Imma Peppa'

I get headaches from time to time.

Massive, Earth-shattering, eye ball-popping, teeth grinding, hot-poker-through-the-temples headaches. Headaches that make a fifteen week-bender on nothing grain alcohol and black tar heroine followed by rehab where your family visits and tells you that sober and clean, you’re just not as funny as you used to be, so you throw yourself in front of a Mack truck, only to be flipped over into road construction where a steam roller smashes you into part of the new pavement of I-91 look like a ride in Mickey’s Toontown compared to my headaches.

Those headaches are nothing compared to my migraines.

Dresden after the bombing, raised by an order of magnitude.

My mother states that I’ve actually had headaches my entire life. Even as a I child I would come to her, concerned over the current status of shipping safety, or some issue of world deforestation and the loss of potential life-saving drugs being hidden away from the pharmaceutical conspiracy.

Headache inducing fodder even for the most capricious 3 year-old.

Today, I come fully loaded. I have a whole drawer of medication. I can sing, not name, but sing the four major types of over-the-counter pain-relievers by their chemical names to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas”:

Acetaminophen, ibuprofen
Naproxen sodium,
And acetylsalicylic acid
Will make me pain free.

See, just like Emily Dickinson!

I even maintain a small supply of hydrocodone both at the office and at the house, just in case a real five alarm headache hits me. I understand that I can get five bucks a pill on the open market . . . but that’s illegal and I would never condone the selling of prescription medication for a profit.

Black tar heroine, on the other hand, has no medicinal value whatsoever, and so my sale of that fits well with my morale code.

I have to admit, though, that I’m not a big fan of pills. I’ve never wanted to be tied to a medication, and since God has a sense of humor, he gave me Crohn’s disease with a nice attachment to all kinds of fun medications. So I attempt, most of the time, to throw off the shackles of my headaches through other means. On most mornings, Fall, Winter and Spring, I will have a nice relaxing cup of peppermint herbal tea. Yeah, yeah, it sounds poncy, but a day without a headache is like a day hitting the lotto, not, yah know, the multi-million lotto, but a few extra hundred dollars lotto. So if some poncy herbal tea will help keep that at bay, then I’ll live with being called a poncy.

I’ll even live with being called a pommy git, although I’m not certain what that means.

It’s not meant kindly though, I know that.

When the tea fails, and I can feel something of a pain coming on, before I have to bust out the pharmaceuticals, I attempt to use caffeine. And not just any caffeine, but the pure, artistic and luxurious caffeine that can only be found in Dr Pepper. Yes, that’s spelled right, there is no period in the Dr’s name.

Today, however, marked a black day in the history books. Dr Pepper, not to be confused with Mr. Pibb, Pibb Xtra, Dr. Thunder, or Dr. Smooth, is actually hard to come by in most vending machines and fast food restaurants. I can understand this, since the caramel-colored drink of the gods would rightly be well and truly sought after, rendering it a precious American commodity like platinum or good sense. But at my office building, they generally stock more Dr Pepper and Diet Dr Pepper than any other soft drink in the building. Rows and rows of gloriously chilled perfection sit and await the music of quarters, nickels and dimes that precede a purchase. As I trundled up to acquire my confection of joy and happiness, I was stunned to see that all five rows where normally nestled the goodness that is the good Dr were vacant.

Vacant. Absent. Missing in action. AWOL.

I screamed a cry that could be heard around the world like that of Captain Kirk from deep inside the Regula planetoid.

How could this be? Have they no mercy? Have they no shame!?

I immediately went to the internet to see if some tragedy had befallen the good people of Plano, Texas where Dr Pepper originated and is lovingly bottled by folk who know what a soft drink should taste like. After much confusion, I was finally transferred to the National Security Agency, who, understanding the concerns I was raising, asked me to terminate the connection so they could get FEMA properly mobilized.

"Sir, this line is for emergencies only."
"I understand your concerns."
"Sir, it's a Federal offense to call in a false national emergency."
"As well it should be. Otherwise I would never have gottent through! So how soon will Plano be safe? Are you sending the big planes in? What about sandbags, have you thought about those? And guards for the factory? We don't want any looting!"

