So you've got opinions and I've got opinions and everybody wants to fucking fight about them this week, right? Well so do I (and I have, at great length. See also the previous blog post: Nobody Put a Dick in Your Mouth), but I'm burnt the Hell out. I'm in serious Mega Controversy Overload, so I wanted to write something with less bicker potential. Choosing not to engage the argument doesn't invalidate my stance (or so I keep telling myself when I need to resist reaching for my phone like a junkie looking to pump some deadly Facebook squabble into my blood pipes).
Problem is that arguing can be like a drug and when coming off a hardcore, three day, Facebook fighting binge, you can't just describe the sunset and wax poetic about the meaning of life. I've got some adrenaline riding through my veins like the contents of a roaring, sploosh-tastic water slide. As I discovered last time I tried to write a real story under these conditions, I can't help myself- I will inevitably deform the original intention and transmute the story into some allegorical expression of the argument that I wish I were having. So to combat that inclination I have tried to pick a subject matter devoid of controversy but super infused with the heavy metal intensity my bones are screaming for. And this is what I have come up with: a step by step guide to making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But not just any peanut butter and jelly sandwich, this is...
The Last Motherfuckin' PBJ on Earth!
* * *
The world is coming to an end. All of the signs were there. Your religion or lack thereof turned out to be the wrong stance to take. Somewhere in the darkest corners of your mind you knew that this was a distinct possibility, but you convinced yourself that you were so fucking sure that you had it right all along and so many people seemed to agree with your opinions that it disarmed you into a false sense of security.
Outside of your home there are fires raging, licking at the glass like non-denominational and totally uncontroversial hounds of a Hell you didn't believe in... or as the case may be, brimstone is scratching at your window pane like the Egyptian, jackal-headed overlord of the underworld, Anpu who you thought to be just another dead God of a dead civilization but is coming soon to carry your soul away for realsies... or by some chance you may find yourself approaching the Babylonian "Irkalla" where everyone (heroes and villains alike!) are forced to wear feathers and imbibe only ashes for the rest of eternity.
But, hark, I say unto thee! There is still time! The impending doom of the apocalypse will eventually shatter the walls of your home and fill your lungs with noxious fumes of death and decay, the unfortunate, vaporized remains of everyone you ever knew and loved... or hated... or didn't care much either way about except for that one time when they kind of snubbed you when you tried to say good morning but they seemed like they were in a total hurry? But still they probably could have said something! Even their putrid miasma will be present in the last dead coktail taste you will experience before your death steals even that sense from your mouth, before everything fades to black... unless you are sentenced to Hell as a non-believer, in which case that dreadful taste will more than likely last for an unbelievably long time... or you might wind up in the subarctic conditions of the Viking Niflhel, where even flames may freeze and that rancid taste is locked into your mouth by a tundra that lasts a thousand times a thousand years... or maybe you wound up in any one of the twenty five Hindu Hells, like the completely gross, self-explanatory one called Diarrhea for example, or the dreaded Forest of Sword Blades where you are made to climb up and down spiny trees made of ... sword blades... even as it rips your flesh asunder.
But that's later. Soon. But later.
For now, you have time... not much, but just enough to perform one last deed as the candlewick of your life burns into the puddle of liquid wax that it's been headed towards since first your flame was lit. It's time for you to have one final experience, a moment that will somehow ring out in defiance of the doom that awaits you in [don't forget to insert another pretty awful afterlife here]. The memory of this act will have to be enough to sustain you, and speaking of sustaining you, there is kind of a rumble in your stomach that doesn't seem to have originated from the cacophony of damnation at your doorstep. You are hungry. One might even be tempted to say this is a, dare I say, unholy hunger?
When all of these stars have aligned (and only these precise conditions- lest you would tempt the peril of all mankind by summoning whichever End Times await us prematurely), then and only then, there is but one thing left to do before you shuffle off your mortal coil. Not everyone will experience these conditions in a lifetime, but here they are, landed right at your feet and waiting for you to make your move. You never thought that you would live to see the day. It is time to prepare... The Last Motherfuckin' PBJ on Earth!
Grab a knife. You may already have a knife clutched firmly in your hand that you've been using to defend yourself against the infected zombie legions or the angels and demons warring on your front lawn who care nothing for those damnable souls who find themselves caught in their crossfire- after all, you were left behind for a reason... maybe you should have put your money on Kirk Cameron, but it's too late for regrets now. If you are already holding a knife, make sure that it's not covered in the blood of your enemies- you're not going to talk your way out of damnation at this point, but you probably don't want to go waltzing into judgment day with the blood of those you've slain wafting off your breath either.
