Too Broke To Pay Attention

Some people don't have enough money to pay attention. To these people common sense is two pennies with the same date. They think manual labor was a Spanish conquistador. They'll tell you that Sherlock Holmes is a housing development.

They are historians too. They'll remind you that Adam and Eve were the first entrepreneurs. Eve opened the first produce store when she made Adam's Banana Stand. Adam invented the soft drink industry when he made Eve's Cherry Pop.

Bear in mind, these are not card carrying members of Mensa. To this group I.Q. is the abbreviation they use on their resumes for "I Quit!" They are part of the influx of the peoples, legal and illegal, who are taking up residence in our country. For some reason that makes no sense, they don't have to learn our language, respect the rights of existing citizens, or make an honest living. This is not an indictment on all immigrants who come to this country, but a fact concerning a small percentage of their numbers.

In our cities we do not raise chickens in our back yards. We have alarm clocks, we don't want to hear your rooster three hours before we have to get up. We don't eat pigeons. We don't steal ducks from private ponds to sell in Occidental restaurants. We put our rubbish in trash bags and trash cans. That thing in your sink is a garbage disposal, not an ice or nut crusher. Our kids do not play bowling with squash and cantaloupes in the aisles of supermarkets.

Ring Dings are snack cakes - not toy telephones. "We are closed" means the store is not open. Our lawn ornaments are there for decoration, not for you to help yourself to them. No, you cannot park in my driveway during snow emergencies. We do not send our grandparents out to the streets with a shopping cart to collect bottles and cans from sealed trash bags on trash day.

Whose brainstorm was it anyway to hire receptionists and telephone operators who cannot speak even a little English when 99% of the customers do? What ever happened to "When in Rome, do as the Romans?"

The jokes in the first two paragraphs above are older than the hills and twice as dusty, but they are becoming vogue again. We are gaining a growing audience who have not only not heard them, but are easily applicable to them.

Pretty soon the library shelves are going to have to be restocked with some of those old classics. Maybe this time around they'll make some of them into movies. Admit it, you're dying to see the film adaptations of "Under The Bleachers" by Seymore Butts, and "The Yellow River" by I.P. Freely. The lines will be long for that great love story on the silver screen: "Back To Back" by Willie Turner, and of course the sequel, "I've Got A Headache" by Betty Dont. "The Rising Son," about a single mother raising a boy entering puberty will draw Oscar consideration. Not to be confused with "The Summer of '42," the story of a young man seduced by an older woman, "Gladiator" is sure to be a summer blockbuster.

The incidents mentioned above have actually happened in our fair city. The city ordinances forced the people to get rid of the chickens and rooster. They have been warned by the health department to leave the pigeons alone. It was the same family that had restraining orders filed against them to stay away from the ponds. Their two restaurants were shut down temporarily by the health department and they were ordered to buy their ducks from USFDA approved dealers. Still the same family, they were ordered to cease throwing their garbage in their yard to feed the pigeons and squirrels. The landlord refused to replace the broken disposal. All of the locals stores make sure kids stop playing with the food until after they buy it. They have been informed that must not open sealed trash containers and can only collect cans and bottles from the streets and parks.

They finally moved away to another city, after a failed attempt with a suit of discrimination. The magistrate determined that their many violations of health and safety codes justified what they perceived as harassment from the neighbors. He went on to declare the family a public nuisance and the landlord was free to evict them. (I wish you luck if they show up in your neighborhood, folks.) Personally, I would have had them deported.

The woman pictured above, by the way, dropped her suit when she discovered that Yoda's light saber was actually a 12-function vibrator.

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