You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl

by Rivenbark, Celia

  So we now know that the Secret Service, for all its sexy portrayal in the movies, basically has the technology of Laura Ingalls’ chalk slate in Little House on the Prairie.

  At a checkpoint, the Secret Service had a clipboard with the names of all the invited guests on it, but the gruesome twosome schmoozed their way in anyway.

  A clipboard? Are you kidding me? This isn’t the South Georgia debutante ball at the Ramada we’re talking about. A clipboard? In this age of terrorism threats, the only thing we have in place to make sure POTUS isn’t dusted with anthrax is the same thing they use for call-ahead seating at Red Lobster? Hell, even Costco demands a picture ID at the door.

  Because I’m a political junkie from way back, I’m already looking ahead to 2012, when I’m hoping for a pop-culture dream ticket: Sarah Palin and La Toya Jackson.

  Palin/Jackson is my fantasy ticket for the sheer hilarity of it. La Toya could point out perceived enemies (“Barney Frank murdered my brother!”) and Say-ruh, as we say here in the South, could mow ’em down with her moose musket. (“I gotcher!”)

  Problem is, I’m not sure if La Toya Jackson is a Republican or a Democrat. My best guess is that she’s a Martian. No matter. It’s a simple change of registration.

  Why Palin/Jackson? That’s easy. These are power women who know how to generate a ton of ink. When people stopped talking about Palin after the 2008 election, she got right back in the spotlight for “ya know, doin’ the quittin’ thing because it’s the ones who, ya know, stay in office and things like that, which erode our, ya know, values and stuff.” And La Toya is fond of conspiracy theories which are, to borrow from the old Addams Family theme, “creepy and kooky, mysterious and spooky, altogether ooky.”

  Which is a great, underused word by the way.

  La Toya Jackson on the ticket would accomplish the unimaginable: She would make Sarah Palin look like the sensible, articulate one. La Toya would be the wind beneath Palin’s mounted bald eagle wings, as it were. Ooky.

  La Toya would bring her own cabinet without even having to step out of the gene pool and put on a towel: Secretary of State Tito, Secretary of the Treasury Marlon, Secretary of Yo-Yo Dieting and Occasional Fitness Janet, and Secretary of All That Is Germane Jermaine.

  And, yes, I know Say-ruh has smart-girl glasses and her caribou Manwiches are enough to make Greta Van Susteren swoon, but I’m not sure she’s interesting enough by herself to be president. Which, make no mistake, is where she’s headed.

  It has been said that the only way Sarah Palin can triumph is if good people do nothing. OK, I’m paraphrasing there. But do we really want to see first dude Todd doing doughnuts in his snowmobile on the White House front lawn, crushin’ his empties on his big, vacant noggin, and refusing to recycle?

  OK, maybe that does sound kinda cool now that I think about it.

  If Palin gets elected, we can expect more shenanigans on the order of the Republican National Committee’s now-famous fund-raising appeal that suggested that Democrats wanted to overhaul health care to deny treatment to Republicans.

  Well, that’s just nuts!

  But then these are the same people who like to spread the rumor that Obama wants to personally suffocate Palin’s precious special-needs child in his sleep and he will pay ACORN workers to peddle “kill Grandpa” pills door-to-door like copies of The Watchtower.

  Remember how the Republicans whined about the Dems vilifying Bush? Oh, it was so awful, so disrespectful, so un-American. But things are different with Obama in the big house. Now, to quote the always acerbic Bill Maher, the far right believes Obama is so core-evil that his favorite hobby is beating nuns to death with truckloads of dead puppies.

  But back to this notion that Dems will play favorites at the doctor’s office. Really? Is there anyone besides those frumpy, red-eyed wailing women who show up at town hall meetings with their hair combs and prairie skirts (surely, the sister-wives are back at the compound) who could honestly believe that?

  Although I seldom agree with Republicans, I’d never withhold medical care based on our political differences.

  I believe Republicans are absolutely entitled to any and all medical treatments that they need and desire. In due time.

