And then the cold cuts danced
Ronpauled on January 15, 2012.
General Gnassingbé Eyadéma’s dictatorial rule of Togo came to mind as I went ronpauling about town Wednesday (freebirding merrily all along the way, of course). My flibbertigibbetty mind had previously been busy obsessing over the small, delicate feet of my newest favorite femjoy, Chloë Moretz, but then for no discernible reason my mind had leapt to thoughts of the brutal tyrant that had held the tall, thin nation of Togo under his big toe from 1967 until 2005. I wasn’t sure why ol’ Gnassingbé came into my mind right then: Perhaps it was his penchant for wearing fake clown noses during his speeches that made me think of him right then. Or perhaps it was that dream I had experienced Tuesday night in which Britney Spears wore a traffic cone on her head and another on her behind while she sang about traffic cones on her head and her behind.
The man I had been talking to when these thoughts invaded my insane membrane huffed and, huffing further, slammed his door in my face. He continued huffing behind his door (which muffled his huffing but did not hide it). I yerked. I realized I had probably been standing there for two or 3½ minutes drooling over Chloë’s feet rather than extolling the virtues of voting for Ron Paul’s ficus tree in the upcoming elections, as I was supposed to be doing. I shrugged and moved onto the next door with my stack of ronpauliana in hand, then the next, then the next…
Wednesday evening arrived in all its sunsetty glory and finally I scootled on home, new stray thoughts bubbling up from my basal ganglia and invading my consciousness: Things like Lucy Lawless in a pair of Greek sandals, the Crash of Traxus IV in 2206 c.e., and whether or not my pet naugas had shed their hides yet this week. As my mind cornered and slew a stray thought about Hoberdidance and Lustie Jollie Jenkin, I arrived back at my palatial abode and went about constructing and extruding dinner…
With my most recent battle with the Epstein–Barr virus now on my mind (man, does that virus pack a mean left hook!), I sat down at my dining room table. Plates, bowls, forks, spoons, sporks, and knives were all arrayed before me, awaiting the beginning of my frenetic, fervent, and voracious noshing. Each plate was piled high with the most interesting of foods: A massive pile of tortellini on one, slathered with the tangiest garlic sauce and topped with cheese of the most grated nature—a veritable snow-capped mountain of pasta, it was. The second plate contained an even larger pile of animal meats: Pork, ham, bacon, spam, and several other unnamed cuts from the magical, mystical farm animal commonly known as a “pig” in English and a “glrr’kknh” in my native Pfhoric. The third plate, not to be outdone by the first two, contained every cut of cow meat known to man- and cowkind: Steak, more steak, moar steak, tube steak, cubical steak, cubicle steak, corned beef, horned beef, horny beef, cornholed beef, beef Wellington, beef Huffington, beef Mapplethorpe, chicken, and lamb.
The fourth plate, so glorious it was deserving of its own paragraph, contained yet another conical heap of pasta: Lasagna, ziti, rigatoni, spaghetti, more tortellini, and even the nefarious tortelloni—piled as high as the fabled Tower of Babel. Conical it was, but alas comical it was not: The devious tortelloni stared at me balefully from the ramparts of the pasta ziggurat, waiting for their chance to leap upon me and stab me in the back the very moment I let down my guard.
The last plate contained my desserts—both just and unjust: Cakes, cupcakes, teacupcakes, bowlcakes, coffee cakes, coffee cupcakes, apple pie, crapple pie, squash pie, pumpkin pie, blumpkin pie, pi pie, danishes, spanishes, radishes, gorgonzola-stuffed mussels, mussel-stuffed gorgons, sugared snails, salted slugs, cheesecake, goat cheesecake, rabbit cheesecake, and even chicken cheesecake. There were more stony scones than even the Stone of Scone itself could muster, and the bear claws outnumbered the number of bears in all of Yellowstone. And lastly, at the very end of the perfectly circular plate, there was a single, phalloid crème brûlée of the most elephantine nature.
Moving onto the bowls, before me was: One containing beef stew, the next chicken soup. The third held hot-and-sour soup, the fourth sweet-and-sour, and the fifth sour-and-sourer. A small archipelago of bowls were clustered together like the Aleutians and contained every known variant of cheese sauce that I could lay my knobby hands on when I visited the Spend-O-Mart the day prior. And lastly, a bowl the size of a small motorcycle contained a mixture of salads from around the world: Garden, Cæsar, and Greek; pasta, potato, and leek.
