Beef, Bowel-Obstructions, And The American Spirit Of Adventure

I decided to try a new place for lunch yesterday. It was a dank little hole in the wall with tiny booths and loners morosely sipping beer watching Sports Center highlights at noon on a Monday. This is to say it’s only slightly less classy than brown-bagging forties behind the dumpster of 7-Eleven. The only major difference was the rats and flies in the dumpster might provide more animated conversation.

At any rate, this dimly lit pit offers an eight ounce burger, which I promptly ordered and swallowed whole. I fell to chatting with the waitress when she revealed that, contrary to what the menu said, eight ounces was not the largest hamburger they served.

It seems that this particular bane of respectability offered a 2 pound burger and, provided it was done without killing the customer, finishing it inside of 45 minutes made it free of charge. Think of what a bargain that is: 32 ounces of meat and all it costs you is a bowel obstruction and your self-respect.

I should admit at this point that I’ve never seen this deep-fried monstrosity in person. In fact, I’m kind of struggling to imagine it. The waitress told me that it takes 30 minutes to cook each side of it.

I’m still trying to figure out what would possess a place of business to make this sort of challenge. I mean, it seems like a poorly-planned proposition. Americans are the most litigious people on the planet. This is a country where someone sued McDonalds because her coffee was too hot. Can you imagine the shit-storm if some idiot goes in there and has to have his stomach pumped?

My co-worker’s eyes lit up when he heard about the challenge. I suspect he’s going to go try it at some point in the future. I believe in drinking heavily, skipping sleep, missing meals, and not exercising: and even I’m not ready to abuse my body like that. I figure my body’s already stretched to the breaking point. If I ate a two pound burger in an hour there’s a good chance I’d disrupt the delicate dance of alcohol, cocoa-puffs and heavy sarcasm that somehow provide the fuel I need to make it through the day.

I told my friend to let me know when he decides to try it. Mostly because I want to watch and partly because I’d like to be able to have the medivac chopper deployed.

It’s really a shame that America has become a place of such unapologetic bitches. Do you remember the American spirit of adventure, independence and hard work that our forefathers shared? It took balls to leave Amsterdam and travel on a rickety ship for months to place that might or might not even exist. Then head west to unmapped territory with weird-fuck animals, natives, and diseases. These days we can’t even handle the adventure of sipping a cup of coffee. How the fuck do you even show your face in public after winning that lawsuit?

“I got my fortune because the court ruled that I’m not responsible enough to handle drinking liquid unsupervised.” What mother, sibling, spouse or friend heard that statement and didn’t immediately pimp-slap the prosecution into common sense or death?

Once, just once, I want to read the story of some stupid fucking hayseed that’s laughed out of court when he tries to sue the kerosene company because “he didn’t know their product was flammable.” We, as a country, need to stop providing rights (and more importantly, blood-thirsty lawyers) to idiots. If we don’t, soon we won’t even be able to eat two pounds of undercooked meat in the name of a liberty, justice and a free meal.