The Worst Of Rick’s Space: Volume I

(Every year The Independent features a “best of” edition at year’s end featuring some of our best work from the past year. This week, Rick submitted his “best of” — sorta — because he got the dates mixed up. No worries, there is plenty of dumb stuff for two weeks.)

Many people will use the catch phrase “global warming” to explain why this is happening. It annoys me, because as a person who has studied GW (that’s what we pros call it) at an advanced level for many years with scientists like Sartre and Harmon Killerbrew, I know the reason why it is getting warmer, and it easily reversible. There is a hole in the ozone layer. All the air conditioning is escaping.

Put in laymen’s terms (a layman is a stupid person, like yourself), when we turn the air conditioning on, the room gets cooler. This is how Earth works as well. You can buy a repair kit at the hardware store, cover the hole, and you are good to go.

As for the sea rising, open the drain for a couple hours, and that should do the trick.

Bird watchers should note Scarlet Tanager and Tufted Titmouse, named after two girls I dated, are among the regulars, as is the Black-Head Grosbeak, named after a guy in my high school chemistry class.

In the last few years, restaurants servers have taken to pushing $9 bottles of water on restaurant diners. The waiter will brighten up and say with an engaging smile, “Shall I bring a bottle of Perrier to the table?” And then his face will turn dark and sullen and his voice will change into something Satanesque. “Or do you want poopy water?” he asks ominously. He leaves little choice.

Limbo is where you go when you die if you have a spotless soul but don’t qualify for heaven. The nuns would use a newborn baby as an example: if a baby came into the world and then passed on before it was baptized, it would go to Limbo. That didn’t seem very fair. Limbo, we were assured, was just like heaven except you didn’t get to be with God. That’s like going to see The Stones with no Mick Jagger.

“What if the infant had impure thoughts?” I asked Sister Anne.

He said he wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole. Ted Kruzewski, a 10-foot Pole, said he wouldn’t touch it either.

My filthy mouth has always been my first line of defense. I always figured if I sounded rough and tough that I actually WAS rough and tough. If perchance someone called my bluff, I would turn to my second and third line of defense, which is to run and failing that, weep.

Consider when we were growing up: the go-to breakfast cereals were literally 90 percent sugar. Frosted Flakes, Corn Pops, and the like augmented by four big glasses of whole fat milk.

This was the beginning of the Organic Food Movement, which is a method of farming by which all food is soaked in poopy water. This gives the distinctive E. coli flavor health food freaks favor.

When someone realized all that fat was bad for us, they made two percent milk. Then one percent. But they couldn’t stop there, so now we have zero percent, which when you think about it isn’t milk at all — hell, it’s probably poopy water.

Despite the negatives, we as a culture thrived eating organic food, which also incorporates free range, hormone free, cage free, and so on. My working theory is cage-free chickens play with the E. Coli chicks from the wrong side of town.

They did the same thing to cigarettes. They took the tasty nicotine filled Big Red Marlboro and made Marlboro 100s, then they came up with Marlboro Mediums, then Light, followed by Ultra Light, Menthol, Smooth. I submit to you, ladies and gentlemen, that these were no longer cigarettes. At a certain point, they became lettuce. Speaking of which, that Romaine is a nasty ass, eh?

I am by no means a professional chef, but I stand by my recipes and know my way around the kitchen. Let me rephrase that: No one has ever gotten sick from eating my food. Karen’s relatives, occasionally subject to her experiments in the kitchen, can make no such claim — a couple is literally clinging to life months after eating Karen’s meatloaf casserole, which tasted suspiciously like Meatloaf the singer.

rmurphy@indyeastend.com