pumpie part 5

This is who ate what from the time the mountain fell on us until the time the thing I'm about to tell you about happened.

Dave Sim had enough beer in him to hibernate for the winter.

The first night, Steve Bissette ate the remaining five walnuts. I've never told anybody before and everybody has always assumed a mouse got them. But this is what happened:

About an hour after the mountain fell on us, as the full weight of our straits was bearing down on everyone, Steve started singing negro spirituals. Everybody thought he was either losing his mind or making some embarrassing valiant effort to keep others' spirits up. He was singing "Swing Low" and "Massa's in de Cold Cold Ground" and "Shortnin' Bread". For musical accompaniment, he would bang a railroad spike that he found in a pile of metal behind the wood stove.

What he was actually doing... Every now and then he'd bellow out a loud note and as the spike came down he'd sneak a walnut under it! He didn't know I could see. He thought nobody could see, but I saw it! I couldn't believe my eyes!

I never told anybody because (a) I didn't want the damn walnuts at the time, and was so sick of hearing people argue I just ignored it, and (b) later I was ashamed that I just sat there and watched as Steve Bissette hogged all the food!

Steve Bissette is famous for his aversion to nuts. It's all an act! It's all calculated to throw suspicion off of him. He'll say "Pumpie's insane, I don't even LIKE nuts!" He may actually believe it himself after all this time.

On the third day, Mark Bode ate the hallucinogenic toad. One second he was licking it, the next second he was swallowing it. There were brief howls of outrage but who could blame him? It was probably involuntary! When you're that hungry and there's a toad right there a fraction of an inch away from your mouth there's just no crime in eating the toad!

Everybody forgave Bode, but the entire spectacle made Eric Talbot so hungry he grabbed Steve's negro spiritual spike and chopped off both of his little piggy that went "wee wee wee" toes and ate them. His own, that is, not Steve's.

On the fifth day Charles Schultz discovered an empty Smartfood White Cheddar Popcorn bag in his coat pocket. Empty except for two puffs of popcorn and a few unpopped kernels. He ate the two puffs, as was his right, and nobody begrudged the old guy having them.

Then he passed the bag around and said we could each have one unpopped kernel, which was damn generous of him if you think about it! The bag traveled around the room, each person in line praying there would be AT LEAST one more kernel there when it got to him. Everybody got a kernel except the last man in line, Kevin Eastman. This was poignant and ironic because Kevin LOVES Smartfood White Cheddar popcorn. But nobody thought it was so sad that they offered him their kernel.

But the Lord works in mysterious ways. As Kevin carefully turned the bag inside out, we all saw that the entire massive expanse of the shiny interior was coated with salt and white cheddar cheese powder. Bissette cried out "Now hold on! That completely changes the playing field! I propose a Starving Artist's Bill of Rights be debated and voted on before bla bla bla!!!"

I watched in disgust and thought to myself "Where was your almighty socialism when Kevin had no kernel? Where was your Bill of Rights THEN, you naughty creature?"

Of course others joined the clamor for Equal Popcorn Rights, but Kevin had the bag licked clean before they could even agree we were in fact all starving.

That's IT, folks. That is it. That is the grand total of all the eating that was done before Day 6.

Well, I apologize. Yesterday I thought I'd get to the Pumpie part today. I was just trying to give you a little background on the food situation and lack of it. I'll get to the Pumpie part Monday, I promise.

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