Hands folded, I looked up at the flypaper hanging from the ceiling fan above my table and offered a prayer to Strahazazhia Kalamazoo-Kintaki-Meeps, insect goddess and She of the six-legged delights, begging Her to protect me and bless my mealy, mealy meal. Then… the noshing began. It began when I picked up a spork and stabbed the first thick slab of pork with its sporky tines. Forcing the entire slab down my gullet and swallowing in as goose-like a manner as I could manage, I picked up the next slab of pork, then the third, then the fourth. The pork gone, I moved onto the bacon, the ham, the spam, the potted meat (did I forget to say there was an entire barrel of potted meat?), and then the various forms of beef matter in reverse alphabetical order.
Piling pie after pie upon the plate from which I was eating (naturally the biggest one), I realized I was in a bit of a prickly predicament: I had piled all the food on the wrong side of the eating-plate! I returned to my seat, agonizing over what to do now that my food was fully seven feet away from me. But then, I made an amazing discovery: Plates are round, and by rotating the plate approximately 180°, I was able to reposition the food directly in front of my salivating, gaping maw.
I sighed in relief. The gorging continued for hours…
As I was stuffing the last of the Græco-Potato salad into my already overstuffed craw, suddenly and without warming, the cold cuts began to dance. I stopped noshing; my spork hung from my mouth and a glob of cheese-infused lasagna sat half-chewed upon my tongue. “Surely this is a hallucination!” I sputtered, dropping the spork to the floor with a clatter—but the cold cuts continued to breakdance. Soon the mussels and snails joined them, doing the tango, the fandango, and even the macarena. A lone ziti moonwalked across the table and landed with a splat on the floor.
The walls shimmered and the air burned…
I slowly slid my chair back away from the table, planning my escape—a blithe slithering out the front door, my trademark retreat—but right then my oatmeal cookies arrived. Perfidious fiends! They rolled across the table and defiantly positioned themselves between the plates of just and unjust desserts, daring me to do something. I whined, whimpering, but tried not to cranch just yet: I was still sure that this was all nothing more than just a mere hallucination caused by my ingestion last night of three gallons of spicy, spicy mustard that I had found in the dumpster outside the local Chinese restaurant last year.
The walls began to melt. And the air turned red, purple, and loud…
And then, seeing their opportunity, the tortelloni leapt into action, tiny knives in their hands and murderous looks in their eyes. Wide-eyed, I scurried under the table like the six-foot-tall man–squirrel that I really am. I moved so fast that my human suit almost fell off as I hit the floor. My bushy tail sprang out from my behind. Ronald Reagan wouldn’t be saving the world this time.
I waited minutes, then peeped out from under the table in as Tom-like a manner as I could manage. The cold cuts by this point had dance-dance-danced their way down onto the floor, and were now forming a conga line around the table and chairs. I buried my face under my paws and wished the world away.
The world wouldn’t go away.
The sporks joined the cold cuts. The tortelloni began howling their fearsome little war cries…
By now the walls had melted fully, revealing the glittering inner membranes of my palatial abode. My thoughts turned to the Brundlesphere and impossibly shaped bowls, as the pi pie languorously floated off of the table and out a closed window and the tortelloni began pillaging the dessert plates without mercy nor quarter. None were spared, not the danishes, nor the spanishes, nor the radishes, nor even the delicate and helpless crème brûlée.
Hotdogs shot forth from the ceiling: Pork, beef, and even inflatable. Each landed with a sickening thud, then bounced into a vertical position and taunted me like billowing cilia. I hadn’t made any dogs part of my meal, but there they were nonetheless. Fried moose synapse and dozens upon dozens of eggs began bubbling out of the wainscoting. My walls had by now been replaced by a shimmering, opalescent film of billy goat hair, waving and undulating in sync with the silent music to which my entire meal and home were now dancing. A gigglious little snorticle of bergrumptuous glee echoingly rose up in my throat as a bizarre sense of euphoria gripped me like Lucy Lawless’ powerful thighs. The hotdogs reverberated and the hot cats danced erotically. Oh, C’mell! How snow carapaced my exoskeleton like melted marshmallow goop now, and suddenly I was a giant anthropomorphic insect. I honked. The food continued prancing. The walls shimmered and I uttered: “Urr’hh urr’hh… Uunrh’uunrh!”
“Urr’hh urr’hh… Uunrh’uunrh!”
The glimmering chitin…! The glittering tortelloni…!
Oh, my doG! Oh, my caT! That is the true me—!!