In the meantime, I've been escorted to a waiting area where I'm being kept safe behind thick concrete and steel bars from over-zelous reporters eager to question me about my quick thinking and lightening reflexes under such a stressful situation. Due to this tragic turn of events, I’ve been reduced to drinking . . . Pepsi. I can hardly make my hand lift the cup that holds the black vileness passed off as a drink.

Misery, thy name is an empty Dr Pepper.

But as I sit, being kept company by a large and heavily tatooed body guard named Bubba who has given me the manly nickname, "Whitebread beyotch," as a sign of appreciation, I am content to know that I have done my bit to preserve the American way.

Toyota Ain't Kosha' - Part 2

Page 2.

Since we ended with a Paul Harvey-esque quote last week, I thought it only apropos that we open with one this week. Then, the circle will be complete. When I left you last week, I was but the learner.

Now I am the master.

But my master-hood pales like a 60’s Native American movie-extra, and one of the poorly paid movie-extras at that, next to the horrors that I have witnessed at the marketing hands of Toyota.

For those of you who haven’t heard of Toyota, and who can blame you, they were a small upstart Japanese car manufacturer. In the 70s and the 80s their smaller, more fuel-efficient, economical and longer-lasting cars were viewed as a minor threat by the Big Three in Detroit. But Americans, sensing that if they didn’t act in chorus would have most of their industry shifted off shore which would prompt a growing trade-deficit with other counties and a reliance on foriegn oil that might necessitate military intervention in the Middle East to protect our economic interests, banded together, and bought only products Made in the U.S.A. Fortunately, all those worries were for naught, and peace in the Middle East has reigned supreme.

Today, it’s hard to find a label or stamp that isn’t domestically produced.

But Toyota, with pluck and moxy that would impress even Charlton Heston, has launched a new add campaign. The question I have, though, is exactly what are they trying to say. For example, a few weeks ago, I was at my parents house and was able to actually watch cable television. One of the commercials I saw was this one from Toyota.

Now, I’ve been in marketing in one fashion or another for the past ten years. As I watched the aforementioned commercial, I was certain I knew what would occur. The hapless and helpless, clearly innocent of any wrong-doing piggy bank would triumph over the Toyota car, much as American altruism triumphed over foreign market self-interest pushes so many decades ago. The tag-line, when all was said and done, would read: “Toyota: Won’t break the piggy bank.”

But no!

Imagine my horror as the nearly defeated cabalistic cretin of a car (alliteration rules!) pulls out at miniature hammer!

As we all know, miniature hammers have been the bane of ungulates down through the ages. Many a bitter war has been fought, with the loss of life amongst Sus scrofa domesticus and Malleus sapien.

Oh, the foolishness.

And so I screamed at my parents’ television much the same way that Anakin Skywalker screamed upon learning that all the script-writing budget went for CGI, and Keanu Reeves would be writing dialogue as a favor to Lucas. You can see his reaction caught on film at the end of Revenge of the Sith.

No, seriously. That's all Reeves, baby.

But, as so often is the case with my articles, I digress.

Within Totyota's commercial, not only does the inevitable happen, and sweet, innocent life is lost once more as the piggy banks falls before its fatal foe (mmmm, more alliteration) but the tagline made no sense whatsoever.

And so I must call upon loyal, patriotic, God-fearing and George W. Bush supporting Americans everywhere to stop the madness. Stop the horror. Stop Toyota.

Toyota ain’t Kosha will become our battle-cry.

Toyota Ain't Kosha' - Part 1

The other day a guy came to my door at about 7:30 in the evening. I had just finished prayers with Justice, and tucked her into bed, whereupon she extolled my virtues as her surrogate father and promised that any fame and fortune that ever came her way, she would see to it that I took the largest part.

Unlike my parents, I now know that my future as a retiree and convalescent octogenarian is now secure.

But I digress.

The gentleman at my door was a complete stranger. This is hardly news, since I maintain a strict isolationist policy when it comes to my neighbors. This way, they will never bother to ask me to borrow a cup of milk, sugar or an egg. That last time I let a neighbor borrow something, I never saw my pet Cairn Terrier again.

