From: curtis@cs.berkeley.edu (Curtis Yarvin)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Re: Pained Whale?
Date: 6 Oct 1992 05:19:01 GMT
Organization: CS Dept. Snakepit - Do Not Feed.
NNTP-Posting-Host: adder.cs.berkeley.edu
Keywords: Losers

In article <1992Oct06.005208.22550@CS.ORST.EDU> tim@physics.orst.edu writes:
>The pained wailing of my immortal soul is keeping me awake nights.
>
>Obpeeve: I've managed to disgust myself with my own cooking.  In an 
>experimental venture, I attempted to wing, so to speak, a dish of 
>chicken parmiagiani.

Fah!  Any fool can ruin chicken parmigiana - or however you
spell the damn stuff.  It's the work of a moment. There's no
art in the thing.

But tonight, in my own kitchen, I created something so awful,
so positively Lovecraftian, out of such banal ingredients, that
I think I'll just have to share it with you.

The germ sprung from my childhood in the Dominican Republic,
where one of my favorite foods was a dish known only as
"platanos."  Platanos are plantains, a sort of large, ugly, and
foul-tasting banana that becomes positively ambrosian
when sliced, dipped in a little oil and fried until brown.
Makes french fries taste like cardboard.  Trust me on this.

So I moseyed on down to the local Safeway, Place of Many
Grocery Peeves, and - what ho! - they had plantains.  In all
the large, ugly, and foul-tasting flesh.

But they cost 99c a pound.  Now, to some of you this may be a
pittance, but my starving student's soul balked.  "Ninety-nine
cents a pound for large, ugly, and foul-tasting bananas?
Bollocks!  I have never paid ninety-nine cents a pound for
bananas, and I will never pay ninety-nine cents a pound for
bananas.  Especially not large, ugly, and foul-tasting bananas."

So I bought some common, or garden, bananas for a mere
thirty-nine cents a pound, and decided to make do.  After all,
bananas are bananas.

Bwahaha.  Come I home, be I hungry, and fry I up some fucking
bananas.  Baby.  Tonight we shall sup in style.  Bwahaha.

I juice my Nonstick Wock, that Nonstick Wock which is the
precise shade of blue evoked by a severe staph infection with
necrotic arterial occlusion, with a few drops of sesame oil.
Eat healthy - but not too healthy.  Slice a couple bananas in,
and season with a little soy-sauce and chili juice.  We're
going for the hot & sweet & slightly funky zone of taste.

Turn the Electric Stove From Hell up to "Napalm & Brimstone,"
begin to stir, and watch the fur fly.  (So to speak.  In fact
to comply with federal food preparation regulations I of course
never neglect to wear my USDA approved hair-net while cooking.)

Now, I had not thought of bananas as a particularly juicy fruit.
In fact they have much the consistency of crystallized lard.
So I was rather... shocked, to tell the truth, when my wonderful
bananas slices (latudinal) began to ooze all over the Wock.
And shortly disintegrated into what can be known only as...

Banana Scunge.

I was dismayed, but do not so easily admit defeat.  I kept that
puppy going, at Napalm & Brimstone, for about ten minutes.  

Now, if you've ever stir-fried anything you know that if you
have to keep it on for ten minutes, it's already dead.  Not
even God can stir-fry vegetables for ten minutes.  Put an
_elephant_ in a Hot Wock, boy, and after ten minutes it'll be
nothing but a heap of ash & tusks.

But the liquid kept it going; my erstwhile fried banana chips
had metamorphosed into An Entirely New Phase Of Matter (check
your physical chemistry textbooks) and, though largely liquid,
was rapidly becoming gelatinous.  Ah hah, I thought.  I'll see
the right side of Solid once again.

I kept it going until suspicious brown spots began to appear on
the side of the pan, and, not wanting to compromise le Cordon
Nonstick, dumped the Banana Scunge onto a plate and quenched
the Wock in dishwater.

It (the Scunge, not the Wock) was about the consistency of a
softboiled egg, and shuddered suspiciously when I prodded it.

I ate some.

The taste is indescribable.  For a few minutes I was
oscillating feverishly, trying to decide whether to frame it,
wolf it down with the savage energy of a dachshund trying to
gnaw its way out of a rhino's anal canal, put it in the freezer
and pile a cairn of orange juice cans around it, or simply call
the local EPA Superfund Haz-Mat Disposal Team and leave it to
the professionals.

Fortunately cool heads and reason prevailed, and I just dumped
the awful thing in the garbage.

c