The pen wobbled as it flew through the air, and my eyes traced the arc of its path out the window, disappearing from view into the garden below. “A little bored, Adam?,” asked Deirdre.

Adam shrugged, and without shifting his gaze, threw a tiny jar after the pen. The jar, currently holding tiny screws after the baby food had been removed from it years ago, shattered satisfyingly somewhere outside. Adam’s hands found a dirty plate, which met the same fate, although it did not seem to smash with the same gleeful panache. “If you’re going to do this to everything, I’d like to help,” said Deirdre. She picked up a small black and white tv. It had plastic faux wood panelling, and was missing the channel knob. Adam smiled grimly in response, and she shook off the pliers that changed the channels, jerked the cord out of the socket, and threw it hard towards the window.

It hit the sill, and spun sideways, flinging glass inside on the weathered floor before striking the oppposite side and continuing on to the attractive mass of the earth. They took turns throwing things. Adam, propped against an overstuffed nylon backpack, tossed whatever detritus was in reach and didn’t require him to change position. Deirdre, increasingly frenzied in her choices, selected heavier items, tearing them from their surroundings with a steady calm. Their pace remained leisurely, almost lazy.

I took a beer, and handed Adam the remnants of the six pack, which he tossed. “You should really clip those plastic rings before littering,” I pointed out. Deirdre answered by throwing a rusty birdcage, and Adam took the cup of sunflower seeds I was eating, and threw them in apology. The stuffed macaw inhabiting the birdcage did not escape as the cage spun, but presumably would be well-fed when she landed.

Deirdre knocked down the yellowed windowshade with the lid to the toilet tank, her back already turned in her search for her next item. Adam sniffed reproachfully, and threw a charm bracelet and an old paperback novel in quick succession. Both had belonged to Deirdre’s sister, and Adam’s choice did not go unnoticed. Since she hated her sister, Deirdre couldn’t really have minded, but by now the ritual had taken on rules, evolving and expanding moment-by-moment, rules I could at once understand and not predict. Blood began to leak from Adam’s nose when his head hit the ground, and his eyes crossed briefly. Deirdre had yanked the from underneath Adam. He wiped the blood from his face with a sock that had escaped from a torn seam in the backpack before throwing it after the backpack. When the sunlight began to slant heavily, the room emptying quickly of anything but the golden tones of late afternoon, Deirdre and Adam began to throw each other’s things. Sensing where this would lead, I left without a word. I only had five dollars in my wallet, a hawaiian-styled nylon affair that shut with velcro, but I didn’t want to lose the punch ticket that would entitle me to a free sandwich with my next cup of coffee. I headed out to the garden, ignoring the things that continued to fall. I tripped on a jumprope that had been evacuated near the day’s start, and fell into the well at the far corner of the garden. When my vision cleared, the summer sun had nearly given way. The remains of the backpack had cushioned my landing, spilling out when the seams tore under my weight. The straps floated next to my feet in the cool water that filled the bottom inch of the well. Damp as it was, I was content to just lay there. Above me, at the top of the well, a dragonfly launched from a blade of grass. I heard the shrieks of passing children as they saw it, calling it a darning needle, calling it posionous, and squealing joyfully with imagined fear as they fled.

I removed my shoes with my feet, toe to heel, toe to heel, and lay there the whole night, gently spashing my toes in the water until they wrinkled beyond recognition.

She dropped her shoulders, lifted her chin, and surrendered to the cold. As the heat left, so did the need to shiver, replaced instead by her resignation to hate. She pushed her shoulders back, inviting the wind in further. Fine then: let it come.

And come it did, raging over rocks and trees, swarming, dodging, an irresistable force that swept all before it, tearing her and everything else in its path from gravity’s hands. When the fury had subsided – was it even fury – can you personify something that is so obviously foreign? I don’t know, but the human power to hate even those things that are not sentient, are not even concious or even anything more than the simple flow of atoms over other atoms in a way we disprove of, is an endless, unrelenting force unto itself, driving us to strike over and over against the abtract, to try to dominate something that can never be subjegated, that will never recognize victory or defeat. Finally, the devotion to defeating that which cannot care is joining with it, letting its abnegation become yours.

