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Ding-Dong! The Twinkie's Dead--The Wicked, Old Twinkie's Dead!Sep 22 '04 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Gonna rant & run!!!
Hi, Everybody! I've just been to a messageboard where we have been discussing what appears to be the death of Twinkies (and several other familiar childhood goodies) as we know them. Want to know my opinion? I think it's a shame! This comes in the same time-frame when a relatively-newer familiar icon is closing its doors: Chi-Chi's. I can rant about that, too! A big part of what led the latter to close its doors was what I would call a ridiculous lawsuit--one of many of its ilk that seem to be popping up around our country these days. Hey! I thought that some kind of bill was about to be passed that would do away with this tomfoolery. Would you believe that there are actually people with legitimate reasons to sue out there, but their cases are getting tossed aside in a way that would imply that they're insignificant!?! I call these kinds of lawsuits terrorist attacks on establishments seen as having pockets so deep that they're virtually bottomless--when this is the furthest thing from the truth. Which brings me to why Chi-Chi's got sued bigtime: One of their locations in Pennsylvania had green onions that had been infected with hepatitis--resulting in the illness of over 600 people and the deaths of 4 of those. While I agree that this is tragic, I see it as something that could happen anywhere, and it doesn't mean that the company behind Chi-Chi's was neglectful in any way. The closing of the location here in Anderson is putting 32 people out of work. Multiply 32 by the number of Chi-Chi's restaurants across the country (which is surely in the hundreds), and you have a lot of people without jobs all at once--and all over something that happened at one Pennsylvania location! I remember that I worked at a fast-food restaurant back in the late 1970s, and that there was this boy there who talked about how he liked to go to K-mart and get a stereo whenever he had a party. He and his guests would enjoy the stereo--and, then, he would do something to it such as loosen a wire and bring it back to K-mart to tell them that it was defective. He did this because K-mart had a policy of giving a refund for a number of days should the customer find anything lacking about the merchandise--no questions asked! I believe that K-mart has been dealing with some financial problems lately, too--and I can't help but wonder if some of those problems were caused by people like this young punk. Anyway, it's difficult for companies to stay in business these days, because there are too many people out there wanting something for nothing (which manifests itself in everything from frivolous lawsuits to taking advantage of store guarantees to "a little harmless shoplifting, as the item would never be missed anyway" to getting too much union muscle going to where companies are struck out of business and/or out of the country), and this is part of what might have hurt the company that made Twinkies to a certain extent. Of course, part of what has hurt it has been our change of eating habits where we want to eat things that are more healthy. And I can't complain about that--not completely, anyway. Of course, there are a couple of aspects of that that I CAN and I WILL complain about: (1) Those ridiculous "You've made me fat!" lawsuits; and (2) The ridicule that people in our society who are overweight receive. It's like we're fair game for hecklers! Anyway, I found this one messageboard where both overweight people and places such as the Twinkie factory were being put down by a few posters and decided to contribute to it. I liked my contribution so well that I decided to share it here, so here it is... I'll be the first one to admit that I need to lose weight (and that this is an understatement!), but I think we've really gone overboard--and I can't help wondering if there might also be some sort of hidden agenda connected to this. For one thing, if this company folds, not only will we be saying goodbye to a longtime tradition but scores of people will be added to our unemployment lines. When people become unemployed, they often look for a scapegoat--and it's hard to say just whom the target will end up being. Back in Germany, it became the Jews--and look what happened! In our case, this mentality would be likely to touch people new to our shores, and there will be resentment whenever they get jobs (even if the jobs are those we too often turn up our noses at). Want to know what REALLY made marijuana criminal? There were people from Mexico who enjoyed smoking it, and there were those who felt threatened by the extra job competition who wanted to make them uncomfortable enough not to want to hang around. Now, don't take it that I'm a big fan of marijuana. I've never used it and I don't believe I ever will--recreationally, that is. However, it would be nice to have it available for medical use, as there are many people who are in severe pain who could benefit from it. But people can go to prison for using it/providing it for even that. Hey! I like my rose-colored glasses, and I would rather think the best of people and situations rather than the worst, and I generally do. But neither am I an ostrich who will hide her head in the sand and deny the strong possibility of hidden agendas. I've lived almost 52 years, and I've seen products banned because some sort of lab tests (usually, I suspect, by their competitors) "proved" that they were cancer-causers--and, then, I've seen the scare pass. Tobacco is KNOWN to cause cancer, but a lot of foot-dragging was done before even warnings could be put on the labels of cigarettes and other tobacco products. Right now, carrying around too much weight seems to be the target of some kind of war--taken to ridiculous levels where people can even sue McDonald's for "making" them fat. Again, I wonder what the real agenda is--with lawsuits against McDonald's, it's obviously people trying to make big bucks from deep pockets. But could it be that there might be people (our terrorists acting in more subtle ways, perhaps?) who might want to bring our country down by (1) setting up situations where more and more of our factories and other businesses close; (2) erasing those pleasant, traditional activities from our present-day lives; and (3) making us end up being scared of everything so that we almost dare not move for fear of getting cancer, diabetes, or some other awful disease? Ever notice that our entertainment is getting louder and louder? This is everything from live concerts to movies--plus other activities where it's considered to be cool/macho to have as little as possible resembling a muffler on our vehicles, even though it has been proven that you can enjoy these things just as much with as without a muffler. Excessive noise has been proven to be very damaging to even those who are willing participants in these kinds of activities--and there are people out there who participate whether they want to or not when people driving motorcycles that sound like amplified jackhammers or cars with their stereos cranked up so high that you can hear them coming several blocks away pass by where they happen to be. Yet, it's very difficult to enforce laws dealing with noise pollution. We know that excessive tanning causes skin cancer--yet those same people who think that fat people are a blemish on the face of society take pride in getting just as bronze as they can get, whether from hours of lying out in the sun or in those tanning rooms. And, surely, some of the places where piercings are placed on ones person can't be all that healthy for such an activity. I'm not suggesting that we throw all caution to the wind when it comes to having a healthy body weight, but I can't help thinking about a situation where being fat might suddenly become "in" and some of these "cool" activities such as excess tanning, excess noise, and excess piercing might become "out." Couldn't you just see all of us fat people taunting those other types!?! Couldn't you just see those people who never seem to be able to gain weight trying to find really stylish clothes--only to find the supply of stylish clothing made that small to be very limited so that they have to go from store to store to store in order to find a handful of such items, while, meanwhile, there would be an overstock of the grooviest threads in sizes such as 3X and 4X all in one store!?! And--just think!--the Twinkie people would no longer have to worry about going broke! Something to think about... Anyway, I've had my say for now. Hopefully, my computer won't go kerphewey again before I get this posted. I'm going to be away from here for the next several days, so you might call this my rant'n'run contribution, but I'll be anxious to read the feedback next time I'm back online. Oh yes! I confess that I've looked at John Stossel's left ring finger--but, right at the moment, I can't remember what I found (or didn't find) there. Doesn't matter! Married or not, he's still my soulmate, so GIVE ME A BREAK!  |
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