Fear the Tigerclaw

A couple of weeks ago, San Francisco decided to ban toys in McDonald’s Happy Meals. The thought process behind it of course, being that kids won’t be encouraged to purchase Happy Meals if the toy isn’t included. The intent is to ween kids off of fast food which is turning our children into tremendously fat little diabetics who can’t function without inhaling about 3/4 lbs. of fat, sugar and salt at every meal.

Of course, the flawed logic in all of this is that kids aren’t the ones paying for the  Happy Meals. They aren’t the ones driving to McDonald’s and they are most likely not the ones who give a shit about the piece of shit toy (that breaks about two minutes after you get it) that is now being banned from all San Francisco McDonalds locations.

More rights than the homo eating it

The ones who are getting upset are in fact, the parents. Parents who are probably tremendously fat big diabetics who, drive to McDonalds, shell out 55 cents for some fried pieces of processed chicken fat, freedom fries and a TUB of soda, jam it down their kids portly throat and feel good about themselves as a parent because at the end of the meal, the kid gets to play with an action figure of Harry Potter, or Tron, or whatever corporate tie in happens to be en vogue at the time (sidenote: I ate many Happy Meals as a kid and NEVER got mainstream toys. I was reduced to having a plastic Chicken McNugget that came with different occupation outfits. That’s right, you haven’t lived until you dressed up a plastic nugget as a cop AND a doctor. I call him Dr. Cop, but that is a different topic for a different day).

Now, granted that the ban in itself is misguided and clueless. Kids will still eat the shit-tastic food, other fast food chains will take the opportunity to dump a bunch of their awful toys into their own kiddie meals and McDonald’s will continue to offer slides, ball pits and scary ass clowns to help attract the young fatties and make them life long addicts. So for anyone to get up in arms about this, is really just wasting their own breath. Breath that, if you happen to be a customer of the aforementioned restaurant, you are now trying to catch as years of clogging your arteries with deep fried fat has left you winded within 20 seconds of being offended by their recent actions.

In the grand scheme of things, I really don’t give a rat’s ass if McDonald’s decides to ban toys, add thumb tacks to their secret sauce and finally admit that their workers piss in the french fry oil (trust me, they do). I don’t give them any of my money, so at the end of the day, their decisions don’t really hold any effect on me. But what fascinates me is how others have reacted to this news. To some, this is a sure sign of the apocalypse and we might as well quit trying because we are sufficiently fucked.

Actually, the exact phrase that was relayed to me was, “the Commies have fucking won. No toys in Happy Meals? Thank you Barack Obama.”

Now, I don’t consider myself to be an expert on politics. Hell, I purposely go out of my way to avoid the topic at all costs for a number of reasons. The main one being that I figured out, relatively early in my life that arguing about shit that you have no control over is a waste of time. But after hearing the phrase above come out of the mouth of a person I happen to hold in high esteem, sent me reeling. How anyone can make the leap from toys in Happy Meals being banned in San Francisco as being a direct result of Barack Obama’s administration, I will never know. It caused my brain to cramp, cough and shit itself. I simply couldn’t process that horse shit.

Then I remembered that the person in question is a Republican and it suddenly all made sense. And before all my right winged friends jump all over me, let me preface this right now. Liberals, Democrats and donkeys are just as worthless, retarded and have way less cojones when it comes to standing up for what you believe in. But they also didn’t blame Obama for Happy Meals, so they get a pass from me on this go ’round.

As I was saying, this Republican friend of mine went into a fairly colorful tirade about how he was positive that this city wide banning (in a state he doesn’t even live in, mind you) was damning mankind to a scorching lake of fire. While entertaining in its absurdity, I couldn’t help but realize that perhaps the Republican Party’s agenda was way out of whack. Especially since he was 100 percent serious in his convictions about “Happy Meal-Gate.”

Afterall, isn’t this the same party that has a base dedicated to doing anything and everything possible to prevent a segment of Americans their rights? How can someone take anoyone seriously when they get all indignant about the government butting into our personal lives, then turn around and tell gay people that they aren’t allowed to do what us straighties can? The irony of the whole situation would be funny if it wasn’t criminally sad.

It isn’t often that I speak towards a collection of people with the same ideals and ask them to reconsider. But can we please focus on the appropriate issues here? Instead of spending entirely too much time thinking about what people are putting into their asses, why not focus that time thinking about what you are having come out of yours? That is, of course, if the Big Mac hasn’t left you constipated and leaving you scrambling to find something to start the “flow of traffic” going again.

