WATER CHESTNUTS ROASTING ON AN ASS OF FIRE
Nature always finds a way.
When people worry about the state of the world, about the destruction of
the rain forest or global warming or the polar ice caps or unbiodegradable
plastics or pollution, they shouldn't be worried about the earth. The
earth will be fine. Even if all the nuclear weapons of the world exploded
at once, the earth will still be here. Sure, we could be knocked off orbit
and most of the life as we know it could cease to exist, but things would
eventually balance out.
The planet went from minuscule single celled organism to being ruled by
monstrofical super lizards, for millions of years, to our present state of
mammalian imperialism. No matter what something will be living on this
planet, whether its weather resistant cockroaches or day glo radioactive
mer-men or intricate societies of airborne insects.
And Keith Richards.
As we sit and breathe, the earth is slowly edging us on the way out. An
eternally patient host, it often eases out the current house guests ever so
gradually, but its conviction is strong, and the door will slam shut on
even the most reluctant of hangers on in due time.
Our huge brains and indefatigably expansive egos have cast our concrete and
plastic shadow across this globe, and even dragged our sticky sweet trail
like a leaking slug off into the stars. To remedy this, the earth's plan
is as simple as it is effective. It aims to make us stupider.
Technology is rapidly stripping our ability to control it. Every day we
map out our eventually more detailed suicide machine. And not all the
rockets in the world will be able to carry us any closer to the sun than
Icarus'wings.
Of course a lot of us seem to be doing a good job in offing ourselves from
our own homespun stupidity.
Death comes in various seemingly innocuous guises. Its most tempting would
have to be the canned good.
Death can't come in a can, is the standard response. Death has to swoop down, to the sound of thunder or long, ear splitting whistles from the heavens or flapping loudly with leathery wings. It has to tear through the earth's crust like a monstrous and murder mad mole cricket. It isn't supposed slip into your house and rest upon your kitchen shelf for months, coiled like a poisonous snake or angry genie hell bent to be out of the bottle.
Unsuspecting that larger, phantasmagorical forces were at work, I decide I
am going to whip up some makeshift Chinese food. I have chicken, mixed
vegetables, angelic Sririhachi sauce, and rice. But it needed an extra
kick. The kind only water chestnuts in a can could provide. Observing the
outside of the can, it seemed a bit...off. Sure, I could have turned on
the light switch, but that was all the way over there. Why waste
electricity when the half light from the setting sun illuminated the place
enough that I didn't bump into things?
I open the can, and notice the chestnuts look....odd. These seemed to be
whole ones, and not the slices I was used to. Being unable to notice the
finer nuances that sight usually offers in the light, I decided to explore
the old fashioned way, by sticking one into my mouth. Sharks do it. Rats
do it. Wonder if something is edible? Just take a bit bite. If you dont
die you are good to go.
After the third bite I could tell something was wrong. Powerful wrong. I
spit what was left in my mouth and turned on the light. Inside the can it
looked like twelve little cat turds floating in chicken broth. If the cats
were into the flower garden and Jerry Garcia iced cream again.
Undaunted I found a different can, inspected it, and poured out its
contents into the wok, and cooked it all up, right and proper. A feast fit
for a king.
Satiated I went about my business, putting the potential poisoning behind
me. Until my own behind beckoned suddenly outside during a cigarette. It
wasnt a gentle reminder, either. This was no test of the emergency
broadcast system. This was gabriel's trumpet into a doomsday whistle.
Clutching my ass cheeks like clenched fist, I stumbled inside. Suddenly I
didn't fel so good.
My stomach felt like it was practicing origami on itself, and my ass felt
like it had just been vanquished by the wrathful and uncircumcised cock of
the almighty. The little brown spider flash fried into calimari.
No sooner had I stood up from the throne and slid my pants up that I had to
turn around and go through it all again.
Sweat burst out in thick drops and I felt violently lightheaded.
Then I remembered...the water chestnuts. Botulism! In a can.
Diabolical.
I stumbled into the bedroom and fell onto the bed. A few hours pass.
I wake up feeling worse than before.
Big fat Jimmy Crimm jumped up next to me and began nuzzling me with his
head.
I clenched him tightly to my chest as my lower intestine made a noise
usually reserved for motorcycle engines or large amphibious dinosaurs.
"Well, this is it, my sweet prince. Promise me you will eat freely and
fully from my body when I pass away. My ample frame will supply plenty
sustenance by the time the authorities find my body and send you to a new home..."
