Round
Acid     The
Clock
Saturday, June 5, 2004
Capitalism
source: yesterday
posted: Jun 5, 2004, 12:01 am
by: rmk
For lunch we went to one of the free food places that've been springing up all over the island ever since the food surplus crisis began here about 6 months ago. These places are everywhere in St. John and there's so many that, to stand out, most serve meals based more on philosophic or mathematical concepts than on the standard restaurant categories of food class, nationality (geography), or health considerations.

We chose one about 3 blocks from the downtown offices of our company because the luxury was a little less excessive there than at closer ones. Still, great gobs of potatoes and huge racks of lamb were served on hand-painted plates with intricate 10th century celtic design. Exotic vegetables from unexpected sources like drain pipes or sewer bottoms overflowed the steam pots while exotic and plain people from nearby and faraway were also there to eat free, without design, ulterior motive, or wish to control anyone else's life or unjustly glorify their own.

Of course, the great chefs of the world have come here to prepare these meals for free, just for the publicity, and for the right to finally compete with each other without external pressure (cause nobody's paying!) to see finally who could put together the most profound and trenchant meal.

And then, after we were seated, had ordered and were waiting expectantly, making small talk about how society and culture were now so much more stupid than ever in history, and just as the food started arriving and we had begun to anxiously finger our utensils, our forks, in fact beginning to levitate from the table top, at that moment, a line of men walked in from the east entrance -– their zippers fully unzipped, their internet-drug-enlarged penises hanging out. As they walked, they were drinking from huge 5-gallon jugs containing a thick sludge of unrefined petroleum blended with tofu chunks.

The man at the head of the head table, stood up and went out to meet the head of the line of men. They stood there and haggled impassively in the distance while all eating and ourselves were put nervously on hold. Finally the man from the head table came back and leaned over his plate, already stacked high with hog jowls.

"For $1000," he said aloud so everyone in the place could hear, "they won't stand on the tables and piss on the food. -- And, for an additional $1000, while we're eating, they also won't stand around beating off and talking loudly about the objects of their, you know, desire."

There was some rumbling as all the tables discussed it and then we voted unanimously to let them piss on the food. When the decision was relayed to the men, standing respectfully by the door, they all got happy and excited as though pissing was their first choice too, and they all started smiling and waving at us like now we were brothers and sisters.

Around dessert, when no one had pissed on our or anybody's food yet and so we were still highly expectant, suddenly the manager came and stood at the head table and announced that the threat of the men pissing on the food was all part of the meal and meant to not only enhance the flavor and trenchancy of it all, but also to bring forth antagonists to key stomach enzymes suppressing digestion so the meal would last longer in the soul (i.e. stomach). He reminded us how this wasn't just another meal, but rather a media experience in the medium of food that also engaged the whole emotional and intellectual and historical range of the person, much as music or literature sometimes did.

Despite this or because of this, and despite being right in the middle of dessert or because of being right in the middle of dessert, more than 50% of us puked at the very sound of his words and were unable to finish eating. And of the 50% who didn't puke and were able to finish eating, more than 90%, soon thereafter, either committed suicide or were committed to various kinds of institutions.

That distribution of outcomes was also a planned part of the meal and if we'd just turned over the menu, we would have seen it described in full detail there. But then what fun would eating be?

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