Ok, I’m not ripping on the genuinely needy.  As someone who knows all too well what it’s like to choose between food or scripts and/or worry about having essential services cut off, I feel for those who are just trying to get by.  Even so, I should know better than to go anywhere near a grocery store on the first three or four days of the month.  All I do is end up coming home with half of what I needed to get (should I be lucky enough to find that) and a huge screaming headache.

I know not everyone on public assistance is raping the system.  For those who are, I’m paying for you, and it pisses me off.  It pisses me off even more when you are jamming your grocery cart (full of things I can’t afford) up my ass all the way through Kroger’s- after you have picked the store clean of such necessities as the toilet paper that would have been on sale had it been there, the fat-free cottage cheese, the store-brand longhorn Colby cheese, the Pantene Shampoo for Color-Treated Hair (?) and the Absolutely Zero Monsters, which would also (had they been there) been on sale.  There used to be a day when being on public assistance was considered humiliating. It was a necessary evil for the genuinely needy, that kept one from destitution and starvation.  Public assistance is supposed to be a safety net for those who have no other choice.  Now it’s almost “trendy” to shove your governmentally dependent self-righteous way through the grocery store (right over the poor saps who are paying for your sorry ass) like a bloated feeder hog at slop time.  To this I say, WTF?

Perhaps it’s enjoyable to sit back and relax while other people work their asses off to pay for you.  I would be ashamed to behave in such a way, but maybe I’m the one who’s wrong.  Perhaps I’m the stupid one for not figuring out how to milk the system and pursue my Fanny Feline lifestyle, since I’m too old to breed and I just don’t like the idea of smoking and/or dealing crack. (In Fanny’s defense, she’s a cat, and she does what cats are supposed to do.)

The Fanny Feline Lifestyle- not bad, except I’m not into eating meat by-products and having to lick my own butt.

My one quandary in this: if you’re not working, why in the hell do you need the Absolutely Zero Monsters?  To stay awake whilst doing nothing?  If I didn’t have to stay awake at work, my need for caffeine would be virtually nil.  If I had nothing better to do, I could get myself on the feline sleep schedule really quickly.  I think Fanny sleeps 18 hours a day.  That would be awesome.  I wouldn’t mind being Fanny, except being a cat, she has to eat catfood (which smells nasty enough) and she has to lick her own butt.

I am just glad they weren’t out of bacon.  I don’t generally eat bacon, but I do have to buy it.  Occasionally I might like a few bacon crumbles (the bacon bits in the can are good enough) in potato soup, but that’s as far as it gets. Grease and salt are two things my body doesn’t need much of.   But for Jerry, bacon- full fat, greasy, lardy bacon- is essential to maintain his well-being.  Jerry will eat bacon when he will not eat anything else.  It’s bad enough that he didn’t get his longhorn Colby cheese.  I will buy the store brand for $4.79 for an 8 ounce roll when it’s available, (even though that’s outrageous) but I refuse to pay $6 for 1/2 lb. of cheese, which is what the name brand cheese costs.  Call me cheap, but it’s a different world for those of us out there who have to pay for food with real money.

No high faluting fromage for you, Jerry.  It is, shall we say, trés beaucoup.

I did, however score a sale on American cheese slices before all the First of the Month Zombies scarfed them up. Not the plastic imitation ones, real American cheese made with real cow’s milk.  So, eat your grilled cheese and like it. It might be all you get.

Maybe it shouldn’t piss me off.  Usually I don’t give a rat’s ass about what other people have versus what I have or don’t have.  I don’t care about designer clothes.  I don’t care if I have the latest and greatest cell phone.  In spite of being a motorhead, I drive a Toyota Yaris.  My last performance car was the 2000 Celica which I still regret trading in.  I’ve never been an extravagant person.  Maybe that’s what pisses me off- working my ass off so other people can have what I can’t afford, for free.  I’ve never really aspired to having extravagant things, perhaps with the exceptions that I’ve always wanted to have an indoor pool, and I’ve always wanted to go on a cruise.

I wouldn’t mind finding him in my pool.  If I were to have an indoor pool, I would need a pool boy.

Maybe I should start my own foundation to help me- a sort of Send a Cougar to Camp type concept- help the disadvantaged old bitty who’s tired of getting trampled in the grocery store.  People could feel sorry for me and donate $5, $10, $20 and more to my PayPal account until I get enough money to get that indoor pool and go on my cruise.  Only I’d have to say I was running for President or something outlandish like that.  It worked for John Edwards, didn’t it?  He got a free mistress and paid for his illegitimate child through the gratuities of others.  I think the only major problem with that is I’m too honest and straightforward to get away with it.  No one is going to throw money at a potential presidential candidate who would tell people how it is.  I am not a very good liar.

Yes, there are two Americas.  Either you are the poor sucker who gets mowed down by the feeder hogs in the store on Welfare day, or you are the feeder hog.