The Slater Exit Strategy: Quitting With Style

Steven Slater did what most people only dream about. He quit his job. Not only did he quit his job. He did it with some dissident style. Of course, for all his service industry employee heroics, he was rewarded with a trip to jail.

In case you missed it, Steven is/was a flight attendant on JetBlue Airways. On a flight from Pittsburgh to JFK International he reached his breaking point. When a passenger decided to stand up and retrieve luggage from the overhead compartment, before the plane had stopped moving, Steven did what all flight attendants do, asked the passenger to please remain seated while the plane was moving. Varied accounts describe the following altercation but the high points are that the bag swung out of the compartment and hit Steven on the head. Whether it was accidental or on purpose is debatable. This was followed by the passenger allegedly telling Slater to ‘Eff off, when Slater asked for an apology.

Steve, who had been, by his own account, in the airline industry 28 years had finally had it with rude passengers, I guess. He returned to the front of the cabin, grabbed the microphone and gave everyone his two week, er two minute notice. He reportedly said, “To the Mother Effer who just told me to Eff Off, Eff You.” He then recounted his years of service, said, “I’m Out Bitches”, grabbed a couple of beers and left the plane. But the kicker to this story isn’t that he quit. It’s that he left by way of the emergency exit slide. He blew the hatch which inflated the slide and took one last ride to freedom. Later, at his home he was arrested.

You can get Later Slater on a shirt.
Check out my Store blog to find out how.

Now, I guess you could make a case for this being highly dangerous. It’s more than likely that he broke several FAA rules by taking the scenic way out. CBS news reported he was arraigned on charges of criminal mischief, reckless endangerment, and trespassing. Charges that could land him in jail for seven years. Not to mention, his stylish exit strategy could have injured someone from deploying the slide.

Should Steven go to jail? That’s a toughie. Unfortunately, we live in a post 9/11 world where the rules of air travel have gone beyond simply being slapped with a misdemeanor. If the courts want to continue to be effective at enforcing rules, he will probably be sentenced to some time. My thoughts are he should be given a fine and probation time and possibly barred from working in the industry, again. Just to set an example, that is. However, what I find irreprehensible is that the passenger was not cited or arrested for anything. By the same token as what Slater did, this was a violation of FAA rules governing the interference of flight crew duties by a passenger. Where is the justice in that? Did Slater’s escape trump the need to uphold those other rules?

Let’s face it, air travel, anymore, sucks. The airlines are grasping at straws to keep afloat, fees are outrageous, and flying generally is not a fun thing to do. Furthermore, because of all these factors, working in the industry is no longer enjoyable. Stricter rules, not that there shouldn’t be, cause more delays. The economy woes make passengers more surly when having to pay out more in fees and service charges which, in turn, creates more confrontational moments with staff. Flight attendants are imagined as these happy as all get out, smile while we ram the drink cart into you, carry-on luggage Nazis who take pride in being difficult and will go off on you at a moment’s notice for not having your seat all the way up. Really, they are just people in the service industry like everyone else. Customer Service can be a rewarding and all together exhausting experience, especially in what can be perceived as a hostile consumer culture, nowadays.

It seems, anymore, that consumers are frustrated with the quality and prices of everything. IPhones that drop calls, McNuggets that don’t get delivered at the drive through and banks that charge outrageous fees are just a few of the game changers that has pushed the norm from “buyer beware” to “seller lookout.” Litigious as we might have been, pre recession, it looks to be a more strained relationship between customers and vendors since everything on Wall Street went out the emergency exit. The atmosphere is thick with stress and heat and the powder keg is set to explode.

Yet, why is Steven Slater considered a hero? Is it because he voiced the plight of the common service industry worker? Is it because he told off a rude passenger? Is it because he defied convention and escaped in style? In this world model of consumer vs. seller, that I just explained, Slater should be the enemy. He works for the company that is causing the consumer issues. However, the manner in which this whole drama played out painted Slater as the victim. He was a guy just trying to do his job in a hostile environment and he had enough of it. Later Slater stood up for the blue collar worker and this passenger, no matter who they were was “The Man.” This wasn’t an issue where a service worker broke the law and caused an incident because they were harassed. This was a “rise up” moment where the beaten down service worker took flight out the exit of a job that they had finally reached their breaking point.

