Sometimes it's not good to stare at a judge and tell her "I got more time than money."

"Well, I don't give time."

"Well you can lock my fucking ass up when they come to pick me up for not paying the fine."

Welcome to 100 and so odd days of furlough!

My first real exposure to the hell that is called the roach coach. Fast food my ass. I have dealt with these before but not in such desperation. Starving and always hungry. I had to eat these. This. Food. I had fifteen minutes to get back to my station and shove food back so I wouldn't get rolled up and taken to back to county.

This was fucking fast food. Well, but not really.

I would wake up in the morning reeking of alcohol and cover my breath as I walked into my site while others were walking in around me. Chew more gum. Cops up ahead. Head down. Drugs wandering out of my system. Body starving. Head count and we all wandered away. Where was I at? A cemetery. I had to clean and weed the city graveyard for a few months. Just some stupid charge that I fucked up on and begged just to serve time. I got this instead. Great. Well this is all fucked up. It took me a few days to figure the scene out. Always take smokes to the site. Don't talk to anyone and just act like you are busy when the cops come by. Doesn't matter what you are doing.

Just be doing something.

After about a week I started looking arount the place. Masoleums from the 1800's broken into. Crypts ripped open. Really nice monuments and....crypts ripped open Yeah! Cold hard marble floors. Well, hell yeah! This is hidden, in the back and sleepin' time. Close the marble door and crash. Don't get all weird on me, mein readers, and act like I am a terrible person for sleeping in some families final resting place. They looked like nice people. Well, their names sounded nice. The fuck if I know. After head check I would grab a rake as the Mexicans grabbed all the hoses and we would all run to claim a spot in the shade. Those bastards would flood my floor if I didn't get there before them. They would do it on purpose.

I know it.

So I had to sit with a rake and shake it at them and yell "NO AGUA! NO AGUA!" Meaning back the fuck off cause I got here first. A little war was brewing between us as I slept away. It was like the god damn Alamo every morning. Sure, I had made a lot of friends, but I had this down. If I have to do this everyday, then I am going to be asleep every day and I don't want that god damn floor flooded. I'm not Davey fucking Crocket and this sure as fuck isn't some Disney special. Don't flood my bed and everything is ok. I could sleep on a marble floor. Hell, I even started wearing a sweatshirt just to use as a pillow.

Nothing would wake me up. Sure, I got caught for a few times and had to go mow the back forty in the blistering heat, but all in all it really wasn't that bad. Just doing time. I never really got the weekenders. Those are people who only had two days in. Saturday and Sunday.Just there for two days to pass off some DUI or something like that. Old men willing to pay of their way in the system while not really getting that once you are in, you are already fucked. Meh. Might as well sit down and see who has a lighter.

Or wait for...The Roach Coach!!!

Yay! Break time! Time to wake up and dig what ever money you have out of your pocket to get a burrito egg like thingy. Just something. If you ate, the screws wouldn't fuck with you. That is a big rule of thumb. Eat slowly and they will walk by. But when you lose that fifteen minutes and the whistle is blown, nail that fucker back and run back to your sleeping place before the Mexicans and their god damn hoses fill the fucking place up with water. Viva la Turtle.

Very fine line there.

Keeping one eye on your food and the other on those god damn hose bearers. The place I was sleeping in had all the shade. They wanted to be watering there. No bueno, big guy. That's my napping spot.

So as I ran back in a foot race with the water crew, I looked back and watched the roach coach tear out. Another fine day for him.

Another race for me. - T

michele:

I’m writing about a salad. Yea, a salad.

I don’t like Burger King. Let’s say that right off. I'm no food snob. Hell, I’ve eaten more than my share of White Castle burgers. But I just don’t like BK. I don’t like their rubbery burgers or their starchy fries or their evil looking king. Damn, that dude freaks me the hell out. But sometimes, you have to compromise your fast food integrity. When BK does a fundraiser for my kid’s school, I have to bite the burger bullet and go. I suffer for my kids. Hey, I’m Italian. Raised Catholic. The only mothers who have more martyr power than me are Jewish. So we’re trudging to Burger King. Home of the Evil Looking King Guy. I’m doing it for you, I tell my kid. Remember this.

This was a couple of years ago. Right about the time all these fast food places started offering salads. It was like the King and Ronald and Dave and the Colonel all got together to wage war against the Atkins diet. Meeting in secret location. Figuring out how to offer fast food meals with no carbs. Banding together for the cause. Down With Atkins! Lettuce! Tomatoes! One for all and all for one! And then the CEOs went their separate ways and ordered their product and development teams to come up with a better salad than their competitors.

So all these places had fresh, exciting salads. Not Your Mother's Salad! Taste mandarin oranges! Cranberries! Sesame seeds and apples! It's a fruit! It's a salad! It's a dessert topping! This was stupid. Wrong. Fast food and salads do not mix. Fast food and grease? Yes. Fast food and fat? Of course. Lettuce, cucumbers and mandarin oranges? Fuck no.

Anyhow. That night I decided to be brave and try the salad. I was hungry. And there was no way in hell I was eating one of those Angus burgers because my cousin said she threw up after having one the week before. Besides, it was up to me to try the salad, proclaim it to be terrible and let everyone know that the Great Salad Conspiracy was a bad, bad idea.

I order the salad and think, I have a bad feeling about this. But that might have more to do with the cashier's reluctance to speak or understand English than with the food itself. Once we get it clear - after four minutes, yes I clocked it - that I want the Fire Grilled Caesar Salad(r) and I’m not trying to tell her that her hat is on fire, and once I get past the fact that she smells like one would imagine Louie Anderson might smell like if he had just chased the ice cream man for ten blocks on the hottest day of the year, we proceed.

