I'll Have the Applebee's Riblets - Hold the Feces

From MSN:
100 sickened after eating at N.Y. Applebee’s
Health department investigating source of Shigellosis bacteria

SYRACUSE, N.Y. - Health officials say more than 100 people reported getting sick after eating at an Applebee's restaurant near Syracuse.
The county health department says there are seven confirmed cases of Shigellosis among people who ate at the Applebee's in Camillus in early March. The bacterial infection is associated with consuming water or food contaminated with fecal matter.

I knew there was a reason why I avoid Applebee's like the plague. Every server there is a 22 year old college student with a diarrhea hangover - and you know they aren't washing their hands, so a little fecal matter is bound to slip into the ice bin or onion ring batter now and then. And, while I imagine there isn't anything much worse than knowing that you ingested restaurant food with bits of shit floating in it - Parker and I have certainly had our share of nasty food run-ins. 

One night after a night late night of underage debauchery,  Parker and I awoke the next afternoon and like any two typical teenagers with a raging hangover immediately had a craving for Hardee's. Clearly nothing kills the poison in a teenagers digestive system like grease and grade F beef. Parker ordered a Hardee Burger and I (because I clearly didn't have enough baby fat) went with the large chocolate shake. Parker ripped into that burger like she was a coyote in Death Valley who just came across a mob corpse. As she began to devour her burger, I heard a guttural sound so grotesque and off putting, that I immediately had to turn down the blaring Thompson Twins cassette to see where it was coming from. Parker had lifted the bun in order to remove the pickles and had come face to face with a dark curly one - it even had a wax like root attached to it. I'm not sure how it got there (was the funloving cook applying mustard with his manhood?) but it was ominous and disgusting. Naturally we were in the car and had left the drive-thru by this point - turning around and complaining really would have taken way too much energy for 2 teenagers with a day of MTV watching ahead of them. At this point most of us would have thrown the burger out the window - but Parker was hungry - really hungry. She actually poked a hole in the middle of the burger, threw out the pube portion and ate the remaining circular burger wheel. I sipped my shake, tried not to vomit and turned up the Thompson Twins.

Many years later, Parker worked at a chain restaurant we'll call "Shenannigan's" where chicken noodle soup was always on the menu. One day while ladling up a bowl of soup from the big copper pot, Parker looked down and discovered a chicken foot (claw?) floating near the top. Mmmmm, It's made with bits of real chicken. So you know it's good.

Then there was the horrific family lake trip where just about everything went wrong. We finally left after three days of hell in the 119 degree Lake Powell, Arizona heat, stopping just long enough to pick up a few burgers from a roadside McDonald's in the middle of nowhere. As we drove into the night devouring our burgers, I heard my sister cry out in pain. When my parents turned on the dome light there she sat, red as a lobster and possibly suffering from sun poisoning, with a broken Popsicle stick and chewed meat sticking out of her mouth. She slowly removed said Popsicle stick to reveal what looked like some sort of prison weapon covered with a green mold-like sticky substance. We examined it and to this day still have no idea what it was or why or how a broken Popsicle stick made it into a Big Mac. While my brother and I laughed at the grotesque foreign object and continued to eat our uncontaminated burgers (or so we assumed) my sister began to sob. Unlike Parker, she did not "eat around it."

"It's made with bits of real Panther. So you know it's good"- enjoy: