The Onion Tree

Entire Refrigerator Rearranged To Accommodate Leftover KFC Bucket

August 11, 2008 | Issue 44•33

PIERRE, SD—After several unsuccessful attempts to insert a KFC bucket into his cluttered refrigerator Thursday, local man Jeremy Browning, 32, was forced to rearrange every item in the 24.5-cubic-foot cooling appliance to make the chicken container fit.

Jeremy Browning's refrigerator.

"At first I tried to just shove it in real hard and push the [refrigerator] door closed," Browning told reporters. "But the door wouldn't close."

Although Browning claims he initially tried to eat all 15 pieces of the Original Recipe chicken, the quantity proved too great and he realized that his only option to preserve the remaining four pieces for future consumption was to store the KFC bucket in his refrigerator. However, the 10-inch-tall, eight-inch-wide fried-chicken receptacle proved too large.

"It was too tall, so I had to lower the shelf a notch," said Browning, who removed each of the items from his refrigerator's top shelf and then placed them on the floor in front of him in order to make the adjustment.

However, Browning soon found that there was little available space remaining when he attempted to return the provisions from the floor to the now-bucket-occupied shelf. In addition, Browning noticed that the bucket was pressing against the refrigerator's lightbulb, raising concerns that it might melt and contaminate the chicken.

After briefly assessing the situation, Browning developed a solution that involved moving several Styrofoam containers, fast-food bags, and a frying pan covered with a plate from the top shelf to the middle shelf. However, this only created a new organizational dilemma. The refrigerator door again failed to close properly, because, according to Browning, "something kept hitting something."

Browning confirmed that he was eventually able to make room for the bucket by piling various food items on top of each other and turning boxes and other containers on their sides. He was particularly proud of a four-item-high vertical stack of a take-out rice container, a tub of cream cheese, and two nearly empty salsa jars.

"That one was tricky," said Browning, noting that he put the "less useful stuff" toward the back of the shelf because he knew he would not get to last week's leftovers until he finished the chicken.

Asked if there was ever a point during the reorganization of his refrigerator when he considered discarding the bucket and wrapping the remaining pieces of chicken in aluminum foil, Browning told reporters, "No."

"You don't eat chicken off a plate," he said. "Chicken tastes better out of the bucket."

"You put the bucket in your lap and eat right over it," Browning continued. "That way you catch and save all the little fried bits and eat them when you're out of chicken."

Upon finding room for the bucket, Browning discovered he still had a surplus of food items with no place to be stored, even after he transferred a loaf of white bread and an apple to the freezer. He initially contemplated flipping the quarts of milk and orange juice on their sides, but ultimately decided the risk of spilled liquid was too great. Instead, Browning was able to create a minimal amount of room by folding in half a pizza box containing a single slice left over from three nights ago.

According to sources, Browning at one point went so far as to drink the remaining half of a two-liter bottle of Pepsi in an ill-fated attempt to free up space in the refrigeration unit's side-door soda caddy.

"Everything kept sliding under the bar, though," Browning said. "I could hear everything fall out when I shut the door. I think because it's slanted."

Browning said his biggest breakthrough occurred when he finally began to fully utilize the dairy compartment by filling it with smaller food items, including part of a lime, a small stack of white Kraft Singles, and a Ziploc bag of ground beef. In addition, Browning was able to find a home in the vegetable crisper for the box of KFC biscuits from last month.

Although Browning was reportedly satisfied with his newly organized refrigerator, he did admit that he had trouble closing the door until he removed a box of baking soda that prevented it from properly sealing.
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New Weather Channel Sitcom About Three Guys, Three Girls, One Storm System

August 13, 2008 | Issue 44•33

ATLANTA—Marking the network's first foray into episodic comedy, executives at the Weather Channel announced Monday that they are wrapping up production on a new series titled Batten The Hatches!, a sitcom about six professional twentysomethings and an unpredictable low pressure system named Arthur. "Get ready to laugh out loud when that incorrigible old Arthur soaks his buddy Dave right before his big date," Weather Channel program director Michael Reardon said. "Just ask [the program's other characters] Rick, Tim, Dave, Dawn, Janie, and Lois: When you're best friends with a 125-mile-wide extratropical cyclone, anything can happen." Batten The Hatches! is expected to greatly outperform C-Span's first original show, Out Of Session, a single-camera dramedy that follows the procedural mediation between the 535 members of Congress and their sexy roommate, Pamela Anderson.

