The Fridge Militia aka The Claim Committee For Clean Food Storage

Superman’s cape. A dog’s food bowl. Yellowcake Uranium. Every child knows these are things you just don’t mess with. This morning at work, a chance meeting and an innocent quip has prompted The Captain to add one more thing to this list: the workplace fridge.

As I walked past the mini canteen area this morning, I saw a dumpster surrounded by a gaggle of gals in front of the communal fridge. As you know, the unusual excites me, so I paused to take in the scene to try and make sense of it. This was not your typical quarterly fridge purge. This was a grass roots organization of employees who were sick and tired of the status quo. The Fridge Party, as I like to call them, were exercising their rights under the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution to assemble in public and freely and openly bitch about all the disgusting slobs who regularly mistake the fridge for a long term storage locker or makeshift science lab, or the lonely bachelors who intentionally leave food in the fridge just so they can experience what married men do and see a woman clean up after them. They call themselves the Claim Committee for Clean Food Storage (CCFCFS). I heard they may be on the Terrorist Watch list.

Normally, a large trash barrel is used for the purge but our cleaning militia had brought in the heavy artillery: a portable dumpster. In the past, crudely written flyers filled with elaborate food storage rules and threats of tossing perfectly good food containers and insulated lunch bags would be posted periodically; occasionally someone would even post something mildly humorous. Nevertheless, the offending parties were gambling on the power of OCD, waiting for the CCFCFS members to be overcome by their disorder and chuck the old food, wash and dry the containers, and leave them neatly on the counter to be anonymously retrieved, along with a nasty note like my Mom used to write to me predicting that I would one day catch Salmonella and die a slow and painful death. Still here Mom!

But this time was different. I saw them actually take sturdy plastic Rubbermaid and Tupperware containers and drop them into the dumpster. Silverware. Igloo lunch bags insulated with toxic material. All discarded and destined to clutter our landfill for centuries to come, left for the OCD offspring of the CCFCFS to manage. Throughout this ejaculation of plastics, it seemed to The Captain that the committee members were extracting an unhealthy measure of joy in the performance of their duties, as if the bitter resentment of the past several years was slowly oozing out like pus from an infected wound.

They’d hung some official looking laminated signs, one with a set of rules that Stalin would be proud of, and one that looked like some sort of Manifesto outlining the crucial role of clean food storage in maintaining social order, protecting the sanctity of the marriage and keeping the masses pure and free of food poisoning. There was even a poster filled with photos of moldy and decrepit food containers, like some lineup book at the police station, waiting for eyewitnesses to come by and finger the offending storage criminals, a grim reminder for the scofflaws who dare to leave that leftover tuna sandwich in the fridge.

Being me, I assumed they were having a little fun with the whole thing and quipped, “Hey, it’s the Fridge Police!” Mistake. Instantly, four pairs of raging eyeballs were burning holes through my skull. Fortunately, the Men’s Room was just around the corner, so I immediately took refuge and locked my self in the nearest stall for good measure.

Three hours later, the coast was clear (for the record, my work productivity did not take a hit, as all I missed was a couple Project Iteration Team update meetings. For the uninitiated, this means I missed NOTHING, if by nothing you mean continually being asked for feedback about really cool computer applications that our IT team has neither the budget nor the expertise to ever actually build). The militia had retreated into the proverbial hills, but the revolution had been a success. The fridge was spotless and completely empty. It appears our brown baggers prefer to take their chances with food poisoning rather than risk incurring the wrath of the CCFCFS.

Believe The Captain when he says: Stay out of the Fridge!

Yours investing in Cooler packs,

The Captain

What's All the Fuss About?

The Captain has been taken by surprise by the vitriol engendered by the local news story below. The sensational mainstream media once again has taken a mundane non-event and blown it up like the overstretched bladder of an aging, hobo rummy. Never one to pass on an opportunity to defend the underdog, I offer the following apologia for our everyman from Massachusetts. See apologia commentary below in red.

Police say Mass. man offered to give 3-month-old daughter to maintenance man for 2 beers.