This is very important. You may be tempted to use a butter knife, but DO NOT give in to that temptation. Butter knives are at least in part what got you into this mess in the first place. They are a useless, redundant utensil whose function could easily be done as well, if not better, by the spoon. Our hubris at creating such a ridiculous piece of cutlery and then promoting it as a "knife" despite its inefficient cutting capabilities would no doubt be mocked by future generations- that is, if there were going to be any future generations. But there won't be. Because this is the end. And you're going to die pretty soon.
So grab a knife- a sharp, real knife. Make sure it's a big one, like, one that actually feels almost too big and marginally unsafe to be wielding with just one hand? If you have a machete or even a hand ax, that's completely acceptable and serve you well in the task ahead.
You're still thinking about using a fucking butter knife, aren't you? Well, you know what? Take all of the damned butter knives and throw them in the trash. I know it's a fruitless endeavor, as you and your trash and the drawer you took them out of to put them into the trash will all be disintegrated at any moment, but just fucking do it. Get them out of the way and let this be one of the last few good deeds you've done with your dirty, heathen life. I doubt it will be enough to garner any sort of real mercy in the hereafter, but maybe if you find yourself in one of the sixteen Tibetan Buddhism Hells, like the "Loud Screaming Hell" or the "Crushing Hell" (reserved for animal cruelty), just maybe you'll get a day off from your torturous existence once every hundred million years for not holding on to and perpetuating the irrationally absurd notion that a butter knife is a necessary and useful invention of mankind. Have you thrown them all out yet? I'll wait. What's that? Your trash is full? Well, for fuck's sake- throw them in the toilet or shove them into the garbage disposal for crying out loud, you're wasting valuable time.
With all of the butter knives finally disposed of (and they had better be), you can finally get some real sandwich work done. Crazy big knife in one hand (or Captain's saber if you happen to be a Civil War enthusiast with such an implement at your disposal), retrieve one jar of peanut butter from the cupboard.
On the off chance that you keep your peanut butter in the refrigerator, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it's already too late for you. You have been living in a Hell of your own making, but things are about to get much, much worse. It's quite possible that you'll end up in the Greek Tartarus (like a basement of Hell, or a Hell's Hell), where you'll be making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for eternity... but the peanut butter is so cold it thickens and refuses to be spread across the bread, tearing it and rendering each sandwich useless and completely fucking inedible.
Don't bother with the lid, you've been taking orders from lids your whole life. This is your final PBJ, not some pedestrian, remove the crust and stick it in your kid's lunchbox knock off. Stab your butcher's knife/ax/saber into the side of the jar and eviscerate one half of the plastic, peanut butter prison. It's going to feel good. Real good. It will almost seem like a foreign sensation against the harsh backdrop of your recently adopted Armageddon reality, but indulge in the release of the intoxicating chemicals with which your mind is being bathed in. Allow yourself the ecstasy that mingles with anticipation of your soon to be tasty triumph.
If you happen to have only glass jars of peanut butter, you're in luck. You may not even need whatever unwieldy instrument you've chosen as your weapon in this battle towards temporary PBJ salvation, though I wouldn't begrudge you for using it all the same. Those years spent living on the edge, encasing your peanut butter in a container that seemed to be taunting every hard surface with its own fragility, it's all been leading up to this moment. Spike the brittle peanut butter urn against a surface of your choosing, setting free its contents, allowing yourself the momentary exhilaration of destroying something completely, changing it forever, killing it while simultaneously birthing it into a new state of being as it becomes several childlike shards of its former self. Don't be alarmed if you release an orgasm at this moment, it's perfectly natural in this situation. Unless it isn't, but in that case, your road to the hereafter has already been paved. You chose the wrong side. So what's the harm in a little culinary ejaculation now? Still, your work here is not finished, so wipe yourself clean and gather your wits. Before you taste the flames of conflagration in the Islamic Hell where your only refreshment will be splashed into your face from time to time like hot, molten brass, you MUST. FINISH. THIS. SANDWICH.
Regardless of how you chose to liberate the peanut butter from its confinement (for a real treat, try biting into the plastic like a wild animal), you are going to need some bread. Grab a loaf from the pantry or cupboard or from on top of the refrigerator or whatever.
