Thursday, January 7, 2010

Margarine

I got a hankering for English muffins the other day. I’m not sure why, but I suddenly said to myself. “Huh. I really want an English muffin. I mean, I really want an English muffin. I would happily punch somebody for a muffin. I might even go as high as stabbing. Shooting, probably not, but yeah, I’d stab for an English muffin.”


The funny thing is that I wasn’t using my ‘inner’ voice when I said that. The really funny thing is that I happened to be in a studio wide meeting with about eighty other people. Needless to say, I now get lots of room at company meetings.

Anyway, I bought some English muffins after work and brought them home, fully intending to pop one in the toaster, slather it with some butter-like substance after it was brown, and then consume it while laughing maniacally.

Before I tossed a muffin in the toaster, however, it then occurred to me to check if I actually had any margarine on hand. This necessitated that I open the fridge, which I only do about once a year. You see, my fridge is full of stuff that I can’t identify. There are bags and cartons and all sorts of things, for lack of a better term, that have been there since the late Pleistocene.

NOTE: I used to keep my refrigerator completely empty, but discovered that ninjas were lurking in there. I then packed it full of stuff just to deny them a hiding space. This also explains why I keep an axe handle atop the fridge (also good for fighting cabinet weasels).

I dimly recall buying some margarine a while back, so I set about trying to find it. It was in the back of the top shelf, past what once might have been a watermelon or some sort of spider carcass. I hauled out the margarine and checked the expiration date. It expired in October. Of 2004.

This seemed a touch old, but I opened it anyway, just to see if it was still good. It was brown, which is generally not a good color for margarine. I poked it and it made a ‘thip!’ sound and bobbled a bit. This was unexpected, so I poked it harder. It made another noise and visibly shrank from my finger.

I think I accidentally created a new life form.

I decided to keep it and named it ‘Fridgey.’ Now, Fridgey isn’t much of a pet yet, but I’m working on socializing it. I pet it every day and leave little bits of foodstuff from the kitchen at work out to see if it will eat anything. Hopefully, if I raise it with enough love and kindness, I will be able to teach it to eat people’s faces.

I also hope that Fridgey is actually alive, because otherwise I’ve become emotionally attached to a bit of desiccated food spread and bought it a little hat.

Cheers,
-Jason

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Beer. Keep the fridge full of beer and there's no room for ninjas. If a tiny ninja happens to fit in, then he or she would both be too tiny to attack you and too drunk to do any damage.
The little spaces on the door are for decorative items and pets.


Buzzcook

Toil3T said...

5 years out of date isn't so bad. I once made an omlette that had parsley flakes that were older than I am. It still tasted alright.

Do you intend on teaching Fridgey tricks other than eating faces? Maybe you could use him (or her?) as a guard-former-dairy-product.

Jason Janicki said...

Good point, Anon. Or just fill the fridge with some sort of deadly gas!

Well, once Fridgey masters 'eating faces' I'll try and teach him which faces to eat. :)

Gaz Hunter said...

One of the drawbacks you may discover with teaching Fridgey to eat faces is that you may encounter the same problem certain Soldierly types did when they taught dogs to crouch under tanks whilst strapped to explosives.

When they were let loose on the battlefield, they did as they were trained. Sadly they were trained using the tanks belonging to the trainers, their *own* tanks.

Apparently it was not one of the greatest successes in the history of warfare...so watch your face!

Gillsing said...

Just the other day I had me some of that home made lingonberry jam that my dear mother gave me when I moved into my new apartment 16 years ago. It's still good. When it comes to my little fridge-friends, I'd rather eat them than try to teach them dangerous tricks. And no hats! They're supposed to stay cold.

Jason Janicki said...

I hadn't heard that one, Gaz Hunter. Guess it's time to put a mask on the attack dummy :)

I don't think Fridgey was anywhere near edible when I found him, so it was either take care of him or throw him away. If no hats, how about a helmet? A little viking helmet would rock!