I couldnt complain. I had lived an interesting, if not a full life.
Live fast, die young, and leave a cat eaten corpse.
My head was still swimming from uneasy sleep, and strange irrational
thoughts began to swarm through it. The once familiar sound of the
raccoon in the attic scratching around took on ominous undertones. The
beast couldnt even wait until I expire! He likes his meat fresh. I
clutched my obese cat close. All light was cast in sharp, expressionist angles, as if poised to extinguish itself lest it be swallowed whole by the
encroaching darkness.
Thoughts of TROLL 2, which featured plant life consumed by humans rendering
flesh into a vegetable goo to be eaten by rubber faced midgets became rather plausible. I closed my eyes and in a hypnogogic haze envisioned large praying mantis styled creatures made entirely out of green beans...
These are the pockets of diseased time in which the truly personal
atrocities take place. Subjective nightmares that visions of hell are recorded. Where phobias reach mitosis and split off in fresh
bundles. Time and space melt into each other, peeled slowly apart like wet
flesh from cold leather. An aboriginal dreamtime of unspeakable
proportions, where all action is parabolic and uniquely distorted.
The air
itself a wavering fish-eyed distortion of a funhouse mirror. This is when,
and roughly where, people get anally probed on the side of isolated unpaved
country roads by bubbled headed monsters of intergalactic origin with non
existant noses and emotionless, almond shaped eyes, glowing space rods
driven spun roughly home by long, spindly fingers...
An indeterminate amount of time passes. I try to stand up, then fall back
to the bed. More accurately I slump back down let a wet towel into a
formless mass onto the squeaky mattress. My hair is slick with sweat, but
I begin to feel a bit better. I gather my strength enough to stand and
make my way to the kitchen where I drink a half gallon of water. The worst
has past. Its one of those miniature near death experiences. I walk
outside and light up a cigarette, savoring the soft curls of the smoke
snaking their way out of my face and into the cool night air.
Until that now all too familiar rumbling starts up like rolling thunder in
my abdomen, promising unwelcome rain.
I clench my ass, yet again, stomp out my cigarette and awkwardly two step
my way back inside.
I will have to accept my personal Darwin Award in the mail, thanks.
When people worry about the state of the world, about the destruction of
the rain forest or global warming or the polar ice caps or unbiodegradable
plastics or pollution, they shouldn't be worried about the earth. The
earth will be fine. Even if all the nuclear weapons of the world exploded
at once, the earth will still be here. Sure, we could be knocked off orbit
and most of the life as we know it could cease to exist, but things would
eventually balance out.
The planet went from minuscule single celled organism to being ruled by
monstrofical super lizards, for millions of years, to our present state of
mammalian imperialism. No matter what something will be living on this
planet, whether its weather resistant cockroaches or day glo radioactive
mer-men or intricate societies of airborne insects.
And Keith Richards.
As we sit and breathe, the earth is slowly edging us on the way out. An
eternally patient host, it often eases out the current house guests ever so
gradually, but its conviction is strong, and the door will slam shut on
even the most reluctant of hangers on in due time.
Our huge brains and indefatigably expansive egos have cast our concrete and
plastic shadow across this globe, and even dragged our sticky sweet trail
like a leaking slug off into the stars. To remedy this, the earth's plan
is as simple as it is effective. It aims to make us stupider.
Technology is rapidly stripping our ability to control it. Every day we
map out our eventually more detailed suicide machine. And not all the
rockets in the world will be able to carry us any closer to the sun than
Icarus'wings.
Of course a lot of us seem to be doing a good job in offing ourselves from
our own homespun stupidity.
Death comes in various seemingly innocuous guises. Its most tempting would
have to be the canned good.
Death can't come in a can, is the standard response. Death has to swoop down, to the sound of thunder or long, ear splitting whistles from the heavens or flapping loudly with leathery wings. It has to tear through the earth's crust like a monstrous and murder mad mole cricket. It isn't supposed slip into your house and rest upon your kitchen shelf for months, coiled like a poisonous snake or angry genie hell bent to be out of the bottle.
Unsuspecting that larger, phantasmagorical forces were at work, I decide I
am going to whip up some makeshift Chinese food. I have chicken, mixed
vegetables, angelic Sririhachi sauce, and rice. But it needed an extra
kick. The kind only water chestnuts in a can could provide. Observing the
outside of the can, it seemed a bit...off. Sure, I could have turned on
the light switch, but that was all the way over there. Why waste
electricity when the half light from the setting sun illuminated the place
enough that I didn't bump into things?
