Guess Who's Coming to Breakfast?

It’s breakfast time at Cook household. Cook is sneaking miniature marshmallows into his Wheaties behind the LA Times. Tiemann is eating reheated wings and watching a TV show in which things with big teeth attack things with big claws. Younger brother Andrew Cook is spreading peanut butter on chocolate-chip cookies. Dublin, Mr. Sixx, and the basilisk have their snouts in their bowls of kibbles.

The doorbell rings. Both dogs go chorusing off to answer it, only to once again make the tragic discovery that, lacking opposable thumbs, they can do nothing.

Tiemann: Somebody should get that. UPS is supposed to be bringing my new kithara pickups.

Cook: UPS doesn’t deliver on Sunday.

Tiemann: Not that UPS. Uncanny Parcel Service. That opabinia person told about it.

Cook: Didn’t that happen in a different reality than this one?

Tiemann: Define “reality.”

Cook: Reality. Something that exists independently from ideas concerning it.

Tiemann: Do any of us exist independently from the ideas concerning us? My chicken wings approach the Platonic ideal--

ACook: Okay, fine, since this situation is so deeply urgent to all of you, I will get the door. If I’m eaten by a minotaur, just remember, you’ll be going to Ralph’s for your own damned milk henceforth.

Tiemann: Minotaurs only eat virgins.

ACook: One could still maul me.

Quiet ensues, broken only by chewing, both at the table and on the TV screen.

Andrew Cook returns with a friend, the dogs circling disappointedly at their heels.

Cook: Dude.

Lee DeWyze: Dude. RCA said I could crash here while I promoted my album.( Read more... )