Friday, January 11, 2008

If Oscar were President, we'd all be saying 'heaveno' to the men drilling for candy on our ranches...

I hate reacting to news headlines, especially when I have loads of very important playing with my Lollipop the Bear plush action figure to do. (Plus all that canning!) But I just read this, and I'm so outraged that I could interrupt my very important "playing with my Lollipop the Bear plush action figure" time and write a blog piece to express my outrage - that's how outraged I am.

It's from the New York Times, also commonly referred to as the New York Bad News Every Second of the Livelong Day - an organization so poorly run that they recently hired Bill Kristol to write a weekly column instead of Billy Crystal, which is obviously who they really wanted. Check out this article, which totally should have been run under the headline, "For God's Sake, Montana, Think of the CANDY!!!!!"


from the New York Times (if that is its real name...)
You can read the rest of this sad miscarriage of justice here...
The article goes on to quote Lonnie Wright, Mr. Mars Jr.'s son-in-law, who "said he had no choice but to let the company in. 'I don’t contemplate any other action,' Mr. Wright said. 'I got lots I could add but nothing that would help the situation.'"

I'm not a betting man (for purposes of this piece, anyway), but I would lay all the money in my pocket right now PLUS all the money on my Dole Fruit Can-Cash Card against all the money in your collateralized debt obligation that there is a candy army hidden on the Mars ranch much like the one featured in the post-Candyland nightmares that kept me in diapers until I was well into college. I'll bet that's what Lonnie Wright meant when mentioned the lots he got to add to the situation. Mark my words, statewide judicial system of Montana: the Mars family is not someone you want to fuck with! Remember what happened to the Reeses after they stole the E.T. product placement spot out from underneath M&Ms in '82? Where do you think they got the dye for the red M&Ms that suddenly appeared a handful of years later?

And the Marses are right too, you know. Time after time, Big Oil and Big Gas (ew...) have filed injunctions to stop M&M-Mars from drilling for caramel on their private ranches, or from strip mining our national parks for nougat. So just remember that when the clenched fist of Mars's Candy Army comes thundering down on Texas and the Gulf of Mexico, smiting everything in its path with chocolate, candy-coated fury.

For the record, America (or BLAMErica, because I am blaming YOU for this), none of this was inevitable. It was all very evitable, if anyone besides me had kept their eye on the ball in the last two elections. Forget Bush-Gore or Bush-Kerry, forget Republicans-Democrats; there were much better choices to be made in 2000 and 2004, and in my typically timely fashion, I'm going to tell you who they were.

2004: Kenny Crandle (Keith Coogan's character from Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead)
Total national votes: 3,152 (approx. 0.0000000001%)

Say what you want about Keith Coogan's acting - we all saw his memorable turn alongside Elisabeth Shue and Anthony Rapp in Adventures in Babysitting too, we can handle it - but he still managed to play the hell out of this part. And anyway, we're not talking about Keith here, we're talking about KENNY. This is a man who knew how to get things done! And by things, I mean "the dishes!"

I wasn't even the only one who thought so. 3,151 other right-thinking Americans joined me in voting Crandle in '04 - that's more votes than Daffy Duck, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Daisy Duke, Bo Duke, Luke Duke, Marmaduke, and David Duke combined!

Think about that, the 100 million of you who voted for Bush and Kerry. Think about that when a man made of licorice is standing above you asking, "where's your Jesus now?" You could have pointed to the sky to distract him, kicked him in the groin, and been rescued by Kenny Crandle. But now, no. Not so much, no.

2000: Leo Canales
Total national votes: 1 (approx. 0.0000000000004%)

I wrote in Leo Canales in 2000 out of my sincere respect for his late-1990s campaign to reform the way people greeted each other answered their telephones. Instead of using the word "hello," he wanted us all to start saying "heaveno," and he got his hometown of Kingsville, Texas to go along with the idea. Kingsville even passed a resolution and made a proclamation, and someone wrote an article, and someone else made an extreeeeemely Web 1.0 website!

Yes, the idea bears eerie similarity to this this Kids In The Hall sketch from 1991, yet somehow, it is totally different. But even if it is a little bit derivative, my point is that it's this kind of grass roots thinking that could have saved civilization - that's all I'm saying.

Of course, it doesn't help that even Leo Canales, who posted his address for all the world to see, didn't agree with me. I was his only supporter, or "stalker," as he and the Kingsville Sherriff's office prefer to call it. This is the thanks I get for picking him over Baby Spice.

Luckily, this year there's still time, BLAMErica! Do yourselves, and everyone else a favor, and together, we can make a difference. Together, we can save mankind from the candy menace. Vote the Grouch in '08, and let's keep M&Ms melting in our mouths, not orchestrating massive offensives along the Gulf Coast.

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