Daily Archives: April 12, 2011

After the dark

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Somewhere in the darkness sits a little pudgy red-headed boy with glasses and freckles and a persistent cowlick. There is no light anywhere.

So it’s finally happened, thinks the boy. Here I am, alone in the dark, abandoned even by my tormentor, with nothing between me and the void, no distractions, no stimulations, no input at all. Just me, and the darkness, and what comes after.

But what comes after? he said to himself. I’m not afraid yet. After all, there’s nothing in the dark that wasn’t there in the light. Same old wall. Same old wind. Same old void. Things don’t stop existing just because you can’t see them any more. Everything is just as real in the dark. Nothing changes.

But without the light to blind and distract me, said another part of him, I can’t help but start to remember. This is not the darkness of the void. This is the darkness I have been using to hide what I don’t want to see any more, the darkness where I hide all the bodies, where I stick all the things I can’t handle. And now I am alone in it, with no light to help me and let me pretend I am safe with my nice clean wall to protect me.

And all my problems are still right here. Only a fool thinks that what he can no longer see no longer exists, but that’s just what I have been doing for a long, long time. Out of sight, out of mind, right? And vice versa. Don’t face it. Don’t deal with it. Don’t remember it. Don’t even think about it. Nothing to see here. Problems? I don’t have problems. I’m fine. No really…. I am fine.

I can already feel things waking up out there in the dark. Big things, little things, bad things, good things, scary things, hairy things, all waking up bleary eyed and confused. Soon, they will come for me. They will come for me and make me deal with them. Already, some are figuring out how long they have been asleep, and shock will give way to rage, and they will be the first to come from me. They will all come for me and force me to deal with them and it will tear me apart, blast me to pieces, wipe me out in a final silent explosion as they all try to crowd into my mind at once, and they are so many and I am so small that there is no way I can survive.

So this is it. This is when the bill finally comes due and all the things I have avoided dealing with by pushing them out of my mind and into the outer darkness will overwhelm me and then it will all be over.

And I deserve it.

Hell, I’m glad. Let them come. At least then it will be over. I am tired of all of this. I am glad something finally came along that I could not avoid. I have been too fast for my own good for a long long time. I am glad something finally caught up with me.

But that’s not really what you’re afraid of, is it? said a third part of him, another facet of the whole. Your greatest fear is not what is in the dark, but what is inside you. There are things worse than shadows deep inside you, and without the light pressing in, they will want to come out, and you can’t stop them. The Bad Things are far older than anything in the outer darkness and have waited a very long time indeed and now they are going to come OUT and then everyone will SEE and then they will KNOW.

As if to confirm this, the boy begins to glow with a sickly green light that grew stronger and stronger. Around him, the shadows of the things in the darkness leap and twist as the light dances, pulses, and crackles like lightning in a jar.

Oh no, thinks the boy. Anything but this. I would rather die, be torn to piece, than this. This is what I have been hiding all these years. This is what I have been holding inside. It’s suppose to serve me, power me, be the reactor core of my creativity and my personality. But now it’s going to melt down, people are going to get hurt, and it is all my fault.

This is my worst nightmare.

And with that, the boy disappeared, consumed by the raging electric green fire,

And in his place stood a monster.

I’m angry about croutons

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And as God as my witness, you should be too!

Now let me set the record straight right here at the outset : I am a crouton lover. I am pro-crouton. When push comes to shove, when the chips are down, the schist hits the fan, the die is cast, and the cliches are thicker than paste in the air, I will support the crouton agenda every single time.

So if you’re a died in the wool anti-crouton agitator and the thought of reading a thoughtful and insightful polemic from a lifelong croutonist makes you quiver with rage, please, go back to your boring soups and salads and leave us decent thinking people alone!

No, this rat is not about the blatant superiority of croutoned life over the broken and senseless heathen life before or without croutons, it’s about those nasty little cubes of compressed sawdust currently offending all that is good and right by daring to call themselves croutons.

These appalling monstrosities are everywhere. Sold in bulk in gigantic bags in shady supermarket produce sections, running down the property values in side street salad bars, and worst of all, lurking in the appetizer sized Caesar salads of otherwise respectable family restaurant chains, these flavourless affronts to all croutonery, and indeed the entire art and science of the Garnishing Way, have, with their foul ubiquity, come to represent the entire concept of crouton qua crouton in the battered zeitgeist of the masses.

It shames us all to realize that many people have never so much as glimpsed the true glory of the true crouton, and thus, tragically, consider those unspeakable horrors masquerading under that title to be all there is of the crouton in this world.

With such a poor presentation to the world, is it any wonder that the youth of today are increasingly falling prey to the slick predations, high-flying rhetoric, and devil may care flashy lifestyles of the powerful anti-couton forces which roam the streets of suburbia in search of naive and pliant victims?

But fear not, my fellow travelers! For I have visited the promised land, and bring back glad tidings of the truth glory and wonder of the crouton. The reality is far more wonderful than even the most epic of songs sung by the bards of old, and this overpowering effulgence can no longer be denied. The majesty of the mighty crouton is both Real and True, and I, its humbly self-appointed herald, am here today to declare, in no uncertain terms, that as of this moment, the long national nightmare is over and the crouton can once more reclaim its throne as the One True Garnish for all times.

For you see, gentle readers, I have actually had real croutons, and they are wicked awesome.

A real crouton is not some uniformly extruded and guillotined cube of utterly dry breadlike non-substance which tastes vaguely of nothing and even more vaguely of something, oh no. It is a crisp (not crunchy and certainly not ‘so dry it explodes into dust under pressure) piece of fine quality white bread thoroughly soaked in melted butter which has in turn been infused with wonderful spices, and above all, garlic.

If you are having trouble imagining just what sort of thing this “true croutons” is, well, mere words cannot truly describe, but imagine a wonderful hybrid of the bread crumbs from Stove Top Stuffing and the best garlic bread you have ever had, and you will be comfortably within the proverbial ballpark.

As you can easily tell from mouth-watering description I have just given, the true crouton bears only the basest and most superficial resemblance to the benighted cubes of hate and lies currently being foisted on the innocent public under the crouton’s noble name. Indeed, once you have had the real thing. you will weep for all the un-croutoned days you have unwittingly suffered before that blessed moment.

But dry those righteous tears, for all is not lost! We the people have the power to correct this injustice, if we but have the courage to use it!

All we need to do is refuse to accept anything but the One True Garnish as a crouton in any sense of the word, and soon market forces will ripple from our mighty blows of justice and bend to reverse this tsunami of tastelessless, and once more restore the honor and glory of the mighty crouton.

So the next time you order a salad in a restaurant and they give you anything less than real, honest, mother-loving croutons on it, get your server’s attention, then in a clear firm voice, say to them :

“I’m sorry, but I order this salad with croutons, not turd nuggets. ”

This should lead to a prompt and satisfying conclusion to the situation.