AcmeShorts

Jeepak chomped into his Big Mac with a pantheon of contradictory emotions. On one hand, he couldn’t believe his luck. He had won the opportunity to participate in a sort of bet. The bet went like this: if you would eat a Super Sized Number 1 from McDonalds in LaGuardia airport’s main terminal’s men’s room, you won ten thousand dollars.
On the other hand:
1. There were four men in different stalls taking actual, live shits.
2. There were four hidden video cameras trained on him.
3. Innocent bystanders were allowed to walk freely in and out of the bathroom.
4. The event would be televised on a nationally syndicated reality show.
5. He was a Hindu.
This chance couldn't have come at a better time. Jeepak needed the money badly; his mother was in intensive care. And besides, he really wasn’t that much of a Hindu - he’d had beef once before. Certainly, the raw, sweet stench of human feces made his meal less enjoyable. To say nothing of the loud, popping anal expulsions behind him. But goddamn was this tasty.
Date Written: January 4, 2004
Author: Benny Maniacs
Average Vote: 3.8333
Comments:
01/7/2004 Dylan Danko: pantheon?? Don't make me slap you!
01/7/2004 qualcomm: yes, wouldn't a mandala of emotions be more appropriate for this golliwog?
01/7/2004 Texxx (3): I love the phrase, "actual, live sh*ts."
01/7/2004 Dylan Danko: I don't think the emotions were supposed to be forming a pattern.
01/7/2004 qualcomm: yes, but were the emotions supposed to form:
1 : a temple dedicated to all the gods 2 : a building serving as the burial place of or containing memorials to the famous dead of a nation 3 : the gods of a people; especially : the officially recognized gods 4 : a group of illustrious persons,
or what?
01/7/2004 Dylan Danko: Ahh, i get you. Hey, nice use of golliwog. You're making me nostalgic for the motherland.
01/7/2004 Captain Crunch (3): I liked this one a lot because it reminds me of my mom.
01/8/2004 Benny Maniacs: Pantheon. Pantheon.
02/17/2004 Mr. Pony (4): Hey, you know, I kind of like how this short sets up conflict, then removes the importance of said conflict in a dismissive way (he's a Hindu; he's not that much of a Hindu), and then resolves the conflict quickly and easily. There's a certain giddy confusion I feel when I read this, not unlike the first time I did a math problem that resulted in a negative number. And yeah, Pantheon is correct.
02/17/2004 Dylan Danko: What are you talking about, Pony??
02/17/2004 Mr. Pony: Just that the short goes well beyond not being zero-sum. It starts you here, then drops you down to here. That's Move 1. It places you nonchalantly back at the start. Move 2. Then--and here's the thing--in a move marked by the same direction as (but with an entirely different intensity than) Move 2, the author rockets you well above the starting point. All the way up here. That's Move 3. You end up, as least as far as conflict/resolution/reward is concerned, in a place that you're really not supposed to be. At all. The dude's got ten thousand dollars, and he's eating a delicious burger sandwich. He's in this no-man's land, a sort of Nirvana, unimagined by the setup of the short. And stop following me.
02/17/2004 Benny Maniacs: Thanks Pony.
03/25/2004 Ferucio P. Chhretan (5): if just for the "popping anal expulsions"...
03/26/2004 Benny Maniacs: Thanks Pony.
05/5/2005 The Rid (5): I'm going to five this. I laughed out loud, and hard.
05/5/2005 qualcomm (3): congratulations, captain crunch and texxx, you voted correctly. solid three. solid.