Operation Enduring Freedom Buffet

Operation Enduring Freedom Buffet
I love the casino where a mouth full of sauerkraut and smoked kielbasa is chased down with hot cocoa and whipped cream. Where an awareness of an Atkinson figure embodies hopefulness and is the measure for cultural sophistication.

At the food line, the guy in front of me explains that he's building a sauce dam of fried rice and dry crunchy pot stickers to pool sweet and sour, Thai pepper and blue cheese dipping sauces for the teriyaki, sea salt and fresh, ground/pepper chicken wings. I'm inspired by this culinary engineer and elect to erect a hydro caloric concoction at the dessert Island where I imagine a wall of banana foster, cherries cobbler, churros, chocolate bread pudding and Apple things damming in a reservoir of vanilla ice cream, whiskey, chocolate and butterscotch sauces.

I listen to a middle age blue collar worker explain to his Justin Bieber infected and dietarily defeated wife that someone told him to put pepper on everything because it aids digestion. I imagine standing up and declaring with exaggerated incredulity, "what the fuck, I'm not putting pepper on my dessert." It might be the declaration to rally this league of buffet connoisseurs into a common solidarity. We would lift our glasses to calling bullshit on peppered vanilla ice cream.

My churro is stale and crunchy like a walnut shell, but I don't want to spit it out because a 60 year old woman with red flashing, energy efficient, LED earrings is watching me. I'm unsure whether I'm the embodiment of her favorite dildo or if she's seeing Jack the Ripper. I determine to crunch my way to the end.

Surveying the scene I half expect to hear the Department of Homeland Caloric Consumption (DHCC) announce starvation clinics and $40 buy-in poker tournaments back-to-back over the public address system.

Wandering through two football fields of slot machines I pass through zones titled Maple Lanes, Birch Island and Wandering Oaks where the women look like widowers blowing through insurance settlements like all you can eat buffet dinners. I half expect to see an automated belt driven walkway that carries the slot ladies back to the buffet lines. The women don't notice me with the exception of one distraught elderly princess who looks like she'd blow me in exchange for 30 minutes on the Grand Junction Jackpot machine. I establish assopathic communication and assume a facial expression that says, if I wasn't digesting 8000 cal of vanilla ice cream and butterscotch sauce I'd be all up inside your stretchy nylon pants.

In the parking lot Cat Stevens sings:
I listen to the wind come howl
telling me I have to hurry
I listen to the robin's song
saying not to worry

Suddenly the smell of diesel exhaust gives me a migraine, my shoulder starts to ache and I've gotta take-a-shit. Why is the saying "take a shit," is this the saying throughout Europe, Asia and The Federated States of Micronesia. Shouldn't it be, leave a shit?