“Time to head on home”
Said Dad to His Son
“Not ’til my Fruit by the Foot is done”
He started to eat and don’t you know,
Three hours later “still not ready to go!”
YOU SEE, with Fruit by the Foot, the fun just lasts and lasts
So he kept eating, “and the time just passed”

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“Star” is a popular word in the world of marketing and public opinion. We have Energy Star, Starbucks, Sinistar, Kenneth Starr, Star Jones, Starburst, Starbirds, on and on.

Plenty of newspapers, radio stations and other media outlets identify themselves as “Star.” The people who occupy the most prominent roles in acted productions are said to be “stars.” The quality of various products, services and military ranks are often shown rated in amounts of stars.

Throughout human existence we have been infatuated with the mysterious glowing bodies that fill the sky at night and the ever present giant ball of light that commands our respect during the day. However…

“Foot Star” is not filling me with awe and amazement.

Ah, such majesty and splendor!

You’ll get over it.

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My own December rituals have about as much to do with J. Christ as they do with a couple magic candles so I consider there to be nothing rude about me suddenly talking about the Christ-mass on the first night of Hanukkah.

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I have at two recent occasions temporarily left my home for the purpose of Krissmiss “shopping,” in which I stand around in stores and do not buy anything.

That is generally not my goal from the start, I simply do not know what anybody wants and I hate receiving gifts I don’t want, and I hate pretending they’re sort of good because then I risk getting them again. Surely other people hate this as well and I don’t want to put them through it. I hate spending money anyway. The real reason I go out is because I remember I used to greatly enjoy just going to malls in December and am looking to revisit that even though I hate snow, stress, every Christmas song and unquestioned, arbitrary bad traditions exploited in horrid marketing. Worse, these days I am so meticulous and have so many thoughts piled up that I can’t possibly express my individual annoyances here in a way I find satisfactory.

What this came from is surely one of the worst ads ever made and yet I’m too busy to say anything about it and too horrified to look at it long enough to think of anything to say beyond that it’s obscene and creepy. Maybe, sometimes, that’s enough.

But I was talking about buying things (things other than what is being advertised there, whatever it is)! It is a process one must devote considerable resources to.

It is never easy to find the perfect gift for the limbless gay spiderman in your life. This shopping, I am not good at it. I get the impression that nobody particularly enjoys it, but they know how to do it. My mother, for example, went to three different stores yearning to purchase the right martini glasses for an acquaintance american. I, however, lack the internal programming to detect when a person requires new martini glasses. My mother also took an opportunity to explain the difference between martini and margarita glasses. And that is all fine and decent, but I wonder how the glasses know what’s in them. And then I wonder if they get offended when stores stuff them with shiny balls instead of their liquid soulmates.

Me (hello!), I place all my imbibable substances in the same cylinder of glass, and they’re usually water. If I need something else just about any other tube I deem to be of adequate capacity will suffice. I am not opposed to having two different liquids occupy the same space within close chronosensible proximity to each other. I consider myself rather an anti-residue activist, but that generally regards the residue of other things in other places; partially removed tags with clothing, unconvincing mayonnaise, butter, whipped cream removal* substituted for mayonnaise, butter, whipped cream prevention, anything which has touched milk, the normal stuff. If it’s something I put in my mouth in a place where no mouths have gone I am surprisingly tolerable. Have fun with that sentence.

*these things cannot be removed convincingly

When I venture externally from my ramshackle ransack shack, there is a glass bottle which previously contained a different, snapply substance that I place my water in and I refill it when things start to get empty. It is replaced easily enough if anybody asks me if I wash it.

I don’t know why I even talk to you sometimes.

I briefly considered the idea that “ant farms,” and specifically the practice of intentionally caving in tunnels (That’s what I quoted; I don’t demand that you click it) so the ants can be observed digging again, are horrible and cruel, but there are much nastier and widelier publicized ways to trap, deprive of purpose and kill your ants. Appropriately enough, called “ant traps.” But even those are probably a bit excessive. I suspect any creatures which dutifily proceed into the base of a near empty drink receptacle and die there in moist, pastey piles, as I’ve seen them do near my kitchen sink on more procrastinaty days, probably don’t have much will to live to begin with. Ants work until they die. The only exception is when they fight, and they only fight when their work is interrupted. Working, fighting, dying, it’s all they know how to do, and all they can know how to do. You’re probably helping them by speeding that along. Their whole lives are cruel. Not like slaves; they’re only officially slaves if another ant colony kidnaps them and enslaves them. It’s actually an instinctual, biological function that they make slaves of each other. Recently documented resistance to the slavery is even more cruel. Ant farming would only truly be cruel if you stuffed the ants inside a chinless, cube-headed symbol of depression era escapism-turned-proud redneck put-em-in-their-place anti feminism and gave that to someone who has a concept of cruelty. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if living Shoebox greeting card Sarah Palin owns several Betty Boop products. However, in the interest of fairness and equal time I must acknowledge that Mitt Romney scares me.

