I Need To Spend Less Money On Food
Sometimes we take for granted the luxuries we have in this country. How do you think the guy in Third World feels when he thinks about Americans stuffing our faces full of delicious, chemically-enhanced-so-as-not-to-spoil food goodness? Food, for me at least, has become a problem and I need to eat less of it. My food budget has lately gotten out of control, and I've got bigger fish to fry. Blow, for one.
It's not like food is the only thing people have to spend money on. I have other needs like my high maintenance coke habit, my occasional foray into PCP and the special-occasions-only gasoline huff. With gas prices the way they are these days, you’ve really got to cut corners in other places when you're inhaling super-premium at $3.19 a gallon (and I can go through three or four a week if I'm out of other things like glue, mescaline or paint thinner – a gallon just doesn't go as far as it used to!).
Food must account for at least 5% of my weekly budget, and that's what my guidance counselor used to call a "red flag", which is a sign of addiction. My reliance on food to get me through the day has gone too far and I've decided that I need professional help.
For help, I'm going to go to my friend Jefferson who lives on the other side of town, and has his own weight-loss program that he says is 100% guaranteed to work. He won't give me his secret recipe, but he has let on that all he does is cook up a mixture of various household cleaning products and over-the-counter medicines from your local drug store, and – poof! – you've got a smokeable one-stop, sure-fire cure to eating too much, provided you can fend off the refrigerator when it comes to life and starts barking at you. He says that his Magic Soma can also cure excessive sleepiness, solve self-confidence problems and end world hunger. Too bad the little kids in Africa can't get their hands on this stuff.
Let's be honest – modern life is hard. Balancing all of our activities can't be done with 16 measly waking hours (just yesterday I had to score some rock, finish re-learning how to tie my shoes and still make it to work at the nursing home before my hallucinations got too bad), and that's when you've got to start simplifying, like some great philosopher once said. Wouldn't it be great if we didn't have to eat, and no one had to worry about things like what restaurant to go to, what to buy at the grocery store and, "Can I afford this can of beans with the money left over from that H that Lou sold me?"
Not only is it good for you to not eat, but also it benefits everyone. I don't know what anyone else is doing about solving world hunger, but I'm doing my part – you'll never see me taking a loaf of bread out of an orphan's hands to feed my own selfish appetite (though I might ask him if he had any cough syrup on him). After a three-day bender on Jefferson's Secret Sauce (he calls it so many things! Crystal, chalk, zip, hype, gack… must be some kind of inside joke that I don’t get) the last thing on my mind was eating. Even then, I found the perfect substitute for chewing on food – fingernails! They might not be found in any of the two major food groups (food or drink), but they're the one renewable resource that we can always count on, which can't be said for meat, dairy or microwaveable products that are better off in the mouths of needy children and orphans and in mine.
If I knew what a hard time I'd have kicking food, I never would have started. Even reducing the vast amount of money I spend that should be going to other things would be a start, but sometimes even a healthy diet of diet pills can't do the trick. With America being so heavy that it's in danger of sinking into the ocean, more Americans should take it from me: after going through three or four nychthemerons without more than a pretzel, you start finding yourself falling back into old, bad habits (like breakfast). Don't do it! With gas prices as high as they are (which is just about as high as I am – hee!) and food shortages all over the world, it’s not too much to ask to help take a bite out of world hunger and begin living by the 3 R's: Reduce, Rev Up and Reds.