When the dust finally subsided, she lay drunk. For three days, she’d had nothing but beer. Dark, foul, mossy Guinness, bought with the intent of having something else, for a change, to hate. The whiskey provided the roar that drowned out everything else.

Shaking, she rose, and plodded to the bathroom, occasionally hitting the wall and turning slightly each time, before she collapsed in the tub and turned on the water. Cold water clmibed the legs of her jeans, rousing her enough to turn on the hot tap. When it finally spilled over on to the floor, she turned it off and sat until it turned lukewarm, and then frigid. Shivering, she stripped off the clothes in the tub.

Wanting only to swim away, she floated, nowhere to go, caged by all this, surely as if she had been in an aquarium. It wasn’t the sides of the tub that held her, not the walls of the bathroom, the doors on the house, or the boundaries of the city. No place on earth would be an escape.

She drank a bottle of shampoo, and spent hours throwing up.

I don’t know what happened next, because my answering machine ran out of room.

For the last seven years, I have been a vegetarian of a fairly strict order. I eat the dairy and the cheese, which I enjoy almost as much as I enjoy the use of the superfluous article, but I do not eat the gelatin. (Alright, it is the time for the superfluous article use to end.)

Now, this often inspires a murmur in those who are in the know, because gelatin is in a lot of stuff. It is, I must say, a handy thing. It gives stock its “mouth feel,” it makes pannacotta gel (apparently, the gelatin in pannacotta is traditional taken from sturgeon bladder. Let’s just pause for an “ew.”), and it shows up in loads of other foodstuffs and general products that need binding. To wit:

• Pop Tarts
• Film
• Gel capsules wrapped lovingly by drug elves around pharmaceuticals
• Vitamins (often found as some sort of binder or vegetarian deterrent…the Flintstones have a decidedly anti-vegetarian agenda)
• Starbursts
• Marshmallows
• And, most importantly, rice krispie treats.

Gelatin is also made of cow elbows. Well, more correctly, it is typically made from the connective tissue of animals.

Which means that for seven years, I have been without rice krispie treats. It is my own private hell. Seemingly apocryphal rumors of kosher marshmallows loomed every now and then, but saw no fruition. Even the web yielded no good answers. But those days are past – for I am bringing together all of the veggie/vegetarian/vegan marshmallow and rice krispie treat knowledge Colleen and I have accumulated to bear by making sure that any google search for veggie marshmallows or veggie rice krispie treats points here.

Yes, friends, we have the answers. A few years ago, Colleen made some marshmallows from scratch. I pouted and ranted about cow elbows, and she offered to make me veggie marshmallows. I admit, I was less interested in the marshmallows than I was in making rice krispie treats from them. We acquired some agar from the hippie co-op just up the street from her apartment (we were all living in Takoma Park, hippieville USA, at the time) and tried to make marshmallows.

We failed, and Colleen dubbed the result “ass-mallows.” Aptly.


Leads have come and gone, but in the last few weeks, all our trails heated up, and the clues gelled (ahem) and we had a target. Colleen found out that modern kosher marshmallows are largely made from fish gelatin these days, which hews to kashrut and apparently represents a major technological leap forward for kosher marshmallowdom. However, there is kosher gelatin that is still vegan.

One particular brand name is kojel and it’s diet unflavored seemed like just the thing for our project. Except we actually ended up using a different brand. Point being, there was even a recipe for rice krispie treats.

A co-worker (thanks, Carol) had pointed me to Pangea, whose site not only had the kojel and the recipe, but even actual, factual vegan marshmallows. We’d truly hit the motherlode.