In this scenario, the worker trumped the consumer because he now represented the consumer. He represented those of us who would to tell our cable company to ‘eff off over the price of our service. The desire to stand up and say “Get bent” to the employers and services that oppress us is all rather Freudian. In fact, the Steven Slater Exit Strategy is a perfect example of the Id, Ego, and super-ego in Freud’s structural model. The Id is Steven Slater. He is the primal instinct in all of us to just flip the finger at the world. All of us observing Slater in the media represent the Ego or the part of us that wishes we could be like that but accept the reality of our position. I can’t tell my boss to eff off and then jump ship. I have a mortgage, bills, and a family. I need to keep my job. I have responsibilities. The Id is the twenty year old us and the Ego is the 30-40 year old us. The Super-ego represents the us that says that Slater should go to jail. It’s not a case of “I wish I could do what he did.” It’s a matter of “He was wrong and should be punished for breaking the law and endangering people.” The Super-ego is usually the voice that comes out of us when we are asked by superiors if we think Slater was in the right. The Super-ego comes forth from our psyche as the representative while the Ego wrestles to keep a hand over the id’s mouth.

As a 14 year veteran of the service industry, there have surely been one or two days where I wanted to stand up, give everyone my business finger and pop open a window and slide out to the parking lot. My Id is constantly plotting my exit strategy while my Ego looks as the realty of my situation. My Super-ego is the guy that sits in his chair, all smiles, saying he loves his job. But sometimes the Id can tie the Ego and Super-ego up with duct tape, grab a gun and go apeshit like Omar Thornton did in Manchester Connecticut. Fortunately, in this case, Slater did not go “postal.” He simply exited the plane in the same way most people would probably love to quit their jobs. He used the sentiment of The David Allen Coe, the language of Half Baked’s Scarface (Guillermo Diaz) and coupled it with the style of Carson Kressley. He is a modern day Howard Beale shouting over the in flight PA system, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." Definitely, RAGE is the new black.

Frankly, barring the safety issues and Slater’s obscenity laden sign off, I think the Slater Exit Strategy could be applied to a lot of situations. So, if Steven does lose his job and have to switch careers I have a couple of ideas for him.

Of course, the most obvious choice for capitalizing on his new found fame would be to go on a reality show, say Survivor. Will he win? Don’t know. However, I think, in either case, he needs to go out with style at tribal council. After Jeff Probst extinguishes his torch he can turn to the rest of the council and tell them to ‘eff off before jumping on a huge inflatable water slide that takes him down to a splash lagoon. If that doesn’t work, I say hire him as a chief strategist in Afghanistan. He understands air travel and can relate to the struggles of having to be the bad guy in cases where he’s just trying to do his job. Of course, as the campaign winds down, he can offer up his exit strategy. Allied forces simply tell Al Qaeda and the Taliban to ‘eff off as we jump onto a huge slide that carries our troops safely into India.

So, thank you Steven Slater for giving all our Id’s a chance to dream. Now, I must get back to work.

Oil Spill Threatening The Gulf Coast

The Gulf Coast of the United States is in imminent danger from an oil slick heading to shore.   It had been previously thought that the spill was caused by an oil rig, Deepwater Horizon, which had exploded offshore.  However, we have just recently learned that the oil spill was not caused by the rig's explosion.  Instead it was caused by the cast of Jersey Shore filming in Miami Beach.   One of the filming crew spoke with EPA officials shortly after completing the scene that caused the spill.  "We had no idea of the impact that we would have on the environment.   We all warned the cast not to get Snooki's hair wet, but when we saw her go down into the water we knew we had a situation."  The cameraman then explained to Michael Sorrentino that he was not referring to him but to the spill.  

EPA officials estimate that between the amount of hair and spray tan products on the cast members, the ecosystem is serious peril.   It was originally thought that Miami was in immediate danger but it seemed that the slick moved South around the Keys and has ended up in the Gulf of Mexico, threatening Louisiana.

