Prime Living - And the train kept a rollin'

"Megatron must be stopped, no matter the cost." Optimus Prime to no one in particular

I don't know how to say this. We live in a world where people attend basketball games but not their children's birthday parties, where potatoes have become a four-letter word, and where - if they're not sufficiently threatened by a letter to the better business bureau of Columbia - I can't get my pants back by Thursday! We want it so easy, Prime readers! So very, very easy.

But it when it comes time to pay the tab, we look down at our bill and are surprised that we ate 13 artichoke dip appetizers. Hey, it was fun while it lasted. Sure the tortilla chips were a little bit stale, and you didn't even bother popping one of those crazy red chips that Applebee's features into the probably 2 year old salsa. But the dip was warm, the drink specials were right, and it's a Friday afternoon in the neighborhood. But now you see that you're going to have pay for the high time you've had with yourself out on the town. Time to pay the piper. Somehow you spent 75 dollars on yourself at Applebee's. You can look around, wondering how the cheap nostalgic, neighborhoody, mass manufactured crap hanging on the walls can somehow get you out the door without being responsible for the charge. What, for instance, can that corny black and white photo of Marilyn Monroe putting her hands in cement on the Hollywood Walk of Fame do for you now? It was s and gs when you were in the throes of an artichoke-inspired freakout but now it just seems tame. The tv is playing a re-run of Mash...in an Applebee's. What's going on? It's time to get out the old, nearly maxed out credit card and pray that Mother Visa has mercy on your soul just one more time before you wind cleaning 75 dollars worth of dishes in the back of a neighborhood bar and grille. Things couldn't get much worse.

And so now the time for talk is over. It's time to put up or shut up, get a hit or strikeout, change the diaper or sit their like an idiot as both your baby cries because of the poop she's wading in and your living room fills with the smell of expelled gerber products, when the only thing you can do is look that movie marquee dead in the eye and say, "Okay, I know I have to see Avatar. I get it. Enough."

And that's exactly where Prime is at, beloved readers. He knows it won't be easy. He knows that even if he tries his hardest, gives 110 percent, he still may fall to the valiant forces of Megatron, a ruthless robot who thinks and feels and yet still desires to conquer all sentient beings.

Today, Prime Livers, is the day that you count the cost, where you get out the old cost-benefit analysis sheet that you bought this morning at your local Staples and crunch the numbers. And then when you realize what it will take for you to stop the Megatron in your life (for some, Megatron is the powerful addiction to sugar-based breakfast cereals, for others, the shame of illiteracy), you have to throw the sheet away. Now that you know it will cost you approximately $33,000 to ensure that you will never have go a weekend without the print edition of the New York Times again, you can't NOT do it. No, counting the cost just gives you motivation.

Because Megatron MUST be stopped. He's a cannon, Prime Livers, a cannon of evil. Think about the cannons of evil that you've allowed to take over your home planet. It might be too late if you wait another day. Pick up the phone now. And proceed to dial the numbers 1,3,5, and 7. You know why, right? They're prime.