Deliriously Happy (22 page)

I let him back in, and some people jumped out of the bushes and

then

I was on my way downtown as part of a massive FBI sting operation. I ended up paying a $1,500 fine, and Charlie was given new tags and relocated to another state under the Federal Witness and Animal Protection Program (FWAPP).

I don't know what I expected to happen, I guess I thought that maybe old Charlie, braving the brute elements and traffic, would somehow find his way the hundreds and hundreds of miles back home. But beagles don't travel well. Charlie, or whatever it is he calls himself these days, was gone.

But then,

anyway, I had other things to worry about once I got home. The neighborhood was literally crawling with freshly freed pets: and not just dogs and cats and parakeets and tropical fish, but poisonous snakes and lizards and several varieties of rodents. And a lot of those little turtles they supposedly stopped importing years ago.

The tropical fish and birds and turtles didn't fare too well on the outside, and it wasn't pleasant to watch (more unpleasant, though, was the fact that no one was ever too sure what happened to the rodents and the rest of the reptiles). But the dogs seemed to adjust okay, quickly forming support groups of about eight to fifteen; and the cats managed to scrape by, if just barely. It appeared that everything was going to be just fine—that is, until the fish and birds and turtles ran out.

Then

the dogs went bad. Almost overnight, they succumbed to some kind of ugly mob mentality, and soon it was unsafe to leave the house without a twenty-five-pound bag of dog food;

and then,

not long after that, dog food was no longer good enough for them, and since there wasn't any meat anymore, the dogs became very difficult to please. The cats, in turn, became quite unsociable and began spending all of their time up in the trees, a vantage point from which they frequently would come hissing and clawing down onto your head, without provocation.

The police refused to do anything about any of this, saying their hands were tied by the Free Animals Are Not Subject to Human Laws Act (FAANSHLA). So things were pretty wild around my neighborhood, at least until that first winter.

Then,

the following spring, they came for my clothes. Under the Non-Exploitative and Environmentally Sound Use of Fabrics for Fashion Act (NEESUFFA) it became illegal to wear, or own, or assist in wearing, or try on, any garment, or draping, or accessory made in whole or in part from animals or animal by-products, petroleum products, or cotton harvested with a threshing device. They left me with a two-week supply of recycled-paper gowns and a phone number I could call to become a regular subscriber.

But then

the American garment industry sprang into action. Having already successfully circumvented U.S. labor laws, it had little trouble getting around this one. By June, the clothing stores were completely restocked with a wide selection of high-fashion outerwear made from technically nonexploitative and environmentally sound fabrics: corn-silk shirts, whole woven-wheat suits, rice pants, stoneground denims, and soy-T's.

This, then,

led the courts to rule that threshed-grain fabrics violated the spirit if not the letter of NEESUFFA, and by August we were back to wearing recycled-paper products and earthen shoes. Retailers promised a full line of winter claywear by fall,

but then

it failed to pass constitutional muster.

Then

Congress passed the All Animals Are Equal in Educational and Employment Opportunities and Environmental Access Act (AAAEEEOEAA), which mandated, among other things, the teaching of nesting and male display in public schools,

which then

led to the formation of the Department of Animal Niche, Territory, Habitat, Roost, and Coop Services (ANTHRCS), which was responsible for finding safe and dignified housing for all animals, except for humans, who were already served by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and which further led to a landmark court case in which a pack of timber wolves used their rights of eminent domain to force the relocation of five families in northern Minnesota.

Now then,

all this has taken some getting used to. Free-range fruits and vegetables are okay, I guess, if you get to them not too long after they've hit the ground, but I do miss eggs and milk and cooked food, and I know this will sound odd, but I miss the chance to wash my clothes. And while I'll admit it is safer to walk in the woods since they banned hunting, and it's much easier to save money now that it's worthless, the fact is, you can't walk on the grass anywhere anymore, and it's downright dangerous to go to the zoo. So then,

I suppose if I had known

then

what I know now,

well then,

I guess I would have never signed that petition.

Court Under Roberts Is Most Conservative in Decades

—
New York Times

The justices ruled 6–3 that “professional intuition” is sufficient cause to prompt a search of persons or property. The Court upheld the constitutionality of a “blanket search warrant” issued in 2010 by a federal judge in Texas authorizing the search of the residence or vehicle of “any persons answering to the names Angel, Enrique, Juan, Manuel, Pedro, Jesus, or Ramon.”

By a 5–4 majority, the Court voted to further narrow
Roe v. Wade
, upholding an Idaho law granting women unrestricted access to abortion “except in those cases in which the woman is pregnant or the abortion will somehow impair her ability to become pregnant in the future.”

