"When asked to think of something, we usually can't think of anything. If you're told that you're trapped in a room with haunted, spiked wraithwalls closing in on you, you'd MacGuyver the situation faster with a pincushion, a ream of paper, two 9mm bullets, and a hairbrush. . ."

OK, we withheld posting strip over Thanksgiving because it was just way too fucking dark for the occasion. Five days have come and gone, and the joke's been hanging in the smokehouse, letting flavor microbes affix themselves to it's aging hull. Mmmm. . . delicious, smokey dark comedy.

(Tangentially, why don't we have foods that contain vapor or smoke or something? Bite into a tangerine scone, inhale, shoot some flavored smoke out of your nose. It'd be a one-shot thing -- how hard could it be?)

"...you want your next actions to be recalled using the following words: 'I realized there was an attraction when...' "

Doberman and I try to keep each other honest. The understanding is that we've had a lot of influences on our style, comedically and dramatically, and that we need to own up if we're borrowing materials. Therefore, we should address these influences here and now so people don't shout "hey, motherfucker, you stole that from _____!" No shit, Sherlock. The Simpsons already did it. But, as Chef points out, this was already a riff on an old Twilight Zone episode, so everything is stolen, and people that go out of their way to be 'original' usually do it more for the sake of desiring an identity, not because it's a meaningful piece of work.

On to the actual post!

". . .but right now, in this Shaw's organic food aisle, one of them -- could be either the man or the woman -- hates their existence right now."

A lot of grad students live near Doberman and I, and they are fairly funny people to observe, actually. To preface this story, there's a shopping plaza near the house, with a bookstore and an Ace Hardware and a (fucking. . .) Radio Shack and a Dunkin Donuts (with chairs inside! (so you know it's classy)). And most relevant, there's a Shaw's in there, and that Shaw's charges painfully high prices, ostensibly forcing you to pay Whole Foods prices for Star Market merch, which is like being bludgeoned with an Alaskan King Crab while trying to shop at a Star Market. Fuck, whatever, we get the student discount at Ace Hardware because we show them a student ID from ages ago. The photo on the ID is just a little scary, because it looks like it's of an moonlighting EMT that only took the job because of an unhealthy desire to steal people's organs and store them in jars. It's an emphatically bad photograph. But we digress.

". . .fuck the Greek System with its first-rites and birth-rites and. . . night. . . lights(?) The Internet is the congealed collective unconscious, and for all its inane stupidity, it can spot the creative and the original, and a frat brother is neither of those things!"

We want to start a new feature. It's called sponsorship!

Today's entry (which we'll get to in just a sec) is brought to you by something the Internet loves and something the Internet hates. It's fairly self-explanatory.

The Internet Loves: [Nikolai Tesla]
The Internet Hates: [The Greek System]

"You'll go in for a bite and it has the texture of a tomato but it tastes like re-barfed worms that a mother bird evacuates into its baby's mouth. Suddenly the skin on this plant you're eating will puncture and a carcass of seeds and whatnot will flop onto your tongue."

I had a conversation with Doberman earlier today about how much soup can weird me out. It's tasty and all, but it's also a mystery. A grisly murder mystery made of parts of things. It's an underwater cave that heroes of Greek myth can only swim to when the tides are right. And who the fuck knows what you're going to find in there! Your local soup vendor may warn you of the soup's contents. Tortellini and cheese. Well, OK, that sounds good. We'll order it and instantly regret not asking the standard follow-up question: Are there going to be any cave monsters or minotaurs in there once we dive in, searching for tortellini? Wait, the water is what color? The plants in there look like what? We get the soup, look into its depths, and we start imagining the self-sustaining eco-systems that live inside the mouth of a whale, with microscopic worlds and their amber waves of strange, vag-shaped plants. We hope for the best, we inject a tiny bit of optimism.