A Mongo Confession

In light of recent news stories such as Tiger Woods and Jesse James, I felt that it was unfortunate but necessary to come forward with an admittance and apology. My behavior is not excusable nor expected of someone who tries to uphold certain values. Although I am not without faults and far short of perfect I cannot make excuses for my actions. Instead of dealing with these issues and shortcomings away from the daily life I have come to lead, I feel the need to cleanse my soul and start the healing with you, my readers.
I never thought it would be so hard to walk that line and coming to grips with what has transpired in recent years is going to take some time. I do not ask for forgiveness but support in making things right. I know I am asking far more than I deserve but by seeking help I am making that first step towards closure and I thank those who have chosen to come together around me instead of shying away in fear and disgust.

The heart of the matter is that I have had several secret relationships with other women since before and after my marriage. I did treat my marriage honestly and have made several efforts to conceal my actions over the years. Now, I can sit here and tell that these others meant nothing to me and that it was just mindless engagements but that would be lying. I have had multiple encounters with these others and continued to participate in secretive activity with them while my wife was even in the house. It is amazing how you can conceal certain things if you truly wish to. Unfortunately, remnants of our trysts were left behind and were and now I am forced to come clean. Quite frankly, maybe I wished this upon myself. Perhaps the strain of concealing these acts was too much and I unconsciously put myself in the path of discovery in order to end the charade. I do admit that having my wife walk into our kitchen and catch me in an embrace with one of these others was regretful but ultimately, I have hurt her more than I can ever know.

Now, in the interest of protecting all parties, I was advised to not divulge the names of these other women but I feel that by concealing their identities they will undoubtedly be thrust into focus in an attempt to capitalize on what could be considered a scandalous situation. I have conferred with all parties and have been given clearance by all but one to announce their identities in the hopes that we can stop the wildfires of gossip before the flames can be fanned. This is extremely difficult and I find that my hands are shaking as I write this.

The names of the involved parties are:
Wendy
Dolly Madison
Little Debbie
Sara Lee
Betty Crocker
an unnamed Hostess
Dairy Queen

Please accept my sincerest apologies for breaking the trust we had between us. I will try to be a better person.

No Show For the Poe Toaster

For the last 60 years a ritual has occurred which rivals that of the annual pilgrimage to Punxsutawney to see if a groundhog will see his shadow. Every January 19th since 1949, a figure known as the Poe Toaster has appeared on the grounds of Westminster Hall and Burying Ground in Baltimore, MD. He or she, disguised in black, makes their way to the grave of Edgar Allan Poe, raises a toast of cognac and then leaves the rest of the bottle along with three roses. It is believed that the roses are meant as a remembrance of Poe, his wife, and her mother who all are interred at the cemetery.

Diehard Poe heads are usually on hand to witness the mysterious event without ever knowing the identity of the toaster. In 1999, a note indicated that the original toaster had died or had at least passed the torch onto a “son” or new toaster. Last year, no note was left, which was odd being that it was the bicentennial of Poe’s birth. Even stranger yet was the no show of the Toaster this year.
Some observers actually cried when the news of no toast had taken place. Some wonder if the toaster had taken ill or had died prior to handing off the torch to another. In any case, the curator of the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum intends to keep a close watch over the site for the next couple of weeks in case the Toaster just happens to show up.
Now, I have a great and profound respect for Edgar Allan Poe. I’ve read several of his stories and poems over the years like Eldorado and The Gold Bug as well as The Masque of the Red Death, The Casque of Amontillado, The Raven, and The Pit and the Pendulum. The one story that has eluded me over the years is the Fall of the House of Usher, but it is definitely on my to do list. Still, this event that has taken place over the last 60 years is something I would definitely get a kick out of attending. Being a native of South Western PA, one would think I would be more up to making the trip out to “Punxsy” as we call it to see Phil’s shadow. Not bloody likely. First of all, I’ve watched the recorded event on cable and it seems like a big drunken party. The observance of the Poe Toaster has that air of macabre being set in a cemetery and the only imbibing to be taking place would be that of cognac or some port wine, which does not come in a box.
To sit in silence and witness such a mysterious event would interest me more than crowd surfing with a bunch of drunken coeds who would rather do a body shot of the groundhog’s belly than to actually be a part of something more steeped in history and culture than a prognosticating Punxsutawney Phil.
But from the looks of this year’s absence of the Poe Toaster, one can only speculate if 200 years after the birth of Poe was a good stopping point. Perhaps a toaster will show up and most likely it will be a copycat trying to keep up the tradition. Given the ravenous fandom of this event, it would be rather humorous but off putting to see multiple Toasters show up at the same time. Perhaps a coordination of members to a secret Poe club can keep the dream alive. After all, It’s hard to think that one will raise a glass to Poe’s memory nevermore.

