Does this jar of cheeseballs make my head look fat?

Last week, a black bear in Northern Wisconsin was spotted roaming the countryside with a large plastic container stuck over its head. In the storybook version, the jar would’ve been a honeypot and the bear would’ve been fat and happy but our real-life bear got a whiff of cheeseball remnants and stuck her head into the jar only to find that she and the jar were in a committed relationship. Unfortunately, wearing an empty cheeseball container over your head is not conducive to normal bear activities, like eating and drinking and otherwise trying to stay alive, and our bear had become somewhat emaciated.

Even though the bear desperately needed help, bears do not generally willingly surrender themselves to humans when they are in need. Instead, she ambled around the Northwoods traveling through 3 counties covering over 50 miles in a week, evading traps and people while trying to survive. Eventually, officials from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture were able to track the bear down after it was spotted near someone’s home and shot it with a tranquilizer dart, allowing them to finally cut the jar off of her head.

The 2-year-old bear weighed just 70 pounds, up to half as much of her expected weight. The USDA agents tagged the bears’ ears for tracking purposes and released her, and now she’s busy trying to regain the weight she lost. Local residents report that she was last seen eating a double cheeseburger at the Culver’s in Hayward before heading into the Anytime Fitness to do some leg work.

Photo by USDA APHIS Wildlife Services

I think a bear with its head stuck in an empty jar of cheeseballs is a good metaphor for where we are as a country right now. Sure, you can still roam freely about and do many of your normal activities but it feels like there’s a giant empty jar of cheeseballs stuck on your head.

For instance, it wasn’t too long ago you could just walk into any grocery store in America without having a panic attack. These days, you might want to talk to a financial advisor first. Wanna take your family to see a Major League Baseball game? Start saving up now for next season. Thinking about buying a house? Get a third job. Planning on going to college? Ha, good one!

Your experience may vary, of course. If you’re wealthy or even just financially secure, you might not be the least bit bothered by paying almost $20 for a can of coffee that was about $8 at the start of the year or that ground beef costs $6 a pound, the highest price ever. If you’re retired and have a house that’s paid for, collect social security and you’re one of the increasingly rare people with a pension or have substantial retirement savings, things might be fairly rosy even. If so, that’s great! For you. Unfortunately, many people tend to think that what they’re experiencing is fairly typical of what others are going through. That’s known as the False Consensus Effect. For example, if you see one bear with a large plastic jar on its head, that does not mean that all bears have large plastic jars stuck on their heads. It could mean that some bears might only have small jars stuck on their heads. Or, even better in this example, no jar at all.

On the other hand, if things aren’t so rosy right now, you need to take action. If your money doesn’t go as far as it used to, fire your bank. March right in there and tell them that you know they’re lying about your numbers. Then let the grocery store know in no uncertain terms that you’re tired of their “fake news” prices and you want to pay the real price. If some over-educated, deep-state gubmint hotshot tells you that your kids need to get a measles shot, just cough right in their face and say “I ain’t fallin’ for that routine again!” And call your congressperson to demand that they keep your Medicaid coverage in place. Once you get everything all sorted out, you can donate some of your newfound extra money to pay for the new, extra-gaudy White House ballroom that we’ve all been clamoring for.

Sure, inflation was a problem even before Cheeto Mussolini came along. But maybe higher prices would be slightly more tolerable if masked federales weren’t also disappearing people off the streets. Perhaps the cost of coffee would be less worrisome if the administration wasn’t also busy suing media outlets for reporting facts, and filing lawsuits against universities as a means to control what they can teach and to whom, disregarding court orders, threatening impeachment of judges, attacking law firms and harassing lawyers, abusing executive power, ordering states to rig their voting maps to give Republicans control over state legislatures, banning abortion entirely in 13 states, incorporating the bible into public school curriculums, and defunding public television, which could potentially deprive millions of kids from seeing Sesame Street. You know what kind of soulless ghoul you’d have to be to take away Sesame Street? The Word of the Day starts with F.

The point is, I love cheeseballs. Little orange balls of crunchy goodness sprinkled with magic cheese dust that make you want to lick even other people’s fingers. “Excuse me, sir… I can see by your orange fingers that you’ve been eating cheeseballs.” Lick, lick, lick.

No wonder a hungry little bear would stick her cute, curious head into a jar that was once packed with hundreds of delicious cheeseballs. They’re that good. If you’ve never enjoyed the cheesy fun of cheeseballs, by all means, get some. Right now, you can pick up a 23 oz. barrel of Utz Cheese Balls for $6.88 at Walmart, which is ridiculous because they were just $4.99 a few months ago. But if you do buy them, please properly dispose of the empty container in a recycle bin so it doesn’t end up on some poor bear’s head.