The night previous, I returned to my bed chamber after nodding in goodnight to my departing dinner guests and found my sleep to be hard fought. I thought it would be another night of wrestling with the demons of regret, the voices of “why did you bring up Charlemagne at dessert? You know Ms. Devonshire is Francophobic!” echoing in my fretful-host post-party reflections but I was soon alerted to it being something else entirely.
A hot eruption of vomit from my gullet across my down comforter and unto my stately new globe with the recently updated “passage to India” cartography told me that my third helping of corned beef hash was more than just a probable deciding factor in Ms. Devonshire’s declining my advances-it was an invitation to a shamanistic voyage of the mind. My friend and fellow member of the City’s exclusive Men’s Club, Dr. Mortolo had begun recently exploring the uncharted recesses of the human mind through the use of electromagnets, hypnoelectric shock, lightning rods, applications of leeches, and electrified leeches to great increase of knowledge. Among his findings, Dr. Mortolo concluded that Beef Hash was but one way to travel to the spirit realms which envelope the ether layer just below the watery heavens. The same effects could be reached through ample voltage directed through the brain pan or through the medicinal drug ‘cocaine’, but corned beef hash of the sort I’d eaten a pound and a half of was the most potent and successful means to achieve this altered state.
Another round of vomiting, this time painting my silk drapes, readied me for my spiritual voyage. I was not in the least worried nor upset. My upbringing was afterall, as a Methodist and I had grown accustomed to fearful flights into the edges of sanity.
The first thing I became aware of was that I was floating in a perfectly white space. Or rather, a white lack of space. There was absolutely nothing about. It was as though I’d been transported back to Minnesota in the winter (a devilish vision for anyone in of itself) and all about me was pure whiteout. I was fully aware of my body: my powdered wig, my parasol, my wooden clogs, my merkin, my wooden teeth, my ivory inlaid false eyebrows; all was in place only there was no reference point to gauge myself against.
I walked. Or rather, I made a walking motion for there was no ‘floor’ to be had. After what felt like an infinity of this repeated walking motion without any sensation of progress, I felt as one who has been attempting to solicit a direct answer from a politician or seminarian. At long last, I saw the dirty tip of a digging spade appear as a gnat before my face and then the entirety of said shovel as it ‘dug’ deeper then followed by a venturing hand. I was plucked from the dread whiteness as a gopher may from its burrow and came up in a humble farmer’s field.
“I thought you mighta’ been watermelon.” The oafish looking brute said in a purely working class accent.
“Watermelons grow above ground, dear sir.” I said, brushing off my crushed velvet cape and wiping clean my nez pince.
“Then how come I’ve never seen one?” he countered.
“If you’ve never seen one, then mayhap you have seen one and not known it, my good man.”
That put him in the throes of thought and I hated to have troubled his mind so. To relieve him of his efforts, I told him of my experience in the void. “I was afloat in a vacuum of nothing!” I concluded and half expected his proletariat’s ears to begin fuming.
“P’haps it was you that was everything.” he said back without a courteous bow. “That is,” he continued as he placed a plug of chewing tobacco in his jowly mouth, “If there was nothing else around, you composed the whole.”
I clicked open my pocket watch and saw the hands were moving backwards, a phenomenon I owed to either the beef hash or my nightcap of laudanum drank from my lead lined grail. “Sir,” I said “I haven’t the foggiest notion of what it is you are trying to express.”
“That is, when the universe was the size of you (which it was but briefly despite your great girth) that all was measured by it, and within it. Distance is a flexible and arbitrary idea-and by your description, I would say that before I plucked you like so much a beet or a watermelon (not to contradict your belief of watermelons) from the ground you were everywhere.” The farmer placed a plug of tobacco under his right eyelid.
I felt quite put off by the man’s haughty demeanor and I told him as much. With a smart lash of my riding crop across his mealy mouth, I bid him adeiu. If the tears in his eyes were any sign, my departing hail triggered an active Francophobia within him and I quickly replaced it with a “good day” accented by another taste of my riding crop.
As I turned to make my way towards a village I’d espied upon the horizon, I was transported upon a great gust of wind back to my four poster and the candlelight of my room.
