Look, I’ll say it plain and simple: it doesn’t matter why I already went through your supposed “lifetime supply” of Hormel Chili that I won, and I’m not legally required to tell you. All I want is what I am legally entitled to so long as my heart is beating: More of America’s best-selling chili and no goddamn questions.
I’m old enough to remember a time before the powers-that-be started putting definitions on what a “lifetime supply” meant or trying to twist the fine print on call-in phone contests on 95.3 KCHL, the Heat That Can’t Be Beat. I remember when, if you had won a supposedly unlimited supply of Hormel Chili, you didn’t get the third degree about how you went through 49 gallons in five days.
Back in the day, you just got more chili.
Trust me, no one wants to get lawyers involved here and tarnish the good name of 95.3 KCHL, the Heat That Can’t Be Beat. I’ve been a loyal listener to DJ Derek and the Municipal Madman for years, and it would break my heart to get attorneys involved in what should be a relatively simple matter of filling up the 55-gallon plastic barrel I brought to this station at my own expense and letting me be on my way.
DJ Derek has already had enough trouble with the law without getting involved in chili-related phone-in contest fraud, wouldn’t you say?
I would also like to reiterate that I read the rules of this contest extremely closely. As long as I was the first person to call in and recite all of the ingredients to Hormel chili in alphabetical order without taking a breath, I’d get a lifetime supply of any flavor of my choice. Is that not the case? Is it not?
You probably thought no one would remember “textured soy flour.” You were wrong.
Nowhere in the rules does it say that I have to eat the chili or produce evidence that I have eaten it. It also does not say that I cannot use it to fill potholes, regrout my neighbor’s bathtub as a courtesy, or use the famously sensuous smell of Coney Island Inspired Hormel Chili No Bean with Mustard and Onions as part of an ongoing campaign of seduction of said neighbor.
I’m not admitting to anything, by the way. And I certainly have no obligation to.
A deal is a deal, and as long as I draw breath, I will be returning to 95.3 KCHL, the Heat That Can’t Be Beat, for Hormel chili whenever I want and how often I like. Even in a benighted and fallen society like ours, we must respect a man’s need to shoot a high-powered jet of Hormel chili into the air every morning to greet the dawn using a jury-rigged firehose.
That’s what this is about. Respect.
Now fill up the barrel. I’ll be back for more Hormel tomorrow and I expect the Municipal Man to have it ready next time.