I Was Lying About Monsters

The sound of an airplane overhead drew me outside – there were no airplanes in the sky over America that afternoon, not anywhere in the country. You could go out in your yard and hear the silence, a sound unto itself, like when an air conditioner kicks off in the middle of the night.

So I was standing there in the driveway watching the sky, hearing its hidden vacuum cleaner sounds, looking for vapor trails.

It was Air Force One, I found out when I went inside. The President of the United States, escorted by a squad of fighters, on his way to do whatever it was he needed to do that day.

No one knew if this was the beginning of the attacks or the end. It seemed like mushroom clouds could bloom on the horizon any second, and I found myself thinking about military targets in central Ohio – what was here that might be attacked?

DCSC, I thought – a defense contractor or military base or something, I didn’t know exactly what it was. But it was right there on the east side of Columbus, and we had a Federal Building downtown. And an international airport, too.

Ellen was three and a half years old. I picked her up at preschool and found a sign on the wall which asked us not to discuss the attacks with our children, since they’d only spend the next few days freaking each other out.

I remember not liking it, not liking the idea that anyone might instruct me on how to talk to my daughter about this – or how not to talk to her. And anyway, it wasn’t an option for me. Ellen is a little Deanna Troi from Star Trek, an empath, and she always has been. She can’t quite read your mind, but she can feel your emotions about as clearly as you can.

Try lying to her about being terrified – go ahead. You might as well try and convince her it’s winter on the Fourth of July.

Big Uncle Shawn had come over. His mother was in Cincinnati with her husband, and he was as convinced she was safe as one could be, and so he came to our house. If society collapsed and we had to make a break for western Canada, well let’s just say that was something we were prepared to do.

We had only recently brought a television back into the house – we hadn’t had one for years – and we moved it downstairs into the den so we could watch the news without filling the whole house with it. Ellen didn’t care if we wanted her to see it or not; she already knew something was horribly wrong, and a round of Polly Pockets was pretty much off the table.

She crept in quietly while we watched the cavalcade of non-Hollywood explosions, filthy and gray and quick, devouring New Yorkers like a freakish sandstorm. Human beings were jumping out of windows a half a mile in the sky, to escape the heat.

Ellen was simply standing there all of the sudden, next to us. She said, “Why are they jumping, Daddy?”

Shawn was accustomed to Ellen’s little girl ways, but by no means was he prepared to answer that one. I shrugged and told her the truth. “Some people crashed some airplanes into these really tall buildings in New York, and knocked them down. It’s a big deal. A lot of people died, Ellen.”

“On purpose?”

“Yes, on purpose.”

She chewed on it with her brain and then asked, “Did they die, too?”

That took me a second to figure out. She wanted to know if the guys who flew the planes into buildings on purpose had died. I hadn’t really thought of it that way – at least there was that.

“Yes, they died, too.”

Still too young to really get a grasp on death, it troubled her. With no religion to simplify it for her, we’d been forced to be as honest with her about death as I was being about the attacks – we don’t know what happens when you die, that’s all there is to it.

She said, “Why would they do that?”

More people on the television fleeing down the street as another rumbling cloud of debris overtook them, and then the camera itself. Shawn turned it off.

I said, “There are people in the world, Ellen, who are just monsters. I don’t know how else to put it. They were monsters and they did something terrible.”

She had climbed onto my lap as I answered, and now she looked up at me, her eyebrows furrowed in a level of concentration usually reserved for chess players. She said, “You told me there was no such thing as monsters, Daddy.”

That’s exactly what she said.

And I’ll never forget the look Shawn and I exchanged as that little piece of her innocence fell away, the chilling realization that these people, these monsters, these terrorists, whatever you wanted to call them – they’d done exactly what they’d meant to do.

I told her, “I’m sorry, Ellen.” And I was.

Because there wasn’t anything else to say.

 

Just Like Seein’ Bigfoot

You know how whenever anyone sees Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster or Ogopogo, they’re so freaked out that they can’t snap a decent picture of what’s obviously, definitely, not horseshit and is instead really right in front of them? So what you get is something that looks like a large, blurry man in a Bigfoot suit:

Or a snorkeler with a Monster-Shaped Sock Puppet:

Or I guess sometimes yes, they do get a decent picture of Ogopogo. Watch out, kids!

