I was in Portland for several days this week. My main reason for heading down was to see my Portland shrink. She's the only good shrink I've ever met. It's worth the three hour drive.
Not wanting to blow a wad of cash on a hotel room, I opted to stay with mum. Just after I went insane a little over a month ago, I made a trip down to Portland and, because I expected to kill myself before long, checked in to one of the nicest hotels in town. I figured that, if it was good enough for the President of the United States of 'Merica, then it might suit my own tastes.
Not the case. It's possible that he was staying in a different kind of room. Mine didn't seem to be full of political buttlickers and whatnot. I got complimentary coffee in the morning, though. I bet he didn't get complimentary coffee in the morning. The only thing that got in the way of my enjoyment of complimentary coffee in the morning is that I would have had to make it myself, and I don't know the first damned thing about making coffee. Even if there's one of those mysterious coffee machines.
I didn't want coffee anyway.
When I checked out and was handed the bill, I was reminded of the day I signed the loan papers on my current car, except that my car was cheaper, and I wasn't even remotely sober when I purchased it. Being out of my mind bonkers made it easier for me to say things like, "Hell YES I want to pay an extra twelve-thousand dollars for a genuine Mini Cooper driving cap! I shall wear it atop my head, and people in the street shall see me and say amongst themselves, 'Hark! He is obviously a man of taste and means!' When I'm feeling especially sophisticated, I will don it while smoking my pipe. Yes, yes, my good man! On the subject of the fancy cap you've mentioned, I think I'll take two..."
If that isn't a lesson to stay sober, then I don't know what is. Probably getting to see Mel Gibson on Cops. That'd be a good lesson.
You see, then, why staying at mum's was the best choice this time around. After having overdrafted my checking account by about six figures, I thought I'd save some money and shack up with family.
I got my money's worth. My parents have always been strange, but over the years they've developed a complex social structure involving only themselves. If there are any anthropologists reading this out there, then give me a call and I'll get you in cheap to observe the weirdos. The first night I was in town, I had dinner with them, and, I swear, they spent an hour talking about bread prices. Apparently, bread is like a stock, and you need to watch the market to ensure you'll be ready when the price of Orowheat NutBread 5000 hits rock bottom. Then you swoop in with your shopping cart and stock up on enough Orowheat NutBread 5000 to last you long enough that, should we ever discover a safe way to cryogenically freeze ourselves for future thawing in a bright new world, you'll have your armada of Orowheat NutBread 5000 waiting for you with NutBread to spare.
At the time, I thought this was a funny little thing. I didn't know that their newfound depression era thoughts about NutBread would carry over into their every waking thought.
The problem began around a late hour of the PM yesternight. I was hungry, and I wanted food. I would have helped myself to some Orowheat NutBread 5000, but my parents keep their stockpile in an offshore drilling rig that's been converted into a giant warehouse guarded by a bunch of five year olds with Uzis. I know; it makes me sick, too, but they're my parents, and I accept them for who they are, even if who they are is a couple of megalomaniacal child slavers with an eerie fixation on Orowheat NutBread 5000.
I took a look around mum's kitchen. What I really wanted was my leftover pizza from dinner, but mum's going to Cuba in a few days, and she - seriously - wanted to pack the pizza for her friends. I can appreciate that Cubans are lacking certain comforts, but I don't think foodborne illness is one of them. I don't even know how mum's getting the pizza out there. She was asking me questions about slapping together an improvised water and ammonium nitrate cooling system, and if it would help. Since I couldn't tell anymore if she was trying to freeze a pizza or build a bomb, I started bringing up unpleasant memories of my childhood so I wouldn't have to admit that I didn't have the answer. She went on to think about the problem herself, and I think she's planning on lining a bulletproof briefcase with dry ice, putting the pizza inside, handcuffing the briefcase to her wrist, and only opening it once the twenty-four hour locking mechanism has released the latch. By then, the bloody thing is going to look like a mastodon that got its ass kicked in a fight with a rabbit (they were bigger back then) and was consumed by the permafrost where it would be prisoner to the elements until it was exhumed on a popular cable channel program quite a few years later to the delight of the only four people on the planet who are so well educated on the history of mastodonia that their little heads explode from the excitement.
That's exactly what that pizza's going to be like. Dirty, old, smelly, carcass-y, hairy, and with way too many tusks and dead scientists with no heads lying around.
If it hasn't leapt out of the screen and struck you right between the peepers yet, I'm bitter.
I'm bitter because, when I was hungry yesternight, and when I was searching for food, the food I wanted was the food that mum was taking to another country. And it's not restraint or good manners that stopped me from taking the pizza away from the whole of Cuba, but simply that I didn't know where to look to steal the thing. Had I found it, I gladly would have torn into it like a savage eating a human skull in nose sauce.
After twenty minutes of searching, I determined in an independent investigation that the pizza was AWOL.
The search only made things worse. Having my pizza hopes dashed put me in a foul mood while doing nothing for my hunger.
My search of her refrigerator yielded exactly nothing edible. I found eighteen different kinds of mustard (my alternative thought is that it might actually have been eighteen bottles of the same mustard, but from different eras), a stick of frozen butter that I considered sucking on, a lot of instant coffee, a tray of ice, some flat club soda, and, oddly, a frisbee in the crisper.
