There’s no easy way to say this.
Our town is in the path of a forest fire, and, in a matter of hours, it may be gone entirely. As your mayor, I’d like to first acknowledge how deeply grateful I am that we were all able to make it to the edge of town, away from the blaze.
However, I know most of us stand to lose everything today, and that’s why I’d like to remind you, though things may seem hopeless in the face of mother nature’s cruelty, we should not discount humanity’s ability to overcome the odds. As the saying goes: when life gives you lemons, sometimes you need to fastball those lemons right back into life’s eyes and sprint away. And by that I mean, let’s not lose sight of a potential windfall here.
Yes, this forest fire is devastating. But it’s also our chance to cook a really huge omelette.
Like, a really big one.
I can see it now. Four helicopters whirring over the trees, a titanic, cast-iron skillet suspended between them by shimmering high tension wire. They hover in position over the flaming inferno that used to be our neighborhood, and you know what’s cooking in that frickin’ pan? An omelette that would please even the Almighty Cronus.
Eighty tons of warm scrambled eggs! Grated ham the size of semi-trucks! So much liquid Armenian Cheese, there are oceanic tides! Cheese tides. Tides of cheese controlled by the moon. If the thought of that alone doesn’t bring a smile to your ash-streaked faces, I don’t know what will.
Now, I understand many of you are hurting. But sometimes, tragedy can awaken us to the brutal, yet liberating fact that our time on earth is short. We only have one life. And with that sobering reality mind, consider our two options for responding to this situation. Option one: we could “grieve” over the fact that our “households” and “most valuable possessions” will be incinerated by an indifferent tsunami of fire. There. That’s one idea.
Orrrr the second one: we could utilize the approaching inferno like a griddle from God, cook the shit out of a skyscraper-sized mound of egg, and then turn the resulting acres of lip-smacking omelette into an egg-themed pleasure park!
And I have two words to say about option number two.
Hell. YES.
Look around! We don’t have to submit to mother nature’s wrath. We can use it to fulfill our most outlandish culinary dreams! When life gives you lemons, sometimes you need to nunchuk that sack of hardened fruit right into life’s temple, knock life on its back, then steal life’s clothes, and sell them to consignment.
Rebuilding our community is going to be a nightmare of logistical and emotional challenges. So, let's flip the script: we'll fry a Godzilla-egg-pile in the burning timberland and create an omelette so large we’ll need personal jetpacks to explore it! And we can charge to rent the jetpacks!
Here are just a few of the many opportunities afforded by my plan. You could:
- Divide the massive omelette into different provinces based around the kinds of ingredients there, like “Chive-Town” and “New Bacon City.”
- Dig secret “Lover’s Grottos” into the rough, but pliable omelette surface, where stalactites of hardened cheese will sparkle in the egg-light and seduce any lover with their delirious whimsy.
- Make a three-piece-suit out of egg whites, and rebrand yourself as “Danny Eggland, Duke of Breakfast.”
- Bath naked in a natural waterfall of steaming, liquid yolk alongside your new husband, a perfect replica of John Krasinski carved out of sweet ham.
We have been given the chance to remake our town as it always should have been: hidden in the cavernous core of a twenty-story omelette, and I, for one, refuse to sit idly by and let that opportunity pass!
So for those who, like me, crave citizenship in a new, egg-based world, I have this to say: Forest… fire up the griddle! And, for those of you who are muttering this is all an impossible fiction intended to help me cope with the loss of every one of my possessions:
You can go ahead and uninvite yourself from brunch tomorrow.