Pineapples. Pineapples are a lot like tornadoes, except instead of causing it to rain frogs, they just taste good. That's true, though. Tornadoes can travel over a pond or swamp and cause it to rain frogs later. If somebody could figure out how to control the weather, they could probably use it to save a lot of jet fuel by driving tornadoes over munitions dumps and then over, say, Iraq. If they got really good at it, they could drive tornadoes over pineapple trees and make it rain pineapples. Which reminds me...pineapples are my favorite fruit, except maybe for Richard Simmons.
So I was in the store the other day and they were selling pineapple. They were $8.99 each, which is way more expensive than I recalled. This pissed me off so much that I picked up a nearby coconut and threw it at the nearest panda bear, who started chewing me out in fluent Portugese. I was surprised, because I didn't know that pineapples and coconuts grew on the same tree.
The $8.99 phenomenon pisses me off. Why can't it just cost $9? If you ask some marketing people (whom I love and adore in the same way that I love and adore having my flesh gnawed off by rats carrying the plague) they'll tell you it's because "it creates the illusion of a lesser cost." This is because marketing people are just morons who failed all of their math classes. It's not an illusion—$8.99 costs less than $9.
At this point, the panda was pretty pissed, and my Portugese translator was trying desperately to keep the peace. Since I don't speak Portugese, I just kept doing what I was doing all along (throwing coconuts at the panda). Apparently the discussion wasn't going well because the panda lashed out and mauled my translator, but just then a drunk driver slammed through the glass windows in front of the supermarket and knocked over a giant display of Campbell's soup. Since panda bears love nothing more than cream of mushroom soup, he was distracted and I made my escape into the parking lot where an evil genius was landing in his helicopter, and the fish that were falling from the sky were getting sliced up by the rotors. I thought it could only rain frogs.
I dove into the helicopter, dodging several more drunk drivers, and we lifted off. Since I was now helpless in the clutches of the evil genius himself, he felt it necessary to make me privy to all of his evil schemings. He had a nefarious plot to kill all of the stupid people in the world by assassinating all of the world's sober drivers. Because of this, drunk people would have nobody else to drive them home, and would ultimately die in fiery car crashes. However, the evil genius, genius as he is, had no idea how to assassinate all of the world's sober drivers. He looked to me for the solution, which, of course, I had.
The best way to kill a sober driver, of course, is to get him drunk. This is admittedly genius, but really not all that evil. It sounds more like something Nathan would come up with. Either way, though, the most efficient way to get a person drunk is with pina coladas, since half of the ingredients grow on one frickin' tree. The trick is to grow the tree in a basin of rum and when it falls over, you've got a whole lot of pina colada ready to serve.
There are two major problems with this. The first, of course, is panda bears. Mass hunting of the pineapple would lead to destruction of their natural habitats, forcing more and more panda bears into urban environments where they have little choice but to take jobs as manual laborers. Their children further clog the inner-city school systems, and they are often too poor to live on a diet of more than a few sparse vegetables.
The second problem is the price of pineapples, which would skyrocket. Prices might increase as much as from $1.99 to $2, which most marketing people will admit is "significantly more expensive, at least when you account for this illusory voodoo." Oh wait, marketing people don't know what illusory means.
It's still a good plan, and well worth the risks. So then as we watched some drunken drivers crash into some humble panda pedestrians, I asked Nathan where the heck he got a helicopter.
