For her two hundredth birthday, Syrine threw herself a mermaid party.
The surgical alteration tanks grafted on the fish tails and gills with precision, nanobots coursing through their bloodstreams.
For hours, she and her friends swam in the orbital colony’s water basin, circling and playing.
They returned to her home and had themselves changed back in time for the dinner celebration.
Mermaids. Centaurs. Winged angels.
Although the angel configurations couldn’t actually fly, even with low gravity zone assistance.
Swimming was flying through water, wasn’t it?
She flexed a prawn’s tail in her fingers, twisted it, and took a bite.
Delicious.
Tag: food
Break
My wife is going out of town to visit her sister.
The last time she visited her, I went out on my bike to get groceries.
On the way back, I fell off my bike and broke my elbow.
This time, I’m not going to ride my bike.
And I’m not going to go get groceries.
Instead, I’m going to hole up in the living room and order pizzas for a week.
There’s no way I’ll break my arm now. As long as I don’t trip over empty boxes. Or violently piss off a delivery driver with a crappy tip.
Envy The Mashed
Whenever I see that a restaurant sells potato skins as an appetizer, I look for mashed potatoes on the menu.
Because there is nothing more cruel than to flay the skin off of a potato and then cast the naked potato out into the cold, shivering and frightened.
At least they are not alone in their suffering, since one cannot just have a single potato’s skin.
Huddled together in the alley behind the restaurant… how cruel!
Better to throw them into a bowl and mash them up to end their suffering. The poor potatoes in the alley envy the mashed.
Thanklessgiving
When I hear the phrase “heavy with child” I imagine a large burlap sack stuffed full of babies.
Juicy, delicious fat babies.
So… so tasty!
Sadly, Old Doctor Parker doesn’t go door to door anymore with his burlap sack. His heavy, squirming burlap sack.
For a while, though, you could call his office, and he’d let you in the back door, and you could pick out the one you wanted.
But the angry mob, waving their torches and pitchforks, made quick work of Old Doctor Parker and his shady “day care center.”
We’ll settle for turkey this Thanksgiving, I guess.
Ring
“No,” she said.
He reached across the table for her hand and tried to slide the ring on.
She pulled her hand out of his.
“No,” she said again.
They sat for a while. Neither touched their wine or spaghetti.
People at other tables tried not to stare, but they did.
She was the first to leave.
He waited a bit before he got up and left.
“No charge,” whispered the maitre’d.
He nodded, and got into his car.
“They bought it?” she asked.
He nodded, grinning.
“Good. Now give me my ring back. And don’t forget your wallet again.”
Squatters
BB Wolf wasn’t like other wolves.
He was a farmer. His primary crops were corn and soybeans, he also raised cucumbers, basil, and other things.
One day, he went out to his fields and saw three houses:
A house of straw.
A house of wood.
And a house of bricks.
“Goddamned squatters,” he mumbled.
Not only had they tapped his electrical line, but when he checked his router, they were stealing his WiFi, too.
Instead of confronting them directly, he called the sheriff.
Three squealing pigs were dragged off to jail.
The Wolf used the brick house as a shed.
Gnocchi
Some chefs make gnocchi, but I know a chef who makes gnocchi do tricks.
Most of the time, he makes the gnocchi do the standard tricks: sit, roll over, and play dead. Even shake hands.
But one day, he tried to make the gnocchi make gnocchi.
That’s right. Little food-based self-replicating Von Neumann machines, multiplying like bacteria.
Gnocchi everywhere, making more gnocchi, which were making even more gnocchi.
If he hadn’t have run out of potato flour, the whole world would have been overrun with gnocchi.
Which would gave been a tragedy, because his gnocchi tastes awful. Even in sauce.
Sing to the fish
Sally runs an aquaculture business.
She loves to feed the fish. And she loves to sing to the fish while she feeds them.
The food floats on the surface of the pond, and the fish rush to the surface to feed.
She tosses them food until they don’t rush to the surface anymore.
Then she knows they’ve eaten enough.
She doesn’t expect the fish to say “Thank you” or to compliment the chef.
All she wants the fish to do is eat, and be happy.
Oh, and not flop out of the crates on the way to the processing plant.
Dinner Lingo
“Diner lingo” is a code that waitresses use to call in orders to the kitchen.
The Waffle House has their own lingo for how to prepare hash browns.
For instance, “smothered” means to add onions, while “covered” means to add cheese.
Get your hash browns fancy enough, and your order starts to sound like a chapter out of a Mickey Spillane pulp detective novel.
Once, I slipped in “taken out back and beaten with a lead pipe” and the chef went missing for a week.
His body turned up in the river, while I’m still waiting for my goddamned coffee.
Dr. Frankenstein At The Grocery
Dr. Frankenstein burst into the grocery store and ran straight for the produce section.
“Damn that Igor!” he growled as he reached for a bag of Romaine hearts.
Only an hour ago, Frankenstein had thrown a head of Iceberg lettuce to the lab floor.
“I need a heart, not a head!” he shouted.
“Sorry, Master!” Igor had slurred. “I’ll go back to the gro-”
“No!” shouted Frankenstein. “I’ll get it myself!”
By the time Frankenstein returned to the castle, the lightning had stopped.
He’d have to perform his experiments some other stormy day.
He shrugged, and prepared a Caesar salad.