My bedroom door opened and in came my maid inquiring to my well being. I threw my chamber pot at her and in my distress instructed her to fill it. Thankfully she quickly obliged and then left me to entertain my troubled thoughts of the night’s happenings.
Had the night’s voyage been a trip through the astral plane? Or had I been privy to the ’seventh heaven’ spoken of by the Apostle? I put the guessing aside and settled down for bed joined by my fourteen wolfhounds and decided that the morning’s breakfast would be corned beef hash and trepanation.
Food
July 5, 2009
June 11, 2009
An Interpretation of Religion and My Ability to Perform Simple Tasks
Posted by Ryan McGivern under Comedy, Drugs, Food, Improvised Writing, ReligionLeave a Comment
You know, some of the best poets never spoke literally.
Why is it that we need to always speak of religions literally?
Really.
Have you ever thought about Mormonism in a non-literal sense?
It seems pretty cool in that way. You know, like, these immigrants
or more appropriately refugees have to flee and lo and behold they
end up in the Americas.
And this fella cares about their stories and writes them down and
then this other dude finds them and in an effort to establish harmony
and unity, makes a new myth for spiritual folk in America.
Forget literalism! It’s a cool story.
And its in that same spirit of Mormonism that I can tell you that
I’m sober.
I’m totally not high-in a metaphorical sense.
You see, when I body paint magical runes on myself and eat
chocolate covered cherries and watch the sunset over LA,
I can say that like every religion worth its weight in salt,
I’m operating at a purely mythic level.
So to answer your question:
Yes, I am perfectly fit to walk to
Jack In The Box.
Just write what you want down on this old google maps.
January 10, 2009
Giant Seafood Restaurant Creature Released
Posted by Ryan McGivern under Comedy, Food, Justice, Pop Culture, news1 Comment
NEW YORK (Mindflowers)– A giant Crestacean-like cretin named George W. Bush caught the attention of onlookers recently at a New York seafood restaurant and will be returned this month to its Texas ranch cesspool, according to a statement from the People’s Foundation for Inhuman Assholery (PFUA) .
George has been a “sort of mascot” for the Crabs A’Plenty restaurant in New York and to fundamentalist, extremist Christians.
The PFIA’s released statement did not say exactly how the immense depth of assholery was allowed to get so big, but restaurant manager Keith Walton told Mindflowers that sometimes brine-smelling muck-dwellers can grow increasingly arrogant, fear-mongering, bigoted, war-loving, and actually insane over time, if given the right conditions. “This thing must have somehow been fed the pyschic energies of millions of bigots over at least eight years. It was oozing toxic ignorance.” Said Walton.
He said the creature had been “sitting in the restaurant’s tank and acting as a sort of mascot, you know: telling funny stories like a crazy old senile person, starting wars, lying about said wars, illegally spying on people, combatting against reason and sense through appealing to people’s base nature, lying about environmental devastation, playing with its tiny genitals while thinking about Abu Ghraib, that kind of stuff.” but when PFIA got involved and requested it be released back to its cesspool, it “seemed like the right thing to do.”
PFIA President Shayna Newkirk said in a statement, “We can’t believe the assholery present in this feeble and despicable creature. Surely this is a bottom feeder who found a wealth of homophobic, anti-science, racist, war loving Neandrathals to be a source of its soul vampirism. ”
Plans have been made for the creature to shed the tight confines of his old restaurant display tank. On January 20th, George W. Bush will be driven to Texas by PFIA members and returned to his natural habitat on the bottom of a cesspool, the organization said.
Reported by Ryan McGivern
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/01/10/maine.lobster.liberated/
http://www.bushlies.net/
http://bushcrimes.net/
http://www.rense.com/general73/warcrim.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobster
January 7, 2009
Lollipop by Beverly Ross and Julius Dixon (full lyrics and chords):
Sweeter than candy on a stick
Huckleberry, cherry or lime
If you had a choice, he’d be your pick
But lollipop is mine
I’ve discovered Lollyphile, a confectionery company based in San Francisco that sells Maple-Bacon and Absinthe (with thujone) flavored lollipops for about two bucks a pop.
