A Few Facts of Life

By Johnny Apocalypse

April 1st, 2008

The only thing banana-flavored that's any good is bananas
For ages, candy companies have put out various products that supposedly taste like a banana. Taffy, fruit chews, hard candy and so forth. Sadly every time you're about to bite into one of these confections and you're expecting a tongue-full of your favorite potassium-crammed fruit, all you end up with is a lump of crap that's part sugar, part soap scum and two parts juniper plant.

Usually candy companies can get it right¾ "wow, this really tastes like an orange!" Sometimes they screw it up but still get an A for effort --- "this doesn't taste much like strawberries but it's still pretty damn tasty". Unfortunately these hard working companies cannot pull off that banana flavor. Why? Because the banana has hidden its taste secrets deep within its chromosomes and can only be deciphered by following the clues in Manet's The Luncheon on the Grass and a thorough understanding of the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why only bananas and taste like bananas, and nothing else does.

Nature does not like us
A few years ago I was driving through the Rocky Mountains to do something stupid which seemed like a good idea at the time. As I was cruising on I-70 four snowflakes hit the ground, causing a massive car accident. Semi trucks went over the side of the mountain, several people were mangled and a tree spontaneously combusted into a cloud of radioactive sawdust which has produced a mutant strain of über-poisonous spiders the size of a newborn baby with eight tentacles, nineteen legs and the ability to taunt its victims before it devours them whole. I quickly turned around, went home and watched a Quantum Leap marathon instead.

Okay, that's a bit of a dramatization, but regardless of how full of shit I am, nature still doesn't like us. I have been a firm believer that mountains should be either avoided or flattened, not enjoyed, because they are death traps. Mountains are meant for deer, bears and those loudmouthed radioactive spiders. When humans go into them, we drive off cliffs.

This not only applies to mountains but other areas of nature. Swamps and rainforests have crocodiles, malaria-covered mosquitoes and all sorts of killer plants. Jungles have lions and crap-flinging monkeys. The list goes on.

The only reason we humans have survived today is because our ancestors were smart enough to move to areas where nature was restricted to meadows and prairie dogs. We built towns here because we didn't have to worry about falling down gigantic rocks or being attacked by anacondas. We developed guns to keep nature from eating us, and cars so we could get away from marauding hordes of killer chipmunks.

Along the way, some lunatics have founded towns in the middle of the most hostile of areas; mountains, swamps, etc. "Oh, the ten-foot snowdrifts here in the mountains aren't that big of a problem" they say. Bullshit.

If you have to go to the mountains, do your skiing, camping or whatever and then get the hell out. Trust me. Those spiders don't fuck around.

If you look at a kid, no matter how innocent, your friends will taunt you for the rest of your life
I thank God everyday that I have never made this mistake, because the grief that my friends get (generally from me) is incredible. And maybe this is immature and uncalled for (unless you're a pedophile, in which case you deserve it), but it's still an inevitability. If you glance at a kid, even if it's just to make sure you don't step on them, at least one of your friends will give you hell for years.

"Hey, I saw you leering at that eleven year old."

"Say what? Dude, I was checking out her mom, she was hot."

"Yeah, yeah, save it for the judge. Pervert."

Even if you pummel your friend senseless for this, he's still not going to let up. Your jackass friend will call you from the hospital and tease you all the more.

But believe it or not, there is a good side to this. The reason your stupid buddy is giving you crap is because he cares. He's taking time out of his busy day to let you know that he doesn't want you to go to jail and get shanked with a bedspring. Chances are he knows you weren't fantasizing about illegal and immoral activities with the young, but he's still letting you know that he's not going to be associating with a real pedophile. It's keeping your friends honest, even though your friends aren't going to do anything dishonest (like when you cock-block your married friend at the bar, who's not going to cheat on his wife but likes to flirt with the ladies). In this case, harassment is caring.

And that, my friends, shows that there are in fact a few tiny things that will never change in this world. Old Spice is the best, bananas are delicious, stay away from nature and don't look down because you never know where a kid will be lurking. Beyond that, everything is in a constant state of flux. Until we raze the mountains and kill off those stupid spiders.