Toledo Tales

A Guest Editorial by Nathan Higgins
4th Grader at St. Rose

Yeah, maybe Congress agreed to ban toxins found in children's products, but that doesn't mean that every kid has to have toxin-free toys. Like this dookie-head Kyle Henderson at my school, for one. You can leave every bit of the phthalates or nitroglycerin or botulism toxin in Kyle's toys, and no one would care.

Not only is Kyle a total pee-drinker, but even his parents can't stand him. They drop him off at St. Rose at 7:00 am for the Early Bird program, and he's like the last one to get picked up from the after-school program. Sometimes his parents even leave him there until Mrs. Kerstner gets mad and calls them to pick up Kyle in the middle of the night.

Sometimes I almost feel sorry for him, except he still watches Veggie Tales and baby stuff like that. I mean, what kind of LOSER still waves and sings with Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber any more? I stopped that like a million-zillion years ago, but Kyle still has a Junior Asparagus lunchbox.

D-W-E-E-B. That's how Kyle spells his middle name, and that's why it's OK to let him play with poisoned toys. Otherwise, he's going to go to junior high with that stupid lunchbox, and the big kids will just slaughter him, so this is like helping him out before his life goes completely nutso.

Labels: Veggie Tales

(Toledo, OH) Hopper, a local canine of uncertain ancestry, told Toledo Tales reporters that the source of a recent outbreak of Salmonella Saintpaul is your refrigerator.

"Definitely everything in your fridge is poison, dude," he said from behind a fence at the house next door. "If I were you, I'd dump all the food into that garbage can over there right away. You wouldn't want your children getting sick and dying, would you?"

Hopper added that - even though Salmonella bacteria were found at a distribution center in McAllen, Texas, and the distributor has agreed to recall the products - you shouldn't take chances with your family's health.

"Straight up, dude? Don't go there," he said, pausing to scratch behind his ear. "The best thing to do is throw out all your food, especially anything from the meat, grain, or dairy families. And if your can gets full, you can just toss that poisoned shit right here in my yard. I'll help you out, brother - I'm man's best friend, remember?"

His canine nose, Hopper said, is capable of detecting odors that humans cannot.

"And my schnozz is saying one thing right about now: BAD FOOD," he said. "The longer you wait, the more likely you will find yourself cradling the dead, twitching body of your young son Billy, saying to yourself: 'Why, oh WHY did I not listen to Hopper and throw out all that bad food??? Why did I have to make Billy eat that POISON???' I'm just trying to help, that's all. Say: are you going to eat those burgers you just grilled?"

Labels: Salmonella Saintpaul

Guest editorial by Frank Jacoby,
irritated waiter

Listen: waiting tables at the freaking Olive Garden wasn't exactly my idea of the best ways to spend my golden years, that's for damned sure. But just go ahead and try to get a better job when you're age 55 and you've been working at some shitty auto parts plant for 20 years and it closes up.

But I'll tell you one thing: I don't have to sit here and listen to you little 19-year-old faggots make "tossed salad" jokes when it's time to place your order.

You think just because I've got a few gray hairs I'm too old to know that "toss your salad" is a euphemism for anal prison rape? Or that when you ask if I have a "hot Italian sausage" that I don't know this is some thinly-veiled reference to my dick?

Here's a word for you: FUCK YOU. OK, that's two words, but I sure as shit am not going to stand here and have you little bastards insult me, and then turn around and leave a fifty-cent tip. You better pray I never see your punk asses outside of this restaurant, or I'll cave your fucking craniums with an aluminum softball bat.

And for your information:Ziti al Forno has nothing to do with acne, you little asswipes, and it's pronounced "ZEE-tee." If you're gonna be a bunch of smart-ass pricks, at least come up with something original, dipshits.

Labels: Olive Garden, waiters

Guest editorial by Jarold Hughes, pharmaceutical connoisseur

So I cut your grass and pulled the weeds around your fence and even hung up that stupid wind chime that blew down in the thunderstorm the other day, Grandma. I walked into your bathroom hoping to score a couple of quick pills, and BAM!

Empty cabinet.

Oh sure: you've got laxatives and vitamins and all sorts of useless douching products (I don't even want to THINK about that!), but all the good drugs you used to have?

There ain't SHIT in your medicine cabinet any more.

It wasn't that long ago when I could find a handful of Oxycontin to crush up and snort, or when I could open that magical mirrored door and find a full bottle of Xanax. But today, I leave Grandma's house empty-handed and annoyingly sober.

I mean, Christ - you haven't even got a bottle of Robitussin or NyQuil for a cheap buzz. What is the world coming to when a guy can't visit his infirm, elderly grandmother for a quick fix? And when Grandpa was still around, hanging on with the liver cancer, he used to have TONS of painkillers: good stuff, too, like Darvocet and Demerol, shit that could keep a young man like me flying for a week!

As far as I'm concerned, this is the worst kind of hospitality: after two hours of working around your house, the least you can do is keep your pills someplace I can find them. Now I've got to find a way to distract you so I can rifle through your underwear drawers.

And believe me - that's even worse than picking up the dog shit in the backyard.

Labels: addiction, drugs

(Toledo, OH) Local embellishment specialist Dwayne Baxter told Toledo Tales reporters that his experiences serving in the Marines during the Vietnam War have convinced him that Iraq War veterans are "a bunch of fucking pansies."

"Listen: I once watched a buddy get blown up while I was shaking his hand, and all that was left was a bloody forearm, still twitching while the rest of him was splattered across forty yards of a gook village," he recalled. "And the scariest shit? The dead guy's hand gripped mine even tighter for about ten seconds, like it was Walter's way of saying: 'Bro, take care, you hear?' Man, it don't get more fucked-up than that. But these Iraq War vets? A bunch of limp-wristed, skirt-wearing douchebags, if you ask me."

Baxter said that claims about posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among Iraq War vets are without merit.

"I ain't never seen such a group of pathetic, terrified-mutt ninnies as the PTSD types coming back from Iraq," he said, pausing to puff his Lucky Strike. "Back in 'Nam, it was either shit or get your fucking legs blown off by some bicycle-riding 10-year-old bomb-carrying girl who says: 'Mister, Mister' and then tosses a chunk of smoking C-4 in your face. BAM!!! Straight up: Vietnam was a MAN'S WAR, the kind of shit that separated the men from the diaper-wearing crybaby little bitches, not like this hand-wringing PTSD horseshit."

Baxter recalled a particularly gruesome scene from just outside Phnom Penh.

"We just finished this top-secret mission to take out some military officers when an artillery shell dropped in on us, taking out six good men from the platoon," he said. "Then this Viet Cong chick comes out of nowhere, grabs me by the crotch, and says: 'You fuck me NOW!' Before I know it, she's chomping on my Johnson like it's a buttered corn cob, and we're going at it like a couple of stray dogs, dig? And just as I am about to shoot my load, this crazy commie tells me to spooge it on her back while she starts humping my dead buddy Raymond's mangled thigh bone, sticking right through his torn pant leg. I says to myself: 'Fuck that!' And I grabbed my M-16 and blew her fucking head off, just as I am blasting off this geyser of man-juice all over my fatigues. Then, for just a second, Raymond's eyes open, and he gives me that little smile, and I knew right then and there I done the right thing with that Vietnamese whore. Now THAT'S some posttraumatic stress, mister."

Labels: Iraq War, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)