The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle
Commentary on the Flux of Events
For the US economy to remain healthy and sound, consumers must keep on doing their patriotic duty.
In the trackless suburbs west of Chicago, a woman waddles into the WalMart. She is 34 years old, but at 327 pounds (and five-feet, five inches tall) she has the medical disorders of a much older person. She buys six boxes of Nabisco Snack-Well low-fat cookies, a videocassette titled The No-Diet Diet, a Care Bear doll for daughter Tiffny (sic), and a George Foreman-brand sandwich grill. At the check-out, her first three credit cards are refused for being at their limit. The fourth is accepted. . . .
Having just been laid off as an assistant purchasing officer for an Atlanta-based information technology company, a father of three drives up to Boatland at Lake Lanier and buys a Kawasaki 1200-STXR personal water craft (or Jet Ski) on his Capital One Visa card. "I'monna have me some damn fun," he tells the sales agent. Six hours later he hits a stump at 55 miles per hour. . . .
The supper hour at the Smith household in Mission Hills, Ca, is an amorphous time. Cody, the 16-year-old, growing at a furious rate, rustles himself up a dinner composed of nacho cheese dip over three microwaved beef burritos, one blueberry toaster strudel, a bowl of fat-free "death-by-chocolate" frozen yogurt over seven crushed Oreo cookies, and a 32-ounce bottle of Jolt. When he has cleared out, fourteen-year-old sister Wyneena, follows. She fixes a salad of the following ingredients: two slices of cucumber, three ounces iceberg lettuce, one radish, the juice of one-eighth of a lemon.
After finishing it, she madly assaults the remaining half-gallon of the "death-by-chocolate" frozen yogurt, and after that she throws up. Mother Jo-leen returns from her job as a drive-in photo kiosk clerk 48 miles away in Placentia, pulls a veal piccata Healthy Meal from the freezer, and eats it in front of the TV with a re-run of Friends. Father Dale comes in around 9:15 from his job repairing automobile air conditioning systems over in Pomona. Jo-leen is now asleep, Wynenna is just that moment parked outside a 7-Eleven with three of her friends, while the fourth, who looks mature, shall we say, is inside purchasing two 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor. Cody is doing bong hits at a friend's house while they surf the web for porno sites. Father Dale pours himself four fingers of vodka in a jelly glass, opens a bag of mesquite-flavored potato chips, and settles in to watch Chris Mathews yell at a congressman from Texas on CNBC . . . .
At a roadside establishment called Ammo-World outside Billings, Montana, a laid-off WorldCom employee purchases a Ruger "Blackhawk" .357 revolver, an ISAPOR #1 Mark 3 grenade launcher (pre-owned), a Chinese-made SKS 7.62mm semi-auto rifle, and 100 pounds of Goex 4FBB military-grade blasting powder. The establishment's policy painted in seven-inch block letters behind the cashier's counter is "You'll have to pry my rifle from my cold dead hands." Under it is a poster of the World Trade Center Tower Number One in mid-collapse. . . .