2009 D-Bag Awards Heat Two: D-Bag Dads

In this match up we have three dads and a dead guy competing for the chance to move on to round two.

• Richard Heene
• John Phillips
• Jon Gosselin
• Roman Polanski

The heat is a bit lopsided as we have three live contestants and a corpse. That shouldn’t be too much problem as Team Phillips has submitted a substitution for John in the form of his daughter, Mackenzie Phillips, carrying the urn containing her Dad's ashes. As we await the start of the match some of the contestants are doing some unusual pregame warm-ups. Richard Heene is conducting some weather experiments and Jon Gosselin is trying to get the digits of some coed in the stands with a Penn State sweatshirt. Apparently there’s a frat party immediately after the match and he’s offering to make a beer run. I tell ya, he better focus on this competition instead of her Levis or he’s not going to fare too well.

Ok, as all the contestants and ashes of contestants come up to the line we get set to go. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with this contest, we’ll explain. The playing field contains numerous structures in which children are hidden. The object is for the fathers to locate their actual children among the structures. Now this will be a hard task for Gosselin as he has to find all eight kids, while Polanski and Heene have only two and three to look for. Mackenzie, standing in for her dead father has to find her half siblings and that gives her the edge because she’s already found herself, so she comes in one up on the others.

There’s the whistle and they’re off like a shot. Roman Polanski sneaks from structure to structure to avoid detection. His work is amazing as the camera really follows him well. The shots we are getting in the booth are fantastic. Jon Gosselin manages to find the older twins right away but loses them in a bitter custody battle with his wife. He seems to be distracted by another coed in the stands. Oh, look out. His wife whisked the kids right out from under him. We’ll have to get a judge’s ruling on whether or not that counts towards his final goal.

Mackenzie is taking the course one day at a time and seems to be unsure on whether or not she should check out a particular garage. She opens the door and there’s Chynna. Wow, that was an "Impulsive" move to check out the garage. Now, there’s a fight over allegations that their father carried on the affair with Mackenzie, while high. Chynna is saying "Release Me." This could be a setback for Mackenzie.

And where is Richard Heene? He’s still at the starting line conducting some experiment. Now, he’s done and heading out into the field. There are a few places he could start looking. My bet is the tethered Mylar balloon immediately to his right. But the crowd seems to be shouting at Richard to check the garage where Mackenzie Phillips found her sister Chynna. Apparently, they are yelling about Falcon being in the rafters of the garage. Oh, and now we have a new development, the balloon that was tethered to the field has just snapped its line and is floating away. Boy, you have to hate when that happens. You go to a sporting event and someone loses a balloon that just stops all the action as everyone turns to watch it float away.

As attention focuses back on the field we now have our first disqualification. Roman Polanski stopped looking for his children and followed a 13 year old girl into a replica of Jack Nicholson’s house. That’s not even the half of it. Chris Hanson and a troop of Swiss officers were waiting inside to ambush Polanski and he has been taken into custody. Turns out that 13 year old girl was really an undercover cop who just looks young for her age. Still, I don’t see how this is a disqualification for Roman…Uh oh, they found Quaaludes on him. Yeah, that’s the reason. Performance Diminishing drugs are a no-no. As Polanski is hauled away we can see his children Morgane and Elvis sitting with Mother Emmanuelle Seigner in the stands. It was all a ruse.

