A friend forwarded me this message, which I will lightly edit:
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If you have the nerve / stupidity / lack of concern for your body or just
find yourself starving at the wrong place at the wrong time, you can walk
into McDonalds and order their new Chicken Selects. They start with strips
of nice, lean breast meat, then proceed to bread it and fry it,(probably in
the same grease used for their Chicken McScraps), but hey ..... that's a
whole `nother story! (And probably why Bike Nashbar currently has all their
McDonald's logo'd clothing "drastically reduced"!)
The real story here is the box the Chicken Selects comes in. It features a
drop-bar tandem with a male pilot / female stoker both wearing helmets. But
guess what? She's not pedalling!! As a matter of fact, she doesn't even
have her feet on the pedals and the pilot is out of the saddle and appears
to be blowing hard to make up for her lack of effort!! This horrific
characterization, this "positional slight-ing", and in this case, even
sexist depicting of the person or persons, (triplets!), riding in positions
behind the pilot's MUST STOP!
Since many tandem couples are old hippies from the sixties, (like me, or
anyone who wears feathers or flagpole ornaments on their helmets, or rides
century rides in sandals while carrying a teddy bear), we harken back to the
days of true journalistic giants like Mad Magazine. In those days, every
entity had its own protest group, and Mad's was called S.W.I.N.E., which was
an acronym for, (yes, Virginia, there really were acronyms prior to the
internet!), Students Wildly Indignant About Nearly Everything! [1]
So, having this lofty example to guide them, stokers everywhere are uniting
under one banner to wage war on the white devil slave master McDonald's!
Their protest group is called S.H.A.M., (which stands for Stokers Hot At
McDonalds), and although they are relatively new, they already have a
rallying symbol, (since these days you simply HAVE to have one of those,
too)! The S.H.A.M.ers new symbol is a small bell that can be pinned
anywhere on your clothing, (since we're also all out of room on our wrists
and trunklids)! The S.H.A.M.ers call this bell the .... wait for it ...
don't get ahead of me ..... it's coming ..... you guessed it! ..... The
S.H.A.M.-a-lama Ding Dong!
Now, being a captain who supports his stoker in all ventures, I have already
joined in support of S.H.A.M. by purchasing my very own S.H.A.M.-a-lama Ding
Dong, and I'm amazed at how closly it matches the sound made by a McDonalds
cash register drawer when it opens! As a matter of fact, that also happens
to be the S.P.A.M.ers only protest method. They have no rallies, do no
picketing, nor organize any boycotts. They simply make themselves known to
kindred souls by responding to the sound of the S.H.A.M.-a-lama Ding Dong.
So, when you hear another S.H.A.M.er ring theirs, or perhaps you're in line
at McDonalds and hear the kid say, "that'll be $12.49, please" followed by a
ding that sounds remarkably like a S.H.A.M.-a-lama Ding Dong, you should
yell out at the top of your lungs, "SHAM!!!", and thereby all other
S.H.A.M.ers shall know you, (as well as multiple first responders like
police, fire, bomb squads, etc.)
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Warm Regards,
Claire Petersky
http://www.bicyclemeditations.org/
See the books I've set free at: http://bookcrossing.com/referral/Cpetersky
[1] S.W.I.N.E. was actually invented by Al Capp, and not Mad Magazine, but
we'll excuse this error at this time