  Kidding! No one seriously believes that doctors are going to check voter registrations before treating patients, do they? That would be a violation of the Hippopotamus Oath. Which I’m not sure they have in Kenya, our president’s true birthplace according to the frumpsters.

  How would it even work?

  Doctor: “Hmmmm. Bill, I know you and I go back a really long way and that I delivered all five of your children but, well, goshdarnit, it says here on your chart that you voted for Nixon in ’72 so it seems to me that your appendix is just going to have to explode while we leave you for dead. Nurse! Go out in the waiting room and see if any Democrats are waiting out there. And make sure they’re getting the good magazines, too.”

  Waaaaaaaahhhh.

  25

  Animal Tales and One Stupid Human Trick

  Next time Bubba and Billy Bob go fishing, they might discover that the fish more or less moseys onto the hook, languishes on the line, and then passively lays there in the cooler smoothing its scales instead of flailing.

  Why come?

  Because scientists have just discovered that estrogen in the water is making fish, particularly large-mouthed bass in the South, a whole lot less aggressive. In other words: Our Southern fish are “gender confused.” Is it something in the water? Mayhaps. Because, among other reasons, Bobbie Jean has decided to pitch her birth control pills into the commode and all that estrogen gets into our waterways.

  Further study has determined that most of the afflicted Southern bass have both male and female sex characteristics, so it’s understandable that they’re confused. Most of the time they don’t know whether to pound beers with the guys at Buffalo Wild Wings or check out the semiannual shoe sale at Dillard’s.

  The only good news to come from this is that it could result in a recall of that horrid wall plaque with the singing bass on it. You know the one. Instead of Take Me to the River, perhaps some lilting show tunes would be in order.

  It can’t just be about Bobbie Jean, though, because it’s not happening in other parts of the country. In Alaska, for instance, fish are completely free of this intersex condition. Alaskan fish have no gender confusion, preferring lumberjack plaid for the boys and something slightly slutty from Forever 21 for the girls.

  Scientists say that this gender bending may keep fish from reproducing because, with so many in sexual limbo, there’s just no real push to procreate.

  Oh, if only deer, squirrels, and Kardashians would acquire this particular affliction. I’m just kidding. I don’t really have anything against deer. Or squirrels.

  If you’re anything like me (and God help you if you are), you’re probably already wondering how this is going to impact … your Friday night at Red Lobster. What? You thought I was going to say the environment?

  The good news is that intersex fish, while perhaps emotionally conflicted, are perfectly safe to eat, scientists say. The absolute worst thing that would happen is that, if you’re a boy, your bidness will fall off. What? Is that a problem?

  I grew up fishing for bass so this is bad news for me. The fun is in the fight! If the fish simply yawns in my direction and suggests a light breading of panko crumbs with a modest pinot on the side, there’s no real sport in that.

  Of course, this is serious environmental business and a few of you who care about this sort of thing passionately will probably argue that this could be the start of an ecological nightmare and they wish my business would fall off, too, for making light of it all.

  While I’m plenty worried about the fish never getting their groove back, there’s an even bigger ecological threat to my beloved Southland than gender-confused fish, and it’s slithering its way up the coast from Florida. According to a report released by the U.S. Geological Survey (motto: “Beer Makes
Us Awesome!”), Floridians, whom I previously regarded as a peaceful people, have been releasing killer snakes into the wild willy-nilly.

  Snakes being snakes, they aren’t happy to hang out in Florida and they’re heading north, where it’s not so humid and there are better drivers.

  News reports make it sound as if they’re slithering along I-95, perhaps getting “stuck on Stuckey’s” along the way and snake-giggling at the billboards for South of the Border. Because snakes don’t have a GPS or even MapQuest, I’m not sure how they know the route but I guess it’s instinctual. Kind of the same way that we humans have instinct that tells us how to care for our newborns and, even more important, to never let the skinny bitch in the group pick the restaurant. Instinct is very powerful stuff and snakes are up to their slitty little eyes with it.

  So what are we to do about all these snakes heading up the coast? Well, I could give you a long, fancy-pants National Public Radio-induced answer, but the short version is, “Bend over and kiss your ass good-bye.”

  No, seriously. That’s all any of us can do.