I open the can, and notice the chestnuts look....odd. These seemed to be
whole ones, and not the slices I was used to. Being unable to notice the
finer nuances that sight usually offers in the light, I decided to explore
the old fashioned way, by sticking one into my mouth. Sharks do it. Rats
do it. Wonder if something is edible? Just take a bit bite. If you dont
die you are good to go.
After the third bite I could tell something was wrong. Powerful wrong. I
spit what was left in my mouth and turned on the light. Inside the can it
looked like twelve little cat turds floating in chicken broth. If the cats
were into the flower garden and Jerry Garcia iced cream again.
Undaunted I found a different can, inspected it, and poured out its
contents into the wok, and cooked it all up, right and proper. A feast fit
for a king.
Satiated I went about my business, putting the potential poisoning behind
me. Until my own behind beckoned suddenly outside during a cigarette. It
wasnt a gentle reminder, either. This was no test of the emergency
broadcast system. This was gabriel's trumpet into a doomsday whistle.
Clutching my ass cheeks like clenched fist, I stumbled inside. Suddenly I
didn't fel so good.
My stomach felt like it was practicing origami on itself, and my ass felt
like it had just been vanquished by the wrathful and uncircumcised cock of
the almighty. The little brown spider flash fried into calimari.
No sooner had I stood up from the throne and slid my pants up that I had to
turn around and go through it all again.
Sweat burst out in thick drops and I felt violently lightheaded.
Then I remembered...the water chestnuts. Botulism! In a can.
Diabolical.
I stumbled into the bedroom and fell onto the bed. A few hours pass.
I wake up feeling worse than before.
Big fat Jimmy Crimm jumped up next to me and began nuzzling me with his
head.
I clenched him tightly to my chest as my lower intestine made a noise
usually reserved for motorcycle engines or large amphibious dinosaurs.
"Well, this is it, my sweet prince. Promise me you will eat freely and
fully from my body when I pass away. My ample frame will supply plenty
sustenance by the time the authorities find my body and send you to a new home..."
I couldnt complain. I had lived an interesting, if not a full life.
Live fast, die young, and leave a cat eaten corpse.
My head was still swimming from uneasy sleep, and strange irrational
thoughts began to swarm through it. The once familiar sound of the
raccoon in the attic scratching around took on ominous undertones. The
beast couldnt even wait until I expire! He likes his meat fresh. I
clutched my obese cat close. All light was cast in sharp, expressionist angles, as if poised to extinguish itself lest it be swallowed whole by the
encroaching darkness.
Thoughts of TROLL 2, which featured plant life consumed by humans rendering
flesh into a vegetable goo to be eaten by rubber faced midgets became rather plausible. I closed my eyes and in a hypnogogic haze envisioned large praying mantis styled creatures made entirely out of green beans...
These are the pockets of diseased time in which the truly personal
atrocities take place. Subjective nightmares that visions of hell are recorded. Where phobias reach mitosis and split off in fresh
bundles. Time and space melt into each other, peeled slowly apart like wet
flesh from cold leather. An aboriginal dreamtime of unspeakable
proportions, where all action is parabolic and uniquely distorted.
The air
itself a wavering fish-eyed distortion of a funhouse mirror. This is when,
and roughly where, people get anally probed on the side of isolated unpaved
country roads by bubbled headed monsters of intergalactic origin with non
existant noses and emotionless, almond shaped eyes, glowing space rods
driven spun roughly home by long, spindly fingers...
An indeterminate amount of time passes. I try to stand up, then fall back
to the bed. More accurately I slump back down let a wet towel into a
formless mass onto the squeaky mattress. My hair is slick with sweat, but
I begin to feel a bit better. I gather my strength enough to stand and
make my way to the kitchen where I drink a half gallon of water. The worst
has past. Its one of those miniature near death experiences. I walk
outside and light up a cigarette, savoring the soft curls of the smoke
snaking their way out of my face and into the cool night air.
Until that now all too familiar rumbling starts up like rolling thunder in
my abdomen, promising unwelcome rain.
I clench my ass, yet again, stomp out my cigarette and awkwardly two step
my way back inside.
I will have to accept my personal Darwin Award in the mail, thanks.