The remaining contestants have continued to scatter about the field. Gossellin has managed to find all but one of his kids and is constantly complaining about the lack of coverage he’s getting from the cameras. He also seems to be yelling at the officials over his compensation for appearing in the games. Well, that will hinder his performance a bit. Meanwhile, Richard Heene has found Falcon. He was indeed hiding in the attic and we’re waiting from a ruling on the field over whether or not Heene had previous knowledge about Falcon’s whereabouts. The other two kids are nowhere to be found but there is a rap video playing on the jumbo tron in the center of the field which looks to be starring Heene’s other kids. I think the FCC will have something to say unless we go to a seven second delay, here.

Mackenzie has just stopped searching for siblings and is instead doing a bunch of talk shows, so I guess we can count her out, too. Looks like we are down to Jon Gossellin and Richard Heene. Oh, wait. Spike TV offered Jon a talk show for single guys and he immediately dropped all of his kids. That leaves Richard Heene, who enticed his other kids out of hiding with a combination of Mountain Dew, pixie sticks, and the DVD box set for Deadwood. He is the winner. What a surreal finish.

Here’s the final breakdown.

John Phillips is dead so we can only take his daughter’s ramblings to anyone who will listen as evidence of the actual abuse.

Roman Polanski was the coyote to the Swiss Police’s roadrunner and fell for the old "Come-accept-this-reward" ploy. He was arrested and is finally going to start the proceedings into the case. Now, whether it will be a "rape, rape" case or just a rape case remains to be seen. The fact that this happened 30 years ago puts him out of the running as he is only guilty of being an idiot for getting caught in 2009. He would have won the 1978 award hands down.

Jon Gossellin is just in it for the money, so I say we just make him go away and hopefully he will take his ex-wife with him. That whole train wreck of a divorce and custody battle shouldn’t even be talked about let alone put on camera.

Richard Heene rises above the competition. Jon Gosselin may be a cheating scumbag who wanted to cash in on his 15 minutes but Richard Heene tried to buy his time by reporting an incident that never happened, wasted taxpayer money on the wild goose chase, including diverting air traffic from DIA. Not to mention, his kids are YouTube rap stars that just shows how bad of a parent this guy is. He needs to be taken to D-Bag prison camp and water boarded. But instead, he floats away to round two while we go around and collect the rest of Gosselin’s wayward children.

Today’s match has been brought to you by the medical doctors of Holder, Roper and Nutter. Physicians who specialize in proactively performing castrations on potential d-bags before they can procreate. They save the tax payers money and the general public much needed brain cells by disallowing idiots to reproduce exponentially in order to get a reality show. They are medical insurance friendly. If only they would have been around to stop Kevin Federline and The Duggars after kid four. Honestly, does she just have a zipper on her abdomen, or what?

The Saga of Balloon Boy

Andy Warhol coined the phrase "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." Who would have known that Warhol predicted the age of reality television and the 24-hour news cycle almost two decades before the first Gulf War and Jessica McClure falling down a well.

On October 15th 2009, the world was gripped with fear and astonishment as a little lopsided helium balloon, which I’ve dubbed the Helium Falcon, took flight across the skies of Colorado. The experimental balloon, which looked like the love child of a Jiffy Pop pan and the Swedish Chef’s toque blanche, was tethered outside the home of a family in Fort Collins, Colorado. Reports came in that the six year old Falcon had climbed into the basket or compartment below the balloon and undid the moorings. The balloon then floated up and away from the home as onlookers wondered if this was an attack or a live promo stunt for ABC’s V, airing in November. That’s when the world started watching. Speaking of ABC and 15 minutes of fame, the Heene family was featured on the show Wife Swap.

As the detached dirigible floated up towards 10,000 feet, everyone sat on the edge of their seats wondering if little Falcon was inside. Wolf Blitzer covered it on CNN as analysts and pilots debated on the qualities of the balloons. Was it big enough to carry a boy Falcon’s size? How did the father construct the balloon? All manner of questions were thrown out to keep the story alive for longer than 20 minutes. Helicopters and camera crews watched in awe as the spinning balloon soared along the skyline towards Denver International Airport. Two Imperial Officers watched the balloon whiz by their tower, “Look, there’s another one.” “Hold your fire, there are no life forms on board.” To which the other officer replied “What are we being charged by the laser, now?”

