It’s no small surprise that I eat a lot of fast food.  I wake up at 5AM, start working and pretty well don’t quit until some time in the evening.  McDonald’s for breakfast, maybe Wendy’s for lunch and anywhere for dinner.  But in all of that, I don’t get napkins unless I ask for them, the usual reply being a sulky, eye-rolling, “Here!”  Most of the time, I don’t notice until I’m already back on the Interstate.

     It’s seriously impossible to eat a Wendy’s triple with cheese without napkins, unless you’re one of those weirdos who enjoys being covered in grease.  It takes at least four napkins.  McChicken?  One napkin.  Double Whopper?  Two napkins.  Arby’s Beef & Cheddar?  One.  Add barbecue and Horsey Sauce?  Three.
     But do they put any in the damn bag?  Not in 2007.

     It changed fast, too.  Right on up to New Years Eve, there was no shortage of Napkins.  I’d have thirty or forty in every bag.  But sharply on January first, that sort of excess stopped.

     The Napkin Shortage has been stressful not only for food-covered consumers, but for the drive-up workers themselves.  One incident of a worker’s traumatic stress, at Wendy’s on Emory Road, particularly stands out.
     “Can I get some napkins, please?” I asked.
     The girl rolled her eyes, huffed and slammed the window shut.
     Eventually the Manager came to the window.  “Is there a problem with your order, sir?”
     “I’d just like some napkins, please.”
     “Can you please pull up, sir?”
     “Why?  I’d just like some napkins, please.”
     “Ok, well, if you’ll pull up, someone will bring you some.”
     Pull up … For napkins?
     It apparently took several minutes to locate a napkin.  When the girl finally came out — nearly ten minutes later — she brought one napkin.
     “Uhhhh, sorry, but I need at least two, please,” I said.
     She huffed, rolled her eyes, and stormed back inside, never to return.

     The most common Moonbat Conspiracy Theory dictates that this Napkin shortage was caused due to McDonald’s bringing back the McRib, causing a tenfold increase in the use of fast food napkins.  They claim that this move was a way to crush the competition by consuming all of the napkins meant for use at other fast food chains, so that McDonald’s would be the only place to have any.  However, this Theory is easily discredited due to the facts that other fast food chains have different colored napkins, and McDonald’s themselves are affected by this blight as well.
     Other conspiracies abound, some more radical than others.  Typically, President George W. Bush gets blamed for this shortage by liberals.  The Knights of Ku Klux Klan blame illegal immigrants.  And, of course, the Neo-Nazi Skinheads blame the Jews.

     As consumers, however, the best thing that we can do is remain vigilant in the face of this adversity, and hope that shortage will end soon.

Now it is quite simple to figure out what is going on in case of emergency by knowing a series of little codes. I remembered this while I was at one of my contracts as a “Code Blue”, warning was issued over the public address system. A code blue is a BOMB threat. I lost about two and half, if not three, hours of my day where I could have been doing something useful. Unfortunately, I had to wait anyway; I couldn’t leave without my equipment. 

To my surprise, the bomb was really just a hoax and did not go off and reduce my equipment and the building to mere rubble. Instead, the Chattanooga Bomb Squad destroyed the “object.”

I am glad I remembered the meaning since the a majority of the staff did not, though the codes are mentioned in the required the Universal Precautions Safety Course for school staff. Going back through the materials of the course myself, I feel the need to mention some of the other codes: White = Accident, Red = Fire, Black = Inclement Weather, Green = Hostage, Orange = Chemical Spill, ADAM = Missing Child, Brown = Shooting.

Looking at these codes I can’t help but think that for the most part these codes where put together to keep the general public from going into a panic. I can’t help but to think that a few of these are a little redundant. Couldn’t a shooting, fire, chemical spill also be an accident? I realize that the other modifier might weigh a little more, but wouldn’t it also be nice to know that Bob the hunter shot the clerk because the clerk was too stupid to realize a shell was in the shotgun Bob was “testing out,” or the building was about to burn down because little Johnny Pyro lit the trash on fire emptying the ashtray in the smokers lounge?

Hmm, fire, that brings up another good point: what do you call over the public address if there is a multiple chemical spill which combusts? Better yet what code do you call if someone doesn’t pay attention and throws empty chemical containers in a trash compactor and the containers combust? What then, why even bother with the codes since the meaning should be common knowledge. Why hide the truth? After all, with a little research you can find just about anything.

     In 2004, I moved outta DC because the place is pretty much a hell-hole of arrogance and one-upmanship.

     Leading up to the Iraq war, the entire town was behind it save for a few bus loads full of Neo-Nazi Skinheads wearing WWJD bracelets.  Personally, I’m pretty sure Jesus wouldn’t’ve been shaving his head, wearing Swastikas and threatening to kill all the Jews, but maybe that’s just me *rolls eyes*.

     As weeks progressed and the conflict escalated, politicians who’d voted for the war a few weeks prior began spouting rhetoric about how they were always against the war…

     It wasn’t long before the War Protestors started going moonbat-loopy.

