If I had any hair, right now it would be dyed, fried, and flipped to the side, because if I had a brain left, it would feel that way. I blame it all on Arby’s, ISIS, guns, Jeb Bush, Marie Osmond, and, more than anyone or anything, IHOP.
Yes, IHOP. I should have known I was close to snapping when I heard the headline on the news. Well, I take that back. It was when I not only heard the headline on the news but also heard a headline that it was one of five trending news stories I “needed” to follow. It was something like, “IHOP Parking Lot Collapses in Mississippi.” And I just spit coffee all over myself laughing.
See? Snapping. I didn’t even care at that moment if anyone had been injured. It was just the thought of a bunch of people having just polished off their jelly-filled, bacon-covered, cheesy pancake with sprinkles towers and all leaving at once, putting such pressure on the parking lot that it just freaking caved in.
IHOP sinkhole
And look: I’m not making fun of people with some extra poundage, because I have plenty of that myself. But come on. An IHOP parking lot in Mississippi caving in? I’m sorry, but I really don’t think that’s a story anyone needs to follow, unless it’s a sign of a sinkhole epidemic, and what the hell can you do about that?
Sinkholes. There’s another one for my list of why my brain is dyed, fried, and flipped to the side. They just happen. Giant pieces of the earth just cave in with no warning. This is why I don’t drive on bridges or interstate highways. Well, there are more reasons for that malady, but you still never know when a sinkhole is going to open up and swallow everything around it.
Wouldn’t it be something if a sinkhole … ? I’m not sure what to write here. Does a sinkhole open up, or is the sinkhole what’s there after the ground gives way? See? You’re starting to worry, aren’t you? Anyway, what if a sinkhole does whatever it does during one of the Republican presidential debates? Not that I want any of those lovely people to get physically harmed in any way, which I really don’t. But what if they were all standing there at their microphones lined up like little ducks and whining about the big ol’ mean media, and all of a sudden they just vanished? Donald Trump’s hair (talked about dyed, fried, and flipped to the side!) might fly up in the air, Ben Carson would say the same thing happened to him at West Point, Marco Rubio could expense it, and no one would even notice Jeb Bush was gone.
Ack. Never mind. They are too easy a target. They just need to go away and have their debates in private where they can just answer each other’s questions. It’s embarrassing.
So I am really snapping. I’m trying my best to laugh to keep from crying right now. I’m serious. It’s kind of hard to laugh, though (other than about IHOP’s sinkhole), if you watch the news with any regularity. In about a five-minute span the other day, there were stories about American soldiers being gunned down in Jordan, a judge in Austin, Texas, being gunned down in her driveway, and in a small town in Louisiana two off-duty police officers allegedly shot a 6-year-old child five times while he was in his father’s pickup truck, and killed him. A 6-year-old child. Let me repeat that, a 6-year-old child. Shot five times.
During the same five-minute span, there was also a news teaser about an upcoming story designed to teach people how to correctly kill another person if that person invades your home. There was a video of a woman who was seemingly having a calm conversation with a man in the Middle East, and, right in the middle of it, she pulled out a huge knife and lunged at him and stabbed him. Is this what we’ve come to? Is this IT?
I try not to get too philosophical because it hurts what’s left of my brain too much, but I’m about halfway convinced that this world is on its last legs. I don’t believe in all that stuff about heaven and hell and the second coming and floods and turning into pillars of salt, but I am really starting to wonder if we are going to just self-destruct.
Okay. Enough of that. It was hard enough to get out of bed after all that, and the last thing I need, personally, is to fixate on it. I tend to fixate on things such as how frightened I am of Marie Osmond or how insane I’m going to end up if I see one more Arby’s “We have the meats” commercial, or how, after all these centuries, the Middle East is still such a hotbed of violence. I could fixate on those things all day and never get an answer. I think I’ll just go to IHOP and sit around in the parking lot. Maybe I’ll drop in for some pancakes.