From Soup to Nuts
An apprentice prep-chef's epiphany in the kitchen of General Ashcroft's House of Justice
by Phil Rockstroh
I promise I didn't mean any offense to you or to Mr. Ashcroft: I regret you took such umbrage to my complaint that your assertion was mere piffle and pettifoggery.
I am chastened by how vigorously and elegantly you rebutted my protest and how you went on to specify — (adding that the Attorney General's office would back you up on this matter)— that you stand by your critique of the "incompetent" and "ignominious" manner in which I chopped the carrot sticks, averring your critique was, in fact, "expansive in its observations and will endure as a testament to aesthetics of relish tray composition for time immemorial"
You said that: If I could not be trusted not to "truncate" carrots— thereby denying the reception guests that decisive and invigorating "crunch" upon the sampling of said item, then how could I possibly be trusted with the calibration of the space-time toaster oven to perfectly brown the manna-filled PopTarts for the Angels of God who come disguised as mortals, middle-management bureaucrats when they drop into the social functions of various Bush administration departmental agencies to covertly test the limits of human loyalty, industry, and piety, and bring divine judgments upon the deviled eggs.
So passed the days in the House of the All-Mighty Ashcroft. In these days of signs and wonders, wrath and retribution, and group sing-alongs in the hallowed and most holy halls of the Department of Justice.
It's not like you didn't warn me: "Oh, the day of judgment will come," you said, "and you'll be called to account for every unexfoliated pore upon your wretched, sagging hide. Do you think the cosmic order has the patience I do:— For the willy-nilly obscenity of your sock draw; for the lack of a precise crease on your gabardine trousers; and how, on a 42 to 52 percent ratio of attempts, you fail to produce a perfect three-quarter inch in diameter pucker beneath the knot of your cheap necktie.
"Do you think your ignominious breaches of all that is good, just, proper, put in its proper place, and sanitized for your protection can just be overlooked? Do you think when an Angel of God descends to earth for consotations with the Attorney General, we might gaze heavenward and see an errant, unclipped hair spouting from a divine nostril of the angel's immortal proboscis?
"We'll, I've seen them growing from that untidy sniffer of yours like kudzu in merciless August. Do you think a God in heaven who hears every sparrow fall is going to overlook that bit of follicle blasphemy?"
"But what about a God of forgiveness?" I foolishly demurred. "I mean if he can raise the dead and forgive prostitutes— He can certainly lay on hands and cure a blackhead or two— and if he can forgive a fallen women he can forgive that fallen soufflé of mine of two years ago come October— which you never fail to remind me off everytime I look in the direction of the whisk and mixing bowl? You know he might even be able to make it rise like Lazerus."
"No. Wrong book, fool— You're in the wrong book— The food and cooking admonitions are the Old testament, Leviticus and Deuteronomy— All that human resources' propaganda is the New Book. Leave those lies to the boys and girls in the Press Office. Your mixing up the division of labor. We've already been over this when you asked for absolution regarding the abomination of that over-cooked brisket of yours that emerged from the oven as hard and salty as Lot's disobedient wife."
I was shamed into silence.
"Don't forget who you're working for: Ashcroft is strictly an Old Testament sort of man— our kind of guy. You know the Old Testament God was a pro-active micro-manager: That exquisite, every-sparrow-falling hyper-vigilance— that's the kind of surveillance we need around this place. Good old traditional values like omnipresence. That's Ashcroft's role model— he says, 'you might as well shoot high'.
"We're talking the Department of Divine Justice here, Wrathful God Division. There is some pretty suspect stuff in the revisionist history of those New Testament Gospels that whiners like you are so enamored of; there's some pretty sketchy stuff we're checking into— starting with evidence of suspected alcohol abuse: All that "my blood is the wine" rhetoric— that sounds downright reckless and irresponsible to the Attorney General and I. We'll get that slacker Son of God at a roadblock sooner or later, then send him to rehab: If his blood is indeed the wine— imagine what his blood-alcohol level will test at. Sure, it's been reported he can walk on water— but we'll see if he can do it in a straight line.