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McCain Cribs Speech From Wikipedia

A Wikipedia editor claims that John McCain's speech about the Russian-Georgian hostilities was largely lifted from the website's entry on Georgia. What do you think?

Peter Tong,
Grocer
"Really? I'm going to go put my name in Wikipedia's 'Health Care' article and wait to see if I get mentioned in the debates."

Blaine Principle,
Systems Analyst
"What a sorry way to treat the nation of Georgia, whose capital, Tbilisi, was featured in Splinter Cell for Xbox and PC."

Carol Williams,
Quality Control Inspector
"I don't see what the big deal is. I ripped off Wikipedia when you guys asked me about that Kosher meatpacking plant the other day."

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People With That Brain-Eating Virus Should Really Just Take A Sick Day

By Rachel Langly
August 13, 2008 | Issue 44•33

I know we live in a career-oriented society, but if you ask me, people's priorities in the workplace are all out of whack. Sure, everyone wants to shine, to be that "go-to" gal or guy, but sometimes it goes too far. In my opinion, when you come down with something, be it the common cold, the flu, or that brain-eating virus that's been going around, you should just take a sick day. It's a simple matter of courtesy to those around you.

No one is so "indispensable" that they can't take a day off without everything going off the rails. I know I'd rather do a little extra filing than have to watch someone's brain get slowly devoured by a deadly parasitic organism in the middle of a meeting, for Pete's sake.

Coming into the office with anything more than the sniffles is just unprofessional.

If you know you've contracted an airborne pathogen that attacks the cerebellum like millions of tiny, insatiable sharks, why not do us all a favor and keep your contagious self home in bed? In this Information Age, most work can be done from home anyway. It's just as easy to get an e-mail saying "My head! Kill me! Please, someone kill me!" than to hear Julie Weingarten scream it at the top of her lungs from the next cubicle.

Remember the time Keith caught that weird stomach virus from his son, and within two weeks everyone in the office had come down with it? Well, I was sick for two days, and all I thought was, "Keith, why did you even come in today?" The office would be a lot more productive if there were fewer government agents in hazmat suits traipsing in and out to drag people off to containment facilities, I tell you.

And when you consider the fact that this brain-eating virus carves out tunnels in your frontal lobes, makes your eyeballs bleed, and swells your glands up to eight times their normal size before it chews away the last vestige of your conscious self, it should be pretty obvious to anyone that you have something serious enough to call in sick for. If you don't stay at home and get better, you just take up valuable time, the whole system gets backed up, and then Harvey's breathing down everyone's neck about falling behind.

God, I miss Harvey.

Plus, according to the emergency warning announcements blaring out of every loudspeaker in the city, being out of doors at all is dangerous. Yet these same people—who can barely even get from room to room without walking into a wall 10 or 15 times—have the nerve to get behind the wheel and commute to work! What if they hit a kid?

And those annoying exploding pustules that shoot green mucus across the room—yuck! Jerry was in the kitchen with me when those sores decided to go off, and one landed right in my salad! I had to throw it out! I'm still a little peeved at him, even after he drowned himself in a mop bucket to stop the pain.

It's just more work for the rest of us when we have to drag your diseased corpses into the parking lot and incinerate them with flamethrowers. To say nothing of the fact that those sores are filled with an acid that burns through anything in its path. I shouldn't have to worry about getting dissolved alive on top of everything else I do around here!

Nobody likes it when a security breach at a top-secret laboratory leads to the slow and painful death of everyone you know and love, but that's what sick days are for.

I swear, if our manager, Ted, hadn't been found under his desk half-dissolved in a pile of flesh and cartilage, I would have filed a formal complaint. Now I have to wait until corporate sends us a new manager, but knowing this company, that could be weeks. Maybe longer if the government collapses and the country is plunged into anarchy like those terror-struck young men in the National Guard truck were yelling about.

Honestly, the company's time-off policy is at least partially to blame. With the holidays coming up, and only five sick days per year, it's no surprise people are hesitant to take them just because some nightmarish doomsday scenario is rapidly annihilating what remains of Western civilization. So if this whole "brain-virus epidemic" thing has any upside, it will be that this company, and many others across the nation, will take a long, hard look at their sick-leave policies.

Well, that's unlikely, but there's always hope!