Buy Rots of Stuff This Horroday Season

Loosely translated Chinese.

The other day, I picked up 5 things in a Walmart store. Every item was made in China. Except some plastic hangars. I bought those. I think it's a sign that America is on the comeback trail.

Someday, Walmart will become the next Woolworth's. That is the life cycle of things. Until then, I love Walmart for a couple of reasons. Four dollar prescriptions and deer whistles. I like the four dollar prescriptions because I no longer have to bribe my friends to pick up prescription drugs in Mexico and smuggle them back for me. My friends seem more approachable now. It is a fascinating thing indeed that drug makers have found a way to sell their drugs ten times cheaper in Mexico and still make a profit. Of course, in America we must protect those profit margins by tacking on that additional 1000% cost over the blood curdling screams of research and development costs. With patent protection for 20 years. Call it a Mexican subsidy.

Ever see a a drug company go out of business? Even when they manage to maim or kill a segment of the population with something like Fen-phen? Wyeth took the hit for the Fen-phen debacle even offering monstrous settlements of 5000-200,000 dollars. They promised to pay even more if you became a vegetable or died. Wyeth set aside 21.1 billion for that little detour and gave great thanks for those protected research and death development costs.

A deer whistle is a small plastic device that is chrome colored and mounts somewhere on the front of a motorcycle via a big sticky pad on the bottom. They cost about 6.99, maybe 8.99 now. As air rushes through some constricted space, they emit some inaudible noise. That is the theory. They are not part of the CPI- because the price is often volatile and depends largely on the plastic supply in China.

My biggest knock on these things, is that for some reason they cannot withstand high pressure hoses at car washes. I have blasted more than a few of them out near the vacuum cleaners and down those grill covered drains. So it is, the Chinese and Walmart have had their way with me.

Nothing will make your asshole pucker more than a big muley buck bent on suicide, perhaps homicide, stepping onto the roadway in front of your motorcycle as you blast along at 70 MPH or so. When this happens, your life is now in the hands of a piece of plastic that may not even be clinging to your motorcycle. The deer whistle I am assured, is guaranteed to make deer piss themselves and flee en masse. I buy them religiously and encourage everybody I know to hunt.

Thankfully, the interstate system was constructed along corridors where WalMart has most of their stores. One day, having purchased one of these things in a Missouri store, I was outside sticking it on my radiator shroud. A kid with a Dale Earnhardt shirt walked by and asked me what I was doing. Kids like motorcycles and often grow up to be men who like motorcycles. When I told him what I was doing, he then asked me what a deer whistle was. I explained the theory to him and that deer apparently can hear these things, piss themselves, and flee. The kid asked me if deer whistles worked. I wasn't prepared for that. I looked at him and said, "well, I don't know kid. I can't hear the thing and I guess the only way to find out whether they work or not happens at the precise moment when I become involved in a motorcycle-highway-deer explosion. At that point, I guess I'll know." Kid says, "they make all that stuff in China, do they have deer there?" I told the kid, "I don't know."

I think I blasted that deer whistle off in a car wash in Rock Springs, Wy. I keep thinking I need to buy another one but for some reason I just haven't gotten around to it. That's how it is for me this year. Maybe if I wait long enough, someone in America will start making one and sell it to me for 20 bucks. Show those Chinese.

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