Coffee and a Roll?

I found myself sitting in the blazing hot nine a.m. sun Saturday morning, watching the adept fielding and precision throwing of two dozen eight year olds in an instructional league baseball game. Major Havoc’s Royals were competing against the Fireballs to see which player could launch the ball into orbit while attempting to throw from the pitcher’s mound to first base. They’ve already mastered allowing a ground ball to roll between their legs and into the outfield. Watching the game was made easier by an extra large BK Joe. The Boss hit me up at the perfect time this morning with her request that I accompany our middle child to the diamond. The one cup of coffee that I had had was just enough to make me agreeable but not enough to calm the shaking. So, I stopped at Burger King on the way to the game.

Now, I don’t know who the genius was that developed the graphics for a Burger King coffee cup. Better yet, who sat on the committee that approved those graphics? Either way, while my mind wandered away from the Bill Buckner impersonations in front of me I noticed the graphics on the side of the cup. Take a look at this and tell me what the first thing is that comes to mind.

Do you see it? The Boss saw it. She saw it right away. She saw it and she helped me photoshop the first thing that came to mind. All it took was a few extra flies.

Did the brain trust at Burger King really want to tell the world what their coffee tastes like? I don’t know about you, but that sure does look like a lawn sausage to me, complete with the aroma drifting away to the neighbor’s yard during their annual family barbecue. Isn’t it always the day that you realize your yard is a month overdue for a cleaning when the cars start rolling into the neighbor’s driveway because their oldest had their eighth birthday and seven generations are arriving to attend the baptism? You step out onto your patio and place your hands on your hips as you proudly survey your property. You inhale deeply and think, “Hmm…Burger King must have brewed a fresh pot.”

The big question is, does Burger King data mine the internet for references to their products the way Home Depot does? If they do, BK will soon return to their boring white coffee cups and it will all be due to the rambling of guy, ironically, named Arby. Regardless, until the new McDonald’s and their award winning coffee comes to Apathy, Burger King will be the default coffee of choice.

One Small Step for Apathy

I am SO excited I could just squee! Well, not really, because real men don’t squee.

Or tweet.

The Apathy Times, “Yesterday’s News When We Get Around To Printing It,” reported yesterday that Mayor Wrinkles’ plan for turning the great dirt pile on Main Street into a vibrant shopping Mecca have taken a gigantic turn to the… southeast, I suppose. What direction is Mecca from Apathy, Kansas? If the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, shouldn’t we be praying to our feet?  There I go on another one of those tangents.

As you may recall, Mayor Wrinkles has made it his mission to bring commerce to our small village. So far his tenure has brought us an Arby’s, a Burger King, a small Mexican restaurant, a Popeye’s Fried Chicken, a Sonic, and a Barista’s Coffee Shack. We have an Ihop under construction and two brand new strip malls with 95% vacancies.

But wait! There’s more!

The gigantic dirt pile on Main Street has been taken over by a third developer and our city council approved plans to add…

Wait for it…

A McDonald’s!

Apathy, Kansas, joins the 21st century! We get out very own set of golden arches!

SQU-

Yeah!

This may be good for our small town. I wonder if we've finally found our anchor store.  After McDonald’s adds it’s particular brand of fat to our community’s diet, we should be just about the right size to attract a Weight Watcher’s, a Slim 4 Life, a Nutrisystem, a Jenny Craig, and another unused gym or two to compete with our mostly unused gym in one of the empty strip malls.

Now that’s progress!

P.S.  Councilman Newfangled, all jokes aside, I know you work hard for us. Especially on French door installations. Thanks for all your hard work on a mostly thankless job!

Virtual Ignorance Is Bliss

I stopped by Apathy’s public library to use their bank of computer and post an update. First, I had to wait for an 83 year old man to complete his research on the migratory habits of the rare Siberian Tree Monkey (http://www.vodkaandbrachiatingdontmix.org/). This could be a challenging method for maintaining my blog, but I just returned after a six month blogging vacation and I’m not ready to allow a little thing like not having a functioning computer stop me from maintaining a computer-based weblog.

There are aspects of being virtually incommunicado that are pleasant. I do not have to read e-mail message after e-mail message from people concerned about my ability to perform. It is rather annoying to be told numerous times each day that bigger is always better and that marathon sessions are the expected norm. There are a couple of basic assumptions behind those messages that are insulting. These e-mails cannot possibly have been written by parents. Is there a parent of small children alive who does not understand saying, “If we do this quickly we can still get eight hours of sleep?”

I do not miss those frequent offers from Abdulah Iwannatakeyourmoney to drain my life savings by telling me that he has “multiple monies on accounts in reputable bank in my native Nigeria.” He usually writes that a lonely, single multi-millionaire died with no heirs, and that on a planet 25,000 miles in circumference populated by 5 billion people, this stay-at-home dad in Kansas (of all places!) is the only person he trusts to help him liquidate the estate. He also wants me to believe that he is only interested in keeping 10% of the eight gazillion dollars on account. If I only send him a valid bank account number he will wire me the remaining 90%. It is disappointing that the poor writing in these e-mails isn’t a tip-off to to every recipient that something is amiss. The complete lack of critical thinking skills on the part of the middle-aged couple in suburban Chicago who did not stop to ask themselves how such an offer could be real before they watched in abject horror as their childrens’ college funds electronically disappeared some Tuesday afternoon, is a complete condemnation of both our educational system and the fallen world that we live in. Greed and avarice rule the day. That reminds me, I need to check my lottery tickets.

I have also noticed that when I read my paper mail my view is not obstructed by an annoying pop-up advertisement that will not go away no matter how many times I click on an “x” that can only be located with the aide of an electron microscope. Advertisers have not yet figured our how to create a paper pop-up ad without causing a heart attack in a sixty-three year old widow in Hartsville, Tennessee, when she thinks she is opening her electric bill and is instead greeted by a spring-loaded Burger King creepy guy who pops up to say, “I like square booty!”

While I persevere through this unwanted electronic hiatus I will continue to record stories and post them when I can. I write better when I write on a computer. My six pages of hand written, double-spaced, heavily redacted rough draft is slowly and laboriously produced. And to think that this is how I got through high school and most of college. Ah, technology…