...a brief interlude...

So there I was, hanging from a tiny branch over a mountain gorge with my pants around my ankles and one boot sailing to the ground thousands of feet below. The wind whipped wildly at my arms trying to tug me down and away from the ledge that hovered a tantalizing two feet above me. On that ledge stood my tormentor, the person that put me in this position, my latest archenemy.

It was a six-inch tall Beanie Baby named George.

I’m sure most of you remember Beanie Babies themselves from the furious uproar they caused nearly two decades ago in the late ‘90s as little old ladies warred over bargain bins with suburban moms in a carnage unmatched since the great Cabbage Patch Kid crush of ‘84. Well unlike the Cabbage Patch Kids this mania grew and grew as more special editions came out and supplies -- or manufacturing runs, whichever phrasing you prefer -- ran low causing nerves to fray and psyches to unravel.

It became father versus daughter, grandma against priest, rocker versus mod all over again as nations fought over these supplies. Little did we know that this was intended as a grand smoke-screen and nations barely noticed when President George W Bush tossed out the Constitution and took his seat as Emperor For Life along with his Court Jester Rummy and Princess Cheney. How were we supposed to know that hidden in some dummy corporation behind Mattel was actually the shadowy cabal known as The Masons and that they really were pulling all the strings? Maybe if the prophets of doom hadn’t been stinky hippies or nut cases with sandwich boards constantly reminding us "The End Is Nigh" we would have taken things more seriously!

At least we didn’t have to worry about Bush and company for long since it appeared the Beanie Babies were done being crushed against well-padded chests, shoved under a nine-year-old’s sheets or displayed in little plastic domes on top of curio cabinets. The opening salvo was fired the night of June 30, 2012 when a Beanie Baby whose identity has been shrouded by the passing years finally got sick of this whole hullabaloo and willed itself into life. It wasn’t long before other inanimate objects in semi-humanoid form realized they could do the same. It was only folks like me that didn’t totally freak out and took to torching vast seas of fake fur and jellybean eyes in an attempt to stop the further propagation of what had become mankind’s greatest foe.

We had the upper hand for a while until few weeks ago when the dirty furry little bastards came out with a new video game (Grand Theft Auto: Super Mario Brothers Twelve - damn our human weakness!) and most of the resistance died down until there was only one clear thinking human left…me. The Beanies hadn’t counted on someone actually being so burned out by video games and mass consumer culture -- hell even PETA had fallen in line after the "Pin The Tail On The Rancher" arcade game came out -- until I surfaced and caught them by surprise. I had ‘em on the run for a spell.

Well obviously things aren’t going so well for me know. You see the little bastards somehow divined my own weakness and blind-sided me. I mean the last Starbucks closed down in late 2005 so I thought I was clear and clean of that particular addiction but those fuzzy little demons resurrected the Venti Skim Latte and held me in their thrall long enough to wheel me over this cliff’s edge. And above me there was George, mocking me.

"Who would’ve thought humanity’s last chance would fall due to a cup of coffee, eh?" taunted George.

Damn you Starbucks! Damn you dirty Beanie Babies! Damn you all to hell!