  There’s no stopping this army of big snakes because, scientists say, they can produce one hundred baby snake eggs at a time. I will pause now for y’all to go throw up.

  Florida, what did we do to deserve this?

  Turns out that owning that cute little Burmese python outlived its fun factor once BP grew up and wound his way around the lanai. What to do? You take the former pet for a ride and dump him out. Done!

  No! Not done! When asked by a reporter if there were actually, honestly, giant snakes in metropolitan areas like Miami, a scientist responded, and this is a di-rect quote, “Yes.”

  Dude. Let us down easy. You don’t just tell somebody that giant pythons are slithering around South Beach. Sure, the vapid movie stars and reality TV stars who tend to lounge about down there probably just think of a boa constrictor as uber Spanx, but the rest of us have enough sense to be scared.

  Scientists are, technically speaking, “completely freaked out in the head” about this march of the giant snakes northward, squeezing and/or consuming everything in their path.

  One scientist said since the snake march began, he’s had the chance to peer into the stomachs of literally hundreds of dead pythons (and you thought your job sucked) and found basically everything except a Barcalounger in there.

  While plenty of the killer snakes have been dumped by bored owners who are, if you ask me, nuttier than squirrel shit to even own these varmints in the first place, others are the descendants of snakes that escaped from pet shops back in ’92, when Hurricane Andrew came calling. Said one scientist, “They escaped and have been reproducing ever since.” Snakes, like the technology-starved Duggars, have to find themselves something interesting to do, I guess.

  Scientists say these house-sized snakes can climb trees and take out entire species of birds, “akin to the situation with brown tree snakes on Guam.”

  Oh, holy Lord! Not the brown tree snakes of Guam! Wait a minute. What?

  Scientists say the giant Burmese python in particular could be heading north. I looked up the giant Burmese python because knowledge, along with a working shotgun, is power. Turns out its favorite hobbies are “eating everything in its path, reproducing with abandon, and traveling long distances.” Sounds like all of my old boyfriends once they dumped me.

  Maybe I shouldn’t be so paranoid about snakes, or so worried about the fish population. The human animal is the one we should all worry about the most because it’s the stupidest.

  A quick illustration: Redneck cousins Joe and Jacky Ray were out hunting big snakes one day when they happened upon a huge hole in the ground.

  The closer they got to the hole, the more they were amazed by the sheer size of it. Like any good rednecks, they immediately decided that the best idea in the world would be to figure out exactly how deep it was.

  “Let’s chunk something down in there,” said Jacky Ray, the brains of the two. “We could throw it down and then listen hard to see how long it takes to hit the bottom.”

  Joe thought this was a pretty great idea because, yes, he did just eat a bowl of stupid for breakfast.

  Jacky Ray glanced over behind him and saw a rusty old car transmission sitting off to the side.

  “Gimme a hand,” he said to Joe. “We’ll take this here transmission and throw it in that hole and see how long it takes ’fore it hits bottom.”

  So the two of ’em picked up the transmission and hauled it over to the big hole. They counted one-two-three and heaved the transmission into the hole, then stood close to the edge listening for it to hit bottom. All of a sudden, they heard a rustling sound in the brush behind them. Jacky Ray and Joe turned around and saw a wild-eyed goat come crashing through the brush, run up to the hole and, with not so much as a second’s hesitation, jump into that big hole, headfirst.

  Jacky Ray and Joe had never seen anything like this kind of animal behavior so they just stood there, slack jawed, looking at each other and looking back into the hole, trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

  An old farmer walked up right about then and asked them, “You fellows didn’t happen to see my goat around here anywhere, did you?”

  And Joe said, “Well, that’s funny you should ask that, mister. We were just standing here a minute ago and a goat came running out of the bushes doin’ I’d say a hunnert miles an hour and just jumped headfirst into this hole here!”

  The old farmer shook his head and said, “Why that’s impossible. I had him chained to a transmission.”

  26

  Lost in Space

  While it’s awfully tempting to sneer at girl-astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper for losing a $100,000 tool kit during a space walk, I just say: You. Go. Girl.

