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Lunatic Ravings - 12/03/01
By Stephen Johnson
Published each Monday and Thursday
Christmas time is here 'cause I am seeing more and more of the Salvation Army
bell ringers in front of my favorite stores.
But somethings horribly wrong. I remember when I was a kid and I saw the bell ringers, I felt pity for them because
they were freeing their asses off and the only way to keep warm was to constantly ring the damn bell. Over the
years I began disregarding them since once you've seen them a billion times, they just become another fact of life.
That is until this past Saturday when I saw a couple of young girls standing outside a local grocery store, sipping
Starbucks coffee and managing a few weak rings of the bell every now and then. Maybe this is the new way to go
for the Salvation Army, but I like seeing the freezing old people who don't bother to drink some pompous, overpriced
liquid from a snooty coffee establishment.
Who knows, maybe soon the Salvation Army volunteers won't have to ring a bell but will have a small electronic
device clipped to their belts programmed with the sound of a ringing bell. It probably will happen soon because
someone could develop nasty arm tendinitis from constantly ringing the bell and will have no choice but to sue
the Salvation Army.
And then there are the dead pigeons.
I don't know where they're coming from, but someone must have put some poison out somewhere and the birds are eating
it, flying around and then crash landing in our yard.
I threw away the first two that I found then it dawned on me that I had a money making opportunity staring me in
the face. Go ahead and ask yourself, "What do kids like the most?"
Right! Dead things and things on sticks.
So I waited until the next pigeon crashed into our yard and I rushed outside with a shovel and prodded it a few
times to make sure that it was dead, which it was, so I picked it up and brought it inside.
I had a few dowels lying around and I took one and shoved it up the bird's ass until it couldn't go any further.
Knowing that the bird would eventually start to smell I shellacked it and put it outside so it could dry. I did
this every time a bird dropped from the sky into our yard and soon I had a nice collection of shellacked pigeons
on a stick.
When the birds were dry, I set up a table at the end of the driveway with a sign nearby stating "Pigeons on
a stick: $1.00". Sure the price seems cheap, but the pigeons were free and the dowels were only .50 apiece
and I had stolen the shellac from my neighbors garage, so I would be coming out ahead.
It so happens that there is an elementary school right down street from me and I sold all the pigeons the first
day I put them out. I guess kids realize a bargain when they see one.
Later that night, someone knocked on my front door. When I opened it, there was a lady holding one of the sticks
in one hand and the pigeon in the other and she was screaming something about me selling an inferior product to
her child because it broke as soon as he got home and he's been crying ever since and what are you going to do
about it mister?
Not being one to sell something inferior, I got a tube of Krazy Glu and applied a liberal dose to an end of the
dowel explaining as I did so that the pigeon on a stick that I sold her son wasn't actually broken since he or
she could have simply jammed the dowel back up the bird's ass but I was happy to fix the problem myself.
When the dowel was back in place I waited a couple of minutes to let the glue dry and then picked it up and waved
it around to show that it was a well made product made even better. This made the lady quite happy and she left.
Since that day no more pigeons fell from the sky so I had to go back to work. What a bummer.
COMING NEXT: Our top 10
movies of 2001!!
snide_remarks@weirdcrap.every1.net
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