CHICOPEE, Mass. (AP) — Authorities say a Massachusetts man offered to give his 3-month-old daughter to a maintenance man outside a gas station convenience store in exchange for a pair of 40-ounce beers. The author betrays his bias by failing to point out the incredible generosity of our alleged sinner. There are couples who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for fertility treatments or for actual babies like the one so selflessly offered up by our shopper. Why should he be excoriated for refusing to participate in the shameful practice of adoption profiteering? I can’t even remember how many times I’ve unsuccessfully offered people cash money to take my kids. Or even if you take a more cynical view and accuse our man of devaluing human life by trading one for a couple of beers, I would remind you jaded souls that that they were two forties! A regular beer is 12 ounces, so even the mathematically challenged can figure out that this savvy businessman would have been up 16 ounces had the deal gone down. That’s a win any way you look at it.

Chicopee police say 24-year-old Matthew Brace of Northampton made the offer on Monday. The maintenance man called police, who found Brace hiding with the girl behind a trash container. He wasn’t hiding, just employing some hardscrabble negotiating tactics which, in my estimation, could have netted him the forties and an extra pack of cigarettes had the stupid state worker not butted in and ruined the deal.

State child welfare officials took the baby into custody. Think about the irreparable damage the welfare state has done to this poor girl; she could have been with a family who bargained for her, or, more importantly, grown up and attended parties where she would be able to regale guests with the cool story about being swapped for a pair of Colt 45s!

Police say Brace was not arrested but will be summoned to court to face a charge of reckless endangerment of a child. Speeding. Running a stop sign. Bartering with a baby for booze. If I’m Brace I’m framing this one! A phone number for him could not immediately be found.

The child's mother was in the store at the time buying cigarettes. She has not been charged. Of course not; she knew better than to try and swap the kid for some Camels. If you think kids are expensive, you should try supporting a smoking habit. That’s right – have another forty!

Believe The Captain when he says: Bartering is a lost art in America.

Yours settling for 12 ouncers,

The Captain

The Captain's Ark

There are some things that just belong together: peanut butter and fluff, cats and dogs, penicillin and gonorrhea. These are the obvious ones, but when The Captain fills his ark in anticipation of the world’s end, it will be filled with wondrous yet conundrous pairs only he can imagine (yes, “conundrous” is a made up word, here meaning a boatload of conundrums, which, for my adolescent readers, are not condoms and will not prevent pregnancy).

So which pairs get a ticket to board The Captain’s Ark to oblivion?

· A capuchin monkey and a South American Condor – breed the world’s smallest monkey with the world’s largest aviary and what do you get? Flying monkeys!! I couldn’t imagine starting a brave new world without them.

· MacKenzie Philips and Kurt Cobain; this couple has no redeeming value for any civilization. They’re on board strictly for entertainment – it’ll be fun to see how long it takes MacKenzie to detox and figure out that Kurt’s a stiff (a little insurance in case MacKenzie gets amorous and wants to breed).

· Tyra Banks and Sean Penn. Gasoline and Fire. If we survive the journey, it would be kind of fun to give these two their own island paradise, tell them to play Adam and Eve, and come back in a few hundred years to see what became of The Captain’s social experiment. Couldn’t do any worse than the originals. Then again…

· Pat Robertson and RuPaul. If the theological dialogue isn’t already interesting enough, tune in to see how Pat handles the sexual tension in the room. Eventually (I think) Pat will figure out that he can’t spread his seed with the attractive drag queen. This couple is the ultimate barometer for a new society; if they can manage to get along, there’s hope for us all. If not, I made sure to order a fleet of fully stocked Bud Light trucks to transition smoothly to the world’s end

· An Opossum and an Eagle. I guess I just feel sorry for all those blind Opossums who keep getting hit by motorized wheelchairs in the middle of the night (I’ve always suspected that marauding bands of sadistic senior wheelchair gangs chase down Opossums at night as part of some twisted AARP initiation right). An Opossum/Eagle hybrid would have excellent eyesight, no?

· Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie, and Brad Pitt. I am fully aware this is a threesome and not a couple, but I’m fairly confident we’ll have an even number by journey’s end. My money’s on Jolie sending Jenn into the abyss. But hey, anything could happen at sea. Pitt could end up the odd man out as lobster food and the new world gets Jenngelina.

· Simba and Miss Teen South Carolina. I’ve always wanted to breed a sphinx. Simba…obviously the male lion. Miss Teen South Carolina? She’s young, pretty, human, and dumb enough to do it.

· Barack Obama and Sarah Palin. OMFG.

Believe The Captain when he says: flying monkeys rule!!

Yours singing Hakuna Matata,

The Captain