Well that’s how I feel when I see a Women For Romney bumper sticker. Let me tell you something – they are OUT there. You just have to keep your eyes open. My friend Spang and I call each other when we see them – ohmygod, ohmygod, OHMYGOD! TOM! I SAW ONE!

Then we get cosmos. Other than that, we’re pretty manly.

But not the bumper sticker. I’ve never been able to get a clear picture of one, but here’s an artist’s rendition straight from my own personal Google Image files:

See? It’s pink – that means chicks dig it. And some of the letters are all fancy, like a girl wrote it on her notebook, a girl who doesn’t just “like” Romney, but who “‘like’ likes” him. Sometimes they don’t even get bumper stickers, they just spray paint their whole Romney-ending name all over their car, as if they’ve already married him and his First Wife. Stephanie Meredith Romney! In a big heart, you know.

But anyway, today I saw this cryptozoological wonder cross my path:

Holy shit! Christians For Obama!

At first, I didn’t even comprehend it. Why would Christians ever vote for a guy who is not only a Muslim, but also a Satanist AND an Atheist? FROM KENYA?

I don’t know, but this guy not only did it, but he’s permanently bragging about it on his car! Who’s driving it, Mothman??

I’ll tell you, it was a spiritual experience, like looking the Abominable Snowman right in the eye across a card table, thinking, “He’s got the jack. He doesn’t have the jack. HE’S GOT THE JACK!”

Surely you can relate. Anyway, someone needs to fly me to Loch Ness or to Bigfoot Town (Canada? Seattle? I don’t know where Bigfoot lives) cause do you see how I calmly stopped texting while I was driving, and snapped a picture of the Sasquatchmobile? I’m like motherscratching Steve McQueen, baby.

Cool, now I have to go run this by some network execs, make some scratch. Don’t show anybody, blogosphere, because it’s not worth any money that way.

Now, I know a lot of you are like, Tom, that could just be a Jesus Fish Eating A Darwin Fish bumper sticker wearing a Christians For Obama bumper sticker suit. Like when those knuckleheads said they had Bigfoot in a freezer and instantly, pre-Tom-On-Facebook, someone came to my desk to show me their Facebook page and asked me what I thought of it.

I said, “Well, shit, I’d say that’s either Bigfoot in a freezer, or it’s a Bigfoot Suit in a freezer. And since we already know there are Bigfoot suits, and since we don’t know if there’s Bigfoot, etc., etc. etc.”

Well – we’ll just have to let Science decide, and Science can tell History, and someone from Television can give me a check, is how I think this works. I’m going to get a new suit and a steak dinner, you guys stay here in case my studio check shows up.

 

Welcome To Crazy Town

Driving around outside of Columbus without satellite radio, without any recorded books, with zero CDs and I mean zero, the way I listen to the radio is I hit the scan button and then wait for a reason to stop scanning. Sometimes it’s a song in the general vein I like, and that might mean good news for twenty miles or so. Sometimes it’s somebody British, saying British things.

This time it was a conservative religious talk show, and the three second-snippet which caused me to stop the scanner included the phrase “homo marriage.”

I’m pretty sure the woman who used the term – especially since she proceeded to use it repeatedly for the next half hour – believed that it was the proper term for gay marriage. Because if you’re using terms which would seem normal coming out of Chet from Weird Science, then you can pretty much bet the farm your lingo is legit.

Welcome to Crazy Town, is what I assume the show was called, though the key word there is “assume.” In truth, I can’t tell you who these people were or even what station they were on, but that’s where they were broadcasting from, and I’m pretty sure one of them was the Mayor.

The first thing they were doing was hammering down the following point: Teaching evolution in school without also teaching that Maybe It Was Magic, well that’s not teaching science, that’s indoctrinating students into a non-Christian philosophy, just basically cramming the Opposite of The Bible down their throats and then stamping the word “Science” on it.

“The Word of God predates science!”  One of them complained. He’s the one I think was the Mayor, sounding like Pat Robertson thirty years younger with a couple of solid martinis in him.

They all cracked up at how obvious that was, and then to demonstrate how much it was obviously a bad idea to teach Science without the Word of God, the woman – I’ll call her the Reverse Terminator, because she sounded like she had maybe come forward in time a hundred years, and like she knew nothing about technology of any kind, and was perhaps even unaware I could hear her in my car – pointed out that a recent study had shown NINETY PERCENT of young people now believed in Homo Marriage.