"We had a similar little problem involving you-know-who-else's screwed up kid, a while back— but we got that all squared-away. The dufus still can't handle a couple of near beers and a damn pretzel though. But now we have to turn our attention to all the rest of the great, unwashed dufuses of the country at large:
"Things have gone soft out there west of the Potomac and east of Paradise: They're soft, and fat, and medicated. You shake the branches of the trees of our corporate Eden and an abundance of pharmaceutical fruit falls into your anxious, sweaty, little palms. They even have the serpent in the garden on Paxil; He's no longer a security risk— because now he is well medicated; he got laid-off from a bogus start-up company called treeofknowledge.com after the Nasdaq crashed. He was screwed royally by being paid in worthless stock options and was unemployed until 9/11, when the intelligence agencies called in all of their old operatives. But with him being on those meds and all— we can't get any good work out of him. He's gotten so slack and docile: We had to transfer him over to the Department of Homeland Security: That damn color alert debacle— That was him.
"Everything has gone so soft and squishy, even in Hell itself: They're all on anti-depressants now: The American corporate work place has shown that eternal damnation is not so bad if one is medicated into the right state of mind for it. It's gotten like club med. down there: The river Styx is brimming with jet skis and recreational boating. There are casual Fridays in Hell and time-sharing damnation. The sign at Hell's Gate has been changed from: 'Abandon all hope all ye who enter here' to 'All who enter here never abandon ye medication'. Hell has just gone all to Hell.
"These are perilous times: We have enemies at large and they want to destroy our way of life, destroy our core values— the things we so love— our churches, our families, our patio decks, our belief in God, our lawn furniture, our cherished freedoms, our Winnebagos, our unalienable right to the pursue of obviousness, our microwave burritos and our PopTarts, our Paxil, and our pool toys, our sacred Fox Network American Idols, our individually-wrapped American yellow cheese food, our sacred Fox Network's individually-wrapped American yellow cheese Idols.... This is a serious threat— We are now at color code:— Yellow Cheese Food! At the sound of the warning alert— all citizens are to take duct tape and plastic sheeting and wrap themselves like individually-wrapped processed, yellow cheese food!
"We must be ready. Sloppiness and uncertainty will undo us all. Chaos is the enemy; its terror cells of decay proliferate like subversive fungus in a public shower stall. We must petition the Supreme Court to overturn the second law of thermodynamics. It should be two strikes and your out for negative entropy. In the remote chance that a snowball ever does have a chance in hell— heads should roll!
"We need more secret detainment camps, more maximum security prisons, more federal death penalty statues. Bring back the electric chair!— That's the solution, but we need to go bigger— an electric sofa, — yes, bigger still— an electric dining room set!
"We need an Edict Against All Uncertainty! Get me Ashcroft's office— I'm writing an addendum to the Patriot Act:
"All spontaneous utterance should be memorized in advance— but first these utterances must be submitted to a select committee of the Homeland Security Office for approval.
"All sporting events should follow the exemplary model provided by professional wresting. All final scores should be posted prior to the start of each game to avoid any unnecessary anxiety regarding the games outcome.
"In the same spirit of fair play and just wars: All evil-doing, foreign armies shall never be allowed to fight when coming up against the U.S. military. All of our future wars must be fought against dangerous aggressors who possess no weapons nor have any military capability.
"All passengers boarding flights of the imagination should be searched and stripped of irony and sarcasm. All monsters are to remain under the bed and not fraternize with skeletons in the closet..
"We have our work cut out for us: We have so many so-called rights to stifle— We have so little time.
"Time is an enemy. Time is thief and I want to see it placed number one on America's Most Wanted. Time should no longer be allowed to speed up during moments of excitement, nor slow down during moments of tedium— Time should be ordered to arrive on time.
"We need prayer in the public schools, We need prayer on public transportation, We need prayer in public restrooms!
"We need an army of holy angels, arriving with a host of special forces cherubim armed with uzis; We need God himself, his Cosmic Johnson of Jehovah packed into his celestial flight suit, to land his heavenly chariot jet fighter on the flight deck of the Ship of State and tell us we are all a damn disgrace!
"You're a disgrace, I'm a disgrace— because we are all letting God's emissary to this wretched earth, the Most Holy Ashcroft down— This is why our relish trays must be as perfect as the unblemished fruit of paradise— This is why following the proper procedures for the cutting of carrot sticks is of paramount importance to the survival of the republic," you concluded, your gaze narrowing upon me with disdain like I was a stalk of browning celery rotting on the produce aisle of the supermarket of the New Jerusalem.
You are right about me: I am a worthless wretch. All I can do is surrender to the will of the Head Chef of Creation. From this day forward I will make myself his little tool, an item of God's own cutlery, a small paring knife in a kitchen drawer in the House of the Lord. I can only pray to be made to grow as sharp as that sin-slicing paragon, that meat-cleaver of a man, Mr. Ashcroft. Amen.
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