November 1, 2008
Dear Co-worker,
Like links, are your fingers,
of little sausages and berliners
are your eyes. Your skin is milky white.
Your lips are delicate strips of bacon,
your tits are eggs bright, facing the sun. I’m craving
some of your muffin top, sex appeal, sits atop
pancake booty with cheeks like apple peels and a dollop
of your luscious forest of beef gravy hair.
Skip the hash browns. Take me down.
Orange juice with pulp is your appeal.
Your body is a breakfast, my favorite meal.
Sincerely,
Your Co-worker
August 4, 2008
With the Bejing Olympics coming up this week, I think its high time to
say what everyone has been thinking:
Tibet must be allowed to be gluten free.
How long has there been wheat added to the soy sauce of a once
picturesque and placid country?
Is that really necessary? I understand that it thickens it a bit and is more
pleasing to the communist taste, but really: Can’t Tibet be free to decide for
itself between Tamari and Kikkoman?
Tibet had been historically a quiet, nonviolent self autonomous kingdom that
prided itself in producing fine foods without the use of wheat, malt, oats, nor barley.
You think its easy to meditate for eight hours at a time when your sprew is kicking
in overtime? Think again.
While the world will be watching China in the upcoming weeks and enjoying the world’d greatest athletic endeavors, some of us will be wondering if the next bowl of noodles Tibet eats will be made from barley flour ‘tsampa’ or rice.
The voice of the intestinally challenged will not be silenced.
Gluten Free Tibet
http://sweetpeasglutenfreekitchen.blogspot.com/2008/05/i-love-tibet.htmlhttp://www.flyingapron.net/home.htm
http://www.tibet.org/
May 30, 2008
If you appreciate sensory experience, I recommend this article published in last Wednesday’s New York Times.
They were among 40 or so people who were tasting under the influence of a small red berry called miracle fruit at a rooftop party in Long Island City, Queens, last Friday night. The berry rewires the way the palate perceives sour flavors for an hour or so, rendering lemons as sweet as candy.
April 7, 2008

We have gone too long being blind to the realities of hummus ingestion!
This is a call to ALL people of our Mother Earth to realize: “Real Aussies Eat Hummus!”
The child in this picture: Will it be raised in a pro-Aussie Hummus Eating family? That may be up to you. You sonofabitch.
Wake up, people! You sit there in your self righteousness thinking that real Aussies could some how “maybe eat hummus.” or think “eating hummus is not a requirement of authentic Australianism.”
You make me sick.
Look at the state of affairs in our hummus consumption. People are using it as a chip dip, adding it to salads, sandwiches, as a ’side’ or as a condiment. All this is done without a single consideration of how eating hummus has been completely co-opted from “The Natural, God Created Order of Australia” as a hummus centered State.
P.S. You Austrailians who don’t eat hummus-I’m praying for you.
Ryan McGivern
March 16, 2008

Look: What goes on at my farm is none of your business.
If I want to call the two person tent in my yard a ‘barn’ its a barn.
If I begin digging a feces trench from my three seasons porch towards your yard, that sounds like a personal decision that really doesn’t involve you.
Where my sewage sluice will end up is for me to know and you to find out.
Seriously. I’m sick of your notes on my porch suggesting that you’ll “call the Humane Society, PETA, or the police” because my cow milking process replaces ‘cows’ with runaway dogs and ‘milking’ with blood letting.
Remember: Family owned farms are the backbone of America.
And my farm in particular will soon be building a silo filled with runaway dogs’ spines.
I don’t want to be a bad neighbor. I don’t. That’s why I built my moat so deep and my gun range berm so high.
So let’s just say that if you put in a good word for me at the “Concerned Neighbors Task Force Meeting” tomorrow, I’ll hook you up with fresh cow’s milk for a year. (wink wink)
Those winks don’t insinuate a bribe.
Ryan McGivern
KPHO in Phoenix AZ: http://www.kpho.com/news/15579448/detail.html
March 9, 2008
Improv Everywhere: Food Court Musical and Winter Snowcones
Posted by Ryan McGivern and J.J. under Activities, Art, Beauty, Food, Music, VideosLeave a Comment


