Leftover food. That's what the days after Thanksgiving are about. In celebration, the rest of this column will consist of leftover writings I have about food:
As I sit at my desk, with an urge I am stricken
To write of the foodstuff that sometimes can sicken.
It first brings us joy, then it causes us grief,
Made from chicken or turkey or pork -- even beef!
And it's also got stuff in it everyone hates,
Like rat droppings (OK by law!) and nitrates.
It started in Germany, down in Frankfurt,
The Frankfurter! Some meat in your roll to insert.
But the World War meant German names had to be changed,
So we call it the "hot dog" (which sounds quite deranged).
There are old men who have never been out of state
Who can line up hot dogs on their arm, up to eight!
They will slather on chili, onions, sauerkraut--
(Another word that went when the War came out),
And for those that know what's gold in the hot dog vault,
They will sprinkle each hot dog with celery salt.
They're called "Wieners" or "Bellybustahs," even "Gagghiz,"
And they're filled with more weird animal parts than haggis.
You could buy these great gaggers for only a buck,
But don't think one will do for lunch, else you're a schlemiel.
*
You know those horror movies where someone is being stalked by a killer and then they scream
The stuff is, ostensibly, a killer (albeit a slow one) if you have too much of it. And it's in everything.
It's in ketchup. It's in jam. It's in your kitchen. It's sneaking up behind you OH MY GOD WATCH OUT! Seriously, this corn is stalking us, and we should do more about it than just saying, "Aw, Shucks."
So, I've been trying to eat slightly less of it by looking at ingredient labels when I go shopping. Someone once said you can tell you're getting older when you read nutrition labels on a cereal box before you buy it, rather than just when you're eating breakfast and it's standing in front of you.
The tricky thing for me is bread. Most bread seems to have tons of the stuff, unless I buy the Extra-Pricey-Extra-Nature(tm) brand. But that costs a lot of dough.
*
Sunday night, after I returned home from work, I hadn't eaten lunch and sadly sighed.
So I sat on my mat and I fried my friend's cat, but we both were less than satisfied.
Salty foods wouldn't do it; they couldn't pull me through it, sacks of snacks like those Fritos Scoops.
Suddenly came to me a great epiphany: I could cook myself some noodle soup.
Spying to my regret a soupless cabinet, I decided that soup would be silly,
Since due to my depravity, I've no center of gravity, so liquids near me can get spilly.
Seeing that I wouldn't be getting satiated soon, Seth grabbed a bucket of spaghetti (sauced), and a big spoon.
Sloppily I slurped and burped from this sickening spaghetti stew -- Spew.
*
Okay buoys and gulls, I've shellfishly started fishing for bad puns, because it makes me happy and gets my endolphins moving.
It wasn't on porpoise, but my mind just lobsternantly refuses to do anything but make puns sometimes. Even if other people can't fathom it or just tuna me out.
Now I don't want to mako big fuss by carping about people who don't enjoy my puns, because things are otherwise going along swimmingly. I'd feel gillty, especially since I mussel said 10 times, "You don't have to like the fish puns I make just for the halibut; just don't make a bass of me, or I'll have to krill you."
But I have a comedic sole, and whale I might enjoy floundering about with a few puns, I wouldn't want to make my audience crabby. I can sea the wisdom in avoiding any net loss in our relation ship, because we're all in the same boat here: I get by with a little kelp from my friends.
Seth Brown is an award-winning humor writer, the author of "Rhode Island Curiosities," and really enjoys Thanksgiving leftover sandwiches. His column appears weekly in the Transcript and weakly on his Web site, www.RisingPun.com.
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