     I remember being harassed one morning on the way to work at the Fairfax metro, when I simply walked past the guy trying to hand me his anti-war flyer.  He started screaming, “Fascist motherf&$#er!  You’re a g#$!%m babykiller!”  The rock-salt was down to keep us from falling face first in the slush, but that dear protester decided to see if he could help me fall a little easier.  I turned around and gave him a small shove back, and he finally shut his damn mouth.

     Arriving at work, I was met with another obnoxious punk at the top of the D.O.T. steps.  He was screaming, cussing at everyone who wouldn’t take his flyer.  On Federal Property.  And the D.O.T rent-a-cops wouldn’t get rid of him…

     He was still there at lunch, screaming, shoving people.  And DC people, generally, when threatened, tend to turn Zombie and ignore what’s going on.  They get shoved, they shut down, and continue trying to walk like nothing’s happening to them.

     I am not that way.

     I observed as Mr. Moron accosted an old woman, shoved her down, and busted her purse open.  Her coins went everywhere.  Being typical of the area, people just walked around the bloody-kneed old lady, ignored the screaming moron and went about their business as if it was perfectly normal.

     I ran to her aid, attempted to help her up, and received a short-lived tirade from the moron … short-lived because when he got in my face for trying to help her off the ground, he got a love-pat and a gingerly toss down the Metro escalator.

     And when trying to help the old lady gather her loose change, she simply ignored me, unwilling to make any eye contact, unwilling to accept the money I’d picked up for her.  And nobody else would pick it up.

     There were numerous other stupid incidents which made me loathe to ride the DC Metro after a while (an Asian lady who continually attempted to push me in front of the train, a man who attempted to climb me — standing on the back of my leg and holding my shoulder — trying to push his way into an overstuffed Metro car, the group of suit-and-tie-clad Howard Dean supporters screaming “DON’T TOUCH ME! DON’T TOUCH ME! DON’T TOUCH ME!” and biting passengers for accidentally brushing against them in another overstuffed car), but I digress.

     This is typical of DC.

     It’s a relatively tiny land area chock-full of asinine, and overflowing with WTF.

     Knoxville protesters tend to be at least a little less moronic.  The culture here is very different to DC, in that most people are usually — at least somewhat — nice to each other.  They still scream sarcasm, and use all the silly catch-phrases which don’t apply (general misuse of words and such).  But for the most part, they’re not hitting people.  They’re usually not throwing things at passersby.

     “The smell of patchouli in the air so thick it makes my eyes water,” said Lissa Kay as she filmed this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1pxJe0rFNA

     You can also see that they enlisted the aid of many of Knoxville’s homeless population in exchange for free doughnuts.  I guess they needed to show numbers, and really didn’t think about how demeaning it would be to bribe people to their cause using food…

     Especially when many of the protesters claim that our government was doing that to rural Iraqis…

     Can you say, “Reprehensible hypocrites!” boys and girls?

     I knew you could.

We get these surveys and we all put in canned one liner answers. And honestly, how many times do you have to answer the same question about what color your underwear are or how many times in the last 3 weeks someone else has slept in your bed?

No, I’m not on a high horse. I am one of the most guilty individuals that I know. If I am bored at work or have nothing to do and there is a survey sitting there in the bulletins, it’s like a train wreck. I have to look. And then, before I know it, I am committing a crime against all that is right in the world and tap, tap, tapping my keyboard, filling in the answers.

Today, on my way back to my office I happened to catch National Public Radio’s Evening Edition. The story was about a new web reference source in response to Wikipedia. Evidently there are a group of individuals who believe Wikipedia to be too liberal. I am not saying that this group of individuals is wrong, but they came to this conclusion based on the statistics of a poll by Wikipedia editors.

There are several bits of flawed logic with this idea. The assumption that the editors of Wikipedia aren’t human because as a straight set of data this poll would leave no room for human error or a lack of honesty. These facts are statistics. Statistics by nature can be used to sway one way or another. If not lawyers wouldn’t be so profitable. However, the major problem with consevapedia.com, is the misuse of the word conservative.

The main example can be shown by comparing the definitions of the word kangaroo on both sites: Wikipedia and Conservapedia. Okay, I am fine with either of them until I get to the Origins section of the Conservapedia definition. The first thing listed is a creationist theory explanation. That in itself was fishy enough for me to check the dictionary for the definition.

The Oxford dictionary (I would have used Merriam-Webster, but the link wouldn’t pull up) states that a conservative is “(in a political context) favoring free enterprise, private ownership, and socially conservative ideas.” If this is the case then where does interjecting religious beliefs into the origin of a species come into play? A true conservative world should not include religion. Religion is much more defined either one way or another.

Conservapedia.com even goes on to say “A conservative is one who adheres to principles of limited government, personal responsibility and moral virtue.” Where does this give them the right to inteject a secular religious viewpoint, much less stake a claim of moral virtue? If they are truly conservative should they not list the scientific information first?

With that in mind I would like to propose a new web address for this website: severelyscrewypedia.com