So the fact that someone had actually penetrated the laser security system, traversed the mine field and survived the anti-aircraft and anti-tank artillery trained along all entrances to my abode was indeed impressive.

“Good evening sir,” the chipper young man said as he brushed dirt and debris from his singed uniform. I could still make out his name scrawled on the uniform’s nametag as ‘Joe”. “We were just setting up some of your neighbors with DirectTV (all rights reserved, not available in all areas, call for an authorized dealer to harass you for the next two years) Satellite television and they were telling us how high their cable rates are around here. I was wondering if you would be interested in lower your own price for high quality television?”

I was impressed.

Not only had this young man, Joe, been assisting my neighbors with his Can-Do attitude, golden locks of lightly curled hair, jaw line that you could crack walnuts on and humble sense of civic duty, but here he had heard the moaning of my fellow citizens about the cut-throat cable industry and their onerous usage charges, and had taken it upon himself to afford me the opportunity to partake of his benevolence and that of his company with clearly no benefit to himself or any stockholders.

I felt good. I felt joyous.

“I’m sorry. We don’t have cable.”

“You don’t have cable?” Joe asked, clearly shocked and appalled. “How do you watch television then?”

“We don’t watch television,” I replied. I felt a little guilty. Here Joe was trying to save me some of my hard-earned money, and I had stolen his thunder. It was like he had offered me a hand into the last emergency boat aboard the Titanic, and I had taken his hand, then plunged a large and atypically brutal looking knife into his back while cackling evil at his naiveté.

“You don’t own a TV set?” Joe asked. He had gone ghostly pale, and looked faint.

Here, I rallied to save poor Joe from the shock and awe I had just laid on him, “No. We own two. We just don’t have cable.”

“An antenna then?” Joe asked, his eyes pleading to make it so.

I tried to lie. Honest I did. But those pleading cocker spaniel-eyes had torn away every last shred of duplicity and obfuscation.

“No, no antenna,” I said, the truth falling from my lips as if someone else was saying the words.

“Oh,” Joe replied. “Well then . . .”

An uneasy silence fell upon both of us. Joe looked at his clipboard, as if to be certain that this was still the United States of America, and I looked at Joe, wondering if was about to run screaming straight back into the slings and arrows of the mine field, and by so doing, end it all.

Then, a light, as if heaven itself has opened a single ray of hope down on Joe’s immaculately conceived head.

“You just watch movies, right?”

I smiled both inwardly and outwardly, feeling my deceptive nature returning like a comfortable pair of combat boots.

“Yes, that’s right. Just movies.”

Joe smiled, as if all was right again with the world, and his place in that world was completely secure. He nodded to me, knowingly, and I nodded back, not willing to destroy the last bastion of Joe’s rose-tinted world. I flipped the switch that disabled most of the surveillance and anti-personnel equipment, and bid Joe a good night. He skipped off the porch, and since no one has come to claim the body, I assume he made it safely out.

Now, what does this have to do with the car manufacturer Toyota or how it isn’t kosher? Well, for that, you’ll have to come back tomorrow . . . or the next day. Perhaps next week when I, like Paul Harvey, can tell you . . . The Rest of the Story.

Good day.

And Here's Why I Believe in Horoscopes

I am a Leo. (Also known as "Lion")

My Horroscope starts like this:
" From the early age, Leos are inclined towards drunkennes and extortion. When it comes to anything else, they show a remarkable degree of laziness. As a child, a Leo will typically demand a lot of money from parents, then from friends and even casual aquaintances.

His overly developed pride and narcissism can ruin the life of anyone who he has come into even passing contact with, while his gluttony is capable of bankrupting even the deepest set of pockets. Amazingly, even though Leos eat a lot and without stop, they never gain any weight.

They like to have the world revolve around them, which is why they strive to be the best at anything they do. If they are not successful at this, they will languish and lose weight.

A Leo's dominant character traits are usually an unshakable delusion of grandure and an elevated feeling of self-importance.

Find yours