Oh wait. Maybe that’s the reason for my friend’s indignation for the lack of Happy Meal toy.

/Tigerclaw

Recently, given our country’s current economic climate, anytime I or anyone complains about their job, they are met with, “well, at least you still have a job.” More often than not, most likely out of the sheer amount of heavy guilt that has just been dropped on top of them, the bitchee agrees with some sort of muttered response while leaving the conversation feeling like a complete asshole for even thinking about complaining. 

But in reality, that phrase, “at least you still have a job,” is chalk filled with bullshit. First off, it is usually uttered by someone who either has a better job than you to begin with, or at least a better life. Secondly, and more important, to the person who actually responds with the phrase in question, you are clearly a bad listener and a piss poor communicator. Did you even listen to the last 15 minutes of the conversation when you formed and articulated your words of wisdom towards me? 

That fucking job that I am so “lucky” to have is the very reason for me currently being miserable. Yes, I understand that the current unemployment rate is hovering around 10%, and that there are probably millions of people who would love the opportunity to complain about my job, but that isn’t my problem. My problem is my job, and you have swiftly dismissed it with a seven word phrase that also had the added benefit of “guilting,” me into feeling like I lit a box of kittens on fire. 

8:30 A.M. Monday morning

The cold hard truth is the job in question stresses me out to no end. Getting yelled at by overgrown, middle aged babies for hours on end is not fun. I don’t care how thick your skin is. You can only be told how worthless you are for so long before it eventually penetrates your defenses and worms its way into your head. So in an effort to prove to them, and ultimately yourself, that you aren’t the world’s biggest mistake, you hustle even more, further taxing your body, which is already working overtime from the stress.  Stress can kill. Stress can make you sick. It has been found that psychological stress can cause sudden death by increasing the chances that abnormal heart rhythms occur. Stress can cause effects on nearly all of the major system in our bodies, creating a huge list of health problems. Among them are diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, allergies, and asthma.  

So yes, I am still collecting a paycheck, but that check is now going towards all of my health ailments that were brought about because of the very same job that I am so lucky to have. Oh, and let us not forget that all of this running around has caused my normal eating habits to collapse on itself. If I am lucky enough to have enough time to eat, it is usually fleeting and consists of me stealing pretzels and other snacks put out by my fellow co-workers or throwing some deep fried fat down my throat while bellowing down the freeway going about 75 miles per hour, forcing my metabolism to throw its proverbial hands up and say “fuck it.” This, overtime, has led to me throwing out plenty of good clothes for replacements with bigger waistlines, extra X’s in front of the L’s and a tremendously concerning wheezing sound when I walk up and down a flight of stairs. 

The benefit of slowly turning into a blimp while simultaneously forcing my heart to run infinite amounts of stress induced marathons is that I get to pay for most of it out of pocket. Since times are tough and all of that, companies have decided, in an effort to keep their employees employed (and thus, keeping them lucky) to slash health and retirement benefits across the board. In fact, for the first time ever, companies have less confidence that they will provide benefits 10 years from now than ever before. 

Essentially, this means that I get to pay for my ever growing waistline and internal problems caused from the job that I am so lucky to have. Which means I have less money to pay my insurmountable pile of bills, and thus adding more stress to my life which compounds the physical and mental ailments I am already suffering from (like bubble guts and the liqui-shits). Which of course, leads me to mindfucking myself about how I don’t have any money due to the aforementioned situations, and further increases to the stress level. 

Which, as any normal human being would try to do, leads us to seek shelter where we can find it. But the best stress relievers on the planet, also happen to be illegal, forcing us to spend more of our hard earned money on things like vodka, whiskey and old faithful herself, beer. After awhile, the body adjusts and demands more and more of these trusted libations in order to take the edge off after a long day, which causes us to have to expand our stress relieving budget exponentially and drops us further down the stress related, ever expanding fat, rabbit hole. All while pickling our liver and causing us to look all yellowy while talking amongst friends and family. 

So to review, I am slowly killing myself with booze, while at the same time running my heart ragged due to stress and compounding it by eating like shit until I feel so bad that I either pay to eventually have gastric bypass surgery or a membership at a gym with 15 sessions of personal training which might cost as much, or more as having a big zip-tie wrapped around my gut and lamenting the fact that while every part of my grows bigger, my wallet does the exact opposite. 

But hey, at least I have a job, right?