Hell in a handbasket, they all agreed. And then suddenly they were talking about the Bill of Rights, unaware of the irony, since it’s the reason you can’t teach Christianity in schools.

They had a special guy on there and again, I was driving a car, didn’t catch his name. Let’s call him Fast Eddie, because he sounded like a grifter and wanted me to go to his website and get his free pamphlet which would teach me the Bill of Rights.

Hmm, I thought. Why don’t I just consult my own copy of the Bill of Rights, if I’m feeling like I need a refresher? Or perhaps I could google it. Me and George W. Bush – we LOVE to do the google.

Fast Eddie wanted to remind us of various agencies which were buying a bunch of hollow point bullets. All of these agencies seemed like weird agencies to be buying bullets, but if you just do the google the way Me-n-W like to do it, you can easily learn that most large government agencies, even the Social Security Administration, have hundreds of special agents who work in connection with law enforcement to investigate various types of crimes. All of these agencies get trained, all of them carry guns, and hollow point bullets are standard issue.

Fast Eddie, the Reverse Terminator, and The Mayor all wanted to talk about hollow point bullets for a while. They called them Killer Bullets, and were very outraged because I guess if you’re going to allow a federal agent to shoot someone in the line of duty, you want him to do so gently.

Hey, is it okay if Zeke from Tractor Supply picks up a few thousand Killer Bullets? Damn Right! It’s the Second Amendment!

But not the government, and certainly not any government agency which doesn’t intuitively sound like they might need them. They didn’t even want the Department of Homeland Security having hollow point bullets.

I mean, what do they need them for? Did anything about the recent gun debate lead them to believe that there were millions of nutcases in America absolutely slobbering for guns, bullets, and something to shoot?

After all, The Mayor reminded me. Obama is now literally a hitman.

Those are two real words he used together. Literally, hitman.

“He’s killing American citizens with these drones!” The Mayor announced, and no, he’s not. Eric Holder just said that it was technically possible – see this previous post about it.

“These drones are going to have scanners,” the Mayor continued. “They’ll be able to see through the walls of your house.”

“Well what are you doing in your house that you don’t want them to see?” Asked the Reverse Terminator instinctively, cracking me up because telling you what you can do in your own house is something these folks generally like to do.

“Well, anything,” said the Mayor. “You could be fixing dinner, chopping up vegetables, facing your wife and then a SWAT team piles through your door thinking you’re threatening her.”

So let’s all reflect on what a grasp it takes on law enforcement budgets if we think SWAT teams are going to be called in every time the X-Ray Drones see a knife. And let’s also reflect on how creepy it is that the Mayor went there first – What if the drones think I’m threatening my wife at knifepoint?

Good question, Mayor of Crazy Town. What if the flying robot thinks that, and then the SWAT guys all turn into incompetent bufoons who would do whatever the flying robot says? Say, would you like to talk to some SWAT guys about whether or not they are drooling morons?

Anywho, if that’s what you conservatives are listening to all day, no wonder you’re all losing your minds. And if you’re wondering why no one is as outraged as you about Benghazi, Chicken Little, it’s because absolutely EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS is an Obama conspiracy when you’re broadcasting from Crazy Town.

A nice place to visit though. I imagine one could get a pretty tasty slice of apple pie there, yes sir. But I don’t think I’ll be visiting the local real estate office. And also I think someone should go check on The Mayor’s wife.

 

How Alpha Moms Go To Disney World

It’s a little known secret that you can pretty much take your pet wherever you want, depending on how shameless you are. What you do is, you simply claim the pet is a support animal, that it detects upcoming seizures or something. Pursuant to the Americans With Disabilities Act, no restaurant or bar or anything really, is allowed to stop you from coming in with your support animal.

And of course they aren’t allowed to make you prove it. Have you ever seen anyone try to make a blind person prove he or she is blind, before allowing the dog?

So I guess that’s why this story from the New York Post makes sense, entitled Rich Manhattan moms hire handicapped tour guides so kids can cut lines at Disney World.

Yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like. Disney – in their ongoing campaign to pretend to have a soul – allows families with a handicapped member to head straight to the front of the line.