Unfortunately, the motherlode also included irregular vegan marshmallows, which are cheaper but sound gross (a wetter consistency? Let’s just pause for another “ew”). Um, we’re still buying some anyway, as cheap outweighs gross.


Colleen ventured over this Saturday, and we begin the last great experiment. No, not democracy. But close, for as Lincoln once called the still-fragile Union, I now declare that vegetarian rice krispie treats are the last, best hope of earth. Yes, friends, we sought to make vegetarian marshmallows.

Which turned out to be vegan. If you can find sugar that isn’t processed with bone-char. Or non-picky vegans. (Bone-char-free sugar it is!)

Anyway.

The Mallow Project

While the marshmallow-project failed miserably, we gleaned much knowledge. The first batch, in which the gelatin was bloomed in cold water, and a syrup made of corn syrup, sugar, water, and salt was boiled for one minute, failed to turn white and triple in volume despite a solid 20 minutes of work with the electric hand mixer.

Our second batch, the plan for which mirrored the kojel rice krispie treat recipe up until after the goo was beaten, also failed, despite boiling the gelatin and taking the syrup to “firm ball stage” or roughly 244 degrees fahrenheit. It did turn white, though, and then actually spooked us the hell out. Let’s take a look:

Ok, so far so good. Let’s mix!

Not bad, not bad. And that’s when it begin to climb the beaters:

The horror started when, with a sound effect straight from Ghostbusters, the gyrating ass of the Stay-Puft marshmallow man emerged. (8MB quicktime movie)

Be thankful my camera doesn’t record sound.


After all that, the mixture still didn’t triple in volume. We decided to try making rice krispie treats anyway. All you need is the Stay-Puft no-longer-gyrating mixture, 3 tablespoons of butter (if you want it veggie) or margarine (if you want it vegan and can get them to shut up and swallow some transfats). And some vanilla.

Unfortunately, the kojel recipe went a little overboard, calling for 2 tablespoons of vanilla extract:

I wouldn’t do that, if I were you. I’ve tasted whiskey that had less alcohol than one of these rice krispie squares. Also, it made the mixture all brown and gross-looking.


Once that’s all melted and well-mixed, it’s a simple matter of mixing in the rice krispies and spatula-ing them into a buttered pan.

Colleen was jealous that the Stay-Puft ass dance had played such a prominent role, and demanded that her breasts be put on display. Ok, then.

Then all you have to do is display your veggie rice krispie treats proudly:

Or regard them pensively, as befits the last, best hope of earth:

And keep them away from open flames if you add that much vanilla.

As promised, interesting stuff from the Pentagon:
1. A sign, five minutes into our wanderings, declared in red text on a yellow background: “We are an Army at WAR!” Ok, then.

2. There is a mall inside the Pentagon. It is a tiny, small-town seeming mall with a crappy women’s clothing boutique, an eyeglass store, a flower store, it’s own DMV (!), and a gift and knick-nack store. The food court is nearly bigger than the mall. The mall is painted, in keeping with the small-town crappy mall feel, in a garden theme. Outside the flower shop, small girls with straw hats are painted wrestling with large pots of sunflowers in front of a painted picket fence.

Since this is the Pentagon, the putative home of an Army at WAR!®, I have written a letter to my Senator demanding that the Pentagon add to this scene a painting of a Viet Cong soldier slowly decending upside-down from a rope, a knife clenched in his teeth, towards the little girl who is hopping down from the fence. Charlie’s in the trees, Betsy! Look out!

3. The Pentagon is flush with neat soda machines containing a wide variety of drinks, including Mellow-Yellow. I want things to be mellow at the Pentagon – you don’t want anybody getting too excited outside the bread displays (see number 5). I drank some Diet Cherry Coke from one. It had MIND-CONTROL drugs in it. That’s probably why I wrote the letter I just mentioned.

