Pasta la Vista

No heat in the office today. I'm sitting here in coat and scarf, typing with the gnarled remnants of frostbitten limbs. I tried to creep downstairs and slit open the carcass of our office manager so that I could nestle in her steaming entrails, but two coworkers had already beaten me to it. No room at the innards. I did manage to escape with half a leg of intern mutton purloined from the smoke-pit, which I'll have to gnaw cold. And this was from one of the smaller interns, so it won't sustain me for long. But I have hopes that I can swoop down from my second-story window upon an unsuspecting freshman. They know to fear upperclassmen and faculty, but they have yet to learn that administrative staff are their most deadly predator.

I have also learned that someone suggested a holiday lunch for the office. Which was countered by the equally objectionable suggestion that we instead do a potluck office lunch. I informed the organizer that I will bring a pasta salad, which is widely recognized as the ultimate signifier of potluck disdain. Let those wriggling macaroni tubes be slathered in viscous rebuke! Let diners pick through in vain for a sign of cheerful pimentos or colorful rotini! No. This pasta salad coheres in a lumpy monotone mass, resisting all implements, cold and fibrous as a deliquescing brain. Perhaps a few fetid olives will be scattered across the top, like lesions. The brave will carve off little extraneous sub-populations of macaroni from the edges of the dish, as none dare plunge a spoon into the mayonaissey heart. Why is it cold on the outside and warm on the inside? What man can say? Leave it be. Take away a solitary macaronus if you can, just so there's one on your plate. But don't pretend you'll eat it. You don't want that inside you. It is designed to fit perfectly inside the walls of your right ventricle, a sleeve of doom waiting to constrict on the first passing clot.

So there's that. Plus a couple meetings this week to tiresomely re-explain what I have already detailed, but that's nothing new. Oh yeah, there's also another luncheon, this one catered. It takes place after a meeting of the muckety-mucks, to which the proletariat aren't invited. But we are brought in to sup on the lunch spread, sort of like the king inviting the peasantry inside the keep walls to feast on heaps of yuletide lardoons and wheat chaff. But it's free, and they got sammiches. It's either that or White Castle.

Comments

[John M. Hicks]

          And I thought niblets were gross. I stand corrected! You know, Kraft mac & cheese is decent out of the box, and better with buttermilk, real butter, and an additional 8 oz. of sour cream. So how do people manage to come up with such awful buffet items? As evinced from this blog, it must be intentional!

JH

[Furry Fury]

OH BOY!

Pasta Salad!!

Seriously. You are such a great writer!
I just love the way you write!

This was so funny.
I was holding my sides, laughing,
eventually it was painful I laughed
so hard; tears were rolling down my checks.

Laughter is nice!
Even painful laughter is good medicine!

Do it again!

Please?

Now that I am in business for myself
I seldom see such incredibly nasty
pot lucks.

What is it about human nature that
makes us lie about such things anyway?

The last time I was at such a thing?

The ladies who lunched with me ooh-ed
and ah-ed about this "fluff" or that
mayonnaise-laden thing so convincingly
that they thus insured this slime from
HELL will continue to be served up out
of spite or ignorance forever!

Why can't we just say what we are thinking?

"GAK!!!"

Ah well, let's thank our lucky stars that
there is a garbage can in every practically cubicle and room!

I do remember some good potlucks though.

There were some actual good dishes at those,
I found some very tasty eats at various
library functions.

So good and so few were these but the
lovely consumable items were presented
with pride and celebrated with much
saliva and satisfied rumbly tummies.

Now that I am an online addict and also
self-employed, I so rarely see food at all.

Save the glorious artery clogging
creations of my better half.

Which I fall on like a slavering dog
whilst making obscene noises
which are unseemly for either
company or those in public to
witness.

(Thanks honey!!!)

I also remember certain wonderful parties
that were potlucks.

Um, the red beans and rice that you
made once. Yum!

Jell-O shooters were sucked down
there too! Now that's some good slime!

I may be getting two parties mixed up
in my head.

(If so please excuse me, I was at the very
least drinking.)

I seem to recall an artichoke bake that was
shaped like a she-male voodoo doll.

Yes, those were the days!

So anyway, thanks for the entertainment Sir!

Please keep it up as we force our way
through these grim holi-daze!

Furry Fury

[chris m]

Very kind words, made all the more digestible by their configuration in a prose poem. I think the key is to focus on the "luck" portion of "potluck." There is guarantee that the luck implied will be good.