Quote of the Day:    “Chew a little Juicy Fruit.  Its good for the soul.”   — Jimmy Buffett

You know, I put a lot of effort in to making this blog a nice little escape from your daily grind.  I try really hard to make you chuckle a bit and to instigate some discussion about the little things in life.  But some days I can’t help myself and I go political.  And I’ll be damned if that’s not what raises the viewership count on the page.  But as I have known from the beginning, I’m really typing all this primarily to humor myself. (Must say, I am accomplishing THAT goal.)  I can’t say I’ll abandon politics altogether.  I’m just not that disciplined.  But I can run as far from it as possible after I get a little bit out of my system, which brings us all to the subject of bubble gum.

I love gum.  All kinds, but especially full sugar, fruity, long lasting, huge and loud bubble producing gum.  I even loved the little stick they used to put in Topp’s baseball cards.  I love original Double Bubble and Bazooka even though though they give me TMJ after about five good minutes.  The new pink lemonade Double Bubble and the other colorful flavors are fantastic, even if all the flavor is gone about the time my TMJ kicks in. The flavor goes quickly in Fruit Stripe too, but I’ll down a Plen T Pack of that any day.  I love the initial crunch of the Chiclet–miniature or squares–but I hate the price.  And I pick up a pack of Rain-blo any time I’m on the road.  Chew the whole thing with nowhere to spit and you will get a stomach ache, but its pure goodness while there’s still one more “orange” in the wrapper.

But all is not well in chewing gum world. We aficionados have been fending off attacks by the wacko dental lobby/tooth huggers for years, but that had sort of settled in to detente.  Our side even had a study come out years ago that chewing gum after a meal actually reduced tooth decay.  I think that might have been a side project of the Tobacco Research Council.  We even survived runaway inflation on gum prices as the boom times of the 1990’s kept enough cash in our pocket to fork out 79 cents for a pack or even a dime apiece. However it seems there is now a phantom menace.  I can’t find anything but plain jane Super Bubble any more, and even that is getting more difficult.  Where is all the gum going?  Are the Chinese and India markets opening up and syphoning the US supply?  Is it drought and flooding?  The Taliban?  

I have been to a Chevron, Kroger, Shell, and Target in the last two days looking for a fix.  Striking out–striking out! at each place in my search for bubble gum, I began to get desperate. Oh sure, they had Doublemint and Hubba Bubba, and Chevron even had Super Bubble, but I needed the good stuff, man.  So I headed to the shrine of all bubble gum repositories; a place that can always be counted on for both a wide selection and bulk packaging of gum–Walgreen’s.  I must’ve been in there thirty minutes wandering up and down the aisles.  A sympathetic clerk approached me with tampons and condoms and whispered, “is one of these what you need?”  I shook her off and resumed my search.  Finally, a $3.99 plastic baseball bat filled with those gumballs that have “single” and “strikeout” written on them.  They were the only bubble gum in the store.  I had no choice.  I shelled out for a fix.

It’s twelve pieces later and I feel better.  But I’ve got to stop now and massage my jaw.