Haiku Madness
Mike seems to be fond of the haiku these days. His numerous postings reminded me of a prank we pulled on my buddy Joel when he got married.
See, Joel foolishly left us the keys to his house when he went on his honeymoon. Dean and I knew this was going to happen and spent months discussing various pranks we could pull on the newlyweds. We weren't left with much after we dismissed the logistically impossible ones, the dangerous ones, and the just plain mean ones, but we did come up with something.
We got everybody in the groom's party to pitch in some cash and went to the grocery store and bought canned food. We bought a few cans of normal stuff - beans, tomatoes, and the like - but the majority were picked off the shelves of the "Is this really for human consumption?" aisle. Strange seafood, parts of mammals you would think were exclusively reserved for hot dogs - that kind of thing. For good measure we threw in a can of cat food and a can of dog food.
When we got back to Joel's, we carefully removed the labels and stacked the cans in his pantry. We paperclipped the labels together and left them on the kitchen table.
But what does this have to do with haiku? To explain the unorthodox stocking of the Decker's new pantry, we left these poems:
I prepared dinner
Alas, one mouth ate it all
Garbage disposalWhat could be better
To trigger the gag reflex
Than this random muckIf I made a stew
Blindfolded in the darkness
It would look like thisAfter that dinner
"Gastrointestinal" does
Depict my distressA mantra chanted
Endlessly in the kitchen
"People eat this crap?"O silver vessel
Unknown mysteries within
Will you show yourself?If a gardener
Took randomness to extreme
Would his plot look thus?Oh, luck of the draw
select something edible
no more pig snouts, pleaseMy can opener
used to provide tasty food...
Apprehension mountsOh Ravioli!
How you brought me so much joy
You still elude meEating out lately
so I can identify
what my fork has pierced
Of course, Dean and I found this hilarious. I doubt that the Deckers were quite as amused. (Philistines.)
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Haiku Madness.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.flyingw.org/MT4/mt-tb.cgi/746
Of course we were pretty shocked at first, but eventually we saw the humor in it. We can be pretty good sports (sometimes). And you caught us in a great mood... it was immediately after our honeymoon after all.
It actually became an adventure.
First I tried to match up the labels to the cans (i.e. label size and shape, can weight and sound when shook, etc. -- "Hmmmm... the garbanzo bean label is the right size and shape, and the can weighs and sounds like it might contain garbanzo beans...").
Then each night at dinner we would make one known vegetable that we had bought, and then we would play Vegetable Roulette from your cans-o-mystery for the second vegetable. Needless to say, there were many nights when we only had one vegetable for dinner.
Suprisingly though, I had actually gotten around half the labels correct.
Note to self: Select similar sized cans next time...