Another peculiar, cruel-sounding aspect of ant farms, is that after purchasing them you’re supposed to send an included coupon or something to the Uncle Miltie company which will then mail live ants to you, free of further charge, accommodated by “an ant wrangler in Utah” which vaccuums a specific type of farm-compatible ant straight from the dirt at unspecified points in the state of Utah. Naturally, when I had an ant farm, I was not aware of or simply unwilling to deal with the mailing portion of the deal, and so just collected whatever ants I could find and dropped / shoved them into the thing. The ants dug no tunnels. They ate none of the narrow, food-like items I slid in with them, including one(1) Mr. Phipp’s Pretzel Chip. To their credit, though, they did as marvelous a job dying as any ants I’ve yet encountered. I will always remember them, and how they’re dead. I didn’t even eat them. Oh yeah and at the time I liked to eat ants.

Some years later, I found myself wanting to throw beehives at all possible aspects, name included, of the music band Alien Ant Farm, whose only hit was a song by someone else which had already been a hit. This youtube link and preview image are not working to rectify my disruptive urges.

Capt’n Eli’s Lemon Lime soder. That’s Capt’n Eli, not Cap’n Eli or, yikes, Captain Eli. Then we’d be in a fix, all right. Capt, like those stupid tests I used to have to take at school.

When I asked for this beverage at Boothbay Harbor’s notorious Wannawaf, the only establishment I had ever seen it offered, the serving person seemed appalled. As if she wanted to say “why not just get Mountain Dew? It’s two dollars less and the bottles are bigger.” I didn’t know my soda cost two dollars more; the sign simply stated “bottled soda: $1.00.” It did not say “popular bottled soda: $1.00, struggling regional bilge: $whatever we tell you”

For the record, this record, Capt‘n Ellis wasn’t as good as green Foxon Park soda, which is cheaper and available in towns with good pizza, but plenty better than Mountain Dew. I don’t know if it was necessarily two dollars better, but it was the only public soft-drink I had the whole week I was in Maine, if I don’t count un-pre-sweetened iced teas, and I didn’t. Booth Bay Harbor is Pepsi country. The only Coca-Cola I saw was in the few non-Pepsi vending machines or ah Rite Aid. I may have been partly grateful at the lack of temptation to place such horrible things inside me, but, oh, such a fool I was! I didn’t realize how health beneficial Coke drinking was.

Whether it’s your first coke of the day, or your second, or your thirteenth, experts agree soda contains liquid ingredients. Apparently a study into the harmful effects of soda was commissioned after people drinking soda experienced harmful effects. Which is ridiculous. As long as you keep pouring it down your neck pipes, the inside of you won’t have time to dry up.

Wannawaf, for your further information, has, as its specialty, ice cream served upon warm, soft belgium style waffles. It’s the sort of thing that local publications, well to do residents and dopey tourism guides will praise whenever prompted as being a unique and wonderful highlight of the area, something so wonderful that only doesn’t expand internationally out of humility and the belief that its personal signature attention to quality cannot be maintained on such a grand scale.

In actuality, though, at least from the one I had, the waffle and the ice cream both would have tasted better separate and I already told you the clerk didn’t leave me feeling oh so welcome. So I don’t, in fact, wannawaf! PWAH HAH HAH HAF HIF HIF HURRR… (weep). I guess this is for people who eat chocolate chip pancakes and chocolate steaks and chocolate whatever the Funk and Wagnalls else other things shouldn’t be made with chocolate.

Oh, oh, and I finally had a look/hear at that stupid “chocolate rain” bit all the popular people assume I’ve already had several looks/hears at, and I don’t understand. The tune is five seconds long and seems to repeat endlessly. I say seems because I couldn’t stand to listen for four whole minutes regardless of what absurd mass-quotable nonsense Mr. Zay Taydon Potate Bacon or whoever is zaying. I gave up less than half way through. Sure, I’d show that to everyone. Great job giving another moderately talented bozo a career, Internet! I tried listening to another of the man’s songs, and it seemed an improvement, but again I lacked the endurance to see/hear it through. And I made this, for the sake of snakes.