Xenosthesia.com

Flip Flops

photo-1539411423931-4108368555d5

Ten things you can do with flip flops:

Go to the beach.
Use a public shower without worrying about fungus.
Take it easy.
Show off your toenail polish.
Wear them with socks and sport the ninja look.
Take them off and save your place in the line at the pharmacy while you sit.
Feel the breeze on your toes.
Cool your feet by walking through a stream, stepping in a wading pool, or turning on a hose.
Sing along with Jimmy Buffett. (“Margaritaville!”)
Take one off and slap somebody with it.

Ten things you probably shouldn’t do with flip flops:

Go to the beach and try to hide your wallet in them.
Mining.
Ride a bike.
Walk through a cow pasture.
Climb a tree.
Traffic court appearance.
Welding.
Lawn darts.
Space exploration.
Mow the lawn.

Every wear I Luke icy Miss Steaks. How wood any won reed it if it was sew must up? I knead two order a way cup call four the mourning—the best thyme for editing. Know one can dew it fore me. Know one can fined the Miss Steaks in a man you script quite as well as yours truly. Bee sides, who maid awl the tie Poes, punk chew Asian errors, and ox ford dramas? He who spelt it, bot it. That’s how the sane goes. Or so eye heard.

The Bacon/America Theory

baconamerica

There was a time in America when bacon was only bacon.

It was found occasionally on pizza, and when it was found as a topping on pizza it was called “Canadian”. It was also found with eggs in breakfasts of the older generation.

Then came the eleventh of September, 2001 A.D.

Someone took control of American passenger airplanes and forced those planes to crash into some prominent buildings. Everyone in the world wanted to know who the mastermind of this operation was. Who was this madman who wanted Americans dead in big explosions and falling buildings? Who wanted the American capitalist system broken?

In bits and pieces the reports came to the people. The madman was hiding in Afghanistan, no…Iraq, no…Iran. He was named Osama and he was of Islam. His manifesto claimed the American people took too much when they took oil from his homeland. The manifesto claimed the privilege of Jihad, a sort of holy war, the wrath of a god named Allah. To claim Jihad was no small matter. Reports came in to the people that some of Osama’s followers disagreed with him invoking the Jihad.

The President of the United States promised to bring the criminal Osama to justice, though he never said what that justice looked like. Time passed. Osama was not found. Islamic followers in America were subject to prejudice. Some were taunted. Many were bullied.

The American President couldn’t find Osama, so he went after a tyrant of another country, and captured the other one alive. Americans weren’t interested. What about Osama? Was he Shiite or Suunite? Was he hiding in a cave? Enquiring minds wanted to know.

While America waited, they learned some things about the Allah-worshipping religion. It was started when two brothers were swapped in the birthright order. Esau and Jacob were twins, the older being Esau. Since Esau was the eldest, he had the right to his father’s riches, an inheritance, and authority through the priesthood. According to the histories, Esau sold his birthright for a meal, but also Jacob tricked his father into transferring the birthright. This created a rift, a schism, a bifurcation of Christianity to create the Nation of Islam. Mohammed was a descendant of Esau and felt very strongly that the birthright could not be transferred to Jacob, nor could the authority. Mohammed kept many of the traditions of early Christianity, one of which was the tradition of not eating the flesh of beasts with cloven feet, such as pigs.

Americans ranted about this. They were still angry.

Somewhere between anger and hunger, the internet-meme was born. Internet-memes are essentially a poster, a short succinct phrase over a still picture. The first few internet-memes were about cats and sometimes dogs, but soon they took on a more subtle punch. Memes started to focus on BACON. Not Kevin, either, but the flesh of swine called “bacon”. Memes didn’t just sell bacon, they turned it into worship.

People in America started mouthing the words they found in these memes. They practically chanted. In a trance, the same chanters went to restaurants and demanded bacon, great greasy piles of bacon. Bacon cheeseburgers were in high demand. BLTs regained popularity. Bacon with eggs in the morning was no longer a staple of the older generation. It was hip, cool, sweet even, to like bacon.

And did it end with pizza? No.

Soon, donuts with maple frosting were decorated with bits of bacon. Cupcakes were decorated the same way. Birthday cakes were layered with strips of bacon inside.

Was this seen as a kick in the teeth to Osama? Or was it the Jihad he ordered? Was love of bacon the mocking laughter of the American people, a sort of anti-kosher revenge? Or was Osama’s Jihad decree a slow, arterial-clogging death?

Time may tell.

Making it Edible

Only food that smiles is worth eating.

happyburrito

This burrito, for instance. Not necessarily pleasant. It began frozen. It was microwaved so the outside was no longer frozen, though the inside still was. Any child knows the time has to be set to five minutes or more and then you watch anxiously through the glass until the guts start boiling out of the burrito——then it’s done.

You pull that sucker out of the microwave oven and cut it open. Stick your finger in the middle of the burrito to make sure it’s really got some heat to it.

