Saturday, April 26, 2008

Mish-Mashed Hodgepodge

I couldn't decide on a single topic this week, so you're getting a mish-mashed hodgepodge.

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The Machias Valley News Observer recently noted that the bee population is shrinking. The number of hives is down 35% since 2006.

Bees are sort of necessary for growing various crops. Growing crops is sort of necessary for human beings to continue eating.

Sure, we could freak out and start a huge “save the honeybee” campaign, but first let's look at the big picture.

Fewer bee stings = fewer life-threatening allergic reactions = lower health care costs for all Americans.

Besides, I prefer to see the glass as half full.

We still have a whopping 65% of the bee hives we had two years ago! That's more than enough, as far as I'm concerned, particularly since I haven't noticed my personal self starving recently.

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Speaking of starvation, I learned on public radio that we have a “global food crisis” on our hands.

(Well, not technically OUR hands, since we have nothing to do with it and all our food supplies are 100% secure and infinite. But I have a certain quota of cliches to maintain, here, so please forgive the error in semantics.)

I guess more people in more places have, you know, nothing to eat. Like, there is literally no food. Can you imagine that?

It's gotten so bad that Sam's Club is rationing rice. They won't allow customers to buy more than four bags at a time.

As a responsible global citizen, the first thing I did upon hearing about this crisis was run out to Shop 'n Save and get 17 bags of rice and about $500 worth of other non-perishable groceries to store in a hidden underground vault in my backyard.

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If your favorite meal is pizza and chips, I have great news: Your insurance will probably cover most of the quadruple bypass, even though you are an idiot.

Ha! Just joshing, of course. Obviously, your insurance, if you have any, covers nothing.

Anyway, the actual great news is that someone is circulating a petition online to bring back pizza flavored chips.

According to the author of the petition (some dude named Chris Talavera), the imbeciles at Poore Brothers®, displaying utter ignorance at what constitutes fine cuisine, stopped producing pizza chips four years ago.

More than 1,600 people have signed the petition, which is hosted at petitiononline.com. I urge you to join them, and help return the perfect junction of cherished cultural icons to their rightful place on the snack shelves at Wal-Mart.

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With Mother's Day zipping toward us like Muhammad Ali's phantom punch, I don't know how to express my gratitude for everything that amazing woman has done for me.

She kissed my boo-boos, put up with my immature foolishness, and kept me clothed, fed, bathed, and sheltered even as I remained ignorant and ungrateful. She kept me in line and put up with all sorts of rambunctious immaturity during my formative years.

And that's just my WIFE. I can't even begin to describe how much my actual mother had to put up with.

So you can see why there's so much pressure to find the right gift.

Wish me luck.

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