n o w p l a y i n g - s c r i p t b i n - f a n c l u b - s t u d i o

make love to the camera



November 2, 2001 - 1:18 pm

Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before

Goddamn, what a week!

First of all, I get the anthrax, which ain't no hay, I tell you what. Then, a short, fat science professor tells me I'm white trash. Good for the ego! The best part of the week came last night, when I inadvertantly turned my studio apartment into a toxic battleground unfit for human habitation.

See, due to my crappy finances, I've been taking stock of my tendency to eat out. When I'm flush with the green, I harbor no qualms about ordering food, going out to dinner, buying drinks and the like. At times like those, I buy restaurant food at least twice a week. A little cashew chicken here, a giganto italian sub there...it adds up. Anyway, since I'm in the poorhouse until later this month, I've been trying to be extra good about eating the food I already have in my house. I'll feel slightly guilty if I don't, especially since my mom just took my brother Barry and I shopping at Costco, a warehouse type grocery store where every item comes in two sizes: Red Cross Food Relief and Apocalypse Prepared.

The Costco shopping excursion should nicely explain the previously referenced 70 ounce tin of Walker's shortbread cookies. It also handily leads into last night, seeing as how the whole mess started when I decided to make a rice dish, employing the 12 pound bag of Uncle Ben's I have just sitting around (what it doesn't explain is how I failed to spot the 're-sealable' thingy on the bag, causing me to barbarously rip open a gaping, irreversible hole in the corner...but my idiocy in all matters domestic is fodder for another entry).

Anyway.

"So," I says to myself, I says: "Let's make a nice chicken and broccoli stir-fry." I wisely started the rice first, because that's the part of the process that takes the most time. I then got the chicken and the broccoli from the freezer, the oil from the cupboard, and then went into the refrigerator for the element that would pull it all together: The Costco purchased one pound glass jar of crushed garlic.

Anyone not see where this is going?

In the immediate, irrational moment after the damnable thing slipped out of my hand, I uttered a short prayer to God to turn the glass jar into plastic before it hit the ground. This prayer went unattended, and my kitchenette floor was suddenly ground zero for a four inch pile of garlic and shattered glass. One of two things was said at this time. It was either 'ah, fuck!' or 'fucking hell!' I don't remember which. As I calmly turned to the sink, looking for some already dirty bowl in which to place the catastrophe, the smell of it hit me, like tendrils or tentacles working their way inside my nose.

That's when I knew things would get bad. I mean, there was a pound of garlic and garlic oil on the floor. When is that good?

It took me about half an hour to get the place cleaned up. I considered frying up the chicken and broccoli in some oil and soy sauce. At that point, though, I didn't really feel like cooking.

I hit the kitchen floor with the cleaning power of 409. Twice. I used a roll of paper towels. I sprayed some air freshener all over the floor. I learned that vegetable oil (which I had poured in the pan prior to the accident, and now decided to discard) doesn't really flush all that well in the toilet. Trust me, that's the main one to remember. Write it down.

Later that night, Sally came over. I had been sick earlier that day, as you may remember, and she catches colds and flus easily, so she was planning to spend only a few minutes with me while she dropped off a tape. She could barely enter the apartment, even an hour and a half after the incident. "Your apartment," she said, "smells like a combination of lemon and bad."

We went outside to talk.

Oh, you know how I said I didn't feel like cooking after that? And you know how I said I had let the rice cook during this entire episode? Well. That was dinner last night at casa de Bill. White rice straight out of the pot in which it was cooked, eaten with a fork as I paced around my little apartment cursing my life.

I should have just ordered a fucking sandwich.

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