Okay, so the beverage vending machine in the break room is finally working (although it’s sold out of several drinks), but I’m suffering from terrible hunger pains because we still don’t have a working snack vending machine.

Until today there hasn’t been a snack vending machine at all. But now, just to tempt me with anticipation, there’s a snack vending machine in there, and it’s powered on, but it’s comepletely empty.

I want my junk food, dammit!

How do they expect me to get through an entire day without a bag of White Cheddar Cheez-Its or some Corn Nuts to satisfy my salt cravings? Sheesh.

And it was bad enough when they didn’t have the machine in there at all, but now the machine is actually there (so my stomach is growling), but there isn’t any food in it. I think that’s a direct violation of the Geneva Convention.

I keep going into the break room a couple times each hour just in case something has grown in the vending machine. But alas, every time I go in there, eager to find some kind of sustenance for my vacuous tummy, I’m hurled into despair by the site of the barren vending machine.

Oh, the horror.

Every year, I get a very uncomfortable feeling deep within my stomach as Thanksgiving approaches here in America. Every year I send out a mass e-mail like this:

HAPPY DEAD TURKEY DAY!!!
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Every year my friends write back and tell me how morbid I am. They say, “It’s only bad if you’re the turkey.”

They simply do not understand.

Turkeys are not the only ones who have a problem with this holiday. There are other casualties at this time of year, and I have deep sympathy for those lost lives. You see, in my past life, I was a cranberry.

At this time, I would like to share with the world an excerpt from the diary I kept while I was a cranberry. I hope this will make the people of America think twice before they devour all those luscious foods:

November 20

Dearest diary,

The plague has gotten worse and I fear for my life. All around me, the others of my kind are being plucked from their homes, never returning again. Where are they going? What is happening to them? I wonder incessantly, and yet I do not look forward to finding out. It is possible that they are being taken to some greater place, I know, but it is also possible that they are simply being slaughtered. Oh, the thought of all that innocent juice being shed sends a shiver down my stem. When shall this torturous panic leave me? When shall I know the truth?

Your faithful friend,

Bob Cranberry

Looking back upon my writing, I am still overcome by a chill. Please, if you are a decent human being, do not eat my brethren this Thanksgiving.

Remember–cranberries are people too.