If it’s cold, finish the five minutes, or add five more. If not, slap a few drops of hot sauce on there in the shape of a smiley face and start eating. You don’t want your food to be ugly.

It may taste like freezer-burn, but at least it looks happy.

The same goes for nachos. Every nacho on a plate should have its own smiling face made of cheese, maybe with a nose made out of a chili bean and eyes of sliced jalapeños. And the best are the round corn chips. Triangles don’t make faces nearly as well as circles. Strips either.

Easy-cheese on a Ritz? Absolutely. Even if you make stars and hearts, you know, eventually one of your crackers is going to smile back at you. To please the child in the house, you’ll make the first one a smiley face.

To please them for a day, you’ll give them crackers with smiling cheese on it. To please them for life, you’ll teach them how to press the tip of the cheese can so they can draw their own smiley faces.

Why do people write about food? Because they’re hungry.

Time for dinner. Tomorrow morning I’ll discuss bacon.

Free Short Fiction: The Gibson Diet

trippy0

Eighteen days was how long she claimed to have been on the Gibson Diet.

It wasn’t bulimia. It wasn’t the Keto, or the Caveman, or the Mediterranean. She wasn’t crash-coursing on newly discovered vegetables from Bolivia either. It was the Gibson Diet. The point was to mainline digital nutrients right into the back of your head.

“Digital nutrients?”

She looked at me like I had just asked the stupidest question since, “Are you pregnant?” She didn’t say I was stupid, she just had that look. The one where a woman looks and her eyes squint almost unnoticeably. It’s that slight twitch of the eyelid, so slight, if a guy wasn’t paying attention, he wouldn’t know he was in trouble.

Regardless of how thin the line I walked, she corrected me. The tone of her voice was motherly, parental and condescending. “It uses the elements already contained in your biology and redistributes them as sustenance.”

“Ah, sustenance,” I said with manly buffoonery, “sounds delicious. You say sustenance, I say greasy burger, greasy fries, tall glass of b—”

“Stop now.”

“What? Am I making you hungry?”

“You’re making me ill.”

“Seriously? How can you not like food?”

Her eyes closed and came back open. Her head shook once, quickly. Eyes fell on me in disbelief. “What you listed is not food.”

“Huh? Not…what?” My own disbelief was more vocal, less body-language.

Then she looked away. For a second I thought she couldn’t bear to look at me any more. It wasn’t me—she was looking toward some unknown future. She told me about it, “I’m beyond that sort of carnal chaos. I don’t need bread. I definitely don’t need meat. Vegetables are fantastic, aren’t they? Yes, but I don’t need them. I can live forever without killing another animal or plant, simply by living off of the molecules already contained within my body.”

“Hold on. So what you’re saying is that your body is eating itself? Do you still…you know…defecate?”

She rolled those eyes. She didn’t have to say it, but she did anyway. “Do we have to take this conversation down to such a low level?”

“I’m just saying, if you do still, then you’re going to run out eventually. Do you drink water?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, that’s interesting. So your ‘digital nutrients’ don’t include hydrogen, oxygen, calcium…that sort of thing? You’re not making water through that USB in the back of your skull? What about other things the body doesn’t already have? Vitamin D?”

“I can get that from the sun.” It was momentary, but it was a good change. She wasn’t so condescending. She wasn’t quite so supercilious. Her mind went another direction. The tone of her voice became gentle. She explained her diet to me a little more. “The Gibson Diet gives me a steady flow of nutrients, instead of gluts and rushes which can be bad for your insulin count. I also get a scheduled dose of endorphins so I don’t feel hungry. It’s much more balanced than an oral intake. I’m not fasting, and I’m not wasting away. This is the way everyone in the future will get their sustenance.”

There she went with the “sustenance” again. I didn’t mention the potato salad and pretzels that suddenly appeared in my mind. My mouth didn’t sound off and betray the fact that I could practically taste the turkey, avocado, bacon sandwich that I was picturing. And I sure didn’t tell her about the fajitas. Never mind that. I kept my own tone gentle, to match hers.

“Your future looks bright, to me.” I smiled and nodded. Then I excused myself. “Hey, I got an appointment. Thanks for teaching me about your new diet.”

“You might consider it.” She sounded nice, but her eyes fell on my middle, where my girth is at its girthiest.

I knew what she meant, but it didn’t matter because I had somewhere to go.

Lunch.

On the way out, my stomach gave a loud rumble. I was so glad my stomach had the manners and good sense to wait ’til she was out of earshot before it did that.

I wouldn’t weep for the future though. She was wrong. People are too fond of feeding their face. No one wants the basic elements when they can shove breaded shrimp in their maw (and in my case, see if I can beat the record on how many fit in there). No one wants digital spaghetti. They want the real deal. They won’t give up cheese on a cracker for the idea of cheese on a cracker. It wasn’t going to happen, not now, not ever.

So she was wrong about the future. I appreciated her opinion, whether I agreed or not. My hope, to be honest, was that she wasn’t wrong about getting everything she needed. I’d hate to see her waste away.