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Friday, March 19, 2004Happy 25th Birthday, McDonald's Happy Meal!!! You get your fast food, you get your choking hazard plastic windup toy, and you get a pastel colored box with really easy word puzzles on the side and Golden Arches shaped handles. All for a couple bucks. What a bargain! I remember going to McDonalds as a kid and running around the McDonald's Playland. And not the wussy padded indoor McDonald's Playland that they have today; this was the outdoor, iron bar jungle gym version, where if you fell off the swaying, unsteady bridge you dropped five feet into a faceful of wood chips. And if you ran too fast without looking you'd plow into a six foot tall cast iron Birdie statue. There's nothing worse than getting a split lip from frickin' Birdie the Early Bird. My worst memory of McDonald's (and probably my mom's too) does not involve any of these hazards. I was too smart to eat the Mac Tonight action figures, and was reasonably careful on the Playground of Doom. No, the methaphorical snake that bit me was so ubiquitous you never would have guessed it-- catsup. That's right, catsup. I used to think that those individual serving catsup packets were the coolest thing ever and massaged them lovingly before tearing the wrapper and squirting liquid tomato on my burger. (Come to think of it, the catsup packets feel sort of like breast implants, which twenty years on I also happen to like massaging. Only I've never had a stripper's tits squirt catsup. That's a good thing, I wager.) Anyway, one day at McDonald's I was kneading my catsup packet, giving it some deep-tissue rubdown shiatsu action. Suddenly, BAM! The packet exploded like a cannon. A cannon that shot catsup. A cannon that shot catsup in my eye. Ouch. Now imagine for a moment that you're my mom. One minute you're eating french fries while trying to police three young tikes ("No, do not hit your sister."), the next you hear a deafening noise. You wheel around to see your son clutching his face and screaming "my eye, my eye!" while red fluid is dripping everywhere. And you thought that the McDonald's food would give you a heart attack. posted by Nate on 11:55 AM link Thursday, March 18, 2004March Madness is here. So far, the big upset is Manhattan trouncing the favored Florida Gators (I called that one). There were also a number of close games, like Wake Forest barely holding off Virginia Commonwealth. By the way, is there a better sports announcer name than Jim Spanarkel? Reminds me of smarmy gameshow host Peter Tomarken from "Press Your Luck." Come to think of it, the NCAA tourney is like that show, with the top seed trying to avoid early round whammies. I wrote an article on the NCAA tourney earler this week. Enjoy. posted by Nate on 11:14 PM link Tuesday, March 16, 2004Unfortunately, I think that John Derbyshire (whom I don't usually agree with) is 100% right in his analysis of the Spanish election, in which the pro-U.S., anti-terror party lost a comfortable lead following Thursday's bombing. An enormous voter turnout (over 70%, up from 39%) swept the "Let's Leave the Terrorists Alone and Hope They Don't Bomb Us Again" Party to victory. Derb writes: The blame must, of course, fall squarely on the Spanish electorate. It would be wrong to think, however, that there is anything peculiarly Spanish about their abject surrender. There has only been one instance in recent years of a War on Terror being fought to any kind of conclusion, and that was the war between Britain and the Irish terrorists. That war ended, or at any rate quiesced, with a near-total surrender on the part of the British. Irish terrorist capos are now ensconced in ministerial positions in London and Ireland, on salaries paid for by British taxpayers. Their foot soldiers, those serving jail time, have been pardoned and let free. Their arms caches are all intact. They control large areas of Northern Ireland (and some in the Irish Republic, too) where police simply will not go. I'm of Irish descent and hate the Brits for what they did to my people (Kill Limey!). However, the IRA types have nothing to do with our historical grievance; they masterfully used it as a justification of a brutal acquisition of personal power and wealth-- just like the Al Qaeda leaders, and the Basque leaders, and most other radical quasi-fascist groups. posted by Nate on 1:08 AM link Monday, March 15, 2004Wow, apparently you really can buy anything on eBay. EBay halted an auction this week and suspended a Taiwanese user who allegedly tried to sell three Vietnamese girls on the website for a starting bid of $7,400... San Jose-based eBay strictly forbids the sale or purchase of humans, alive or dead. Gotta love the Internet, where if you get tired of downloading pirated software and looking at porn, you can sell fellow human beings into slavery. Thanks a lot, Al Gore! Speaking of eBay, I broke down and spent twenty bucks on a Megatron action figure tonight. I wrote about him a few weeks back, if you're interested. posted by Nate on 11:27 PM link
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your stolen base are belong to Rickey Henderson. Questions or comments? Email nate@swankypimp.com |
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