It Might as Well be Hockey ©2014 by Joe Sixtop all rights reserved

     Well, it's been a minnit since a new episode of my struggling internet column has dropped. But check this out: Tonight I went to work, I waited on some people. Most of them were pretty cool, nobody was an outright A-hole or anything. We had some business but nothing crazy. I made adequate money for my efforts. I got cut at a decent hour and went home. Except for the getting cut and leaving at a time that I liked, it was a pretty average shift.
      And that's the way it's been lately. The only thing that's changed since I last checked in with y'all is that I quit my day job and have picked up some lunches at what has heretofore been my evening job. I'm just kind of bored and burned out with it all. I don't seem to have the energy and enthusiasm I had last summer and I want it back! On the for-real, that got a little out of hand last year; I want a slightly more mellow version of what I had in 2013. Oh well, keep eating right and exercising!
I'm not quite ready to give up on These American Servers™  (or being one of them) just yet. Since I don't really have anything restaurant-related that I can even pretend might be interesting, I'm going to go off-topic. The first one's about politics and the second concerns sports. Stick around and pretend to enjoy!

      If you keep up with politics, you might be aware that there was a little bit of a contretemps about who was going to be the Republican nominee for United States senate from Mississippi this year. Like in a lot of southern jurisdictions, a candidate in the Magnolia State has to get at least one vote more than 50% from those who deigned to participate to be declared the winner. If no one scores that objective,the top two finishers face off in another contest, with all the other challengers eliminated.
     The incumbent, Thad Cochran, came in second, but the challenger, Tyler Pastornicky, didn't quite manage to hit that magic 50%, because another, minor candidate was in the mix and he got about three per cent to fuck things up for Tyler. So incumbent Cochran reached out to eligible voters who are traditionally more Democratic to help him out in the runoff. He also got popular Mississippi guy, former New York Jets QB Brett Farve, to do a campaign commercial. Apparently, the strategy worked, because Senator Thad won the runoff.
     If I'd been able to vote in that contest, I'd of been like, "Fuck that!" Why should I vote for some reprehensible right-winger and help him out? He'd have to promise a lot more than that he'd (probably) be only slightly better than his opponent. But now that Mr. Pastornicky and his minions are acting like such petulant little bitches about the results—kind of like George Bush Jr back in November of 2000—I'm glad things worked out the way they did. The senator will PROBABLY prevail in the general election (c'mon, it's Mississippi) but might be inclined to be (very) slightly less douchey, feeling that he might owe his newest supporters a little something. And if the Pastornicky contingent stays home in droves during that election, the (most likely extremely) conservative Democrat, Travis Childers, might actually get a narrow victory. If that shut the Republicans out of a majority in the United States senate, that'd be awesome.

     I really like baseball. It's my favorite spectator sport. But I really, really hate the new (this is its third season) ordeal where there are two wildcard teams. Major League Baseball has three divisions per conference. so three teams finish in first place. The two best teams that didn't finish first face off in a one-game, winner-take-all playoff for the right to play the best of the first-place finishers in a best-of-five series for the right to go to the conference championship. To me, this is some bovine cabins. One of the things that made baseball great was that the playoff teams deserved to be playoff teams. This new format is so bad, it might as well be hockey. It didn't happen because it was a good thing for the sport, it happened in the hope of some more dumb shit to put on cable TV and maybe increase the chance of selling a few more September tickets in Kansas City and Pittsburgh, There's a good chance my favorite team, the Saint Louis Cardinals, might benefit from this new ordeal, and it's pretty sweet to have your team in the post-season  every year, but I still don't like it. This diluted bullshit is seriously taking away my enjoyment of the regular season. How about you?
     Speaking of baseball, great former Cards manager Tony LaRussa retired after the 2011 season wherein his squad won their most recent world championship. According to ESPN, TLR has unretired and taken an office job with the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Phoenix team's not very good. If they don't turn things around real soon, I believe Tony will take over as field manager for them, at least on a temporary basis, either this year or next. You read it here first!


      

Breakfast in America © 2013 by Joe Sixtop all rights reserved

     My fellow Americans, welcome and thank you for checking out today's press conference. Can I get ya started with a top-shelf margarita, Diet Pepsi, or a large draft beer? Wups! Flashback from old job, sorry about that. Anyway, I feel I can honestly say, without fear of contradiction, that "No Net Loss of Freedom" is more than a campaign slogan; it's the cornerstone of my administration. Remember "Stop & Frisk?" We stopped it. We've ended America's fucktarded "War on Drugs," repealed the RICO Act, revoked the government's civil forfeiture privileges—check out the United States website, a lot of you have money and cars coming back!—removed all the red light cameras and, while I strongly urge everyone to continue wearing your seat belts &/or brain buckets, there are no longer any laws saying you have to. You're welcome and, unless you're pulling down over a quarter-mil a year, there's lots more good news on the way for everybody!
     But I'm afraid that now I've got to urinate on the Froot Loops—sorry, I messed up and used the old name, of course I meant LGBT Circles™—of a troublesome few of you. I'm talking to the johnson skulls who go to a grocery store and grab some ice cream, say, or hot dogs, whatever, and then abandon that shit in a non-refrigerated part of the store, like by the tampons or light bulbs. That's messed up. I've asked Vice President Paul Krugman and Attorney General Tony LaRussa to craft legislation addressing this problem. We're thinking, first offense, ten dollar fine. A little steep? Hit me up on Twitter @JoeSixtop and let us know what you think, OK?
     I know I'm supposed to answer some questions from the public and the media now. But me and the First Girlfriend have to get on Air Force One and haul ass down to Saint Louis so I can throw out the game ball at tonight's World Series game. Tell ya what: I'll get CIA Director Ed Snowden to pinch hit for me. Unless you need to know about auto-grat or separate checks or something I'm sure he can answer most of your questions as well as I can. Anyway, thank you, God bless and I'll talk to y'all later.

     For about the last couple years, I've been slowly trying to healthy-up my lifestyle. Like, I haven't consumed any alcohol since 2010. Plus, I've been persuaded that it's a good idea to eat breakfast, so I try to, even though it's something I'm not naturally inclined to do.
     My first choice of AM repast is bourbon—but I gave up alcohol, remember?—so I have a heaping bowl of LGBT Circles™ doused in Nestlé's Quik! Not really. Usually I have an orange or apple or something like that. On other days, I have yogurt. I get Chobani or Dannon Oikos. They're pretty tasty and claim to be nutritious and maybe they are. Plus, they're Greek yogurts and since the economy over there is sucking so bad, it makes me feel good to help those people out a little.
     The other night after work, I went to the 24-hour grocery store for that evening's dinner, some salad, and the morrow's breakfast, a thing of pomegranite Chobani. I ate my lettuce, seriously considered lifting some weights for a minute, checked out a  little Coast to Coast AM  and sacked on out. The next morning, I was a little chagrined to realize that I'd neglected to put my intended breakfast in the fridge. It had sat out all night and become room temperature. As I headed out the door to my lunch shift, I threw the compromised yogurt away.
     Upon reflection, I think I made a mistake. I should of put the shit back in the refrigerator and had it later. Grocery customers pull stuff from the cold dairy case all the time and then abandon it wherever they might be in the store when they change their minds. It happens everywhere, from the swankiest Publix in Buckhead to the shittiest ghetto Jitney Jungle in Hattiesburg. Do you think that stuff gets thrown away? I don't. It gets restocked. I'm sure I've consumed yogurt that's spent several hours warming up next to the toilet paper and then been chilled back down. And if you ever eat yogurt, so have you.