  It was brilliant really. There’s poor HSP working with a (ick!) grease gun and, while she’s cleaning up, the bag “slips” out of her grip, the tools tumble into the final frontier, and back at NASA Mission Control, they hear her mumble, “Oh, great.”

  Yes, great! Great way to make sure that from now on, maybe they’ll let you stay inside the cute capsule thingy and make muffins for the rest of the crew. Crazy like a fox, you!

  I’m only slightly worried that one day in the next few years, some poor kid growing up in an Oklahoma trailer park is going to get hit in the head by that thing falling from outer space.

  “Son, I bet that’s the grease gun that girl astronaut lost a few years back,” his daddy will say. “Whoa. That’s gonna leave a mark.”

  I decided HSP did it on purpose to get out of work because, like I said, she wasn’t nearly as contrite as she should’ve been after losing the expensive tools used to maintain the spacecraft. Her explanation:

  “Despite my little hiccup, I think we did a great job out there!”

  This would appear to be a slammin’ new version of the old chestnut, “But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?” A little hiccup?

  NASA, once again finding itself with powdered egg in a tube on its collective face, didn’t have the reaction I would’ve predicted.

  I was expecting NASA to issue a stern rebuke of such carelessness. Perhaps even something along the lines of “Are you a freakin’ moron? It’s not like y’all can head on over to Home Depot and pick up some new tools? That bastard costs one hundred thousand dollars!”

  But, no. NASA took a kinder, gentler approach with the loss of the taxpayer-funded tool bag, issuing a statement praising HSP and saying, “she showed real character and great discipline” by continuing on and doing a fine job for the rest of the spacewalk. Not to belabor the point, but where did they think she could’ve gone? She’s in space. It’s not like she can say, “Screw all of y’all, there’s a sale at Pier 1 and I am so outta here, asshats. Uhhhh. Which way was Earth again?”

  Because NASA isn’t completely stupid and apparently never misses a BOGO on tool bags, our girl was told that she could continue her chore by sharing her fellow astronaut’
s tool bag, which I’m sure pleased him no end. (“You think you can hold onto that caulking gun? It belonged to my granddaddy … .”)

  NASA did say it was a trifle odd that she “lost” the tool kit because normally it’s tethered to a much larger bag. Maybe she just thought they didn’t go together. Tandem bags are just so 1998, y’all.

  The spin doctors at Mission Control managed to make it seem almost laudable that there’s a bag of expensive-ass spaceship parts floating out there.

  “We appreciate how hard you all are working,” they said in a peppy little post-goof message to the crew. Which makes me just wonder if NASA is, well, high.

  The next goal for the space team is to build a $154 million machine that will convert urine to drinking water. Which means HSP’s muffins may taste kinda funny, at least on the first couple of tries. It’s like when you make pancakes and you always have to throw out the first two or three ’cause the griddle isn’t hot enough yet and you’ve used too much urine, er, water.

  Why am I so cranky about my astro-sistah? Because she sets us all backward when she does dumb shit like that. She, of all people, should know that women still have to work twice as hard in male-dominated professions just to be taken seriously. That’s not fair, of course, but it’s true. So when you, oopsie, lose a tool kit, it causes heartless humor writers everywhere to unveil snarky, personal attacks on all of womankind. Thank God she didn’t whine that the orange spacesuit didn’t do a thing for her complexion.

  To be fair (which, incidentally, I just hate) HSP has been a good, occasionally outstanding, astronaut for more than a decade, so that does make me think the whole losing-the-tool-kit thing was planned. I mean, it did happen while she was cleaning up a greasy mess. Maybe she got fed up with always being the one who had to clean up the guys’ mess. Maybe she was all “Right stuff, this, bitches!” Or, maybe not.

  In any case, it’s important to remember that anybody can make a mistake, especially when you’re the only girl living with a bunch of men whose only core belief is that bacon makes everything better. Stuck in space without so much as a Jersey Shore rerun, their main job was to add a couple of rooms to your “house.” Only in this case, the house is a space station, and they’re transforming it to a five-bedroom, two-bath home with a kitchen.