How bad can it be?

I like beef jerky.

I come from a long line of jerky eaters.

Honestly, the prospect of a food that requires zero preparation on my part that most quickly satisfys my hunger and lets me get on with the business of living my life appeals to me. I can get to the bathroom, refill my Diet Coke and snag a chunk of jerky in a two minute commercial break and be back to watching television without missing a single whine, dramatic eyebrow or, "we need to ask Grissom", but I digress.

Yep, jerky appeals to my lazy side.

I have a friend that makes jerky, and it's pretty damn good, he puts a lot of work into it. Which is why the sorry bastard doesn't get his ass around to doing it but once in a blue moon, so I have to make due with the commercially available jerky at the juggernaut of the retail world, Wal-Mart.

So, I'm going down the aisle last weekend, doing my best to avoid the snivelling toddlers with dirty faces and sticky substances in their hands and the little old ladies with their blue hair and shopping carts filled to overflowing with Christmas crap and I spot a bag of what purports to be "buffalo jerky".

Ok, I'll bite, I'm curious, after all, how bad can it be?

So I get home and settle down to watch a videotaped episode of Jerry Springer, (yes, I'm borderline white trash, no I don't live in a trailer, well, actually, I don't live in a trailer anymore, but that's besides the point, anyway) I've got my glass of Diet Coke and my bag of newly found dried meat goodness at my side and as yet another toothless wonder starts tossing her overly processed, black roots at least a foot long hair around calling her mother (sister, cousin, doesn't really matter) a fucking whore I absentmindedly tear open my jerky snack and pop a piece in my mouth.

Hey, it's jerky. I've been eating jerky since I had teeth, I love the stuff.

But, something seems altogether wrong about buffalo jerky.

It's got a taste that Diet Coke won't kill.

It's got a taste that peanut butter filled pretzels won't kill. (Yes I eat all kinds of white trash food when I'm watching Springer.)

I'm starting to think that running outside and eating grass like a dog to get the taste out of my mouth as a viable option, but I made it to the bathroom and a bottle of generic Listerine type mouthwash first.

I'm reading the pack of the package thinking that surely something as truly majestic as a buffalo, an animal that supported an entire culture of indiginous people on our continent before white settlement, couldn't taste that FON-KEE.

Ingredients: Buffalo meat soaked in a beef puree solution.

My neighbor has a dalmation named Sparky that he lets run loose.

Sparky really enjoyed that package of buffalo jerky.

Good doggy.

Well, the good news is that I found three pair of amazing party shoes on Saturday.

The bad news is that I found them at this completely shit ass department store that used to be the only thing going in this part of the country and a lot of the sales staff still likes to think that they are the only store around.

This store is so asshat that the show department is basically self service. Twelve days before Christmas and there are two people working in the department. This means that one person is running back and forth retrieving shoes from stock and the other person is ringing up sales on both registers so they'll both get commissions for the day. Anyway, I'm getting all the shit I've been lugging around all morning in one of the chairs and getting my tennis shoes off while my mom takes the prospect out of the boxes and I pull on a footlet, which is realy just a cheap assed peice of ugly suntan pantyhose that has been stitched closed on one end. They must make those out of leftover panythose stuff.

I was just about to start complaining about this fucking department store and their stuffy staff and their fucking practically self service shoe department when I looked down at my feet.

I've got nail polish slopped all over my cuticles, and on my skin. My nails are too long, I can't remember the last time I clipped them. (Shit, I didn't clip them the last time they got clipped, the wonderful Athena did that for me.) My heels are rough and I've got some massive callouses on the sides of my big toes and I haven't shaved my legs in about eight weeks.

I actually refrained from complaining about self service shoes at that point.

My mom and I got a good laugh about it later over lunch.