But what if no one in your incredibly wealthy Manhattan family is in a wheelchair? Do you have to stand around with the wretched Morlock people, all hunched over and sweaty, waiting for hours as if you are poor? Where’s YOUR bailout??

Don’t worry. Manhattan has plenty of secretive, high-end escort services. Most of them are for Wall Street players and government officials who like hookers. But at least one of them is for rich people who would like to rent a wheelchair-bound tour guide to take along to Disney World with them, for about a thousand bucks a day.

Now, Disney World already has express service you can pay for to shorten your wait. You can get VIP passes for a chunk of change. But then you still have to walk around all over the place like a bunch of zombies. What you need is a big, handy motorized cart which seats six of you and has a Handicapped sign on the side. Park anywhere you want – you’re Kanye West, baby, and if you’re lucky, you’ll even have room on board for your Rented Human Being!

For a fee, I’m sure they’ll ride on some sort of exterior sled, so they don’t freak your precious kids out or depress anybody. Right? You soulless, shape-shifting reptile people? Heh? Am I right or am I right?

Say, do you think if you pay an extra thousand dollars, they’ll affix a steamroller to the front of it so you don’t have to wait for middle classers to get the hell out of your way? Ask ’em!

This is happening. This is real. Handicapped tour guides are all the rage – in fact according to the article, you’re kind of looked down on at the Billionaire Club if you’re walking around Disney World without your Paid Escort On Wheels.

And yes, they’re proud of it, squares. Don’t get mad at them just because you didn’t think of it, or because you don’t have an extra thousand dollars a day, or because you have an actually handicapped family member.

“My daughter waited one minute to get on ‘It’s a Small World’ — the other kids had to wait 2 1/2 hours,” crowed one mom, who hired a disabled guide through Dream Tours Florida.

“You can’t go to Disney without a tour concierge,’’ she sniffed. “This is how the 1 percent does Disney.”

Mmmm. Yes. I wonder what the poooooor people are doing today.

How do you hook yourself up with one of these guides, you ask? Craiglist, you’re guessing?

No. It’s very insidery, like when they figure out immortality or time travel. They’re not just going to get online and scream, “Good news, everybody’s immortal now!”

There’s not enough room for that shit, man. There have to be people standing around miserable or it’s not worth it to be the special princess with the special tour guide, who doesn’t have to.

Apparently you have to know someone to even speak to the “black market tour guide” service. They’ll ask who referred you before they tell you a thing. One of those awful women from the Coldcreek Manor commercials has to give you the number, and then you speak her name into the telephone, and her name is power in their ears, like Lucifer or Beetlejuice.

“It’s insider knowledge that very few have and share carefully,” said social anthropologist Dr. Wednesday Martin, who caught wind of the underground network while doing research for her upcoming book “Primates of Park Avenue.”

“Who wants a speed pass when you can use your black-market handicapped guide to circumvent the lines all together?” she said.

Yes, it’s like on television commercials, when one family can only record four television shows at a time, but your family can record thirty, and so the other family gets to hang their heads in shame while you dance around with your eyes rolled back, chanting and humming and praying to dark, forgotten gods and whatnot. However you got so awesome, I don’t know.

And we can’t get mad at Disney, because what are they supposed to do? Start verifying physical disabilities? Lie Detector Tests for little Johnny?

We can’t even use the Evil Detector, because it’s Disney World. The thing would explode before you got it into the parking lot.

So it seems the One Percenters have won again, and all we can do is salute them for their vast riches, their utterly shameless sense of entitlement, and their uncanny ability to find everyone’s price tag and then pay it with a cold, reptilian smile. What a precious memory for their children, full of magic and greed and the sociopathic rental of human beings.

Do you believe in Hired Handicapped Companions, blogoshpere? Tinkerbell does, and so do I! So do I!

And now, off to be sick.

 

Let’s Watch Supernatural Since Our Blog Post Fell Apart

Man, it’s too bad.

I got into a hilarous Facebook argument today about Benghazi, and here’s the funny part. I don’t really have an opinion one way or the other about Benghazi. I am suspicious of the motives of those who are outraged, since they aren’t outraged at Bush, who for Frank’s sake, cannot even go to Europe for fear of being arrested for war crimes.

