1. Receipts that you stuff in a drawer or a box because you want to use them later when you file your taxes and then later you look at them and the ink is almost totally gone. You hear me?? Receipts that you can get in huge trouble for not keeping are being printed in DISAPPEARING INK. Just like sonogram pictures and those timeless photo portraits of your child sitting next to Chuck E Cheese. I’m not crazy y’all, all of these things are printed on the same cheap glossy paper with the same magical fading ink.

2. National Geographic Magazine for adults is a beautiful collection of insightful articles and breathtaking photos of global societies and events. National Geographic Magazine for Kids, is exactly the same except half the articles are about video games and 75% of the content is ads for Disney movies, video games, and/or video games based on Disney movies.

3. Speaking of Disney. Do you have any Disney DVD’s? Do they all do that Fast Play shit? If you aren’t familiar, it’s where you put in a DVD and your kid is bouncing up and down saying Little! Einsteins! MAMA!

And a friendly voice says: This DVD is equipped with Disney’s FAST PLAY which will begin playing enhanced content immediately.

You know what that means, right? It means: Here are 10 commercials for Disney movies. But when the choices are: FAST PLAY and BORING INSURANCE SEMINAR/MAIN MENU
gosh guess which one your child picks?

Sometimes I feel almost like Disney is like… like they’re in it for the money. That’s crazy, I know. I sound like one of those conspiracy theory nuts, right?

4. Wendy’s current marketing tag: At Wendy’s you get what you deserve. So, are all the bad people avoiding Wendy’s right now? I’ve lived a pretty clean life and I’m a little nervous about what I might be judged and then punished for when I walk through that door. The other day in fact I went through the drivethrough and ordered a Big Bacon Classic. Instead they gave me the Baconator. I’d never tried the Baconator, so at first I thought maybe they thought I was special and deserved a nice upgrade. Then I ate part of the Baconator and found out that in fact, what I deserve is not good at all. Since then, I have been striving to be a better person. Because next time they might give me a cup of their chili. And I don’t think I could handle that.

5. China. If they can infuse aquadots with seizure/sleep-inducing chemicals, why can’t they make tooth fillings that taste like a Kit Kat? Maybe people would get fewer cavities because they’d already have the delicious taste of wafers coated in creamy milk chocolate in their mouths all the time.

6. Realizing that whenever foodmakes say “New improved flavor!” and you taste it and don’t really notice a difference, all they really did was switch to using High Fructose Corn Syrup.

I don’t really even fully understand why High Fructose Corn Syrup is so bad given the leap of faith I already make by eating so much processed food, but I sort of trust that it is much much worse than preservatives and food coloring and monosodiumratpoison and whatever else is in that 500-item list of ingredients. And I am outraged.

7. I heard a thing on NPR the other day about sustainability. The lady said that if everyone in the world lived like the average American, we’d need 8 Earths to sustain us. Damn, I thought, as I unwrapped my quarter pounder with cheese while my children thanked me for their dinner from the backseat, That’s a lot of Earths.

And really, the thing that made me saddest about that statistic is not how gluttonous and horrible we are, but how unfathomably poor most people are. Think about it. The only reason the Earth isn’t gobbled up tomorrow is because our standard of living, when averaged together with BILLIONS of others, comes out okay.

This really puts a kink in my plan to eliminate third world poverty by establishing a basic floor-level standard of living for everyone on the planet.

Because really, if we raise all those billions of people’s standard of living up to where it simply sucks rather than being outright inhumane, we’d all have to give up a lot of stuff.

8. With this in mind, I volunteer to give up Leapster toys, on behalf of society. I know they’re wonderful and educational and all but I can’t help it. The part of my brain that is supposed to like them is broken, and no dosage of Zoloft is going to fix it. Leap stuff annoys me.

9. Michael J Fox as Stuart Little. No no no! DAVID HYDE PIERCE was the correct choice, YOU BUTTWADS.

10. What they did to Trumpet of the Swan. WHY??

11. All of the stuff in our country’s history. My son is turning me into a hippie, and it is only a matter of time before we engage in some sort of flag burning. Nicolaus’ current historical thing of interest: The Trail of Tears. Perhaps the single most adequately named thing in the history of PR and marketing. Alternate trail names that did not translate as poetically from Cherokee to English:
Trail of OMG White People are the Biggest Assholes

Trail of You’ll Regret This When Oklahoma Has Casinos and Georgia Doesn’t

Trail of alright! We’re going already…

Trail of Have You People Seriously Not Come Up With a Better Way To Transport People Than Covered Wagons?

Trail of A Young Nation Still Has Quite A Bit Of Testosterone Left Over From The Revolutionary War And Feels Like Fucking Some Shit Up.

12. It’s after 1 am, I have to work tomorrow, I’m awake, and there are no Kit Kats in my mouth.