I lay in bed in Brooklyn yesterday afternoon, staring up at the ceiling and watching the sunlight fade from the room. I couldn’t nap, couldn’t rest. A creature had taken up residence in my throat and chest. I imagined it to be black and very hairy, with large leathery wings. It wasn’t quite a bird and wasn’t quite a mammal, just this hairy winged thing, like a shaggy, greasy bat.

It moved around, pacing between my uvula and heart, shuffling and trying to stretch its wings. I imagined what it would feel like when the shaggy bat burst past my lips and lifted off, cutting ragged figure-8s around the paper lamps hanging from my ceiling.

Smithfield Ham is a meat like no other. A close cousin to Italian prosciutto, Smithfield ham is the meat of peanut-fed hogs, salt-cured and hickory smoked for a minimum of six months in the corporate limits of Smithfield, Virginia — home to my grandparents, aunt and uncle. Smithfield ham is drier and more thickly cut than supple, subtle prosciutto. Compared to Smithfield ham, prosciutto is the damp rag used to wipe a hog farmer’s work boots.

In a purely physical sense, Smithfield ham is terrible for you. The only way it could harm your heart more from a medical perspective would be if a surgeon were to slice your chest open and manually pack your arteries with wads of the stuff. From an emotional perspective, it is Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, love and forgiveness and bedtime stories all in one salty, fat-filled bite. Draped over a handmade biscuit with butter, it is also Prozac, Lithium and THC.

The bat flapped tireless, frustrated laps up and down my throat all last night, all this morning, in the cab to La Guardia, on the plane and all the way through the airport. It wouldn’t come out, and it was getting hairier by the hour, so hairy it got heavy when it settled on my chest to tongue its wet wings clean.

I keep waiting for the real grief to happen, but I just feel numb. I feel like I’m made out of balsa wood or something — soft and flexible, but easily shattered. All I want to do is read. I am an Easy Reader of epic proportions on a normal day, but now I am positively EATING words. I finished “Bonfire of the Vanities” on the plane and started right in on Haruki Murakami’s “Dance Dance Dance.” I was able to take a break from reading and joke around with my dad and sister while we shopped for funeral suits this afternoon, but after reading Pop-Pop’s obituary in the local paper, I couldn’t stop. It was all I could do not to wad the newspaper up and stuff it in my mouth — knocked out the front page, local section, comics and started in on the classifieds by the time we pulled up to my aunt and uncle’s house.

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I don’t make a single dime off this blog, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t pay off big-time. I don’t have ads or a large readership, but apparently my influence is enough that people are imitating things they see on here … something that might get them hurt or killed slowly through sheer fat absorption.

Take Bret Wallin, for example. He and literally hundreds of thousands of other people saw the post a little whole back about that ridiculous Franken-fast food pizza. And while some folks thought “yeah, I’d taste that,” Bret said “who’s got a Boboli crust” and MADE one. Actually, he made several:

My friends and I definitely tried our hand at making a couple McDonald’s pizzas. The first was exactly like the pictures you posted - each fast food kept to it’s own kind. The second, though, we chopped up the fries, nuggets, and burgers to spread out the toppings more traditionally.

A really fun time, for sure. We felt that the pickle was surprisingly one of the emergent tastes (as well as the ketchup and mustard to some degree). I first saw a link to your post (I think) on the site Kissing Suzy Kolber. I was visiting some old college friends and I knew right then - “we have to make that… we have to make it TONIGHT!”

And we did. Like I said, a great time. Most everybody felt fine except a couple guys had three slices. That sort of knocked them out for a little bit.

Understandably.

So wait. They made one of these things, ate it, then turned right around and made ANOTHER one. You know, to get it right.

This is why I use my fingers and eyes to make love to the Internet all day long.

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My friend Richard sent me these photos tonight, saying

“I don’t know where these came from but they’re going around the
net. If you haven’t seen them already, I know you will enjoy them. Don’t ask questions, just marvel.”

And marvel I did. My God. Have a look - ingredients and buildup here, the shocking conclusion after the jump.

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This is too fascinating and revolting (which, for me, is a synonym for fascinating) to pass up. It’s probably safe for work and a good lesson in why you shouldn’t go around stealing food out of the work fridge.From the Vaginal Food & Cuisine section at MyVag.net — Don’t Try This At Home. Here’s a telling excerpt:

As I love my girlfriend so much that it hurts, and I want to have her in everything I do, I decided to produce yoghurt with my girlfriend’s lactobacillus. I bought a yoghurt machine, which is just an electric contraption that keeps small cups constantly at body temperature. I put plain milk in each cup, and then with the full and loving help of my girlfriend I swabbed a bit of her vaginal juices and put a small bit in each cup. I then mixed the contents in each cup, plugged the machine and waited overnight.

The results were fabulous! … I have taken a few cups to work, which I store in the office fridge. A female co-worker pinched one from me, ate it, and liked it so much that she is asking me where I got it, but I do not dare tell her where it came from!

One thing is clear. This is gateway behavior for full-throttle sexual cannibalism. You totally know the deal: this guy is all chunky cardigans and cups of Earl Grey tea and little weird food projects like this now. But once he works out that he can have this woman he loves so much literally coursing through his bloodstream those beady little eyes are going to light up like candles only an electric chair can snuff out.

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I see you in the bathroom in my office every afternoon at about four o’clock. I think we’re on the same cycle that way. I think you’re a VIP in your company judging from the deferential reverence in younger men’s voices as they talk to you at the sinks and urinals. You respond to in clipped, quick sentences. It’s obvious that your words are almost as precious as your time, and given just as sparingly. You’ve got decisions to make, places to be, and barely enough time to take lunch.

This afternoon you strode purposefully into the bathroom, robotically munching Cheez-Its from a little bag. Without wasting a single motion, you unzipped, pulled EVERYTHING out and started pissing away a good two feet from the toilet — using both free hands to keep eating those Cheez-Its.

If you’re that busy, you’re in heart attack territory, man. And then where will you be? Dead on the floor, lying in a puddle with your piece out and Cheez-its on your lips. That’s no way for a man of industry to go.

Going to the bathroom is important, and so is snacking. Nobody is so important that they have to do both simultaneously. That’s not efficient, it’s just nasty.

Take a little time to taste the Cheez-its. Get outside, get a little air, some sunshine. You’re building a world and that’s great, but take some time to enjoy the world you’re in. It’s a hell of a mess, but there’s some beautiful stuff if you stop and look.

Take care, man. Take care.

–Jeff

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