Then as suddenly as it happened, the balloon gently landed in a field and little space men walked out and greeted Richard Dreyfus. Kidding, there was no Falcon inside the balloon. Where was Falcon? So, then it becomes a mystery as to what happened to this little boy. Did he fall out? Was he ever in the balloon in the first place? Now, a twenty minute story morphs into a media frenzy as search and rescue teams head out into the dwindling daylight to search a 15 mile or so radius for this detached basket. Soon, Wolf Blitzer throws up an image of the balloon and in the lower left corner of the image an object of some sort is seen in motion. Cue the Mega Pixel Giant Touch Map! Now we people trying to grasp and stretch this image that, wasn’t clear to begin with, into a huge blurry image so that we can try and perform a mass Rorschach test on live television. Is it a bird, is it a plane, is it Falcon? There was no clear indication what the hell that thing was except for the fact that it happened to be in the field of vision during the photo. It could have been a turkey flying over head.

Now, here’s where it gets even crazier. All the while during this media frenzy being dubbed Balloon Boy, which conjures up images of Jake Gyllenhaal in Bubble Boy, the Internet goes nuts with parodies. Shirts on Zazzle and CafePress hit the net. Writers in Hollywood start churning out spec scripts for a movie or at least a Lifetime Television Event. Everyone goes nuts until…….they find out the kid is hiding in the garage.

Around 6:15 pm, I finally switched back from watching Glee on my DVR to find out that little Falcon had been found alive, hiding in a box in the rafters above the family’s garage? His diary will be out next week. Seriously? The kid was hiding in the garage. Was this kid taking lessons from Bart Simpson? Did he just watch 12 Monkeys? WTF?!? (Internet Slang Quota Reached)

Now, what would have happened had this turned out differently? The entire media machine, including the amateur set of bloggers and shirt designers [read me, et. al], went crazy over the story and had we been wrong and the kid did fall out of the balloon or crashed, we would have been no better than the paparazzi standing alongside the wrecked remains of Princess Diana’s car in 1997. The ability to reach out and propagate a thought or fad or meme today is astounding. Blogs let us publish opinions and editorials, instantly. YouTube let’s upload movies…as long as they are not copyrighted… in minutes. I can produce and publish a design for a shirt in less time than it took for that balloon to crash into a field.

But, the joke could be on us. All of us who got sucked into the pseudo drama of Balloon Boy may have been taking for more than just a balloon ride. This could have been some Warholian attempt to get back into the spotlight. When asked by Wolf Blitzer why little Falcon didn’t come out when he was being called for, the kid didn’t answer. When his parents repeated the question, the six year old did what most kids do, say the wrong thing. “You guys said that, um [pause] we did this for the show.” What show, exactly? For show, meaning pretend? Then the kid gets sick, twice, during interviews on television, when asked the question, again.

Now, taking a day to digest all this, I watched the video of the “lift off” by the Heene family. After the balloon starts to float away, the father gets visibly upset, almost to the point of bad acting. Then, watching the Wolf Blitzer interview and hearing Falcon’s response, it almost seems like the kid was afraid to answer, like he forgot the preprogrammed response to that question. Asked about Falcon’s response, Richard says that Falcon was talking about a later moment when he was asked to recreate his climbing into the ceiling for the cameras.

As more and more comes out about this story, shock and awe turns to disbelief. The kids are allowed to swear and make rap videos? What about the report that the father asked his other son, Bradford, to take a ladder and get on the roof to look for the balloon’s heading. Then he states his fear that the kid could touch the high voltage supply inside. Was it 1.21 gigawatts of electricity?

As this all unfolds, you feel like this is some unscripted episode of The Office and Richard Heene is Michael Scott. Then the police hold their briefing today and the candor of the officer is just hysterical. I couldn’t hear all the questions being asked but at one point it sounded like a reporter asked him his personal take on the story and he responded, “I’ll tell you off record, perhaps over a toddy.”