But whatever, they got Clinton for Lewinksy, I guess they can do as they please, and I’m sure John Stewart will tell me what happened. What gets me is that they’re Demanding Answers, and they’re offended that anyone would accuse them of having political motivations for Demanding Answers, but right after 9/11 – it was a cardinal sin to accuse Bush of having done anything wrong at all.

Remember that? Clearchannel even issued a mass email to all of its employees, effectively instructing all major radio stations in the country that they no one should be saying anything on the air about 9/11 unless it was to express support for President George W. Bush.

Now they START with the assumption that the Office of the President is corrupt – GO PATRIOTS!

The Facebook debate was all about that hypocrisy, so I didn’t need to know much about Benghazi, and I feel a little like Socrates in that way, because I don’t think anyone out there knows anything about Benghazi, just a steady stream of bullshit coming out of the television. Socrates and me – we think the guy who admits he doesn’t know shit is the smartest guy in the room. Go holler at Socates.

I mean seriously – what do you know about Benghazi? Did you hear it on Fox News? Did you hear it on the Internet?

Did a French Model tell you, on the Internet?

Anyway, a guy showed up, started Benghazi-ing around in the manner of typical conservatives, and it escalated much in the manner of my previous How To Conduct A Political Argument On Facebook, then I dragged the argument over here and utterly, completely destroyed the guy to the point where he would have certainly wept.

The thing about Facebook arguments is, you’re on someone else’s thread, so it’s not long before you’re pretty much screaming at their houseguests in their living room – not cool. But neither one of you wants to let the other guy get the last word.

Which is why you shouldn’t argue with bloggers. I dragged it over here not just to get it off my friend’s timeline, but also because I had a hilarious plan to render him unable to reply, unable to get the last word –  because it’s my blog and I can edit reader comments. No matter what he or anyone said, I was just going to switch to edit mode and then re-type all of the comments to say “ALL HAIL HILARY CLINTON, SHE ROX!”

It was a stupefyingly nasty and efficient rant, about as mean and nasty as I get. And because I’m so savvy, I checked with the Facebook friend whose wall it was on AFTER I finished it, and she said, “Naw, he’s a nice guy, don’t publicly shove a bomb up his ass, he’s too nice.”

I mean, I was three minutes away from posting probably the nastiest and most insulting thing I’ve ever posted. If you’ve been reading a while, really take a moment to mentally snap a tarp over that concept. I went apeshit. And then almost as an afterthought, I saw my Facebook Friend get back online and shot her a message – say, better let me know if you don’t want me lighting your friend up like a downtown Christmas tree, cause I’m halfway through my launch protocol.

Please don’t do that, crazy man, said my Facebook Friend. Sigh. Fine – Abort Launch. Feels like we should be raining fire on someone, but okay – we’ll give peace a chance.

Which is a good thing. Usually, I unload on someone and then feel bad later. So cooler heads prevailed – Yayyyy!

Except Booooooo, sort of a problem. Right after I got done eviscerating the stranger, I was going to check in on Supernatural, see what Dean and Sam are up to. I’ve been re-watching the entire series and the Horsemen are about to show up. Now guess what we’re doing, blogosphere?

That’s right. We’re watching Supernatural. If you’re a dude, grab a beer. If you’re a girl, grab a beer and a Big, Stupid Grin because you’re going to need it watching the smoking hot Winchester brothers rock around for 42 minutes.

Actually, I think that’s a lot to ask – telling you all about that thing and then asking you to pivot over to Supernatural, and this thing’s long enough. So we’ll watch Supernatural tomorrow, since I spent so long today  explaining why we’re watching it.

Sorry about yesterday, by the way, but my mom beat up a guy at the bus station and I had to bail her out of jail, get her a decent lawyer and some whiskey. That’s what Mother’s Day is all about, and I’m not really sorry, I hadn’t thought this paragraph through when I started it.

 

Local Church Bangs Head Against Wall To No Avail

Supposedly, Albert Einstein (pictured to the left, rocking my own personal haircut) once defined insanity as something like “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” For example – and again, sorry to keep bringing up McDonald’s – but getting a McMuffin, taking a nasty, gristle-paste bite of it, spitting it out and swearing to God you’ll never eat one again. Then six months later, hmmm – those McMuffins used to be pretty good, I think I’ll swing through there and grab one.

