He: “I really don’t understand how these people stay in business.”
She: “Which people?”
He: “The ones giving away all this free stuff in their products. Shouldn’t they be charging for it?”
She: [Sigh] Sweetheart, haven’t we been through all this before?”
He: “Not us!”
She: “I could’ve sworn … Oh, never mind. They can’t afford to charge for it. Trust me on this. They’ve already got enough problems with public relations.”
He: “What? People don’t appreciate free stuff?”
She: “They can’t get to the stuff they paid for! Never mind the freebies!”
He: “They .. can’t .. get .. to .. the ..”
She: “Argh. Here. Read.”
He: “OK …”
She: “You go to the store. You buy the bottle. You bring it home. You open the bottle. You break the seal. And now you can’t use anything in the bottle, you have to go to the store and buy a new one!”
He: “Because …”
She: “Because just what it says on the bottle! You can’t use it! The seal’s broken!”
He: “I don’t like your chances of that.”
She: “Of what?”
He: “Of breaking seals! Those animals are as big as you and me, some of them a lot bigger. Where, and how, are you going to get a grip on them to break them? And it’s not like they’re going to take your trying to break them lying down. They’ll whack you and they’ll bite you, and if that don’t bowl you over, their breath sure as hell will! And as if that wasn’t enough, they’re protected! You think a seal bite is bad, you don’t want to have anything to do with a Fed bite …!”
She: “They’re not protected any more …”
He: “They’re not!?!”
She: “More reading for you, and how come you’re not keeping up?”
He: “Because I don’t feel like being scraped by Facebook?”
She: “As if that didn’t happen years ago, to you, me, and everybody else. Protection shmotection. It’s open season on seals. Their fates are sealed.”
He: “Sea lions.”
She: “Where lions?!?”
He: “There lions. There castle. Watch out for those big Hawaiian dudes at the full moon.”
She: “Not. But shouldn’t we be calling 9-1-1 in case there’s a zoo or something that lions could escape from?”
He: Don’t bother calling, you’ll discover that lions are not a mane topic of discussion. It’s sea lions that the Feds aren’t protecting any more, not seals.”
She: “There’s a difference?”
He: “Yeah. Sea lions can’t join the Navy.”
She: “Can so!”
He: “Yeah, but they don’t go on to star in action movies after they retire.”
She: “Yeah, I suppose not. They just go hang out around river mouths and eat salmon. Wonder how many Navy veterans they plan on exterminating?”
He: “Save them the cost of setting up veterinary clinics at VA hospitals.”
She: “True that.”
He: “So they can spend the money on task forces to save whales.”
She: “… wait a minute.”
He: “What?”
She: “Weren’t sea lions almost driven to extinction a few years back?”
He: “They were. That led to the 1972 law that just got zapped to allow people to remove salmon-eating sea lions. Like you just showed me.”
She: “So we’re going to drive sea lions back to the brink of extinction in order to try to save whales which are at the brink of extinction?”
He: “Uh huh.”
She: “Um, aren’t we forgetting something?”
He: “You mean, the naked bipeds that, despite having the entire world as a food source, gobble up more salmon in a day than every whale and sea lion on Earth could dream about devouring in a year?”
She: “Careful, honey. You’ll be accused of spouting fake news to promote your own agenda.”
He: “Yeah right. Whose fate was it that you said was sealed, again?”
Okay. I’m laughing. Thanks.