I get a choice with my Fire Grilled Salad; chicken or shrimp. I have this thing against ordering anything that comes from the sea in a fast food place, but I was feeling daring. Bold. Adventurous. I stared the cashier in the eyes, slapped my palm on the counter and whispered in a low, Clint Eastwood-as-gunslinger voice, Shrimp. I'll try the shrimp.

We get our food and move over to the last available table. The place is packed with mothers and kids. Most of the mothers doing the martyr thing like me. But not as good as me. No way.

This table is under the air conditioner vent. This has nothing to do with the salad, but everything to do with creating the proper dining atmosphere. Granted, you're not going to get a quality dining experience at Burger King. I mean, there’s a partly padded cell to the left of me - well, it’s a ball pit - where some bratty, greasy kids are throwing balls at the window. It’s like they are engaged in a contest to see who can interrupt your conversation or ruin your dinner first."> But I’ll tell you, it takes only one time for an adult to press their face against the window and mouth the words "I will eat you and your little sister for dinner if you don't stop throwing those god dman balls right now" for a kid to really get it. The balls stop coming at us and we make the attempt to get comfortable, which is hard because it’s about 40 below zero under that vent and I had to keep putting my arms across my chest because apparently the town workers that were standing on line thought they could determine the temperature in the room by staring at my tits. Well, that might be true. Ask turtle. We have talked about this.

Anyhow, the salad.

We didn’t get off to a good start. I opened up the plastic bowl and saw too much Iceburg lettuce. Caesar = romaine. Caesar does not equal Iceberg. The sooner all restaurants figure this out, the better off we will all be. So strike one. Inferior lettuce.

The shrimp. It comes in this foil bag. Yes, a bag-o-shrimp. They’re swimming in some kind of murky brown mixture. I decide to ignore this. Instead, I move right on to the smell test. I don't like my shrimp to smell too...shrimpy. Or fishy. There is no bigger food turnoff than trying to eat something that smells like Christina Agueleria's crotch. Not that I've smelled it. I just heard. From Fred Durst.

I decide to use my assistant for this one. I pick one of the shrimp up with my forefingers and hold it to my daughter's nose. She recoils. Ewww, I'm a vegetarian, get that shrimp out of here. Gross. Ewww! Gawd, mom, you're so rude! Relax, I told her. I don't want you to eat the thing, I just want you to smell it. Does it smell....dead? She leans in and puts her nose real close to it, takes a whiff, pronounces it "dead smelling", and then I gave her a little slap on the back of her head so that she springs forward and the shrimp ends up in her nose. No, not really. But I thought about it.

I shake the shrimp out of the bag and onto the salad. My sister starts singing "It's Raining Shrimp." My daughter crawls under the table.

I have to say, I was surprised at the amount of shrimp that came out of that bag. I expected seven or eight at the most, including the one up the daughter's nose, but were twenty-two. That's right. 22 shrimp swimming in that murk. Yes, I counted.

One last moment of preparation before I can actually eat the damn thing and pronounce it good or bad. The dressing. Sweet Onion Vinaigrette, as it were. No bueno. Points off for not having actual Caesar dressing. I go up to the counter and ask why. I do things like that. You might not want to go out in public with me a lot. I’m a nuisance. As it turns out, they did have a Caesar dressing but, for some unknown reason, Miss I Smell Like Louie Anderson decided I would prefer onions.

I get the dressing. Open packet with my teeth. Because, really, there is no other way to open it properly. I prepare to eat. Wait. Something is missing. Something isn’t right. hey!Croutons! You cannot have a Caesar salad without croutons! I search the mess of BK foodstuffs on our table but, no croutons. I send the daughter to the counter to ask Louie Anderson for croutons. She reports back that they do not have any. What? Are you kidding me? Many style points taken off. Many.

Well fuck. I’m hungry. I’ve got to eat what’s in front of me whether it’s a proper salad or not. I put the cover back on, properly secure it, grab the bowl in a frisbee grip and toss it to my sister across the table. She throws it back. Salad mixed. Don't ever think those high school days spent playing Frisbee instead of studying Trig won't come in handy, because they will. As I just showed you.

My salad was now tossed. By my sister. Go ahead, I'll wait while you make your juvenile sexual innuendos. Done? Good, because they were lame. Surely you can do better than that.

Ok, I’ve got eat. I’m eating a fast food salad. This could go real bad. I take a quick glance at my wallet to make sure my insurance card was there. I go all Babe Ruth. Rais my arm and point to the hospital across the street. I uncover the salad, grab a plastic fork, and dig in, just waiting til the moment where I could proclaim that fast food salads are a bad idea.

Well, hell.

It was good.

Pretty damn good.

I was all set to bag on it. Now I had all this worked up negative adrenaline and nothing to do with it. Or did I? I noticed one of those “how was your dining experience” cards on the table. I make a lone comment: I do not think the temperature in your establishment should be such that my “headlights” get turned on when I walk in the place. Meh. It was best I could do. I felt like I had to complain about something. I came in there expecting to give a bad review to an out of place salad and was cock blocked.

So if I had to give a review? Let the Burger King toss your salad. -M

So that's our fast food stories. Give or take a little. Sometimes we get off track. And you get to hear about turtle sleeping in a masoleum or my temperature telling tits. I think it works out in the end.

And this begs the question (well, sort of): what's your favorite fast food?

Faction - Fast Food Diet