Grape Nuts? Bullshit Nuts is More Like It

You ever had this "cereal"? I hope so, because I for one hate to suffer alone. I'm serious, what ever happened to Rice Krispies or Fruit Loops? Now those were some cereals. None of this roadside gravel bullshit. It doesn't even talk when you eat it. Even my ex-wife did that. And fun fruit flavors? Don't let the "Grape" part fool you; the only fruit this crap tastes like is Heath Ledger. Boring.

Life is like a bowl of Grape Nuts, and by that I mean it sucks. Sure, it comes in a lot of flashy packaging, and there's a wombat on the box, but inside it's just a bag of dirt from Nevada. Kids? Had 'em. Jobs? Did 'em. Movies? Slept through 'em. Transexual adventures? Saw a 20/20 on 'em once. Didn't seem all that appealing.

You know that song, "Shock the Monkey"? I tried that once. Went down to the zoo in 1985 and told one of the apes there'd be Republicans in the White House for the whole of his natural life. He threw a rubber T-bone steak squeeze toy at me. I still don't know what that song was about.

When I was a young man I wanted to be a lumberjack. Can't remember why, must've been all those "Don't Be a Fag, Cut Down a Tree!" ads that were on the radio at the time. Anyway, I thought that might just be a good life. Spending all your time out of doors, getting nature back for every time it had rained at an inconvenient time during your life. But there was one thing I hadn't counted on: cutting down trees is a goddamned lot of work. I'm serious, it's not like in the cartoons or those lumberjack video games, where you swing the axe with one hand and the tree goes down like a huge stick of warm butter or a horny teenager at Crystal Lake. Those goddamned trees have their mind made up about standing, and it takes some serious convincing to get them to see things your way. It's a battle of wills and the chances are good you'll decork your spine before the tree even starts to lean.

That's when I got the idea to cut the whole process short and cut to the chase with a couple sticks of dynamite. Now that's speaking a language trees can understand. When you say jump, they do, and cartwheel end over end for good measure. But as you might imagine, there was some serious resistance to my startling new innovation in the world of lumberjacking, as there always is when a brash newcomer struts in and turns things on their ass. And you know those big Brawny paper towel meatheads didn't want some skinny mug with a dynamite connection horning in on their racket. That, and there were some problems with not being able to find the tree after the dynamite went off, since depending on the prevailing winds it could end up a half-mile in any direction, and they always seem to build elementary schools at the most inopportune locations. And there was some jabber about 90% of the usable wood being destroyed in the explosion, as if their meathead-and-axe system worked flawlessly right out of the gate.

I wasn't a lumberjack for long. Didn't exactly shock your monkey with that one, did I? Yeah, the lumberjacking industry and I decided to go in different directions. I learned the lesson that there are some dreams too beautiful for this world to handle, and they learned… come to think of it I don't think those meatheads learned a damned thing. Nuts. I hate coming out on the wrong end of a learning experience. But like I said, life's a bitch and all she's serving for breakfast is Grape Nuts. Would it kill life to make French toast? I doubt it. But that's life for you.

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