Something I think that what teachers in high school would have told me had I gone to their classes is that I'm a real think-on-my-feet kind of guy. As a testament to their unheard praise, I shifted my worldview appropriately when faced with this tragic food situation.
My eureka moment came when I realized I had defined "edible" too narrowly. By broadening my horizons and my chances of getting botulism, I could probably find something that would, at the very least, not kill me when I ate it.
That's when I found it.
Glop.
Mum, the tricky devil, had hidden a whole thing of Glop in the back of the fridge. I hadn't seen it the first time because I thought I was looking at box of mold. Given that I never figured out what the stuff actually was, I can't assume that it wasn't mold, but I can hope.
I pulled the thing out from its hiding place and read the box:
Glop.
Pure unsugared, unsalted, unspiced, uncarbonated, unprocessed, good old everyday it's-so-inedible-it's-almost-illegal Glop.
By order of her Royal Holiness, the Empress of Wales, you can be assured that you hold in your hands the best thing of Glop there is on the market today. That's because every thing of Glop is tested by a horse in our factories, and as long as the horse lives, the Glop flows. The Glop must flow.
Before Glop arrives at the factory for processing, it must be acquired in its raw form. To this end, an army of badgers with neo-cortices grafted onto their primitive brains are fed a subliminally implanted message that fools them into thinking that working in the Glop groves is the highest office attainable by badgerkind. This results in an army of mammalian slaves happy to give us this day, our daily Glop.
No other Glop in the world has what we have, and we're not just talking about the badgers.
Our Glop is 100% natural, organic, picked-straight-from-the-Glop-tree Glop.
Hallelujah! Can somebody get me a witness... I said, can somebody get me a witness!
Well, who could ignore such a well written, witty, entertaining, informative, insightful, even genius bit of marketing spew? Not me. But I can't ignore anything. That's why, if you come and spent the night at my pad, and if you sing in your sleep, I'll approach you under the cover of darkness with a plastic sack and put us both out of our misery.
My interest was piqued, and it was intensified by my hunger. I decided to try the Glop.
Step one was to evacuate some Glop into a suitable vessel. I found just such a vessel and then filled it about halfway with Glop.
Step two was to add water. The water is a catalyst that helps Glop return to its initial molecular state of being three hydrogen atoms and eighty-five Gloptrons. The Russians experimented with this process as a potentially limitless source of energy, but stopped when a Glopular power plant went into meltdown and reversed everybody's gender without otherwise harming them. Yep. Things are pretty effed up in that town.
Step three - the final step - was to enclose the vessel of Glop in a chamber and bombard it with radiation until you were pretty sure it was dead. Something like a million children go missing each year because somebody was in too much of a hurry to irradiate their Glop to death.
Step four - also the final step - was to let the Glop cool and stop being incandescent. Some studies show that telling the Glop your deepest darkest secret will cool it down faster, but there are also people who say humans went to the moon. The world is full of idiots.
Step five - the most final step there is - you gotta put it in your mouth. It sounds disgusting, but that's what Glop is for.
Once prepared, Glop is a unique substance. It is neither a solid, nor a liquid, nor a vapor. It's in an inbetween state - something less than a solid, but more than a liquid, with hints of vapor (well, fumes) thrown in. Blows your mind doesn't it. Nobody knows how this is possible. One time, some guy said it was probably elves, and I'm inclined to believe him. Whatever the reason, though, you must remember at all times that this ain't your momma's (well, in this case it kind of was) formless sustenance. If you turn your back on Glop, you're screwed. You have to respect the Glop. You will give the Glop your deference. If not, The Glop will take your soul (you can get your soul back, but it takes a long time and you have to fill out a ton of paperwork - just take my word for it and humble yourself before the Glop).
When eating the Glop, you might notice that your Glop has solidified into one large thing of Glop. Don't fight it. The harder you try to stir your Glop, the harder it gets. If you try too hard, your knife will just twist until it's no longer useful. And that's if you're lucky. If you really screw things up, the Glop will cast your entire bloodline into the limitless dark. You don't want that.
After all the warnings and threats of eternal damnation and blah blah blah, Glop isn't all that bad. I found that chewing was a waste of time. If you don't tear through it quickly, it temporarily cements your mouth shut. If you do that, then you aren't going to have a gloptastic good time.
You also can't drink it. In a battle of stamina between you and the Glop, I'd bet on the Glop. It will stick to the serving vessel until the end of time if need be. You'll have to go to the bathroom eventually and put the Glop down (unless you have some serious dexterity (freak)). Glop simply cannot be poured.
What you have to do is inhale it with your stomach. I think you know what I mean. You just inhale... with your stomach. Couldn't be easier. The first few times you try, you'll probably vomit, but keep it up, 'cause your hard work is going to pay off. If you're having a really hard time, then consider barfing directly on your Glop. It will partially digest it and soften it up, making stomach-inhaling a little easier.
Arriving at the end of my vessel of Glop, I'd have to say that my experience was pretty good. The only problem (and this is so minor) is that I found a chicken beak in the bottom of my Glop. I thought it might be a prize. Like, maybe it was a fortune beak. I could snap it in two and get some advice about how I'm totally biffing the marriage I don't have.
But, no. It was just a beak. No fortune. A bit crunchy.
That's about it.
Maybe somebody could stock her fridge with something other than Glop next time (hint, hint).