And yet we watch and we watch and for 14 more minutes the world talks about Balloon Boy and his father Caractacus Potts. ABC is probably shuffling to find a spot in the schedule, so that they can rerun the episodes of Wife Swap featuring the Heenes. I’m sure the SNL is churning out specific bits for their live show on Saturday. I can see Bill Hader playing the beleaguered father while Fred Armisen plays the young Falcon. Robot Chicken could do an entire episode of bits with the balloon crashing into various Pop Culture clips like the aforementioned Star Wars interlude I spoke of or crashing into the balloon from the end of the Wizard of Oz after the Wizard breaks loose and even floating across the stage of the VMA’s in miniature as Kanye West halts the balloon’s progress long enough to say, “Im’ma let you finish, but Richard Branson has one of the best balloon videos of all time.”

See, we just can’t stop ourselves because our common sense is hiding somewhere in a box in the garage.

Cookie Duh

Nestle recently pulled it’s refrigerated brands of Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough products from stores over concerns of E. coli contamination. The reason being was that consumers ingested some of the raw cookie dough and became sick. Could you imagine being at grandma’s house, baking up a batch of Nestle’s nummy nuggets, and digesting a dollop of dough, not knowing the Escherichia Coli nature of these uncooked chocolate chip chunks?

Is this Stupidity in the Raw? Is there any threat to actually baking this toxic toll house cookie concoction? In a word, maybe. While the possibility for anyone who died, from eating the raw dough, to be nominated for a Darwin exists, there is more afoot here than plain old fashioned moronic activity. Usually, consuming raw cookie dough allows for exposure to Salmonella, not E. coli. Yet, still people continue to chomp on this comfort food while it’s still in its uncooked form. Had people baked the cookies and became sick, the culprit in this case may have gone unnoticed because not many would look at fresh baked cookies to be contaminated. People would be more likely to look at the tomatoes or lettuce in their refrigerator as the usual suspect.

Now, while I would like to complain about the nature of, what could be called, frivolous lawsuits against Nestle because of this issue, Nestle is not without shame in recent years. Looking over the trusted news source that is Wikipedia, a slew of criticisms can be found ranging from price fixing to melamine laced milk. Of course, calling Wikipedia a trusted news source is like calling Faux News a fair and balanced media outlet, but a little more digging into the cited charges can reveal better evidence.

But that doesn’t indemnify either party in this matter. I am as guilty as the rest of the cookie dough fiends of the world. As a wee Mongo, I worked at an amusement park and would often visit friends who worked in a Giant Cookie stand. They would throw me a gob of soon to be baked cookie dough from time to time. It was heaven. Had I ever gotten sick, I would have no one to blame but myself. Still, the nature of these lawsuits stem from becoming sick from an out of the ordinary illness associated with raw cookie dough that has been made from pasteurized ingredients. In this case, kudos to Nestle for taking prompt action on pulling the products from shelves and nuts to those individuals who cry foul when they eat the uncooked morsels.

It’s OK to roast me for my insensitivity over the issue, but when you consider that eating raw cookie dough is a risk associated behavior, you are probably engaging in off label use by consuming it. I don’t have a bag in front of me but I would venture to guess that somewhere on the labeling it says “Do Not Consume Raw Cookie Dough.” If anything, stupidity could be a good thing as people may never have known the extent of this matter had they not gotten sick from raw dough.

Every year we are treated to another food related scandal. Is it the fault of manufacturers going soft on standards and quality control? Is the fault of migrant farm workers not washing up before working in the fields? Is it the fault of the public for not adhering to warning labels? All three are somewhat guilty of being caught with their hand in the cookie jar. How this all plays out over the media is a mystery, yet with every passing year, we face a new threat from our food. M. Night Shyamalan could have been onto something with his milk dud of a film, The Happening. Maybe the world is finally out to get us. Storms rage across the plains, earthquakes and fires ravage our homes, and the food we eat has become a weapon in the war against mankind. However, somewhere in the distance, you can hear the maniacal laughter of a little Dough Boy and there is no finger pushing into his belly. Victory is poppin’ fresh.

