A bad cupcake a the local neighborhood donut shack may or may not have been responsible for a painful bout of food poisoning I suffered this week. The truth is I could have gotten poisoned by so many things, I don’t even want to contemplate the possibilities. The cupcake was a bad one; that is my story, and I’m sticking to it. The proof is that the cupcake was the one item of food, last weekend, that no one else in my life tasted in any part. Only I was tempted by its sweet succulence, overwhelmed by its velvety viscosity, flirted with its frosty vulgarity, etcetera. But before j’accuse and name names, let me be clear. There will be no Crime Scene Investigation; detectives flushed all the evidence.
Now for some news that hasn’t been circling the bowl. My obsessive compulsive disorder, like a ticking time bomb, exploded this week (thought we were beyond this imagery) and I frantically transferred all pictures and videos plus ten gigs of music from my old computer and various other storage media onto the IMac. Its the real deal now. If Joey Daytona had his way, I’d be calling the IMac “Nicky” right about now and saying to it, “Yeah, thanks Nicky, you’re a good kid. Hey Steve, he’s a good kid that kid!” I used the new machine to remake the upcoming Hellnight teeshirts for the Grill. Nothing like a 24 inch screen to crystallize an artistic vision, right Nicky?
Its March Madness baby! My aunt can’t stand Dick Vitale, but I love the way those sportscasters enunciate. Not to jump around too much, but here’s a passage of an essay called “Obamandela,” by Breyten Breytenbach, included in the most recent Harper’s Magazine Readings, that I found particularly inspirational. Yes, I first read it on the throne:
“I’m driving through the dark streets of Dakar after arriving at the chaotic airport on a flight from Paris. Ka’afir, the Senegalese colleague who comes to fetch me, and I do a quick roundup of world news since we last met. He brings me up to speed on the latest disappointments caused by the corrupt and inept Wade government: civil-servant salaries not paid for two months, power outages lasting days in the poorer neighborhoods, schools on strike, the impossible dearness of basic food, the Lions (Senegal’s national football team) not making the cut for the Africa Cup…
We pause to reflect on all of this. Then he suddenly says, ‘But the American people gave a lesson in democracy to the whole world.’
How so, I ask?
‘Obama.’
He says nobody in Africa believed that the Americans could find in their hearts the maturity and the fairness to elect a black man to the highest office. I warn that the proof is still to come, that the man may fail because the challenges are too overwhelming, because the people around him have too powerfully entrenched views and strategies different from his (I mention the Israel conundrum).
‘Even so,’ Ka’afir says, ‘even if he fails, which is likely, the historic fact still remains that the American people grew beyond their fears and prejudices. Their hearts expanded.'”
Why does the cupcake look like Master Shake’s brother? Perhaps you should have stuck to the Portugese-Irish-Korean soda bread laddy.
Snork, that is a nice cupcake photo.
Verma’s is bad!