We're on our way to Connecticut, and we stop off at a rest stop to get some supplies. I pick up some shit and some other shit and then I spy some jerky that I know. It's pretty good jerky, as far as store-bought jerky goes. Also, it's hot as a mufuckle -- like, I eat it in sub-nickel-size bites or I start hiccoughing.

Eventually I find myself at the cash register transacting business with a dark-haired kid of indeterminate nature and description. It's pretty clear to me, all things considered, that this kid is going to pass into and out of my life with seamless indifference, another noise-making animated piece of retail furniture, so I'm surprised when this cashier/human sees the jerky and makes an observation.

I'm surprised because it sounds, to my distracted elsewhere-gazing mind, wry.

I like observations. I especially like wry ones. They smack of wit. They're like sincere and legitimate high-fives from fellow befuddled beings channelling a kind of semi-embittered micro-existentialism into an uplifting shared moment, an "are you seeing this crazy shit too?" kind of handshake.

He says, slowly, with what sounds like remote irony, "Death by jerky..."

Inspired by this unexpected display of derring-do, I offer a pointed observation of my own. "Ya think it's hot?" I quip with high trenchance.

Now, let me explain why I think this is all so potentially goddamn hilarious. Let's let you see what stimulus a nigger is operating off of.



That's the package. That jerky really comes right the fuck out and screams "HOT!" at you, and you really can't argue any differently -- I don't care who you think you are. It says "Death by jerky." Literally, death. As in, "your ass will die from the inside out, this jerky is that fuking hot, cowboy." It has a big muscular red bull front and center, and that bull is shooting loads of smoke out his goddamn nose. They had to go all the way back to 1955 and steal the smoke animation style from Warner Bros cartoons, do you realize that? This bull is the spiritual descendent of Marvin the Martian's rabbit-seeking A-bombs. That's how hot this jerky obviously is.

Maybe I'm misremembering the A-bomb bit. I can't find a picture of it. In any case: the packaging isn't subtle.

Naturally, then, I think we're quietly trading dryly clever barbs, ruminating together for just a brief spell on the psychological excesses of marketing, here at the cash register of this garish rest stop known for its cheap Indian reservation cigarette prices and hopefully the choice of colors that comprise its paint job.

"Ya think it's hot?" I've asked, and that fiendishly sardonic gambit hangs there for a bit. I eye him, possibly for the first time, certainly the first time I'm paying attention, curious to see how this is all going to wrap up. I watch his eyes bore into the text on the package.

"Nah..."

Oh, a return volley. I'm all ears.

"If it was hot, it'd prolly say like, tobacco or somethin on it... you know?"

Yes, I do know.

I've been led astray yet again.

Cash-register-thing, you will always haunt my memory.