Jeremiah's School of Levitation

So, I was sitting there enjoying my $2.95 slice of pizza and I realized that I'm eating a TWO NIN-EY FIVE DOLLAH SLICE A PIZZA and I'm realizing that I may have just found yet another racket.

See, I keep a list of rackets. I call them rackets because they are the various economic gotchas in this world that we, for some reason, sit back and deal with, as the racketeers slowly screw our thumbs. We peel money out of our linty pockets and pay money to these rackets, each dollar disintegrating in a flaming poof. The poof sound, though, is often drowned out by a disembodied giggle sound. That giggle is coming from the racketeer, who can't believe that you will actually pay three bucks for a slice of pizza, but who will continue to charge it to you as long as you continue to pull your wallet out in a trance and fling your money into their satin-lined pockets, and they won't even do a dance for you.

Pizza is nothing but a cheap mess that you make on some flattened dough. It used to be the perfect date/party food for me to make during my "Yeah, I'll Take $1.17 of Gas, Please" years. All I needed to do when someone was coming over was to buy a prepared pizza shell and then just throw my leftovers in it and add tomato sauce and cheese and, VEE-OLA, I had pizza. My guests/dates would eat it and smile and say, "Wow, this is great! What kind of pizza is it?" And I'd want to say "Well, it's a bologna, chop suey, fried chicken, birthday cake, and mac and cheese pizza! That'll be $3 a slice!" Instead, I just said, "Oh, secret recipe that Mom used to make, while she was in the Pizza Mafia!"

If you screw up dinner, don't fret. Just dump it on some dough, smother it with cheese, and bellow "Hey Family, guess what? Daddy just made some...[snicker]...pizza! Come and get it! And, don't ask any questions!"

So, I'm adding pizza to the list of rackets. I've seen $18 large pizzas at the local hoity toity pizzarias in town, and a mess on dough that you charge 18 bucks for qualifies as a RACKET. And, by the way, why does adding "ria" to your store name give you the right to hike up the price of everything by five bucks? I can just see going into a place to buy some water and getting charged 6 bucks for a bottle and getting a little irate and the waifish cashier with the twenty-ton attitude shrugging and saying "Hey, THIS place is a water-ria. You can take your unhip self down to the 7-11 if, I don't know, you're a little down on your luck this week and can't afford the BEST water."

So, there.

By the way, in case you were wondering, here are my top five rackets:

1. Plumbing. Just to have a plumber come over and say, "Hi, I'm the plumber" costs as much as a night out, with a babysitter. If you go nuts and actually have them touch one of your pipes (DON'T insert lewd thought here), then, if you listen carefully, you can hear your bank account flushing.
2. Cereal. This has gotten better, but, still, five bucks for some sugar coated corn is problematic. I think Kellog used to be a stand-up who kept getting booed offstage and is now exacting his revenge.
3. Real estate/investment seminars. Now, if getting rich was so simple, why are these guys touring the country, doing seminars, and selling tapes on how you too can get rich instead of them just sitting at home and just going about their business of getting rich? You don't see Bill Gates going around telling people how to start a massive tech company do you? No. These seminars ARE what get these people rich. Come to my seminar and I'll tell you how they do it.
4. Pizza. See above.
5. Cruise ships. They don't let you bring your own alcohol on board, but will gladly sell it to you at prices that are usually about half your salary, in drinks that wouldn't get a lab rat drunk. Meanwhile, you get to stop at ports of call that, in comparison, sell alcohol for free.

Okay, I'm done. Gotta go. My half-a-Big Mac pizza is done.

here you can't get just a slice... you gotta buy the whole pie! and it's usually not that exceptionally fantastic...

we gorge on American pizza and burgers when we come home...

go Steelers! :)))

I like paying $10.00 for a hamburger from a locally based chain featuring a large red bird as their mascot. I'm sticking to Dicks. And i donlt have to hear cheerful waitrons singing happy birthday to every 3rd table.

Badoozer is right. Coffee is a racket. Movie Popcorn is the granddaddy racket of them all. Who'da thunk all that fluffy goodness is the REAL reason for landfill overcrowding, obesity, IBS, divorce and I don't know, sweat marks in the pits of your tux...global warming and El Niño or something...

'"Yeah, I'll Take $1.17 of Gas, Please" years.'

Those were the days... only... in my day it was $2.00.

My Dad remembers pumping fuel at a penny-a-gallon.

Imagine how many Big Macs you could buy with all that extra money!

Ipod: Pizza and burgers are our specialty over here, however racket-ized. When our families collide one of these days for a barbeque, I'll grill you up a Jeremiah special burger that'll make you go "Oh yeah."

Susiedooz: Yep. Rackets succeed because we show up at their door, just asking for it.

Meno: Yeah, and isn't it funny that the red bird's name is also a synonym for "the act of stealing your money?" Go, Dicks! No wonder there's a line outside there all the dang time.

Emma: OH YEAH! How could I forget movie popcorn?! Especially since, whenever I buy popcorn at the movies (sucka!), I always ask the cashier if I can just make monthly payments on it.

TG: The Poor Days, it was. I once scrounged up .38 cents from behind my car seat just to get me and a date home. I got my date home, at least, which earned me some points.