Hi Fi Parasol

Possibly the best thing about our nation’s current festival of pecuniary insolvency — other than getting to watch elected officials sweat through their suit jackets as they try to explain why we may soon need to offer corporate naming rights to national parks and, eventually, individual constitutional amendments — is that all of the big chain restaurants are trying their damnedest to keep us all coming back for more servings of beef tallow and corn syrup. Mostly, they’re doing this by plying our mailboxes with coupons.

Sadly, I’ve given the bastards exactly what they want. I have used these coupons, in bulk. In the past few weeks, I have eaten at Denny’s, El Pollo Loco, and Arby’s, and I’m seriously considering an inaugural trip to Ono Hawaiian Barbecue. If Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen were a big pile of semidigested stomach contents, it would be mine. It’s disgusting.

I’d like to say that I’ll try harder not to be taken in by such deals in the future, but of course I will. And I use the word “deals” with the most athletic of eye-rolls, since I know I’ll be paying an even greater price for these meals ten or twenty years from now, when I shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars to my neighborhood bypass surgeon or oncologist, who very likely won’t offer coupons. I mean, those guys have boat payments to make!

Anyway, the coupons have their hold on me. I’ll let you know when my heart explodes.