When You Pull the Chili’s Finger

Sometimes fast-food restaurants go too far when they expand their menus. Call me conservative, but what’s wrong with burgers and fries? McDonalds added salads shakers (guess they’re a bit nervous). Burger King added some breakfast sandwich which shares the size and nutritional value of a deep-fried walrus. And to one-up them both, Wendy’s goes and introduces human fingers in their already stellar chili. When will it stop?

By now, you’ve probably heard the story of Anna Ayala. The poor woman just wanted some lunch minus human body parts just like any of us. But it was not to be. In between spoonfuls, it seemed her chili was pointing off to her left. She looked where the chili indicated but saw nothing of consequence. The confusion eventually turned into disgust when she remembered chili is normally a finger-free food. In the true American spirit, she prepared a lawsuit against Wendy’s for the traumatic experience.

If only the story ended there. At the Wendy’s store, during the daily high-five a thon to raise morale, managers noticed that all their employees (except Captain Hook-Hand of course) had all ten fingers. The chili-makers downtown noted the same at their weekly itsy-bitsy spider race. Something was wrong. Where did this well-manicured, 1.5 inch long finger come from?

Investigators were on the case. Then it came to light that poor Anna Ayala had a history of lawsuits against such mega-corporations as General Motors and (I’m not making this one up) El Pollo Loco. The investigations led to the arrest of Anna, as it seems her finger-find was finger-fraud.

But the real interesting part of the story is how people reacted when they first heard about it. So many people said, “I’m not ever eating at Wendy’s again”, "I'm going vegetarian", or “Fetch me my barf bucket”. But now we see Wendy’s isn’t even at fault. People often times perceive things incorrectly. Take the famous song penned by Bruce Springsteen, “Blinded by the Light”. Thousands of people know this song but only a select few know the lyrics.

The real chorus of the song is:
Blinded by the light,
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night.

When lyrics don’t really make sense, it’s understandable that people won’t get it right. If I sang a song very clearly but said gibberish (i.e. -to the same tune- Hungry like a train, spaced out like a moose, another bullet in the brain) you would not be able to sing it back…unless I had written it down, and you re-read it…

Anyway to prove my point, I went to a Web site where people submit what lyrics sound like to them and ask for the correct lyrics because not knowing drives them crazy. Here are some REAL submissions:

Blinded by the light,
Wrapped up like a noose into the rhythm of the night

Blinded by the light,
Picked up in a bar by the ruler of the night

Blinded by the light,
Wrapped up by Venusians in the middle of the night

And my personal favorite…

Blinded by the light
Held up like a loofah by the foreman of the night.

“Foreman of the Night” is my favorite song in Phantom of the Opera. Anyway, the point is….um….I don’t know what it is. ...oh yeah, before you jump to an assumption and boycott an innocent restaurant chain, remember that it’s “Blinded by the Light; revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night.”

Smoking Chimpanzee Can’t Kick the Habit

I love the zoo. I always have. The sights, the sounds, the …smells….

And there is no smell at the zoo like the smell of the Ape House. I would often joke with my friends that it would be a most excellent prank to make one of those plug-in air fresheners that would capture the essence of Ape House. Then you go over to a friend’s house and find an obscure outlet that they never use and plug it in. Mwa hahaha.

Amazingly, the Ape House at Bloemfontein Zoo in Johannesburg, South Africa has found a way to make the smell even more revolting and possibly cancerous. Their star chimp, Charlie, has taken up smoking to pass the time. Believe it or not, zoo visitors would toss him soda cans and cigarettes and the monkey would down the soda and puff away on the cigarettes. And now, he’s addicted.

This amazes me. And get this, when zookeepers come to check on him he would hide his cigarettes like a guilty child. Zoos are wonderful. Where else could a chimp learn the values of addiction and shame?

So I started wondering…what if I threw a pencil, a calculator, and my W2-form into Charlie’s cell. Could this chimp prepare my tax return? Well, there was only one way to find out.

It was a hot and sticky day in Johannesburg. Various bugs took turns swarming about my head as I asked for directions to the famous smoking chimp. An obscenely bright orange taxi took me and the cloud of bugs to Bloemfontein Zoo. As we drove under the high-arched gate I knew I had entered another, almost alien realm. Trees so tall that they disappeared into the sky lined the well-worn road. Vines as thick as tanker trucks laced between the ancient branches.

