I’ve mentioned the Brunch Critic on various occasions, so I’m pleased to introduce you to his corner of the Internet. It’s an insider’s look at cubicle culture in a high-powered consulting firm. That’s right, gentle reader, “high-powered” means you see real grass when you look out the office windows, rather than the side of an ugly garage complex abandoned by the 80’s.
“Imagine a ‘gay Dilbert,'” wrote the author, who also billed Dreaming in Cubicle 3025A as an excellent “time-waster.” True to advertisement, the page wasted five minutes of my time, but it was a good five minutes wasted. Whether you’re a gay Dilbert, a straight Dilbert, or a bi-curious Wally, the journal deserves a glance or two. There’s a universal appeal to headlines such as “That’s When I Wanted to Shove Pencils into My Eyes,” after all, and that means even you might like it. Yeah, I’m talking to you, the fellow huddled in the corner who, instead of being straight or bi or gay, nurtures an unbridled lust for Beanie Babies wrapped in silk.
If you ever run out of stabbing pencils, pens will do in a pinch. Give it up.
As we sat at a picnic table under a glorious Indian summer, munching on a variety of rustic food, someone wondered aloud whether the hot dogs came from this very farm. The question was germane, gentle reader, because what patron wouldn’t muse about such things while eating in a barn? Indeed, for all their pumpkins and rides and camels, perhaps the Goebberts also dabbled in the wholesale slaughter of beef, water, corn syrup, and the tiniest bit of sodium nitrate.
Yoko hinted that the hot dog factory probably operated right next to the petting zoo, which made perfect sense. I mean, where do you think the animals go when they run out of pet? To a five-star resort filled with giggles and hay? When I was six I believed, fervently so, that all my petting zoo friends would eventually fly to the great Pet Store in the Sky. After dropping off billions of targeted presents, Santa would deliver these animals to their promised land, packing them into his sleigh with antediluvian glee. This was before Uncle Cooter took offense at my stupidity and beat the living shit out of me with a nine iron, but that’s irrelevant to today’s discussion.
I don’t know if we’ve delved into this already, nor am I going to wade through pages and pages of my own writing, so let’s chance repetition. How did we discover alcohol? Beef? MSG? The origin of foodstuffs is a field ripe for study. Since the academy hasn’t really embraced this subject as worthwhile inquiry, however, we’ll just have to make do with wild speculation.
Alcohol
This beverage is basically as old as drunkenness itself, and that puts us somewhere in the Cenozoic Era.
One day, Og-mar left his cave with lifemate Ashlee in search of a new club. As they made their way through the Gleaming Tusk tar pits, Og-mar spied a patch of rotting fruit.
“Ooo, look. Fermentation,” he said with charming anachronism.
Ashlee grunted.
Milk
Sara-John woke at the crack of dawn, always before Reginald the Rooster could open his goldurned beak. She loved putting on her worn yellow boots as the farm stirred to life.
Meanwhile, Old Bessy would stare at the stable doors, lowing and lazily swinging her tail while waiting for Sara-John with large, innocent eyes. Whenever Sara-John would creak open the doors, Old Bessy would moo with happiness, or whatever passes for happiness when you have an IQ of 18.5.
One morning, Sara-John pulled up a stool next to Old Bessy and started milking her.
“I don’t know why we keep you on the farm, Bessy. It’s not like you lay eggs or anything. All you do is complain and complain unless I give your udders a tug,” she said as wholesome milk splashed onto the dirt.
“Hot dang, girl! I’m thirsty.”
Pork
Farmer Hoggett knew it’d happen sooner or later. In his heyday, Babe could herd sheep like nobody’s business, but it wasn’t his heyday anymore, was it?
“That’ll do, pig, that’ll do.”
The next morning, Mr. and Mrs. Hoggett had bacon for the first time.
MSG
Professor Bofflebum, having just stolen fireworks from some crazed “China-men,” wiped the sweat from his brow.
“By God, Penderton, this stuff will put us on the map for sure. Fetch my victory monocle, on the double!” he said with a wave of his hand.
“Of course, sir,” replied the bootlicking Penderton.
Bofflebum lifted up his hand for silence.
“What’s this? Is this sodium?” he asked, running his finger along the fireworks satchel.
“Yes, yes it is,” nodded his servant agreeably. “What do we do now?”
“Well, I’ve got some mono in my left shirt pocket.”
“You do?”
“Yes, Penderton, and I tire of your questions. Now go find some glutamate before I ship you back to the coal mines of Yorkshire! We’ll mix it up and make a pretty penny off those savages.”
Beef
And then Sara-John lost it and bit Old Bessy. Drinking unpasteurized milk doesn’t help them there neurons any.
The Future
This brings us to the future, which is clouded at this point. The human race has wrapped its collective lips around everything. Wheat, dogs, squid, cockroaches, we’ve seemingly sampled it all. This only leaves, of course, the untamed territory of manufactured products, and even then we’ve celebrated some success.
One day, on a morning not unlike this one, I will sit down at a café in Villars de Lans and flag over a waitress.
“Bonjour, mam’selle. I would like to, how do you say, eat a car,” I’d begin.
“Ah, you are Amaireecan, no? The cair, it eez an excellent choice. Might I suggest the Renault, 1979?”
“A very good year,” I’d reply in touristy ignorance. “Yes, of course. I mean, ‘Oui.'”
You know what I realized over the weekend, gentle reader? I used to think that conversation was an art or a science, maybe even both, but I hadn’t committed to either school of thought yet. Perhaps that’s a good thing because simplifying matters into two coarse categories would be a disservice.
Talk, I would offer, is also its own entity, its own beast. There are times when you can try with all your will and wit to push conversation into a certain mold, yet it continues to flow as it pleases. And so you honor it. You honor its different capacities: as advice, as comfort, as argument, as banter, and all its other iterations. Sometimes it’s a little scruffy, a little rough around the edges, but then again we aren’t living a screenplay, are we?
Every once in a while, talk is so good that it changes you slightly. Some call it “good” conversation while others call it “deep” conversation. Whatever you label it, it’s absolutely essential. It’s what happens when words sear with timely profundity, and you think about them long after they’re said.