Past Opinion Articles

Article for the week of 6/24/08

Salmonella Scare Nearly Over

By, Puns McKenna

Talk about scary. Okay, so we have this salmonella thing going on across the U.S. And here we are, all of us, wondering just how it got started. Well if this doesn’t beat all… Apparently Amy Winehouse is behind the mass diarrhea. She isn’t content sickening us with her appearance, now she has to make us all physically ill with our favorite foods.
Pop Diva overnight has this nefarious plot to take over the world. Apparently one tomato plant at a time. According to preliminary reports, the Pop Diva has been secretly visiting Farms where Undocumented Immigrants pick and care for the tomatoes. Rumors abound that Ms. Winehouse has been playing a little too much, house in the gardens. Apparently some of her unmentionable articles got mixed into the soil during watering time.

So some disgusting things got mixed with the plant’s nutrients. Now the populace is experiencing the disgusting result of salmonella. So what are we going to do about this travesty? Are we going to just sit down on our big American backsides and take the little “pew… pew…. Pew’s” in the butt? No! We should all buy these lovely tomatoes and use them for what they’re good for. Pelting high priced pop musicians with rotting fruit. It’s an old past time.

Remember back to when the Sun King ruled France? You know when all the people were starving and he gave them rotting food? They used to pelt the people they didn’t like, or who treated them wrongly, with rotten vegetables and fruit. In this case we’d be using rotten fruit. Tomatoes make this really nice squelching sound when they hit a solid target. And heck, they make for nice paint too.

Just think what her new look would be. Splotches of tomato running down the front of her shirt, and chunky salsa down her back. A great way to end the spread of salmonella is to take it back to its source, yes? Maybe we should just deliver them to the kitchen door of her favorite restaurant. Make a new dish called the Winehouse Salmonella Special?

It just seems strange to me that a pop star that big could get away with such a hostile take over bid. What are we coming to? Are we trying to make the world a better place, or a less crowded space? Personally I love my tomatoes. And the quality of living is in the top ten lists of things I want out of life. Do you want to eat your tomatoes without the fear that you’re going to get sick?

I think we should put a ban on pop stars being able to tour farms. If you’re a super hot pop start now and didn’t get to take a field trip to the local farm when you were five… Don’t go ruining the health of the nation because you’ve “always wanted to have a fling in the flowerbeds.” Remember folks when you use the growing vegetables for a place to play adult games… other people will eventually have to eat those veggies.

So Caveat Emptor folks; Be wary of the fresh tomatoes and other veggies.

Confessions of a Dislocated Texan
The things I may have to do to entertain myself
By Ezra Mann (Editor and Weirdo)
In a world that is so demanding of our time, we have to find new and creative ways to cram it in before we get that hint of sleep depravity. We’re constantly bombarded with ads for movies, video games, television shows, merchandise and stuff that we don’t know where to direct our short attention spans.
The wise thing would be to turn away from the advertising that plagues our every waking minute and escape to a book or go outside. Then again, we wouldn’t be American if we weren’t consumed and darn it I’m my own greatest critic and I won’t know it’s really bad for me until I drown in it. So, let’s grab the floaties and wade into the pool.
The first thing I need to overindulge in is my need for all things video, be it game, episode or epic. I need my Spendtendo, my CheckBox and my Phony Satisfaction so I can mash buttons and joysticks till my hands leave me for an Adam’s Family sequel.
I can max out my credit cards to spend more time in front of my television or the biggest screen I can find because if I’m not entertained I’m not properly shriveling my membrane. Later, I can be wheeled from show to show with the intent of never lifting more than a finger if I can’t find someone to do it for me. Then, when someone casual comes along and tries to indulge it I’ll squish any opposition that doesn’t agree with my seen it all wisdom.
However, if I sit on my tuchas all the time I’ll get way too large to fit into the size -30s that all the super models wear. Of course, it’s hard to tell what string of clothing they wear sometimes with the feathers, capes, stacked fruit, pants up or down or no pants at all.
In fact, I’m not really sure if I’m following the latest trend in fashion or rejects for a drag show in San Francisco. Gee, it’s so hard to guess what changes of clothes I’ll have to make that are only endorsed by those with more money in a year than I’ll make in a lifetime that I may as well wear no clothes at all. I can laugh all the way to the cellblock with that number.
Maybe I can just avoid those first two embarrassments and just fill my living area full of stuff. That’s right, you can never have too much stuff with all the room we’ve made by not reading newspapers, magazines or anything more complicated than a flyer for free cheese burritos.
Mmmmm, free cheese burritos, and the free cheese burrito man action figure, desk mug, burrito slippers, burrito hand bag, cheese stuffed animals, cheese burrito air freshener and don’t forget your Senior Juan Wayne toilet paper. Holy guacamole, I’m going to need more storage space for all this stuff I’m spending my stimulus check on that the government so kindly borrowed from a nation we’re not already in debt to. Maybe when I have no money left they can bury me in more of their stuff.
I’m so glad I’ve spent so much time worrying about what I don’t have so I could forget about things I might have been satisfied with in the first place. There are no limitations, complain instead of change is the name of our game.
So let’s sit down, or buy out or get more stuff, which ever provides us with the most convenient source of fake happiness. Being irrational packrat’s of entertainment is exactly what our forefathers gathered for, not that whole idea written by a bunch of dudes with calligraphy lessons. It’d be insane to think there was something we actually did not need.


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