style flavor. Well, whose home are we talking about? Jeffrey Dahmer’s? Believe me, folks, there’s nothing home-style about the boiled head of a Cambodian teenager. Even if you sprinkle parsley on the hair and serve it with oven-roasted potatoes.

Style

Style is another bullshit word you have to keep an eye on. Any time you see the word style added to another word, someone is pulling your prick. New York-style deli. You know why they call it that? Because it’s not in New York. That’s the only reason. Its probably in Bumfuk, Egypt, the owner is from Rwanda and the food tastes like something the Hutus would feed to the Tutsis.

Another bogus use of the word style is in family-style restaurant. What that means is that there’s an argument going on at every table. And the eldest male is punching the women. You know, “family-style.”

Gourmet

Here’s another word the advertising sluts have completely wiped their asses with. Everything is gourmet now: gourmet cuisine in a can, gourmet dining in a cup. Folks, try not to be too fuckin’ stupid, will ya? There’s no such thing as gourmet coffee, gourmet rolls or gourmet pizza. Gourmet means one thing: “We’re going to charge you more.”

The same is true of the word cuisine. The difference between food and cuisine is sixty dollars. That’s it. They’re stealing from you. You want to know some real gourmet food? Toasted snail penises; candied filet of panda asshole: deep-dish duck dick. Now you’re talkin’ cuisine.

Hearty

This is a word only a bullshitter could love: hearty. Soups are hearty, breakfast is hearty. Folks, next time you see the word hearty, take a good look at the rest of the label. “Hmmra! Six hundred grams of saturated fat.” You know, hearty. As in heart attack.

The/words

It’s a good idea to be wary of any words ending in y, in particular such words as butter-y, lemon-y and chocolate-y. Any time marketers add a y to the name of a food, you can be sure they’re yanking your schwantz. Real chocolatey goodness. Translation? No fuckin’ chocolate!

And while we’re at it, zesty and tangy are not real words that normal people use in conversation. Has anyone ever turned to you in a restaurant and said, “This pork is really zesty. And it’s tangy, too”? My comment? “Hey, Zesty, I got something’ tangy for ya!”

Flavored

Folks, watch out for the word flavored. Lemon-flavored drink. Oh yeah? Lemme know if you spot any trace of a goddamn lemon in there.

There’s even a pet food that calls itself a chicken-flavored treat. Well, a dog doesn’t know what chicken tastes like. He might like it if you give him some, but he’s not gonna say, “Oh good, I was hoping we’d have something chicken-flavored again. One grows tired of beef.’

Natural

The last one of these bullshit food words is natural. And these comments are directed at all you environmental jackoffs out there. The word natural is completely meaningless. Everything is natural. Nature includes everything. It’s not just trees and flowers and the northern spotted owl. It’s everything in the universe. Untreated raw sewage, polyester, toxic chemical waste, used bandages, monkey shit. It’s all perfectly natural. It’s just not real good food. But you know something? It is zesty. And it’s tangy, too. Bon appe’tit, consumers.

RETAIL BLUES

LET’S TAKE THE GLOVES OFF

When did they pass a law that says the people who make my sandwiches have to be wearing gloves? I’m not comfortable with this. I don’t want glove residue all over my food; it his not sanitary. Who knows where these gloves have been? Let’s get back to the practice of human hands making sandwiches for human beings.

And we have to stop this tipping-people-for-counter-service thing. No one should get a tip for standing erect, moving a few feet to one side and picking up a muffin. The sign on the pathetic little tip cup says TIPS WOULD BE APPRECIATED. Well, so would some fuckin’ decent service. Let’s be honest, folks, there’s not a great deal of IQ floating around behind these counters. Maybe in their homelands some of these people might pass for intelligent, but to me, if they live in this country and can’t speak English, their IQ plunges about three hundred points. I shouldn’t have to leave a tip in order to pay for someone’s English lessons.

DON’T BE A PHONEE

Store clerks! You should not be on the phone when you’re waiting on me. When I, the customer, walk up to the counter, the phone should be put down. And if it rings while you’re waiting on me, let it ring. After ten rings, pick it up, and, without even saying hello, say, “I’m currently waiting on an actual, paying customer who has money and has had the courtesy to come into the store to transact business. I will get to you when the store is empty. Stay on the line if you wish, but I may not get to you till sundown.” Then smile at me and say, “Where were we?” The in-store customer should always come first.

MOVIN’ ON UP

And where did this new rule come from that says the second person standing on line in a store has to hang back and leave about six feet of space between himself and the customer being waited on? You know, one person is already up at the counter and the next person is standing back five or six feet, leaving all this unused space. When did this shit start?

And I’m not talking about stores where there’s an obvious central feeder-lineone line that feeds a number of counter positions. I’m talking about an individual line that feeds a single counter, and these dopey people hang back like they’re afraid of offending someone. This has obviously grown out of some perverted, politically correct impulse. Move up, motherfucker! Take up the slack! You know what I do when I’m behind one of these timid jackoffs? I step right in front of him and take his place in line. If he doesn’t like it, I say, “You should have moved up, twat-face. Don’t you know space is at a premium? I gave you a full minute and you didn t move. Now I’m next!”

THE UNDECIDEDS

I also get very unhappy with people in supermarkets who stop their carts in the middle of the aisle and just stand there looking at the soup. They don’t know what they want, so they’re looking. Parked. Middle of the aisle. They’re trying to decide. Why would you go to the supermarket if you didn’t know what you wanted? You know how I shop? I enter the store with a list in my hand, and I move quickly through the aisles from item to item, and I’m in the parking lot before Hamlet has figured out if the cream of mushroom is a better bargain than the chicken with stars. I say, know what you want, get what you need, and get the fuck out of there. That’s how ya shop.

