It's Amazing What People Perceive As Important

Apparently, this whole "election" buzz is all that people are thinking about right now while serious issues--things that actually effect our daily lives--continue to go ignored. Take, for instance, Burger King's recent partnership with the soon-to-be-released Happy Feet movie. On the surface, this would appear to be a rather harmless endeavor. Much to my great pain, I soon discovered that this pairing was anything but harmless as I purchased my three year old son a Happy Meal from Burger King. A Happy Meal containing an innocent little penguin toy called Heartsong Gloria. "What is it? What is it?" my son exclaimed as I chucked the toy back at him, remarking, "I don't know...it looks like some kind of penguin," as I pulled into the nearby gas station to purchase more milk (always more fucking milk!). When I returned to the car (the car I parked next to the gas station entrance and locked fully) my son chirped over and over again, "It's another whistle daddy! It's another whistle!" to which I answered, "Oh, great, another whistle." It would seem that the recent trend in Happy Meals is whistles of all varying types: Superman whistles, Duck whistles, every fucking type of whistle you can think of. But this whistle was differend and I should have known it was different when my son said, "Listen, daddy, but hold your ears first!" Instead, I ignored my son as I pulled onto the open highway. I reiterate, I ignored a three-year old, a seasoned veteran of whistles of all shapes and types, who went out of his way to tell me to hold my ears before he took to blowing his whistle.

Next, I can only remember an explosion in my brain as I immediately went blind, causing the car to speed out of control and--since I had been delaying getting the wheels re-aligned--probably straight towards the large granite median. Thankfully, the shrilling pain in my head stopped just in time for me to regain control of the vehicle although it took a great deal of panicked blinking before my eyesight completely returned. "I ran out of air," my son said as he added, "But that's a good whistle isn't it?" I never replied as I passed a dog convulsing on the off-ramp. As I pulled onto the road towards my house I had to steer around two dead alley cats and an owl that was leaning against my fence as if in a drunken stupor. The ringing in my ears continued as I parked the car, let my son out of the back seat and calmly told him, "Now hurry up and go show mommy your whistle."

Thankfully, Burger King has eleven more of these delightful toys for my son to collect.