shameful gastrointestinal problem.
That’s right. It’s not really, you know, a major part of the story, but there was this certain large food company marketing
some cheese snacks with a non-nutritive fat substitute in them, and that large company was test-marketing its cheese snacks
guess where? Buckeye State, of course. Where these companies test-marketed lots of products for people they figured were uninformed.
These snack foods were cheap, all right, a real bargain compared to leading brands, and they had cheddar flavoring. Only problem
was, since your intestine couldn’t absorb the non-nutritive simulated fatty acid, it was deposited right out of you, in amounts
up to two or three tablespoons. The food company was trying to find out how much of this we’d tolerate in Ohio, this oily
residue that didn’t come out in the wash. If you ate a whole bag, it could be
bad.
So, truth is, on top of having
egg on his face,
my dad, right then, was having a rough day, and he wasn’t tolerating it too well.
You’ll be wanting to know how I know all this stuff, all these things that happened to my father in the restaurant, especially
since I wasn’t there and since Dad would never talk about any of it. Especially not
anal leakage.
Wouldn’t talk about much at all, after that, unless he was complaining about Ohio State during football season. You’ll want
to now how I know so much about the soul of Ohio, since I was a teenager when all this happened and was supposed to be sullen
and hard to reach. Hey, what’s left in this breadbasket nation, but the mystery of imagination? My mother lay in bed, hatched
a plan, how to get herself out of this place, how to give me a library of books. One night shedreamed of escaping from the Rust Belt, from a sequence of shotgun shacks and railroad apartments. A dream of a boy in the
shape of a bird in the shape of a story, a boy who has a boy who has a boy: each generations dream cheaper than the last,
like for example all these dreams now feature Chuck E. Cheese
(A special birthday show performed by Chuck E. Cheese and his musical friends!)
or Cracker Barrel or Wendy’s or Arby’s or Red Lobster or the Outback Steak-house or Boston Market or Taco Bell or Burger
King or TCBY or Pizza Hut or Baskin Robbins or Friendly’s or Hard Rock Cafe or KFC or IHOP or Frisch’s Big Boy. Take a right
down by Sam’s Discount Warehouse, Midas Muffler, Target, Barnes and Noble, Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Super Kmart, Ninety-Nine
Cent Store. My stands at the end of the line. Fresh poultry and eggs. Eggs in this county they’re the biggest darned eggs
you’ve ever seen in your whole life.
Forecast from the Retail Desk
N obody likes a guy who can foretell the future. Let me tell you. A guy with foreknowledge of events. Its like having really
bad acne. I had that, too. You’ll need clinical trials probably.
The bull market will come to an end,
for example. Any idiot will tell you that, and yet a persuasive demonstration of my skills requires that I start small and
build to a spectacular conclusion. The Dow, in spite of its reliance on blue chip issues, will chase NASDAQ’s tail down. My
own employers will come face to face with some nasty accounting practices that lead straight to a cadre of cocaine-snorting,
Lexus-driving tech-fund specialists. Then some really bad international loans will surface.
Jesus, make a loan to Canada, or something.
My position, here at the retail desk, where I am not well liked, will be one of the first declared obsolete in the merger.
They’ll let me know first thing on a Monday, after I’ve been up for three consecutive nights, worrying about my brother’s
kid, who has leukemia.
I tell my wife this stuff, she doesn’t believe me.
Here’s a historical account of the first ever public demonstration of my skills: I told Bobby Erlich that he was going to
get paralyzed in a motorcycle crash. This was in 1977. Erlich didn’t
That’s right. It’s not really, you know, a major part of the story, but there was this certain large food company marketing
some cheese snacks with a non-nutritive fat substitute in them, and that large company was test-marketing its cheese snacks
guess where? Buckeye State, of course. Where these companies test-marketed lots of products for people they figured were uninformed.
These snack foods were cheap, all right, a real bargain compared to leading brands, and they had cheddar flavoring. Only problem
was, since your intestine couldn’t absorb the non-nutritive simulated fatty acid, it was deposited right out of you, in amounts
up to two or three tablespoons. The food company was trying to find out how much of this we’d tolerate in Ohio, this oily
residue that didn’t come out in the wash. If you ate a whole bag, it could be
bad.
So, truth is, on top of having
egg on his face,
my dad, right then, was having a rough day, and he wasn’t tolerating it too well.
You’ll be wanting to know how I know all this stuff, all these things that happened to my father in the restaurant, especially
since I wasn’t there and since Dad would never talk about any of it. Especially not
anal leakage.
Wouldn’t talk about much at all, after that, unless he was complaining about Ohio State during football season. You’ll want
to now how I know so much about the soul of Ohio, since I was a teenager when all this happened and was supposed to be sullen
and hard to reach. Hey, what’s left in this breadbasket nation, but the mystery of imagination? My mother lay in bed, hatched
a plan, how to get herself out of this place, how to give me a library of books. One night shedreamed of escaping from the Rust Belt, from a sequence of shotgun shacks and railroad apartments. A dream of a boy in the
shape of a bird in the shape of a story, a boy who has a boy who has a boy: each generations dream cheaper than the last,
like for example all these dreams now feature Chuck E. Cheese
(A special birthday show performed by Chuck E. Cheese and his musical friends!)
or Cracker Barrel or Wendy’s or Arby’s or Red Lobster or the Outback Steak-house or Boston Market or Taco Bell or Burger
King or TCBY or Pizza Hut or Baskin Robbins or Friendly’s or Hard Rock Cafe or KFC or IHOP or Frisch’s Big Boy. Take a right
down by Sam’s Discount Warehouse, Midas Muffler, Target, Barnes and Noble, Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Super Kmart, Ninety-Nine
Cent Store. My stands at the end of the line. Fresh poultry and eggs. Eggs in this county they’re the biggest darned eggs
you’ve ever seen in your whole life.
Forecast from the Retail Desk
N obody likes a guy who can foretell the future. Let me tell you. A guy with foreknowledge of events. Its like having really
bad acne. I had that, too. You’ll need clinical trials probably.
The bull market will come to an end,
for example. Any idiot will tell you that, and yet a persuasive demonstration of my skills requires that I start small and
build to a spectacular conclusion. The Dow, in spite of its reliance on blue chip issues, will chase NASDAQ’s tail down. My
own employers will come face to face with some nasty accounting practices that lead straight to a cadre of cocaine-snorting,
Lexus-driving tech-fund specialists. Then some really bad international loans will surface.
Jesus, make a loan to Canada, or something.
My position, here at the retail desk, where I am not well liked, will be one of the first declared obsolete in the merger.
They’ll let me know first thing on a Monday, after I’ve been up for three consecutive nights, worrying about my brother’s
kid, who has leukemia.
I tell my wife this stuff, she doesn’t believe me.
Here’s a historical account of the first ever public demonstration of my skills: I told Bobby Erlich that he was going to
get paralyzed in a motorcycle crash. This was in 1977. Erlich didn’t
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