Crap in a can

HEY, BALLOONS BURN!

Last Thursday, the OC Reg reported once again on our county’s BIG ORANGE BALLOON (BOB). Now, I like BOB. I’ve been pumping BOB up for months.

Yesterday afternoon, Rebel Girl called me from the very foot of BOB. She and the gang were planning to take a BOB ride, but the wind was up and so BOB was grounded.

Then, last night, I noticed a news story entitled Two people confirmed dead in hot-air balloon tragedy, near Vancouver.

The story is awful. It includes phrases like “big ball of fire.” How can that be?

Shouldn’t these balloons be fireproof? I mean, what with the abject Hindenburgitude of the very idea of a friggin’ BALLOON, I just assumed they were! —But no. Not that one in Vancouver, anyway.

CRAP IN A CAN:

A couple of weeks ago, I was visiting my sister at the hospital. Owing to her kidney failure, she was required to drink some crap in a can. She told me about it. “What’s it called?” I asked.

“Beneful, I think,” said Fannie. “Something like that.”

I said: “Beneful? Isn’t that the name of some kinda dog food?”

Turns out this “Beneful” has a truly disgusting taste. It even smells bad. It was stinkin’ up the room.

Fannie’s friend Angela came by and sipped some of it. She gagged. (To be honest, Angela does more than her share of puking and gagging.)

Turns out lots of patients are routinely given this drink along with their lunchtime rubber chicken. It wasn’t just Fannie.

So Fannie told the doctors, “Listen, this Beneful tastes like shit. I guarantee that nobody’s drinking it.”

They stared. They sniffed it. They looked at each other. They stared some more.

Near as I can tell, it was later determined that, probably, lots of patients were dumping their Beneful instead of drinking it, cuz, well, it really does taste like shit. Medically, that was very bad, it seems.

Evidently, nobody had bothered to say that their daily Beneful tasted like shit. Some just held their noses and drank it. Others just passed on it. Nobody in that hospital had put two and two together.

MORE CRAP IN A CAN:

All this talk of post-Hindenburgian burning balloons and idiotic crap-in-can imbibery reminds me of our district and Raghu P. Mathur’s new contract. Somebody told me that there’s a rumor that Raghu has installed bulletproof glass in his office. If so, then at least he understands the absurdity of his new contract. You’ve gotta give him credit for that.

There’s a BOARD OF TRUSTEES meeting tomorrow night.

I perused the agenda.

The trustees are poised to adopt the Final Budget for 2007-2008 and a whole slew of new or improved board policies.

Among “information items”:

• Draft responses to the Accreditation reports (on the two colleges)
• The cost of security cameras

I’ll try to be there. I must be nuts.