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quarantining the story virus
12/08/2007 = 08:26 AM

Quin tagged me, the little so-and-so.

It's a story virus.

If you are one of the carriers of this story virus (i.e., you have been tagged and choose to contribute to it), you will have one responsibility, in addition to contributing your own piece of the story: you will have to tag at least one person that continues your story thread. So, say you tag five people. If four people decide to not participate, it's okay, as long as the fifth one does. And if all five participate, well that's five interesting threads the story spins off into.

So I am going to end this story here, in order to avoid tagging anyone else, but if you feel like spreading the virus, go back to Quin's contribution and pick it up from there.

I woke up hungry. I pulled my bedroom curtain to the side and looked out on a hazy morning. I dragged myself into the kitchen, in search of something to eat. I reached for a jar of applesauce sitting next to the sink, and found it very cold to the touch. I opened the jar and realized it was frozen. (Splotchy)

My first idea was to put the applesauce in the microwave. Hey, I was still tired. Could I scoop some out and put whipped cream on it? No, too solid. Why was it so damn cold in here? I walked over to the thermostat and saw that the heat hadn't clicked on all night and the temperature had dropped substantially overnight. Now, tired and hungry, I opened the access panel on the heater. There's the problem: why was someone cooking a duck in here? (SamuraiFrog)

I bent down and scooped up the uncooked duck carcass. There was no way I was going to let it go to waste, especially considering I had applesauce on hand. I placed it in a roasting pot and went back to reset the heater. As I continued to wake up, I realized that my roommate had spent the night at his girlfriend's place and couldn't have put the duck there. "How the hell did it get there?" I wondered. Just then, an already odd situation became even stranger. The lifeless duck animated, flapped its featherless wings, and began to speak. (Some Guy)

"Zal-pinga, zal-pinga, zow-zow-zow! I am the ghost of unrequited meals and you will be haunted by three more meals, tonight!"I folded my arms, my face and body language conveyed equal parts doubt and skepticism.

"What?" asked the duck."Shouldn't you be an ex-business partner or friend of mine that has passed away?"

"What?""Marley, you know, you should be like Marley."

"What are you going on about? I am not a reggae duck."

"No, if this is anything like the story, you shouldn't be a duck, you should be someone just like Jacob Marley...I don't know, maybe, uh, Dwight Holstein."

"He's too busy haunting Louise Barret, because she stood him up on prom night. At any rate, tonight, you will be visited by three meals."

"But why do meals walk the earth and why do they come to me?"

"Will you shut up already? I am freezing walking around here, with nary a stitch of clothing or plumage-"

"And why should you be cold, you are dead already?""And why do you think we ghosts are moaning all the time? It's bad enough being dead, but...you are getting my sidetracked! Tonight, you will be visited by three meals!" (Write Procrastinator)

"Three meals? Visited by three meals? Is that what you are saying?"

The duck glared at me while wrapping my best kitchen towel around his plucked body for warmth. "You don't listen so good, do you? Watch my beak and I'll say it slowly. T-h-r-e-e meals. The belches and gas of meals past, the taste of meals present and the dreams of meals future. Got it?"

I tried to focus, wondering if this was indeed a plucked duck wrapped in my Williams-Sonoma cotton dishtowel, now puffing on one of my hidden cigarettes, telling me of the ghosts of three meals that would come to visit, or, if that blotter acid I took back in '89 really did cause flashbacks.

"When your kitchen timer clicks off 60 minutes, the first ghost will appear." he continued. "I'd suggest you lock your doors, you really don't want guests tonight...the first one may be...unpleasant."

While he spoke, I realised I kept referring to him as a him, and from the drape of the dishtowel, the struggle to keep it under the wings, over that plump, juicy breast meat...he was a she... and I hadn't eaten... yet. (Quin)

Did I dare slaughter and cook a duck with whom I had just been conversing? I had misgivings.

Not about the eating a friend part — I hadn't been all that traumatized by The Carp in the Bathtub and had eaten gefilte fish with impunity well into my adulthood, when I realized that I preferred shrimp toast (although I did learn from the gefilte fish experience that shrimp toast, dipped in a little khrayn, is pretty damned delicious).

No, it was the slaughtering part that was worrying me. Again, not from a morality standpoint, but from a practical one. I know how to purchase duck at a supermarket and cook it, but how do I start one from scratch, as it were?

I started the way I start most endeavors where I am clueless: Blingo. It led me to Viva USA, which stated that

Different books encourage various methods for small flocks. Some of these include:

“hanging the duck on a shackle, then cut the throat on the left side at the base of the beak, severing the left jugular vein and carotid artery” (1)

and

“starve a duck for at least six hours before killing it, but do not restrict water. To kill, cut the duck’s throat in the soft spot where the head joins the neck (2)."

---

1. Adams, A.W., Cooperative Extension Service, Kansas State University, August 1989.
2. University of California Cooperative Extension, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Publication 2980, January 2000.

Yeah, no. First of all, that's just ew, second of all, I don't have that kind of time, and third of all — no, we're back to first of all. Ew.

My stomach was growling and I was trying not to think of a conversation I'd overheard between my best friend and her husband when they were fixing the vacuum cleaner:

He: I think you should put that —
She (interrupting): Excuse me. Who's fucking this duck?
He: You are.
She: Then shut up and hold the head.

Meanwhile, in walked the duck ... and it smiled at me.

Aha. When a duck is smiling at you around Christmastime, a Chinese restaurant will cut off its head for you. I learned that from A Christmas Story.

(Mind you, I also learned from A Christmas Story that I had really better get that whole "fucking a duck" thing out of my brain before I said it out loud, risking soap poisoning.)

I picked up the duck and took it to Royal Palace.

Tony Hong greeted me the same way he always does: "Where's your mother?"

I explained my situation and presented the duck, who said, "You're about to experience the belches of meals past."

I replied, "Ooh, get her — whoops. I've got your number, duckie. I take Prilosec and I just watched Good Will Hunting."

"Affleck!" quoth the duck.

"Wait a minute," Tony said. "Did you pick up that duck to bring her here?"

I scrolled upward in the browser window, because I couldn't remember. I had, indeed.

Tony said, "You pick up a duck, you win a prize. Flip her over."

I flipped the duck onto her back and she had the number "42" printed on her belly. I guess I was right when I told her I had her number.

Tony took the duck from me and said, "Anything off the top shelf."

The shelves behind him, as at most upscale Chinese restaurants, were stocked with your standard bar ingredients. I selected a bottle of whiskey and asked him to make me up an order of scallion pancakes and some shrimp toast, which, as I mentioned previously, is really good mit a bissel khrayn.

"What about this duck?" said Tony, when he came back with my take-out.

"Are her eyes open?" I asked.

He checked. They were.

I picked up my take-out and my whiskey, said, "She's Peking," and went off into the night.

When I got home, I found that the applesauce had defrosted. I dunked my scallion pancakes into it. It wasn't latkes, but the flavors worked better than you would have thought. (Golf Widow)

Tags: meme

drinking: coffee
listening to: Tchaikovsky, The Nutcracker Suite: Waltz Of The Flowers
too bad: the chinese dance already ended; that would have been kind of perfect