I have no health condition. I’m not injured. I’m not sick. I just like food. A lot. I think about how I will cook it, I think about the way it looks, I think about what seasonings I could add, how much fat is in it. I think about the fudgy brownie seeping with syrup and sugar hot beneath a scoop of Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream and chopped walnuts on top. I think about the fresh ground organic peanut butter that spills out of that glorious machine at Whole Foods.
Then I think about melting on top of the Haagen-Dazs ice cream. I think about fresh brown rice and that delectable earthy taste that flattens against my tongue like a lather of foody-goodliness. Warm toast crunching against the roof of my mouth, the way it tickles when warm butter, creamy and smooth… Okay, I’m getting a bit carried away.
It’s all in the taste though.
Nobody talks about how wonderful it feels to digest Haagen-Dazs Ice cream – or about the brilliance of swallowing peanut butter. Why? Because that’s not the point of eating.
It’s the tasting. And the real inconvenient truth is that taste buds are evil, vindictive, cruel, needy, greedy and addicted youths in revolt.
They rent out a cheap artist’s loft on the third floor of a teeny rundown apartment building. It’s a bit leaky and their land lord is right above them. But it works. They’re passionate, instinctive, compulsive, and they know all the cool people. On slow nights, Asper A. Gus breezes in with his funky afro friends, Brock Lee and Callie Flower. That’s cool for a little while, but they always tell the same stories and Asper has a weird aftershave that lingers in the apartment.
“Better guests,” they chant. “Party, party, party!”
They have an open bar, an open door, and they’ll take anybody. It’s a jazzed up feeding frenzy. The walls are pulsing. There’s dancing and music and drugs and heat.
Then, taste buds start rioting. It’s all so good and they can’t get enough. A technicolored rave, glorious, dark, orgasmically exhilarating. It’s a ruckus and a mess.
And hefty Mr. Stomach is down in the basement under the garbage chute doing what he always does, rummaging through all the junk taste buds tossed down after their sucrose party. It’s easier when their stupid music isn’t harassing his eardrums, so he forever anticipates the precious moments he can slave away in peace while taste buds sleep off their food-comas and hangovers, dreaming about dessert.
Meanwhile, the hippy twins downstairs are hopeless packrats who store all the extra taste bud-castoffs for a time when the partiers upstairs are deprived of their raison d'être (which will never happen). Mr. Stomach keeps sorting through the garbage, and as he sorts the esteemed trucking company Intestine Inc. has to haul it out to Dumpster Supreme, who pushes it through the hole-y landfill. And all the while, the taste buds are raising their bleary heads, growing bored and hatching party plans.
So, before Mr. Stomach can finish sorting, before the Intestines get everything to Dumpster Supreme, and before everything’s out in that holey hole of holiness, taste buds start gallivanting around in their minion way, blasting the subwoofer and dancing in every conceivable jigsaw mix of bodies and sensations – sweet and meaty, sour and salty – all for the sake of a tongue-twisted glory at the expense of Mr. Stomach and the hippy twins on the bottom floor. The entire fiasco is an ecstasy chaos that Mr. Stomach has been protesting all night with desperate howls through the ceiling.
And the quibbling man in charge, Lord Brain, shamelessly enables their partying by refusing to reprimand them. Instead he mutters things like, “Oh, yes, of course, yes I completely agree. You need more party supplies. I totally understand.” So he tells his right hand man, “Hand! Bring the gluttons more food.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Meanwhile Mr. Stomach is growing hoarse and finally just flops over on his tattered sofa under the chute that always spews a putrid ooze. And he’s so far away and so far on the bottom floor that Lord Brain doesn’t hear him until it’s too late. The basement is trashed, rotten garbage is trickling though the doorways, and he is pushed past capacity.
The twins have way more stuff than they need, Intestine Inc. is getting lethargic and everyone is unhappy…except for taste buds, who have fallen asleep yet again, bare bottoms breathing in the breeze, bodies still tingling from their latest orgy.
Then I think about melting on top of the Haagen-Dazs ice cream. I think about fresh brown rice and that delectable earthy taste that flattens against my tongue like a lather of foody-goodliness. Warm toast crunching against the roof of my mouth, the way it tickles when warm butter, creamy and smooth… Okay, I’m getting a bit carried away.
It’s all in the taste though.
Nobody talks about how wonderful it feels to digest Haagen-Dazs Ice cream – or about the brilliance of swallowing peanut butter. Why? Because that’s not the point of eating.
It’s the tasting. And the real inconvenient truth is that taste buds are evil, vindictive, cruel, needy, greedy and addicted youths in revolt.
They rent out a cheap artist’s loft on the third floor of a teeny rundown apartment building. It’s a bit leaky and their land lord is right above them. But it works. They’re passionate, instinctive, compulsive, and they know all the cool people. On slow nights, Asper A. Gus breezes in with his funky afro friends, Brock Lee and Callie Flower. That’s cool for a little while, but they always tell the same stories and Asper has a weird aftershave that lingers in the apartment.
“Better guests,” they chant. “Party, party, party!”
They have an open bar, an open door, and they’ll take anybody. It’s a jazzed up feeding frenzy. The walls are pulsing. There’s dancing and music and drugs and heat.
Then, taste buds start rioting. It’s all so good and they can’t get enough. A technicolored rave, glorious, dark, orgasmically exhilarating. It’s a ruckus and a mess.
And hefty Mr. Stomach is down in the basement under the garbage chute doing what he always does, rummaging through all the junk taste buds tossed down after their sucrose party. It’s easier when their stupid music isn’t harassing his eardrums, so he forever anticipates the precious moments he can slave away in peace while taste buds sleep off their food-comas and hangovers, dreaming about dessert.
Meanwhile, the hippy twins downstairs are hopeless packrats who store all the extra taste bud-castoffs for a time when the partiers upstairs are deprived of their raison d'être (which will never happen). Mr. Stomach keeps sorting through the garbage, and as he sorts the esteemed trucking company Intestine Inc. has to haul it out to Dumpster Supreme, who pushes it through the hole-y landfill. And all the while, the taste buds are raising their bleary heads, growing bored and hatching party plans.
So, before Mr. Stomach can finish sorting, before the Intestines get everything to Dumpster Supreme, and before everything’s out in that holey hole of holiness, taste buds start gallivanting around in their minion way, blasting the subwoofer and dancing in every conceivable jigsaw mix of bodies and sensations – sweet and meaty, sour and salty – all for the sake of a tongue-twisted glory at the expense of Mr. Stomach and the hippy twins on the bottom floor. The entire fiasco is an ecstasy chaos that Mr. Stomach has been protesting all night with desperate howls through the ceiling.
And the quibbling man in charge, Lord Brain, shamelessly enables their partying by refusing to reprimand them. Instead he mutters things like, “Oh, yes, of course, yes I completely agree. You need more party supplies. I totally understand.” So he tells his right hand man, “Hand! Bring the gluttons more food.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Meanwhile Mr. Stomach is growing hoarse and finally just flops over on his tattered sofa under the chute that always spews a putrid ooze. And he’s so far away and so far on the bottom floor that Lord Brain doesn’t hear him until it’s too late. The basement is trashed, rotten garbage is trickling though the doorways, and he is pushed past capacity.
The twins have way more stuff than they need, Intestine Inc. is getting lethargic and everyone is unhappy…except for taste buds, who have fallen asleep yet again, bare bottoms breathing in the breeze, bodies still tingling from their latest orgy.