MESSAGE FROM A COCKROACH

“Hello there, I’m a cockroach. Listen, I’m gonna keep this to a minimum, because I gotta get back to the kitchen and eat a bunch of crumbs that I spotted on the table. Plus there’s a little puddle of gravy on the left side of the sink near the drain that nobody noticed. Okay, here’s my deal: Bug sprays. We don’t like ‘em, we don’t need em, we don’t want ‘em. We say get rid of ‘em. Okay? That’s it. Otherwise, if you don’t do what we want, we’re gonna crawl all over your face while you’re asleep. We’ll even go up your nose. We don’t care. Thanks. Ill see you later. And for chrissakes, turn out the lights, will ya?”

FLY THE FRIENDLY SKIES

When I’m on a commercial flight, and I see a fly flying down the center of the airplane from back to front, I like to take him off to one side and ask him if he understands how fast he’s moving. They never really know. So the first thing I do is briefly explain Newton’s laws of motion, complete with a small diagram to make it a bit easier. But the only thing their little fly egos are interested in is how fast they’re moving. So I tell them that in order to calculate their velocity relative to the ground, all they have to do is add their own flying speed to the speed of the airplane. I show them how it works and they can’t believe it when they discover that they’re actually traveling over five hundred miles an hour. The first thing most of them mention is that a frog’s tongue wouldn’t stand a chance against that kind of speed.

PLEASE DON’T SAY THAT

Here is a small sampling of embarrassing societal cliches that I find tiresome and, in some cases, just plain ignorant.

IF IT SAVES JUST ONE LIFE

You often hear a new policy or procedure justified by the specious idea that “If it saves the life of just one (insert here ‘child’ or ‘American soldier’), it will be worth it.” Well, maybe not. Maybe a closer look would show that the cost in time, money or inconvenience would be much too high to justify merely saving one life. What’s wrong with looking at it like that? Governments and corporations make those calculations all the time.

EVERY CHILD IS SPECIAL

An empty and meaningless sentiment. What about every adult? Isn’t every adult special? And if not, then at what age does a person go from being special to being not-so-special? And if every adult is also special, then that means all people are special and the idea has no meaning. This embarrassing sentiment is usually advanced to further some position that is either political or fundraising in nature. It’s similar to “children are our future.” It’s completely meaningless and is probably being used in some self-serving way.

HE’S SMILING DOWN

After the death of some person (even many years after) you will often hear someone refer to the deceased by saying, ‘I get the feeling he’s up there now, smiling down on us. And I think he’s pleased.” I actually heard this when some dead coach’s son was being inducted into the Football Hall of Fame.

First of all, it’s extremely doubtful that there’s any “up there’ to smile down from. It’s poetic, and I guess it’s comforting. But it probably doesn’t exist. Besides, if a person did somehow survive death in a nonphysical form, he would be far too busy with other things to be smiling down on people.

.And why is it we never hear that someone is “smiling up at us.’ I suppose it doesn’t occur to people that a loved one might be in hell. And in that case the person in question probably wouldn’t be smiling. More likely, he’d be screaming. “I get the feeling he’s down there now, screaming up at us. And I think he his in pain.” People just refuse to be realistic.

THIS PUTS EVERYTHING IN PERSPECTIVE

This nonsense will often crop up after some unexpected sports death like that of Cardinals pitcher Darryl Kile. After one of these athletes sudden death, one of his dopey teammates will say, “This really puts everything in perspective. ” And I say, listen, putz, if you need someone to die in order to put things in perspective, you’ve got problems. You ain’t payin’ enough attention.

AMERICA’S LOST INNOCENCE

I keep hearing that America lost its innocence on 9/11. I thought that happened when JFK was shot. Or was it Vietnam? Pearl Harbor? How many times can America lose its innocence? Maybe we keep finding it again. Doubtful. Because, actually, if you look at the record, you’ll find that America has had very little innocence from the beginning.

LET THE HEALING BEGIN

This bothersome sentiment is usually heard following some large-scale killing or accident that’s been overreported in the news. Like Columbine, Oklahoma City

or the World Trade Center. It’s often accompanied by another meaningless, overworked cliche, “closure.” People can’t seem to get it through their heads that there is never any healing or closure. Ever. There is only a short pause before the next “horrifying” event. People forget there is such a thing as memory, and that when a wound “heals” it leaves a permanent scar that never goes away, but merely fades a little. What really ought to be said after one of these so-called tragedies is, “Let the scarring begin.” Just trying to be helpful here.

Consolidated International: We Need You

Were Consolidated International, and we might be looking for you. Are you one of those submissive people who show up, punch in, put out, pitch in, punch out, clean up, head home, throw up, turn in, sack out and shut up? That’s what we need, people we can keep in line. We just might have a place for you. Consolidated International: People making things, so people have things to do things to other people with.

THE FANATICS WILL WIN

I hope you good, loyal Americans understand that in the long run the Islamist extremists are going to win. Because you can’t beat numbers, and you cant beat fanaticismthe willingness to die for an idea.

A country like ours, preoccupied with Jet Skis, off-road vehicles, snow boards, Jacuzzis, microwave ovens, pornography, lap dances, massage parlors, escort services, panty liners, penis enhancement, tummy tucks, thongs and Odor Eaters doesn’t have a prayernot even a good, old-fashioned