A pretzellian oration

(got bizarre?)

Few things bother me, but none are worse than a dearth of pretzels! Like the bard said, "Twisted salted bread twirls about my head and in my mind, in everything in me that is fine." Pretzels to me are as was the fair desirous lady to Goethe's suffering young Werther. Pretzels. I need pretzels like a man of humongous girth needs an anti-grav booster pack! And allowing me a poeticisim of my own: Who indeed needs gold from lead, when I can have my pretzelled bread?

Yet my beloved ones have forsaken me: I have not eaten pretzels for over a week. Not a single pretzel has touched my lips lo these seven dreadful days.

Have you ever been disappointed with life qua life? Have you been betrayed by an unkind fate? Have you ever thought a thing would be there when you needed it, yet for example when you woke up one morning in hunger and you searched by hand your gigantic porcelain jar of pretzels, you found it completely empty - ie no pretzels at all? That's precisely what happened to me scant seven days ago. Seven days of torture, of anger and shame. My lack of pretzels leaves me plaintive, deprived and depraved in spirit beyond all depravity.

My whole pretzel-blessèd youth I had thought - in illusory naivité - that shortages of my preferred 'curvy browners' would transpire not, that my glad gullet in perpetuity would be stuffed upon desire with the yeasty, oven-fresh morsels; that Fortune fair would never a pretzellian scarcity force upon me; that impossible would it be for my dear ones to forsake me, (me!) their chief amoroso and most eminent delectator! Yet here I sit, spent of hope, with an aching vacuum inside my body, and especially my small intestine. Now I but expound in vain upon my lack of favoured snacks. O, ruinous cupboard, o naked jar!

Something is wrong, horribly wrong. And so do I not screed vehemence unto this flickering canvas? Is it illegitimate to wail and gnash my teeth? Is it untruth, my friends - is it not art - to complain about a stolen snack, a wayward nibble, a tenuous delectable? Is the disappearance of my most treasured of belly-dwellers ie Perfection Amid the Knotty Dough ie God's own Pretzel - is such a thing dignified with tears? Can you put a price tag on a 'two-minute microwaveable'? Does beauty exist in a pretzel bag?

Yes, it does. It can. And it shall forevermore, though an ecstatic longing rents me in twain.

Emotion cannot be argued. All pain seeks an outlet. The noumenous human crisis stretches beyond logical limits. And so I rant and rave and hold you at rapt attention in plaintive entreaty to suffer pity with me of that abscondant itty bit of Bavariana: my lost pretzel. For such a lot I was born: to live with pretzel-bread, to love with pretzel-bread; to have pretzel-love inside me, and then stolen away in a hideous farce. I would deal with the Devil himself for one last savoury chew.

Is it my lot to die alone and unsatisfied; to meet my maker's wrath in piteous groaning and utterly barren of stomach? I fear I am not strong enough to be condemned with dignity.

For pity's sake, dear Lord, grant me but one more crumblet!

(*cough*, collapse)