Masticatory Musings

Evolution is a funny thing. Its sole purpose is to promote the survival of adaptable species while allowing the retarded, worthless species that have somehow managed to make it as far as they have to die off in a decidedly unsatisfying yet appropriately inconspicuous puff of smoke. Basically, evolution's job is to be the bouncer at a popular but horrifyingly douchey night club: if you're not awesome enough to be on the list, get ready to be turned away in a flurry of public shame and very large fists.

In any case, we humans are supposedly relatively highly evolved. I say "supposedly" because in my comparatively short existence, I've seen enough slobbering, swivel-eyed mouthbreathers to question seriously whether evolutionary biologists have spent all these years just sitting around swilling Schlitz while thinking up the best way of playing a monstrous joke on the rest of us. Then again, the fundies have already beaten me to this possibility (albeit with an entirely different agenda in mind), and I try to make it habit not to side with brainless jerks.

Anyway, evolution has, in its own spectacular little way, provided our species with certain convenient little features that make our meaningless, tortured lives a bit more prolonged so that we can bestow life on a few poor bastards relegated to their own meaningless, tortured existences, mainly just to get back at them for being younger and more attractive than we ourselves have become. Evolution has given us things like bipedality. Speech. In the case of a few lucky humans, complex brains. And my personal favorite, the ability to chew things with our pukesome, germ-ridden gobs closed.

If there's one thing I hate, it's sitting down to dinner, thoroughly enjoying the fact that some poor slob other than myself has slaved over making my meal, only to turn my head and see some disgusting creature chomping away with its gaping maw open so wide that it seems seriously in danger of turning its head inside out. It's not that I frequent stockyards or farmyards or whatever kind of yards animals are kept in; these are the pitiful excuses for sentient beings that can be found just about anywhere there's food.

Here's the thing: I may be a complete moron when it comes to a lot of things, but I do know that humans are equipped with the capacity to feed without displaying the half-masticated contents of their vile blowholes. Why, then, do people feel the overwhelming urge to smack and slurp away, spraying flecks of saliva-soaked fodder all over everything and everyone within a 10-mile radius?

Because they're disgusting. Disgusting, self-important slobs. There, I said it. And I challenge you to come up with any kind of plausible proof that they're not. Thing is, I can't decide whether these monocellular slack-jaws are doing it on purpose ( "Look at me! I'm EATING! Lavish me with praise! I am a hero of the universe!") or whether they're just shamefully ill-mannered.

In any case, I propose that anyone caught slurping and smacking away like this in public should be hauled off and locked in a small dimly lit room with nothing but a knitting needle while the children's song "Frere Jacques" is piped in on a continuous loop. If after 72 hours they haven't poked out their own eardrums, they will be reintegrated into society under the condition that any further incidents of lip-smacking will result in permanent musical incarceration.

I have a feeling the ACLU won't like it, but then they hate pretty much everything.

You suck at driving, or: Get the hell out of the passing lane

Picture it: it’s a gorgeous autumn day, mid-morning, and you're driving down the freeway. Maybe you’ve got your window down, because gosh darn it, it’s just such a super-duper day outside and you want to enjoy it, by golly. The birds are singing. You’re singing along to whatever embarrassing music is on your iPod. Life is good.

You move over into the passing lane because, hey, you’ve got kind of a long way to drive, and maybe you want to cruise at 70mph. Meanwhile, the dim-eyed, slack-jawed simians who slid through the cracks at the DMV testing office—which coincidentally is also run by dim-eyed, slack-jawed simians—putter along at 45mph (on a 55mph highway, mind you) to their apeish little hearts’ content in the righthand lanes.

So far so good. But just as you’re feeling the wind in your hair and thinking about the delicious cup of coffee that awaits you at your destination, one of these idiots merges into your lane at a mindnumbingly slow speed, right in the middle of your soul-filled rendition of Journey’s classic hit “Don’t Stop Believin’”, causing you to slam your foot onto the brake and nearly have the front half of your head imploded by your own steering wheel. OK, you think, he’ll speed up—surely that’s why he merged into the passing lane.

Wrong. He merged into the passing lane because he’s a complete barking retard who clearly doesn’t understand the purpose of this particular feature of the American freeway system. For some reason, he can’t get it through his thick, nuclear warhead repellent brain housing that the passing lane is for passing. If it were known as the happy funtime going for a leisurely drive in the countryside lane, his actions might be justified. Even reasonable. You still might want to run him off the road in a fit of blinding fury and then punch him square in the face while belting out rock legend Bruce Springsteen’s anthem “Thunder Road,” but that’s neither here nor there.

So what do you do? This oxygen-sucking fleshbag is clearly oblivious to the fact that you have crept up dangerously close behind him, so you do a quick flash of your headlights to let him know you’re there. Sort of a non-verbal way of saying, “Excuse me, my fine fellow, but I believe you may have mistakenly entered the incorrect area for moving at a pace which is considerably slower than that of your fellow motorists. Might I ask that you kindly move over?” But of course, your polite request goes unnoticed—or ignored—by the thought-deficient sack of rocks before you.

You’re a law-abiding citizen. You’re an exceptional driver. So of course, under normal circumstances, you would never think of passing illegally on the right. But you’re desperate: your increasing pulse rate and steadily rising temperature indicate that a full scale meltdown is in your immediate future. You turn on your signal and look to your right. DAMN. As would be expected given your rotten luck, the next lane over is jam packed with an entire army of halfwits driving even more slowly than the beacon of stupidity in front of you. You flick your signal dejectedly into the off position.

So that’s it. You have no choice but to resign yourself to your torturous, slow moving fate. You’re reminded of one of those dreams where no matter how fast you try to run, it feels like your limbs are under water. Or encased in a block of stupid, stupid concrete. But this time, it’s all 100% real, and you’ve left your throwing knives at home. Again. So not only can you not hurl them with seemingly superhuman force at Retardo McMoron up there, you can’t even slit your own wrists with them. Maybe one of these days you’ll learn.