I had hard-boiled eggs for lunch today. I’ve been inexplicably slightly craving them for the last three days, and I finally got around to actually satisfying the urge. I felt terribly domestic, standing in my kitchen, quietly reading Hemingway, and boiling eggs. I waited as they rocked and roiled, tumbled and boiled. I could hardly wait for the timer to go off…after all ten minutes seems an obscene length of time in this microwaveable future we live in.

Watching the egg-shaped, err, eggs, saunter around in the boiling water got me to thinking. I do a lot of that. It fascinates me, sometimes, to think about where foods came from. Why we thought to take a bite of this, or mix that with that…it sometimes seems so improbable.

scene opens: slightly after the Dawn of Time, but before I Love Lucy. A wistful Elysian meadow, resplendent in the light of morning. A gentle dew rests lightly on sundry flowers and grasses. Two slack-jawed yokels reverently take in the scene, watching as noble chickens strut silently about the field.

Joe-Bob: Bill, what the fuck just came out the back of that chicken?!

Bill: Holy Christ Joe-Bob, is the chickens packaging their feces now?!

JB: I don’t think so Bill, there’s still plenty of chicken-shit around.

Bill: Boy-howdy! … Dude, eat it.

JB: What?! Fuck you! You eat it!

Bill: You saw it, you eat it.

JB: Fuck. (crunch splatter gurgle) Yearggh!

Bill: Yes?

JB: NO!

Bill: Hmmmm, well hell, now what?

JB: We could try NOT eating it.

Bill: Shut up JB. Ummm, let’s try….

etc, etc.

The funny thing is, as I was reminded this afternoon, I don’t particularly like hard-boiled eggs. I have a few things like that: Things I think I really really want until I get them and remember I don’t…like hard-boiled eggs, and liver, and a punch in the face.