If you keep your bread in the refrigerator, you have nobody to blame but yourself. You chose this lifestyle and it's catching up with you. I'm not going to say you should be ashamed of yourself, because that would just be rubbing it in. But you probably wouldn't be faced with the charred landscape that surrounds you if you had just let you bread live free like God/Odin/Nature intended. You have transmogrified the very nature of your bread and now you face the cataclysmic repercussions of your vanity. Not even the flames of whichever underworld you find yourself in will thaw your bread back into an edible texture. And if you even think of suggesting, aloud or to yourself, that if you microwave the bread for just a couple seconds it will be totally fine? I swear to whatever waits beyond the veil of life that you will be smoten. Well, I mean, you're already about to be smoted, but someone's gonna riddle you full of so much smite that you'll be just like, one big pile of smite'ry.
Right about now, some of you might be asking, "But what about gluten free bread? You have to keep that stuff refrigerated or it will spoil!" Well, I'm glad that you brought this up. Listen very carefully: You are not gluten intolerant. That's not even a real thing. I know you were told that by a doctor and you read about it in some science journals and ever since you gave up the gluten you've been feeling, like, sooooo much better- but you've allowed yourself to fall prey to the predatory ramblings of heretics.
In fact, similarly, if you have a peanut butter allergy and you've managed to read this far into these instructions for whatever reason (I don't know, maybe you've just mainlined all your epi-pens and want to see what you've been missing your whole life), I've got news for you too: You'll be fine. Peanut allergy is a figment of a collective imagination- it's kind of like what happens when a mob mentality takes root except instead of literally kicking all of the shit out of someone so you can get them Black Friday deals, you had to eat your public school lunches in a decontaminated white room while nurses and ambulances stood at the ready. You know who has peanut allergies? Kids whose parents think peanut allergies are a real thing. Kids in Africa don't get peanut allergies- they'll eat whatever the fuck they can get their hands on! Some of them actually eat dirt, just to feel something in their stomachs. There is not a thing on the planet that would kill them if they ate it. But enough about the poor and hungry, obviously you don't care that much about them or we wouldn't be where we're at. The point being, we've got the burden of luxury on our side, and with so many options and choices at our disposal, peanuts somehow drew the short straw and became the pariah of the food pyramid community. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that peanuts are not going to kill you. If we ostracize gluten long enough, that'll probably gain corporeal form and become a real thing too. I just mean "you'll be fine" in the sense that the world is crashing down around you and you've got nothing left to lose anyways, so you might as well go out on a high note- master of your own fate and all that jazz.
I want you to forgo the twist tie or whatever other plastic latch device has been keeping your bread fresh. Where you're going, fresh bread is the least of your concerns anyways. try to remember that "The Last Motherfuckin' PBJ on Earth" is as much about the journey as it is the destination- not unlike the life you've filled with whatever countless crimes against humanity you committed that have landed you in this extreme predicament. The difference being that the end result of this recipe is a sandwich, instead of, you know, something like what the Aztecs called Mictlan, wherein you are forced to journey for four years past demons and icy winds that cut like knives in order to eventually make it to the demented lands of the ruler Mitlandtecuhtli, a blood spattered skeleton king adorned with necklaces made from real, live, human fucking eyeballs!
So, about that bread. I want you to tear a hole in its plastic sheath with your teeth and spit the tattered bits out like a grenade pin. Satisfying, eh? I would like to assume that you've already gotten rid of the "butt bread" before today, but seeing as you are approaching the hour when you will be brought in to account for a life full of bad choices, I suppose it's not outside the realm of reason that you still have those hateful pieces of half-bread on your loaf. You really should have fed them to ducks, because ducks are a creation of Satan/Molech/Erkil Khan and poisoning them with your passive aggressive bread rejections might have earned you some benevolence in the tough road that lies ahead.
Or better yet, if humans hadn't spent so much fucking time devoted to the creation of cockamamie inventions like butter knives, maybe we would have done something more productive as a species, like unlocking the mysteries required to forge butt-less bread! If all you have left in the bag is butt bread or one piece of non-heathen bread and one piece of butt bread, then I'm afraid this is where you get off. You do not have the elements required to continue this journey and you must find some other way to bide your fleeting time before you are met with, well, whatever ends up meeting you when it's all over. Maybe nothing? Man, that would totally suck too. Perhaps you'll be reincarnated as a shitty, asshole of a duck and someone in another universe will feed you the butt ends of their bread? With any luck, it's not laced with Alka-Seltzer, but you'll have a stupid, tiny duck brain so you wouldn't be able to tell until just before your stomach explodes anyways.