The zoo apparently specialized in primates, and the pungent smell flooded my senses. I felt the car skid slightly as we ran over a patch of discarded banana peels.

“Tell me,” I asked the cab driver, “Is Charlie friendly?”

The cabbie caught my eye in his rear view mirror and his toothy smile was his only response. I didn’t let my developing apprehension show. After another five minutes on the road, we arrived at the compound referred to as The Chimporium. The cabbie helped me with my bag, took my money, and chuckled. And then he got in his car and departed in a trail of dust.

The cigarettes had made Charlie paranoid….among other things. I was told to approach his cage alone, as he felt threatened when outnumbered. I entered his shelter and was greeted with the acrid scent of monkey feces mixed with menthol. A wire-meshed fence separated his enclosure from the corridor where I stood. The sun was beginning to set, and long shadows stretched their fingers across the exhibit making it hard to see much of anything. Then in the corner, I noticed a faint orange light. It flared quickly to a bright red, and then faded back into darkness. He coughed.

Now was the time. I reached into my backpack and carefully removed my calculator, pencil and W2-form, as well as the appropriate 1098E form. I felt his eyes upon me, and I lost my handle on the calculator, dropping it to the cool concrete floor. It made a sickening thud, but wondrously continued to work. I let out a breath and gathered my items together. There was a slot that was used for food, which visitors also used to pass cans of soda, cigarettes, and homework assignments to Charlie. I pushed the objects through the slot and waited.

After several nervous minutes, he emerged from the shadows and began to examine my items. He took my forms and seemed to look them over very curiously. He held my W2 in his strong right hand and approached me. Only the mesh-fence separated us. I held my breath and waited to see what he’d do. He looked back at the form and gingerly yet purposefully rolled it up tight and held it out towards me. I was so shocked I didn’t know what to do, so I reached for a match and lit my W2 form, which Charlie promptly smoked.

Charlie taught me a powerful lesson that day. Chimps can’t do taxes.

Back to the Past. The Jurassic to Be Precise

Do you remember the good old days? People didn’t swear on television, gas prices were cheap, and dinosaurs ruled the earth. It’s been 60 million years since the monstrous lizards reigned supreme. Could they finally be returning? Alan Greenspan says no, but scientists say “I dunno, maybe”.

The recent change in plausibility of dino-resurrection is due to a recent find in Montana. Some archaeologists stumbled across the skeleton of a 40 foot tall Tyrannosaurus Rex. And you know how scientists are, first they’re excited about their find, maybe they celebrate a bit, push up too excitedly on their taped together glasses, and before you could say “Beam Me Up Scotty” the ancient bones ended up getting broken. But this turns out to be a good thing. Inside the broken bones, scientists discovered soft tissue (with aloe so it doesn’t irritate your nose).

This is important for a few reasons. First when the cells from the soft tissue were compared to an ostrich, they were found to be nearly identical. This proves the controversial theory that dinosaurs were made out of ostriches.

Secondly, it is entirely possible that the soft tissue may contain a complete strand of DNA. And with that DNA, we could clone the T-Rex. This would be dangerous of course, so I would recommend securing a small tropical island and building an amusement park with giant fences to house the beasts. What could possibly go wrong?

I asked some of my friends what they thought about cloning dinosaurs. All agreed that it wasn’t a morally right decision, but they also all agreed that if it did happen they would love to go see it. I don’t know if it’s right or wrong. I mean, if you cloned a T-Rex and then trained it to eat kittens or steal hubcaps, then that would be wrong. But if you clone a T-Rex and use it to pick apples from tall trees or rescue people from burning buildings then that would be good.

I recently watched an episode of Fear Factor where these lunkheads had to get away from a police dog to advance to the next round of the game. Police dogs are vicious and it was fun to watch. But what if, instead of chasing people, the dogs chased a T-Rex?....I mean, what if instead of a police dog, a T-Rex chased the people and chomped em’ up? Wouldn’t that be more satisfying? Of course it would.

I don’t know how you feel about the return of the dinosaurs. But just to be safe, it may be a good idea to make sure your hubcaps are really fastened up good.