Voting 7–2, the justices ruled that children under the age of eighteen have “only those rights conferred upon them by the state, or their parents.” The case stemmed from a February 2009 incident in which the principal of an Austin, Texas, grade school conducted full body-cavity searches of twenty-seven third-graders in an attempt to locate a missing chalkboard eraser, which was never found.

Reversing California's high court, the justices voted 6–3 to reinstate the disorderly conduct and resisting arrest conviction of Laurence S. Williams, who was apprehended by the California Highway Patrol after “making voodoo eyes” at one of its officers. The decision was moot, however, as Williams was released following the state court's action and subsequently was shot and killed attempting to leave the scene of a double-parking incident.

Quick-fix artists are now in a frenzy over guns. But let's be honest and recognize that the overriding issue isn't really gun control.

—Former vice president Dan Quayle, blaming school shootings on a lack of prayer in schools, a liberal legal system, and a popular culture “that transmits counterculture values”

Cherry Garcia, Wavy Gravy, Phish Food, Dave Matthew's Band Magic Brownies

—Flavors of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream that are sold to children and named for the late hippie singer, the hippie clown, the marijuana-loving hippie band, and marijuana-laced pastries, respectively

Damien Thorn needed a fix. He had had another hard day at William J. Bennett High School, where his more popular classmates had again teased him about his long hair, blue jeans, and out-of-step political views. Damien felt like screaming. For ice cream.

At 4:50 p.m., the impressionable sixteen-year-old entered the Piggly Wiggly supermarket in Heartland, a tightly knit midwestern community. He went straight for the grocer's frozen food section.

He stared down the endless, gleaming freezer, his young eyes glazing over. There were dozens of flavors to choose from, and no one to tell him that any one flavor was the “right” one. Vanilla, chocolate, strawberry?
Traditional
flavors, he sneered, for
squares
.

He pulled out a container. Bovine Divinity:
Milk chocolate ice cream and white fudge cows swirled with white chocolate ice cream and dark fudge cows
.

“Cows are gods,” he chuckled. “Cool.”

Damien peeled up the cover and plunged his finger deep into the intermarried chocolate and vanilla. He sucked his finger, savoring the creamy anti-Christian message. Almost immediately, he felt a tingling in his brain. He tossed the opened container back into the freezer, having no intention of paying for it.

He opened the next container: Brownie vs. the Board of Education. Delicious.

The sugar and fat were giving him a definite “buzz” now, and he began pawing through the cold metal shelves, promiscuously touching, tasting…

Karamel Marx, Lenin Meringue, Julius and Ethyl Rosenberry…
Next row, next row
.

Fudge Blackmun's Roe v. Walnuts, Godless Chocolate Cake, Morsel Relativism, Plumiscuity…

More, more, no limitations…

Greenpeach, Gum Control, Pro-Gay Agenda Swish, Creamy Sex Education in Schools with Free Condom Swirl…

Oh, sugar, sugar! Oh, honey, honey…

Up Against the Wall, Fluffernutters! The Revolution Will Not Be Caramelized! Chill Your Parents!

Damien sat in the middle of the aisle, splayed legs, frostburned fingers, three dozen pints of immoral mess oozing around him. He grinned stuporously, his pupils ricocheting like Mexicans scurrying across the border.

Then he saw it.

He crawled into the case, clawing at the one remaining, iceencrusted container. Still inside, he scraped the frost away with his thumbnail:

THE WORLD'S BEST VANILLA

“Vanilla ice cream made with pure vanilla extract.” A laugh escaped and hung in the frozen air. So perfect, so pure. And heavy, he noticed. And hard.

At 7:53 the next morning, Chip White, the star quarterback of the WBHS Values, was standing at his locker, ministering to some members of the cheerleading squad, when he did not notice a wildeyed Damien Thorn approach him from behind, raise above his head a blue cylinder with the now all-too-familiar psychedelic lettering, and
Hello, we're Ben and Jerry, and we really must protest at this point. We know what the author is trying to do here, and we don't like it one bit. To our knowledge, no Ben & Jerry's prepacked pint has ever been used in the commission of a first-degree murder. And, we cannot state more emphatically, we do not condone this use of our product. Also, and not to nitpick, but most of the flavors referenced above are not and never were available for sale in supermarkets, but only in our 350 franchise scoop shops across the country
.

As to the larger issue, let us reiterate that the link between premium ice cream and violence is tenuous at best. Millions of teen Americans enjoy our fresh, delicious ice cream regularly and do not go on rampages of any kind. Recent legislative efforts to place age limits on the consumption of Ben &Jerry's will, we believe, drive children to consume subpremium ice creams high in chemical preservatives and pumped full of air, as was common during the Vietnam War, with potentially tragic results
.

At Ben & Jerry's, we make premium ice cream from only the finest natural ingredients and pure Vermont cream, and do not support the violent overthrow of the United States government at this time
.