November 12, 2004
Zark!!!
Guy's last little twist of the knife in my spleen (his post-secret meat secrets revealed yesterday), hurt a lot. Yes, to borrow from his recent Hitchhiker's Guide reference, a lot like the pain experienced, over and over, by Agrajag in his re-incarnated final moments brought on by the unmercifully oblivious Arthur Dent.
I feel a certain kinship with Douglas Adam's poor doomed bat-creature precisely because of the gut-busting excess Guy forced me to endure, repeatedly, over the preceding nine months, every time he reminded me of how far ahead he was in the contest: I gorged on a 24 ounce steak in DC (enduring a "little heart-attack" in the process). He parried with several, nonchalant meals of the same (all in the same day). I bought a grill. He responded by single-handedly financing his local butcher's daughter's college tuition. I killed a cow and announced my lead. He, in turn, announced, cackling, the news of his long running secret hundred-plus-pound stash of beef. With each my opponent's counter-offensives, I felt the staples of my Nissen Fundoplication stretching to the point of rupture.
But these acts of staggeringly tactless cruelty pale in comparison to the agony inflicted by my opponent the day I returned from celebrating my parent's 40th wedding anniversary. The news that he'd pulled the plug on our blood-feud meant that all of my previous pain, endured for the possibility of victory, was for naught.
Guy, do you have any idea how much you've put me through? Let's take a look, shall we?
First, there were the numerous meals of putrid, rubbery, tasteless beef product. Can you imagine eating even one of these abominations? Try over 20!
It's enough to put me off hamburgers for life, I tell you.
And then, forced by Guy's onslaught to catch as catch can, I scraped the bottom of the barrel. Literally. The bottom of the meat barrel. The place where pink flesh turns to a sickly shade of green. The land of the imminently expired.
Not a scrap of meat could be wasted as I chased his ever-growing lead. Even burnt scraps.
When forced to argue that carbon counts as beef, I knew I was pushing the envelope of self-abuse. And yet, he made me do it.
I wasn't even above murdering another warm-blooded creature, so desperate had my opponent made me. Can you imagine the bewildered, conflicted uneasiness I felt as the cold instrument pierced my Young Belted Galloway's neck? Yes, dammit, he tastes good. But was this absolutely necessary?
Yes, to cut Guy's lead, it most certainly WAS necessary.
And on the most joyful of events, my parent's wedding anniversary party, when my conscience urged me to set all thoughts of the contest aside for just ONE weekend, Guy's punishing meat-gluttony turned what would have been a beautiful familial moment into a calculating, heartless desire to eat until beef came out of my nose.
All of this, and more, for nothing. What a waste. Just thinking about it makes my bowels churn. And, post-piss-off, he has the gall to pat me on the back with "Good show, old chap"?
Nice, Guy. I mean, what do you want from me, blood?
Look, I'm out of it. You're only doing this for yourself now, so if you don't like it, by all means stop. But your complaints are wasted on me.
Posted by: guy at November 13, 2004 12:39 PMAt the very least, I'd want to catch up with you. As you say, how humiliating it would be to lose to you if you'd actually stopped consuming beef in September.
Posted by: Eric at November 13, 2004 12:50 PM