E-capitulation

Pub date November 27, 2012
WriterL.E. Leone
SectionCheap Eats

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Do you want to know how to settle a strike? Here’s how to settle a strike: Capitulate. It’s

fun and easy — just … give ’em what they want. In this case, the letter ‘e.’

Hedgehog, I says, henceforth, you can spell youse however the hell you want. In fact, you can spell all the other words however you want, too. I trust you to get the thing said, however you spell it. We’re all good communicators here.

In fact, we’re in the goddamn bidness of communication, ain’t we.

Yet, my last couple missives to higher ups at the B.G., Maurice and Robin, have been more-or-less dismissived.

If it were me — which it is, but let’s say if, for example, it were me who owed somebody else say, for the sake of argument, $3,300 for services rendered, and I knew it and knew that I was good for it but couldn’t decide which of my bank accounts to take the money from, I would just … pay.

Fun! Easy! Settled! The owe-ee(eee) is all squared away. Then, my lower-downs having been seen to, hypothetical me sleeps real nicely at night. Or, hyperhypothetically speaking, Maurice, Robin, the alive one, or, hell, even Andy for all I care, coughs up the Amount Owed, and then they can bicker amongst themselves until the cows come home.

And sleep at night, if that makes sense. And I kinda hope it doesn’t. Hedgehog?

CHEAP SPORTS Good morning from last Friday! Did youse miss mese like Ise missed youse?

Today I’m thankful for the Chicken Farmer. She’s asleep at the moment but yesterday, when she was awake, she smoked a turkey, baconed up some Brussels sprouts, and baked a gluten-free pie — all in honor of our first little movie taking third prize at the “little movies made in a big hurry” contest down in Hollywood. That her celebratory act of catering happened to fall on Thanksgiving is only a coincidence because she happens to feed me well all the time. It’s not just when the rest of youse are honoring the arrival of the pilgrims and blah blah.

Normally there would be three “blahs” up there, but I’m on a strict word count this week. Because I need all my available words to tell you this:

We’re buying an elliptical. Or not. It’s all very confusing and frustrating and, quite frankly, annoying. The romantic-musical-comedy-sometimes-road-trip that is usually our lives has this albatross circling over it, threatening to dump a load at any moment.

See, Chicken Farmer (aka the Athletic One), tweaked her knee several columns back. And then she spent a lot of time icing it. And then it felt better. And then she tweaked it again. Rinse and repeat for over a month and the end result is a fat Hedgehog. Because, as it turns out, hedgies don’t exercise unless their farmer’s take them out and make them. I don’t have anyone to play racquetball with. Or soccer. And my recently unbroken wrist has not been feeling so great about the bat finding the ball lately. I would ice it, but all available ice has been allocated to Chicken Farmer’s knee and we can’t afford to buy more ice. So naturally, turning our studio apartment into a fitness center is the only way either of us can see out of this morass.

Not that we can afford an elliptical machine either, but the free one at the Mission Rec center is wobbly and sticky and we need to put on clothes in order to get to it. There are elliptical machines in other places (they are called “gyms”) but you have to pay to use them. They are not wobbly or sticky, but you still need to wear clothes and then also, the money. Of which we are low.

So here’s our desperate plan: we’re going out, for the first time in either of our little lives, into the despair that is Black Friday. We’ll drive around until we find a sports supplier in need of a mob. Then we’ll rush in, waving our arms and making lots of noise (so as to give the impression that there are more of us) and run straight to the ellipticals. We’ll pick the one with the best stride length and degree of incline and assure the salesperson that we have the money for it; we just don’t know where exactly we put it.

Surely any salesperson worth their sale-salt will see what good consumers we are and reward us with an interest-free loan and free delivery on-the-spot. Right? That’s how companies do business. Right? Chicken Farmer?

CHEAP EATS continued…

Huh?