Crazy Town. If you want a McMuffin in 2013, you need to go to an organic market and buy the ingredients and make it yourself, or take the ingredients to your Mom’s house and ask her to make it over and over til she does, even if you’re 41.

Science and Church, of course, don’t always get along so well, and as such I was amused and not particularly surprised to see this article: Copper Thieves Rip Off Church For The Fifth Time.

This hits pretty close to home for me, because not only did I live in Grove City for three soul-crushing years, I believe that’s the church where my War On Ash Wednesday post took place. I am not sure about that – I have to admit that churches sort of blur together to me. You remember how on the OSU campus there was a Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell all rolled into one? Called it the Kentaco Hut?

Well I do, and that’s pretty much church to me. Mosques I can distinguish because they’re round and look like space churches. Otherwise, they are basically a series of tall, pointy buildings where several times a year fish fries are held.

And I shouldn’t bag on Grove City like that. It’s really not that bad anymore. In fact, if I were mayor of Grove City, that’s what it would say on the signs when you entered the city: Grove City – It’s Really Not That Bad Anymore!

Anyway, here’s the situation. Copper thieves keep rolling up to the St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church and taking their copper spouts. You might be thinking, say Tom, I know that city like the back of my hand, and that church is three blocks away from the Grove City Police Headquarters. That’s odd.

Yes, and as crackerjack as the Grove City Police really are, I can think of an even more compelling question. Why don’t the copper thieves burst into flames like Nazis prying open the Ark of the Covenant? Why aren’t they wiped clean by the Wrath of God?

I don’t know. Mysterious ways, and whatnot. Free will. The Almighty doesn’t go around micromanaging anything except sexual orientation and tithing and how long He can allow women to be held captive by crazy men and then still get credit for their freedom (ten to twelve years, depending on local zoning codes). Everything else is a barrel-o-monkeys. Go ahead and knock it, but The System Works!

At least that’s my understanding. But religion aside, it does strike me as sort of funny that thieves keep a-stealing the copper, and the church keeps a-buying more, and putting it back. That seems a lot like banging one’s face against a wall over and over.

“The trouble with this last time was I replaced everything and one week later, they took it all again,” said Michael Esposito, whose title is not disclosed, so I guess he’s not the Pope or anything. I imagine he’s the guy in charge of maintenance at the St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, and it sounds like he could use a little input here.

Five times seems like a lot. Die Hard learned that, on their fifth one, hopefully. Five robberies is Too Many.

Right now it’s like a berry patch, the gang just plucks all the copper berries, goes back to the hideout for some copperberry pie, and then waits for the berries to grow back. And four times in a row, the solution has been, well, let’s put the same stuff right back where it was with no changes to our security whatsoever, we’ll just pray that the copper thieves get tired of all the free copper and leave us be.

I’m all for prayer, don’t get me wrong, but back in college, I used to shoot pool with Bigfoot and the Tooth Fairy and God and Randy Butler. I learned quite a bit, let me tell you. For example, in terms of defense, you want to leave the cue ball up against the rail if you know you don’t have a shot and Bigfoot’s up next. Drives him crazy. And the Tooth Fairy can’t make a straight-in shot if you put Cher on the jukebox – that’s foolproof.

And the other thing I learned is, for clarity’s sake, God wants you to pray. He sure does. But when you’re finished praying, He wants you to get up and do something, preferably something to facilitate what you’re praying for. He’s the Almighty, not your intern. Paddle the boat, all right?

Slowly but surely, the gang over at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church is internalizing the mysterious lessons the copper thieves are teaching them. For example, according to the article, the damage is “usually a little over $3,000” so “the church is considering putting video surveillance in the parking lot.”

Yep, that’s usually my assessment when someone clips me for three thousand dollars, five times in a row using the same, exact method and means. Hmmm. Maybe we should tighten up security around here. Or at least consider it, which according to the article is all they are currently doing.

There does, however, seem to be something ironic about needing video surveillance to watch a Church. I’m not going to mention any names, but I thought Somebody was Everywhere and Knew When We Were Sleeping, and When We Were Stealing Copper Spouts.

But I guess I might have Somebody confused with Santa Claus. How on Earth could I have done that?

 

Lions And Tacos And Farms

Holy. Shit. Did you know there are Lion Farmers?

