Recipes and other shit

From the recipe for black beans in The Best Recipe: "Bring all bean ingredients to boil...skimming surface as scum rises." This seemed a useful allegory for American politics, especially assigning the role of the ham-hock, presumed source of said scum, but I felt too hungry to pursue it (the allegory, not the recipe). So instead:

I decided to tell you a story about my elementary school days when, in fourth grade, at recess, two older boys challenged me to shit in the schoolyard in exchange for a 1986 Topps Floyd Youmans baseball card (career numbers: 30-34, 3.74, 424 K). Floyd was a known cokehead, and I thought that coke was a beverage. I still have that card, and I don't really want to talk about it. So instead:

I'll discuss another recipe. This one, entitled "Brains Filling," comes from the Culinary Arts Institute's Polish Cookbook (1978). The abridged instructions: "Rinse brains under running cold water. Put brains into a saucepan with water to cover...Drain brains; remove and discard white tough membrane. Chop brains coarsely." Now I sometimes crave boiled brains-pierogies, not so much for the taste, but for the eighteen hours after, when I can think with my stomach, intestines, colon, toilet bowl, municipal sewer system, etc. Of course, depending on the brains, these thoughts are either "Chew, chew, chew the cud," or "Hot, hot, find the mud," or instead:

"I take away the sins of the world. Have mercy on me."