Tinfoil and Togas: Part 2

So after the mandatory 24 hours of psychiatric observation, I was set free. I immediately went to the nearest grocery store and purchased $40 in ingredients. Once I got home, I realized I’d simply bought 10 boxes of Lucky Charms, so I went back again (10 boxes would only last about 3 days, after all).

I then bought a whole bunch of other stuff that could conceivably go into a burrito bowl. I got several different kinds of cheese, copious amounts of rice, some spices, ketchup, beans, 9mm ammo, tin foil, a tiny shovel, and several other things I probably shouldn’t have.

Oh, yeah. Chicken. Like, 5 pounds.

I got home, spread my purchases out on the counter and stared at them for a while. I would like to say I was waiting for some artistic inspiration or something like that, but in truth I didn’t really know what to do. I picked up a can of beans and placed it atop the chicken. This seemed like a start, so I quickly built a little food pyramid. It was rather impressive, if I do say so myself, but it still wasn’t turning into anything edible.

It was time to get serious.

First of all, I needed the proper attire. I don’t own an apron, so I grabbed an old sheet and made a toga. I then made and donned a tinfoil hat. This was mostly for the look, but also just in case the chicken tried to use some sort of mind-control powers on me.

NOTE: Yes, I know the chicken was already dead. That just meant it might be a Chicken Lich, hence the precautionary hat.

Now, thusly clad for battle, I got a machete, a hammer, seven feet of rope and set about opening everything and putting it into the largest pan I could find. My oven is apparently ancient, as it had no ‘make edible’ setting, so I picked a random temperature and set it to ‘Bake’ or ‘Clean’ or something. I’m not really sure which.

In went the pan, I set the timer for 87 minutes (give or take) and then wandered off to watch whatever happened to be on the Military Channel.

It was around three hours later that I noticed the smell. After a quick check to make sure the ninjas hadn’t set me on fire again, I followed my nose (it always knows) to the kitchen, where I discovered smoke pouring out of the oven. I had forgotten to actually set the timer, you see.

Which takes us back to the beginning. My magnificent pan of burrito bowl fixin’s was now a thick, black rock that tasted terrible, regardless of the amount of ketchup I put on it.

I like to think I learned a lesson that Sunday. Something meaningful about hope and charity and the boundless joy and beauty found in nature. Or something. In reality, I just learned that while I can’t cook, I look really, really good in a toga.

The tinfoil hat works too.

Cheers,
-Jason

Tinfoil and Togas: Part 1

Last Sunday found me in the kitchen wearing a toga and a tinfoil hat. I was wearing the toga because I don’t own an apron. I was wearing the hat because I wanted to feel stylish. I was wearing both items because I was attempting to cook.

‘Attempt’ is the proper word, as the pan in front of me was covered in a thick, black, charred substance that at one time had been a chicken. Smoke was rising and for once I was thankful that the ninjas had replaced my smoke alarm with a fugu fish.

NOTE: I don’t quite know why they did it. I can only surmise that they assumed I wouldn’t notice it was a fugu fish when I went to change the battery and I would somehow eat one of the poisonous bits. It was a cunning plan, foiled only because I don’t like seafood. Or generally eat bits of smoke detectors.

You see, Saturday for lunch I had a ‘burrito bowl,’ which is what you get when you dump everything that normally goes inside a burrito into a bowl. As I ate, I happened to notice what my burrito bowl consisted of: namely, chicken, cheese, corn, rice, beans, and some salsa.

And then I had an idea.

I could, given the proper tools and ingredients, make this myself. The next few minutes were kind of hazy. I may have shouted ‘Eureka!’ I may also have leaped onto the table and done some sort of dance. Said dance may have involved ‘groinal gyrations.’ As I mentioned earlier, I don’t really remember. I guess I’ll just have to check the police report.

Tomorrow: Part 2

Your First Scream of the Day

This morning, after my bike ride, breakfast, ritual chicken-sacrifice, and shower, I decided to go ahead and shave.

I lathered up, mowed my face (more or less), and then splashed on a palm-full of aftershave. A few minutes later, after I finished running in a circle and screaming, I returned to the mirror to brush my hair and put the cap back on the aftershave.

It was then that I wondered: Why the hell do I do this? Shaving is painful enough, but why do I then insist on slathering blue alcohol on scraped and bleeding skin?

Well, in all honesty, it’s ‘cause my dad told me to. I remember well the day he taught me to shave, shortly after my sixth birthday. He handed me a can of Barbasol, a razor, and a bottle of Aqua Velva and said “You’ll figure it out.”

Oddly enough, that was the same thing he said to me when he explained sex.

So, why do we men slap alcohol on our faces after we just scraped it with a really thin piece of metal? I had no idea, so I went to that bastion of modern knowledge: Wikipedia.

Apparently, ‘It is said that the alcohol in the aftershave closes pores in the skin and prevents irritation ("razor burn").[‘

Huh. Well it is also said that if you throw a potato at a full moon, a werewolf loses its bunions. So, yeah. I am deeply suspicious that this is one of those things that is ‘just done.’ There may have been some reason in the past, when razors were large, ungainly things that doubled as chicken de-boners and were often used to fell trees, but I don’t know if it still applies.

Well, I’m going to keep doing it, even though I don’t know why. With my luck, I’ll stop doing it and they’ll discover that aftershave scares off the bed squid and then I’ll wake up with a face full of sucker-marks.

Which, of course, will make shaving even more painful.

Cheers,
-Jason

I Am a Chicken

Earlier in the week I fell ill. It was not bad, as far as illness go, but I pretty much slept all day Sunday and most of Monday. Relatively speaking, it probably made up for the insomnia of previous weeks.

However, one interesting side effect of being that sick, for me at least, is what I call fever dreams. Basically, I have amazingly strange and vivid dreams. These dreams don’t just have sound, color, and plot, they have a whole 4th Dimension of weirdness as well.

For example, when I was in the 6th grade, I was laid out with the flu. I had a dream where I was a two-dimensional object (a square to be precise), who was trying to find a way to break into the 3-dimensional world. My search was rather hampered by the gang of swirls that kept chasing me around.

No, really. I’m not kidding.

So, Sunday night, I was a chicken, a rooster, actually. I was trying to find a way to free my brethren from the clutches of the evil Colonel who bore a suspicious resemblance to a certain military commander with a line of chicken restaurants.

Yes, the Colonel was making nuggets out of my people and I was determined to stop him. After a gun battle in fast-food establishment (which was in the first person), complete with bullet-time, John Woo-esque leaping, and the dispatch of a foe via knocking him into the deep fat fryer, I learned the location of the Colonel’s secret factory.

I gathered my stalwart companions (who were also chickens) and dressed in black commando garb, we stormed the compound. A ferocious gun battle ensued (though this time in a 3rd Person overhead view), where many a chicken and man alike fell in a hail of lead. Think the D-Day scene from Saving Private Ryan done in a warehouse with chickens carrying machine guns and you’ll get the idea.

I managed to make it into the main factory and oddly enough, it was now a side-scrolling platformer (think Mario). I now had to jump between floors, evading traps and pixilated bullets, while pecking any enemy who got close enough. I eventually made it to the Colonel, who resembled Donkey-Kong wearing a white suit, glasses, and a white goatee.

Unfortunately, something must have disturbed me during the fight with the Colonel, so I never found out if I won. Instead the scene shifted and I (being regular me now, not a chicken) ended up hitting a series of hanging pails with a lead pipe, hoping a clock would fall out of one.

I am dead serious.

In retrospect, maybe I need to stop playing so many video games.

Cheers,
-Jason