Freedomland
This is late and I'm missing The Sopranos, so it may well be short. You all have my permission to complain. I also accept your tacit permission to not care.

This turned out to be a pretty good weekend. Not only did we not go to any theme-parks, but it was also the first post-Easter weekend, which meant we included meat and meat-based products in our regular family Gluttony Friday festivities. The common trough hasn't smelled that good or been so beautiful to look at what with the glisteny sheen of rendered animal flesh since Lent started.

Also, Mrs. Pops and I availed ourselves of the easy availability of a temporary live-in relative and got out of the house ALL BY OURSELVES on Saturday evening. There was much convincing and bribing and (finally) a blunt object on the back of the head to emphatically seal the baby-sitting deal, but suffice it to say we were free.

Like any two people locked in a marriage primarily defined by the raising and successful NOT killing of children (whether or not they deserve it on occasion is immaterial) who seek to rekindle the spark of romance and couple-dom and intimacy that is so easily smothered and oxygen-starved by the inhuman capacity of children to ask for snacks, we did what any good American couple instinctively knows how to do: we consumed.

We are Americans. This is how we show our love for our country and, since we don't really have time to remember what it's like to be in love with just one person, it's a handy substitute for conversation.

We went to all the fancy-pants stores that have been until recently denied to us inland dwellers and we marveled: "Look!," we exclaimed, salivating: "A Pottery Barn!"

We went to the Apple store and did not buy his-and-her iPod Nanos. We went to Abercrombie and Fitch and did not spend $75 on jeans with holes cut in them (seriously, those appear to be back in fashion). We went into Sharper Image and did not buy an all-encompassing sphincter-endangering massage chair. Most impressively, we went to Williams-Sonoma and did not buy a $3,000 espresso machine.

Rest assured we did spend money on more sensibly-priced but still heroically unnecessary things. And then we went to Cheesecake Factory and gawked at our super-human portions including a Caesar salad that could have (and this is not much of an exaggeration) solved the hunger problem in any of several small to mid-size Third World nations.

And then, because we are Americans, were ordered dessert. Come on, don't judge us. Sure, there was no way humanly possible for us to finish our entrées without exploding the linings of our stomach, but then it has "Cheesecake" right in the name of the restaurant. That kind of marketing cannot go unrewarded.

In the end, we did spend a lot of money, but what we left with no money could buy: 1) time away from the children and 2) proof that we love America. You know, just in case the NSA comes around asking questions. They can accuse us of hating America if they want to just because we're Catholic and therefore blindly pro-immigrant. Also, my "JihadRawkz!" website has drawn an eyeball or two from the Department of Defense.

They can burst through my front door, hit my wife in the face with a rifle-butt and clap us all in irons if they want. The president said it himself: "Go shopping. Go to dinner."

I need only show them receipts.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.99


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 10:15 PM