Meaning, there are dudes who raise lions like cows or something, and then they slaughter them and sell them for meat. Who in the world is up for a little lion meat, you ask? Where are these guys selling their lion chops?

Florida. According to CNN, a Florida Restaurant Sells Lion Tacos.

Are we on Sliders? Is this a parallel universe? I guess I’m baffled – if you’re allowed to eat lion around here, then why hasn’t everyone been chomping down lion for the last few decades? You’d think we’d be breeding big, fat lions and packing them eyeless and toothless into warehouses with retractable roofs. Feeding them dead chickens from the factory egg farms. Something classy, the way we usually roll.

And if we’re not allowed to eat lions, then why is this restaurant selling lion tacos?

The answer – which I thought would be shocking but was instead presented rather blithely – is that yes, you sure can sell lion. And okay, that answers that, go ahead and sell it, go ahead and eat it. I’m not going to start freaking out til I’ve thought it through.

But my knee-jerk reaction is, you’re sort of a dick if you want to eat a lion taco. Let’s test my hypothesis against the rest of the article.

Well, they’re $35. So I think we all know that if Charlie is willing to pay $35 for a taco, then Charlie is sort of a dick. Especially if the basic reason that the taco is $35, is that we’re running out of the animal in it.

See, they are listed as “threatened” and not “endangered.” That’s why it’s cool to make tacos out of them. Ah – the system works, yes?

I don’t know why it bugs me so much. We eat a lot of animals up in here, yes we do. And pigs are smart, for example – see Charlotte’s Web – and we eat them like they’re made of bacon. Why am I cool with eating pigs and not cool with eating lions?

Good question. I’m going to drink this beer and blog about it for a bit, and then maybe I’ll be able to tell you.

But apparently there’s an animal rights organization called Born Free USA which “embarked on an undercover investigation into the lion meat trade in 2011.” They’re pretty freaking sure you shouldn’t be eating lions

Ugh. That description I belted out a few paragraphs ago about how we’d handle legalized lion meat? Sounds like I was on the money. Here’s the day-ruining link for you. Born Free is currently engaged in talking the government into reclassifying lions as “endangered,” at which point you will no longer be allowed to eat lion tacos.

CNN interviews a guy who’s just eaten a lion taco, and sure enough, as I predicted, his name suggests he’s kind of a dick, just as much as his taco selection:

“I thought the lion was good,” said patron Lee Weiner. “It didn’t taste too gamey to me, similar to steak.”

Yeah. Not too gamey. Hey, that’s great. Every time I see one of these majestic creatures, that’s what I think. Proud, strong, graceful, deadly, probably not too gamey to eat on a taco.

By the way, would you like to know what else you can have on a taco that’s similar to steak, and costs a lot less? If you send me $35, Mister Weiner, I will be happy to tell you. Depending on how many tacos you eat, the information could easily pay for itself in a single day. Give me a ring-ding.

But again, time to look in the mirror. Let me just type as many animals as I can think of in one minute, that I’ve eaten over the years in non-survival situations:

Cow, lamb, goat, chicken, pheasant, turtle, pig, fish, lobster, deer, elk, bear, crawfish, alligator, bison, duck, quail, ostrich, rattlesnake, oyster, squirrel, rabbit

For crying out loud. I think I’ve lost my whole train of thought here. What was I talking about? Climbing up this total stranger’s ass because he ate an animal that wasn’t on my list?

Well, he did spend $35 on it, and his name is “Weiner,” so I’m not going to beat myself up all day. But yes, I wonder what possible moral criteria I might be using to determine which animals are okay to enslave and then eat. The answer appears to be, whichever ones cross my path.

Huh. So, I’m kind of a dick and the only reason I’m not eating a lion taco is because I’m a cheapskate and I’m not in Florida. I really thought this blog post was heading somewhere else, I’ll be honest with you. How bout that?

Anyway, it seems clear that the only way you’re going to get jackasses like me and Mister Weiner to not eat lion meat is to assist Born Free in their attempt to get lions officially reclassified as “endangered.”

How can you do that, you ask? By eating as many lions as possible. The problem is that they aren’t endangered enough yet. We need to really go to town on them, knock those numbers down.

No, not really. That’s dumb. Don’t listen to me, listen to Born Free. Here’s their link, in case you’d like to help them in their cause.