This evening, I stopped to dine at a restaurant quite close to my school which I eat at frequently. I asked for a menu and pointed at a line of Chinese characters, not knowing what it was that I was going to be digesting later that night. I did know that it was going to cost me $1.25, regardless of what it was, so I felt that I could take the hit to the wallet there. I sat and at some peanuts with a pair of chopsticks (Note: The ‘peanuts’ link goes nowhere, just hover over it to read an aside on these nuts).

I buy a beer from the shop next door and go back to relax in my chair to wait for my food. I casually glance up, and it immediately appeared to me that someone had ordered snake from the menu. It appeared that way because just then, a man who appeared to be working there had a knife in his hand and appeared to be slicing a snake in half. I say appeared (and perhaps I should stop repeating said saying) because I had not seen the man working there prior to this occasion, and as I mentioned before, I am a regular there, and I also could not see the actual slicing. All I knew was that there was (1) a snake, (2) a knife, and (3) dark liquid coming from somwhere landing directly on the pavement. From my obscured view of the whole scene, I would say that he was the killer (beyond any reasonable doubt).

As the man (which I had since decided was working at the restaurant) discarded his bloody cloves and tracked off in his Bruno Maglis, he ferried the snake past the guest house into the restaurant’s kitchen. He quickly emerged from the place (and now I can say, with confidence) from whence he came and started on another order. In this case, there was certainly no “appearing.” It all happened, no more than six feet from me in living colors; those colors being blue, black, tan, green, grey, and red.

Blue was the color of the bucket where the black cage was placed. Tan was the color of the Chinese gentleman’s hand as he took a green frog from the black cage sitting in the blue bucket. As quickly as he lifted his tan arm containing the green frog, he thrust his tan hand toward the grey cement and released the green frog. Lying on the grey cement was a green frog with red liquid coming from his mouth and eyes.

When a frog meets cement, the sound is exactly like the sound of your friend forgetting to catch the bag of peanut M&Ms that you just tossed to him. When a frog meets cement, and hops up to escape certain death, the sound of the frog leaving the ground is imperceptible from the distance of six feet; when the frog lands, it is as if a small child fell to his knees from his ice skates and barely slid an inch.

I counted ten bags of M&Ms and three small children falling to the ice as I dumbfoundedly looked on.

I’m pretty sure I had the pork.