Most people, at some point in their lives, have spilled cream of mushroom soup while trying to eat, type, listen to a podcast, and play a cello all at the same time. Modern life, which necessitates such multitasking, prevents one from enjoying cream of mushroom soup in silence and without interruption, the way nature intended cream of mushroom soup to be enjoyed. Instead we are cursed to eat our mushroom soup at our laptops while playing cellos like terrible, mushroom-soup-eating beasts.

This, at least, is what I tell myself when trying to rationalize the fact that strange life is currently growing on my pants.

Allow me to explain. A few weeks ago while trying to enjoy my cream of mushroom soup, I had forgotten that bowls inadvertently get hot when holding mushroom soup, and hence I found myself clutching a searing object, with no place I could rid myself of it to adequately prevent severe burning of my hand. Initially the pain had caused me to practically throw the soup at my laptop, but quick-thinking reflexes caused me to deftly throw out my arms to protect my precious computer from being ruined by soupy doom, preferring instead to burn the hell out of my crotch. I stand by my choice to this day. Is my crotch capable of downloading 200 gigabytes of porn per day? I don’t think so. In fact, if I were forced to throw scalding culinary dishes at either my crotch or my laptop every day for the rest of my life, I’d throw the scalding meal at my crotch each and every time, no questions asked. Like Gandhi, I am willing to sacrifice myself for the greater good.

Upon covering my pants with cream of mushroom soup, I did what anyone else would do: I cried for hours on end. I cried neither for the scalding nor for Argentina, but for the insufferable waste of a perfectly good meal. I really wanted to eat some mushroom soup, god damn it! But after consoling myself by picking out the stray mushrooms from the folds in my pants and eating them, I decided it would be best to remove the pants and attempt cleaning them. So I took them off and haphazardly scrubbed them off in the sink, then threw them into my pile of dirty clothes so I could wash them the next day. And it seemed everything would end there. But it didn’t; oh, how it didn’t!

A few days later, I noticed a strange smell in my room. Normally this sort of thing is not unusual to me, as I live with a dog who is constantly producing strange smells, but this smell was different. It was overpowering and quite disgusting, whereas my dog’s smells are usually underpowering and slightly less disgusting. Then I remembered the fabled mushroom pants I had forgotten to wash, and crept slowly toward the pile of dirty clothes in which they rested. Those pants were somewhere in there. Their stench wafted toward my nostrils. I thought I saw the pile of clothes rustle and move. What foul monstrosity awaited within this pile of ghastly cloth and fabric?

When I found the pants, I nearly gasped in horror. These certainly looked like my pants, but no, these were a different color! These gray pants were now splotched with irregular patches of red and magenta, smelling of soured milk. My pants were covered with life, sweet life!

I’m reminded of the famed creationist video where a smug, retarded little man claims that evolution cannot be true because new life never forms beneath an air-tight seal in peanut butter jars. Well, my dear creationist friend, if the production of life in strange places is your test of evolution, then bear witness to my GLORIOUS RED-STAINED PANTS THAT SMELL OF MUSTY CHEESE! Fucking fuckwit.

Anyway, at first I thought that perhaps some new bloody feces organism had spawned on my pants, because it was red like blood and smelled distinctly of feces. Then I began to fear for my life, for I started sneezing profusely as soon as I got near these foul pants, and my eyes began to water, and I’d be a liar if I said that I did not fear that some sort of mind-controlling fungus spore would enter my nasal passages, get into my body, insert itself into my DNA and thereafter control my body like a puppet, the organism’s tendrils ripping through my body as soon as someone found out I’m really some sort of alien fungus spore as in the movie The Thing.

Luckily, the tendrils never ripped out of me and I’m reasonably certain my mind is not currently controlled by a fungus. (Please be on the lookout if I start constantly updating this blog with articles about my love of fungus, though.) After that, I began to feel strangely scientific. In fact, I felt a strange affinity for Alexander Fleming, the famed scientist who accidentally discovered penicillin’s antibacterial properties by observing the fungi in a petri dish. My red-stained pants were really no different from the penicillin he discovered, except that I have no idea what was on my pants, it didn’t have antibacterial properties and no doubt probably harbored a hefty colony of bacteria, and it didn’t revolutionize medicine. But really, those are only minor differences, as the overarching thrust of the stories are the same.

Now the pants are finally being washed properly, but I do not harbor any hopes that they will not be forever tainted with the redness of that fateful organism. Perhaps I will wear these stained pants on days when I want to remember that I almost sort of kind of nearly discovered something somewhat like penicillin. Or perhaps I will just wear them when I no longer have any pants, for all the rest are currently covered in soup, and these are somehow the cleanest pair left.

(If there are any science types out there who might know what sort of organism would produce a spoiled cheese smell and stain things red, be sure to offer your hypothesis for what this was in the comments, unless it’s something scary that will invade my brain, then I’d rather be ignorant of my impending doom.)

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 at 6:54 PM and is filed under Humor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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