Swine Flu Over the Cuckoo's Nest

If there wasn’t enough to worry about with everything going on in the world, now we’ve got Swine Flu. I’m not going to go into great detail about it because I don’t feel that it deserves the sense of panic that it’s getting in the media. We survived SARS and various other anagrammatic diseases over the past few years, why should this be any different? Because people are tired of talking about the economy. We have this masochistic need to create new drama when we’ve become bored with beating the dead horses of the economy, The War On Terror, and whether or not Susan Boyle will get an extreme makeover and Nadya Suleman will get her Octomom trademark. By the way, Susan, don’t change a thing, and Nadya…get over it. You weren’t clever enough to come up with it, so you don’t deserve it. Go get a job and go away.

But, I digress. The whole Swine Flu got to me thinking, ironically. It almost conjures up apocalyptic visions of flying pigs swarming over the border from Mexico with flight goggles. Ok, maybe just in my head, but still. Beyond that I started thinking musically to Pink Floyd’s and thought, “A Benefit Concert for victims of Swine Flu!” They could get out the flying pigs and go on tour and then Peter Frampton could keep them in a trunk and Homer Simpson could let them out, and I’ve lost you…

Right, we have flying pigs, a concert setting, and of course what better way to celebrate a concert tour than with a T-SHIRT? Now, here’s where this thing gets to be bigger than me. I can never do anything on a small scale. I’ve got to cram so many details into a design that everything is a part of a bigger story. For instance, a benefit concert would probably have a bunch of bands on the bill. That means you have to come up with band names. Really, as much as I would love to include Pink Floyd in my fictional concert tour, I don’t think the Content Police would appreciate it. Well, with Swine Flu we have some places to go. We can think about fictional band names having to do with diseases, medical procedures, and pigs. The words Pandemic and Epidemic sound like good band names. So we come up with our design, get a tour name, and include all of our band names on the front of the shirt. But what about the back?

I’ve recently began doing some two sided shirt designs. Nothing huge, but a lot of the designs I came up with just didn’t work as a frontal design. CafePress charges an additional $3.00 on the base price leaving you with decisions on what to do about mark up. But this is a special design and we can forgo the worries over profit as we try to capture that brief window of relevance before the shirt buying population moves onto the next popular culture horse in which to flog.

Usually, on the back of a concert tour shirt, you see the dates of the tour. Hmmm, well, Swine Flu has been found primarily in Mexico and now spreading to the U.S. in New York, Michigan, Texas, California, and New Jersey. Ok, that gives us cities and concert venues. We can even be silly and say that the Mexican concert dates have been cancelled. And with the disease spreading with new hypochondriacs claiming to be stricken with a case of the oinks, we can say, “more dates to be added.” Now we’re moving beyond a topical t-shirt and becoming a metaphor for social consciousness and the 24 hour media. After all, who actually buys concert shirts? Secondly, you have a subset of those people who go to concerts wearing a shirt of the band they are seeing which is a big social faux pas. To top it all off, just when you think the story has run its course, along comes words like Pandemic and Outbreak and now you’ve got a global crisis of disappearing common sense. You know that professionals are telling the public to do to prevent spreading the disease? It’s the same thing they tell us every year during winter months. Cover your mouth when coughing or sneezing, wash your hands, take care of yourself. Next thing you know, we have a thousand people with Michael Jackson surgical mask starter kits wandering around. Don’t be that guy!

Then, once you have all those elements thrown against the wall, you have to make it vintage and retro looking. After all, the last time the United States went through a case of the Swine Flu, Carter was in office. In 1976, there was a Swine Flu epidemic and could your imagine the bill on that tour? That would be some kick ass, old school bands.

With that in mind, I give you the latest in an attempt to waste precious free time and avoid cutting the grass, Swine Flu Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, World Tour 2009. Now, I must say that I started this idea the on April 27 and there were about 21 designs already addressing Swine Fu. Within three days the idea had been already put into circulation by other shopkeepers and the design count was up to 217. I cannot say that I had the original idea, but I put a lot more time into the creation. I just hope people agree.

Front and back of the
Swine Flu World Tour 2009 Shirt