These certainly are the high holy days of pestering. Anything you buy afterward lurks the dreaded follow-up survey:
“Hi! We at Dubble Bubble just wanted to make sure you enjoyed your recent bubble-blowing experience with our fine family of products, although, in a rare display of corporate honesty, we just make the gum. Please take a few months of your valuable time to fill out this survey. Feel free to chew Dubble Bubble whilst doing so.”
I write back:
“The dee-lish pink bubble gum brought back a flood of childhood memories, most painful, including living in an orphanage run by my grandmama where gum was all I had to eat and survived the harsh winters in a blanket knitted from gum wrappers. I suspect Grandmama converted our food stamps to demon rum and date-pulled Purina Monkey Chow, upon which I was raised. Eeeechi-eeeechi!!! No wonder I can do so many pull-ups!!
“I’d find The Bubble Gum Experience more enjoyable if You DB People didn’t charge $14.99 per individually wrapped pink blob, no reference intended toward your tub-tub-tubby and scowling ex-wife, Diega. In the moo-moo. Here. Sing it with me — ‘Diega-in-the-MOO-MOO!! Diega-in-the-MOO-MOO!!’”
Humana is the worst. Humana would call on the quarter-hour to ask if, as an approaching senior, was pinned under a fallen bookcase and needed to talk with someone from Humana’s vaunted Portable Car Jack Coverage Division or while pinned, would I like to hear some lively bossa nova Humana elevator music, which may not be covered by my policy.
Much as I love my National Rifle Association, they surely do pester. I’ve been a member since flintlock rifles were en vogue, and, before that, the good old days when we just threw rocks at one another. I’m concerned with protecting myself, and, my family, especially from Democrats who are merely weeks away from forming their own NRA, only not with guns but those long skinny incense sticks. Mark my words. Those people are going to find a way to somehow hurt themselves and others with the unlit end.
That’s what we need to give The Left a dose of their own medicine — a National Liberal Incense Owner Data Base.
For school safety, of course.
I’m also in charge of our Neighborhood NRA Moose Watch. Argue and make faces if you will, but we haven’t had a problem with moose in the Santa Clarita since the 1970s.
Whigs or communists, either.
Alas, hate to admit it, but I’ve let my membership lapse. The NRA wants me back. Bad. They’re even offering gifts. Or, as America’s musketeers call them, “FREE Gifts!!” Give your wife some flowers on Valentine’s Day with the caveat, “I got you this FREE gift, honey!!” If she’s in the NRA and suspects you’re having an affair because of your uncharacteristic enthusiasm, she’ll surely shoot you, Bosco.
I’m not sure how much an NRA membership costs anymore because certain size-one-hat-wearing California bureaucrats have outlawed speaking with the NRA so you can’t ask. I think it’s 45 bucks. But, the NRA’s having a post-COVID special and it’s $30 if you rejoin PLUS you get that “FREE Gift!!”
I’ve already got thermoses (thermosi?). Tote bags. Backpacks. Still have that banker’s box filled with switchblades that Mrs. Diega Hairy Verga Sr. confiscated from me in the sixth grade, point being I’ve got enough knives to arm a large, Democrat-run city or produce “West Side Story” at the Canyon Theatre Guild. FREE NRA Gift!!?? I’d like a garrote.
Not to sneak up and choke people from behind, but rather, to snare small animals when American Civilization goes feral, which, according to The Democratic Party/Manson Family Holdouts, is about 20 minutes before the ice caps melt, the dinosaurs crawl from steaming crevices in the Earth and Kamala Harris is blowing giggle snot bubbles while cackling through her laugh-filled third State of the Union address.
Or, a flame thrower would be nice.
Isn’t California just the best state in the whole Union?
Where else can you have self-abusing sex traffickers wearing anatomically correct hamster suits given the inside track for nursery school noon aides AND where you can legally purchase a big-asterisk flame thrower? Actually, Maryland is the only state in America where you CAN’T purchase a flame thrower. The backward dolts. (Good British band name.) You can own a flame thrower in California, but, it can’t say either “NRA” or “TRUMP” on it.
Advertise “NRA” stenciled in big, bold letters and you run the risk of angry mobs of rock-throwing liberals trailing you in hysterical protest, accusing that you shoot your own Quarter-Pounders at McDonald’s. Actually, you can reason with The Left. Just tell them you use your NRA membership to intimidate “…persons with child-bearing plumbing and naughty parts, real or imagined…”
That seems to calm them.
You know what I’d like for my NRA present? A dog. Or better, a dog sled team. Again, just to annoy the neighbors, I’d name all my dogs, “Ka-BLOOEY!!” That way, I could call of them at the same time. Then, I’d attend some Zoom/NRA knitting lessons and stitch my dogsled team matching little doggie camo Kevlar bulletproof vests (all with NRA boldly on the side), little doggie holsters and miniature AK-47s modified so they could fire them with their cute wet noses.
Sigh. My dream NRA gift? My own mega-video billboard on Soledad. Like that famous giant neon cowboy outside the Frontier Casino in Reno, I’d be holding a 60-foot-long Sharps rifle in one hand and waving with the other. Through snow, rain, heat and Santa Clarita’s unrelenting — beige — a loudspeaker would tirelessly boom through the seasons: “I… am Pistolero. Me and my dogs? We’re NRA members…” On a timer, the billboard erupts every 90 seconds with happy animated doggie gunfire.
Better than holy water to drive out the disbelievers.
Hmmm. NRA Holy Water. In camo decanters.
Now that’s a great gift idea…
Depending what time you’re reading this, John Boston is possibly asleep, neither heavily armed nor dangerous. Looking for great stuff to read? Visit his bookstore at johnbostonbooks.com.
