Eggos and Tylenol and Guns, Oh My!

I am sitting on my couch, drinking a cup of coffee and I have just finished off two Eggos that I retrieved from the back of my freezer. I am watching The Great British Baking Show. It’s vegan week, which means that it’s a total shit show in the tent.

Did you know there was an Eggo shortage in 2009? Could you imagine? Those were really hard times. Yes, tens of thousands of acres in California are burning, and this is coming at the heels of a mass shooting in the Southern California neighborhood of Thousand Oaks, which came on the heels of a mass shooting in a Synagogue in Pittsburg. BUT NO EGGOS? There apparently was a listeria contamination (listeria is just a fancy bacterium that makes you sick to your stomach) in the beloved Eggo factory. To remedy this listeria and stop the hysteria, the Atlanta Eggo plant was shut down for cleaning, and voila! No more listeria and the Eggos were back in the hands of children and sad, single 36-year-olds all over the world.

Remember in 1982 when a bunch of people died from taking Tylenol capsules laced with cyanide? Then we all had to stop taking Tylenol. COULD YOU IMAGINE NOT BEING ABLE TO GET RID OF A HEADACHE? Don’t worry. We eventually developed tamper-resistant packaging, like those fucking seals I can never get off, and we stopped making pills that you could easily open and put some poison in.

Remember when you could drink a bottle of gin and then take your Oldsmobile out for a spin? THAT SOUNDS SO FUN!!! But then a 25-year-old London taxi driver named George Smith was arrested for drunk driving after slamming his cab into a building, and the fun was ruined. Mr. Smith was jailed in 1897, and finally, 13 years later in 1910, we here in the US wised up and started adopting some laws against driving under the influence. Although, it didn't stop Don Draper from sipping on an Old Fashioned, and then hitting the road; but then again, nothing could stop Don Draper from doing anything.

Remember when a man killed 35 people in Port Arthur, Australia with a semi-automatic weapon in 1996? The youngest victim was 3 and the oldest was 72. OMG THAT’S SO SAD. In response to this shooting, the government enacted strict ass gun laws. I mean it’s hard to own a gun in Australia, and when you do own one, you have to renew your license every 3-5 years. In addition to these laws, they bought back a ton of guns from people and then destroyed them. Yet, here in the U.S. of A, we are good at ignoring problems (Remember when Reagan ignored the AIDS epidemic?). Not to mention, we’ve got the good ole’ "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" amendment that we live, breathe, and quite literally die by.

This week’s shooting in Thousand Oaks marked the 307th mass shooting in the US in 311 days. 328 people died in those incidents, and 1,251 were injured. I feel like far less lost their lives to Eggos (if any) in the great Eggo shortage of 2009, and we were on top of that crisis like a former Bachelorette contestant is on top of a chance to unbox something. That being said, I am sure many Eggos were lost, and well, EGGOS ARE FAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN PEOPLE ANYWAY.

And so, I have come up with a solution to make everyone happy: For every gun you hand back to the government, you get a lifetime supply of Eggos. I call it the "Give a gun, get an Eggo" Program.

You're welcome.