Saturday, February 18, 2006

Carnival of the Recipes #79

EntertainmentPerfidy

Welcome to the 79th edition of the Carnival of the Recipes, hosted by your friends and eventual overlords here at the Ministry of Minor Perfidy.

This Carnival is a bit of a departure for us. For more than thirty centuries, the Ministry has been the leading institution for Eschatology (end-times studies) worldwide. We have been monitoring man’s inhumanity to man and measuring the potential for pan-species disaster - especially the threats posed by zombie invasion and giant fighting space robots - since before Hammurabi was in short pants.  We spend our days in the John of Patmos Memorial Library and Gift Shop staring into the chthonian depths of human depravity, and our nights in the Carl Sagan Observatory scanning the heavens for the sinister telltale glint of diffuse starlight on titanium skin.

All this gloom and doom does tend to wear on the soul. It is easy to lose perspective. As they say, when one stares into the abyss, the abyss looks into you. This is actually literally true, by the way; when one is involved in tendentious cross-dimensional profit repatriation negotiations with elder powers, you don’t have much time for pizza and beer. When Dread Chthulu is your opponent’s lead counsel these things don’t seem to matter as much as girding your psyche against gibbering madness from beyond.

However, it is important to remind ourselves that to most people things like pizza, beer, and volleyball do matter. When the apocalypse comes and the select few among you who we allow to take shelter in our Catastratorium, the nerve center of our global operations, need to eat, it is crucial that we have more than protein pills and MREs for you.

To that end, I have been leading a task force dedicated to perfecting the art of eating well under duress. Ancient crafts like brewing, baking, cheesemaking and animal husbandry are being adapted for long-term viability in underground caverns. Our best gnostic chirurgeons have teamed with our most elite scientists to make stunning advances in vat-grown meat and high-yield hydroponic farming. I think you will be well impressed, those among you who survive, when you are sipping a fine Dortmunder-style lager as the atomic bombs pound the surface far above.

For this, you see, is my stock in trade. My compatriots are stockpiling arms and radiation medication as we speak. And though I certainly have made sure I know where my 12 gauge, .45 revolver, and Louisville Slugger are, I also feel it is crucial to remember the finer things that buff the rough edges off a painful existence. If we met on the Serengeti, I would be the man in the impeccable linen suit with a camp table and a shaker of ice-cold gin. If we met in deepest space, we would dine in fine casual luxury on pizza margherita preserved indefinitely in hard vacuum and baked in the intense heat of fusion engine exhaust. And when the zombies roam or the robots maraud at will, when humankind must stand side by side with our greatest allies, the dolphin and octopus, to fight a proxy war against the menace that threatens to end us all, you (some of you, at least) will take some solace in the small homely comforts we provide.

For to live on in the face of disaster is merely animal. To live well, with panache and élan in the face of the grimmest apocalypse, well, that is human!

So come! Cross the threshold of the great double doors of the Catastratorium!

Come! Don a grey guest tunic and take a seat at the polished obsidian slab in the main cavern!

Come! See what elite guests have gathered for stimulating conversation and nonpariel apres-doom cuisine!

Come! Admire the unique and curious artifacts we have collected over three millennia! But don’t touch that! It would be better if that statute of Yog-Soth-Oth didn’t instantly cast your mind into insanity , don’t you think?

Come! Taste what toothsome delights our kichen staff have concocted, marvel at the astonishing variety of potluck the guests have brought!

Come! Raise your glass and toast the indomitable spirit of humankind!

To the future!

Now… what have we to eat??


Posted by Johno on 02/18/06 at 10:52 PM
Entertainment • Perfidy • Permalink