With two pieces of normal, non-butt, traditionally sliced bread removed from the wreckage of your loaf's bag, cast the unused portion aside and take a moment to lament the fate of the other slices. They were, each one of them, so close to transcending their boring bread-lives and becoming something meaningful. Instead, they are scattered on the floor like so much refuse, incapable of performing the singular function for which they were created. It is, however, some small mercy that when all of this is over and the cast aside bread dregs are obliterated into some kind of atomically disassembled, cosmic purgatory, they will not be confined in your guts, forcibly made to bear witness to the ceaseless torment that awaits you.
It's almost time to spread your peanut butter onto the bread. Don't be afraid to use wheat instead of white. It's not just about your health, though the sensationalist media would have you believe that wheat bread is for those who have given up on having any real fun, it's a well known fact that white bread does not occur in nature without the intervention of witches. Now, if you're reading this, you probably have nothing against witchcraft and the like- but be warned that the alchemical concoction required to manufacture a single loaf of white bread contains no less than three unwashed, post bathroom trip handfuls of previously digested, repurposed Play 'Doh and the tears of non-vaccinated Canadian babies (used primarily as a binding agent). But hey, if that's your thing, go for it. Who is going to stop you? Allah? You've spent a lifetime living a physically manifested mockery of his teachings, why stop now?
This next step is very important: if someone has placed chunks of anything in your peanut butter, you must leave immediately. The killer is in the house. The call is coming from upstairs. Someone has betrayed you in a truly profound manner and there is no time for you to consider the implications of this treasonous act. Someone in your own home hates you more than the most wrathful collection of Gods or conglomeration of evil Deities imaginable and you would be better off facing what awaits you beyond the flimsy walls of safety that have barely protected you thus far than wait around to discover what freshly concocted Hell awaits you within you own home.
Using your cleaver/katana/chainsaw, spread peanut butter generously on both pieces of bread. You are an adult (hopefully) and you will make your sandwich as such. Don't play around with a PBJ hull breach because you didn't create a protective barrier on your bread and then be surprised when you have to deal with sticky jelly fingers FOR ETERNITY. Imagine waffle hands times infinity. You do not want to go there.
Now, reach into your refrigerator and pull out the grape jelly. If somebody used the last of the grape jelly without placing a new one in the refrigerator so that it would be cold when you were ready to use it, rest assured that while the finished product will surely suffer, the perpetrator has certainly beaten you to the finish line... they are more than likely being forced to drink kind of hot tap water from dollar store paper cups that shed those little floaty wax pieces into the liquid and it's not like you can taste them but it still seems pretty damn gross, and it makes the water kind of chunky feeling? And it's really just borderline unsanitary.
If you are about to substitute your grape jelly for the smashed remains of some other fruit, I would highly advise against it. Strawberry jelly, while absolutely more popular, contains an overpoweringly sinful amount of sugar. Now, it's really none of my business, but if you want to face certain obliteration with that much sin in your mouth I think you would have more fun felching a complete stranger. And don't even get me started on apricot or marmalade- just who in the fucking blazes do you think you are? The Queen of England? Maybe if you hadn't lived in such audacity and pretension, you wouldn't be here now. Think about what you've done for a moment and then spit onto the floor to get the wretched taste out of your mouth. You don't want the ghosts of all your failings as a human being to mask the taste of your final epicurean excess.
Don't overdo it with the jelly either, damn it. If you can't press the two pieces of bread together without purple goop spewing out of the edges, you're doing it wrong. You want enough jelly to lubricate the peanut butter so that it doesn't become a mess of lightly pissed in kitty litter that you can't swallow, but not so much that you finish your sandwich looking like you just gave Grimace a rough blow-banging.
Grab a glass of milk. And when I say glass of milk, I mean glass. You're not in elementary school and this isn't snack time. Besides, I suspect that plastic is capable of absorbing some small amount of its contents with every use, so unless you want a cornucopia of all the back-washed juices and mouths that have ever fondled the rim of your plastic ware, then use a fucking glass like a grown up. You'll want the pallet cleanser so that you can re-experience every bite as if it were the first, fresh, virgin bite of this- your concluding act of nourishment.
Try not to reflect on whatever it is that landed you in this predicament. Unless it was really fun, then you might want to keep those memories handy as a mental escape for what lies ahead.
Alternate bites of sandwich with mouthfuls of milk, close your eyes and let your mind wander until the end of your sandwich or the end of existence, whichever comes first.
Oh, and if you're lactose intolerant? Go fuck yourself. Someone clearly hated you before you were even born, so you'll probably end up as the ass end of a human centipede whose cowcatcher is force fed a steady diet of expired cheese and yogurt.
Bon appetit!
No comments:
Post a Comment