4. In the center courtyard, there were large (over-sized, really) adirondack chairs. In the center of the center courtyard was a octagonal building with a pewter owl perched at its peak. The gentlemen showing us the facility remarked that the Soviets (back when there were Soviets) thought that it was a missile silo. I am sorry, comrades; it is a snack stand. It is the critical Philly Cheesesteak gap you must worry about, although not too closely, because they have stopped serving the Hawaiian cheesesteak. I don’t know what that is.

5. There are many odd displays. Displays as in exhibits. For example, there is the office supply exhibit, which is not only fun but also doesn’t containing much of anything that is probably not on my desk right this second. Next to the office supply exhibit is the bread and napkin exhibit. This contained napkins with “clever” sayings encouraging its user not to reveal classified information, as well as bread pans used to bake bread before they started, you know, buying it. The pans impressed the word “Pentagon” on the sides and bottom of each loaf. There was what appeared to be actual bread from that time period still in the pans. I am still a little grossed out.

6. Also in that center courtyard was a duck. That was pretty neat. He was not military, although Chelsea said he drank loudly.

7. There were scooters and scooter parkings and posted scooter speed limits. Not actual scooters, but “SPVs” or self-propelled vehicles, of which there seemed to be two varieties: golf carts and Rascals.

8. They don’t allow cameras, but they do allow cameraphones if you don’t take pictures with them. If you do, they will take your phone and look through all your pictures and mail it back to you (or so the guards say).

9. A placard installation detailing the renovation of the Pentagon made it clear that it is in serious disrepair. Also, there are showers, and you can buy razors from vending machines, as well as hot noodles. Different vending machines, though.

10. Pretty much the mall and vending machines were the exciting bits. And the mind control drugs. THAT IS ALL. END TRANSMISSION.

I fumbled with the zipper for a few minutes in the warmth of the lobby, fingers stupid from the cold. My limbs shook gently as they absorbed the heat, and the snow in my hair began to melt, making me feel sweaty in conjunction with the stinging of my flushed cheeks.

It’d been just a week since I’d gotten my hearing back. I’d lost it on the subway after a minor confrontation with the clerk at a gas station over the princely sum of 87 cents. I’d boarded by rote, barely noticing anything happening around me. I was brooding, chewing on my cheek while I mulled over the situation. It was the sound that brought my attention back to reality, bit by bit. Finally, I started looking around. I never saw it coming.

Something on the train was squeaking both wildly and rhythmically, a cross between the free flight of a saxophonist’s jazz solo, and the structured, squealing tone of RF interference. No-one else seemed to notice. The buzz of the fluorescent lights grew and my head started to pulse. The dull light pressed down on me, and the squealing pressed in, and finally something popped.

I woke up when the car jolted to a stop at the end of the line. The lack of sound was, as one would imagine, instantly prominent. A man rambling to himself in a seat across from me mouthed vehemently but wordlessly. The normal clatter of the trains was simply absent. When the doors closed and the train started in the other direction, I started, too, rising from my seat briefly out of shock. The rambler offered soundless commentary, and I fixed him with a sullen look until he turned away.

The week I was soundless was about what you’d expect: awkward, frustrating, and devoid of any real explanation of the troubles. No phone calls for doctors appointments; communication dropped off entirely. And the sound returned as abuptly as it had left. After venturing out for a cup of coffee, flavored slightly by all the questions they asked that I responded to with random yeses and nos, coming off probably as somewhat dotty and in poor command of the english language. I drank the cup to the dregs and tossed it in a trashcan on a corner when I was overcome with pressure in my ears. The pain was immense, and I had to lean against the wall, nauseous, trying to keep the coffee down.

Freshly returned from isolation, every sound was notable – the low buzz of a large appliance hard at work; the clatter of ice, the rumble of street traffic. Conversation drifted from all sides, like the sound of a classroom before the first bell sounds. When I closed my eyes, I could feel conversation. With my eyes screwed shut I could eavesdrop on any private discussion, the stories of Kent’s secret baby, or Maraiah’s encounter with a distant, caustic aunt flowing in through the shudder of my breastbone and the light touch of my foot on the ground.