Breaking: Students Protest Gustatory Insensitivity

We interrupt this venue’s usual programming for an urgent news bulletin from the Real World.

Yesterday, at 11 a.m. EST, as residents of Washington, D.C., New York City, and various other population centers along the eastern seaboard prepared for the immanent appearance of Leviathan, students at two U.S. college campuses launched a new protest against their universities’ gustatory insensitivity.

“When I first came here,” said sophomore Julienne Almonde, “I didn’t know how bad it was.  I expected life outside my little city to be different—less friendly, welcoming.  But I didn’t know there would be cornflakes on the breakfast menu.”

While whole sectors of D.C. were swept by emergency personnel, seeking to ascertain that evacuations were complete, we asked Almonde to provide more detail about his shock. Almonde said that for gluten intolerant people like himself, life in the presence of wheat was a constant struggle.

“But then some bright student gets the idea for a hazing—oh, here’s the guy who only eats cornflakes—and you’re the target of instant mockery.  I mean, yes, I eat corn; but only when it’s organically grown and stone ground—but not the kind of grinding that’s done by undocumented workers, Gaia bless their souls.  The kind of grinding, you know, that I would do in my spare time.”

Pressed for more details, Almonde admitted that he had last prepared his own meal when his grandparents gave him a KiddieMill for his eighth birthday.

“Since then, my mom’s ground everything for me.  I mean, she just does a much better job.  Hey, I’ll be sensitive enough to admit that,” laughed Almonde.

As citizens on the East Coast scrambled onto the last metro trains out of the city, junior Marilyn Toufeux made the case against her own school.

“President Blackhatte has completely ignored the fact that the containers in which we carry food are the virtual receptacles of mass discrimination.  Basically, if you look at the shape, every single one is circular.  Plates, cups—even the weird plastic containers that you pick up at the salad bar.  I mean, they’re not, like, ACTUAL CIRCLES, but they have these rounded edges.  It’s an insult to women everywhere.  I mean, if you’re skinny, it’s like they’re saying, ‘curves, what?’  And if you’re curvy, they’re basically just implying that you’re fat.”

With scientists at MIT desperately reviewing calculations from the latest sightings of the famed sea monster, hoping to buy Americans a few more hours of time—or at least of hope—Toufeux explained that her father had hand-carved a special set of wasabi-tree inspired dining dishes for her bat-mitz-moon-confirmation party.

Artist's rendering based on Toufeux's description.

“We’re a pretty diverse family,” she admitted, with her typical coy modesty.  “And the complexity of the shapes just expressed—you know, me, individually.  So it’s really, really hard to come here and see these PEOPLE—just eating—out of those THINGS.”

As sources announced that the President and members of the houses of Congress and Cabinet had been safely enclosed in separate facilities, designed to one-better the bunkers constructed after 9-11, Talon Sawteye related the harrowing tale of his encounter with an unsympathic teacher.

“I told her—expecting sympathy, I guess—that every time I passed the egg salad in the salad bar, I got these visions of chickens, caged ... my ancestors ... the chicken was our totem, you see.  I could feel their feathers, in my eyes; see their wings beating; feel their panic, caged; feel the blinding light of the cage lamps, the sleep deprivation, the torture ... She said maybe I should wear sunglasses.”

Sources within the university confirmed that the teacher had since stepped down.  It is unknown, however, whether she was actually fired by the university after Sawteye and his friends began egging the university administration buildings, or whether she had simply obeyed the evacuation orders issued by FEMA forty-eight hours before.

Asked whether he will also be leaving campus, Sawteye says he plans to stay right where he is.

“Leviathan?” he repeated when asked how he planned to deal with the inevitable guest.  “My parents used to talk about the guy.  I don’t think they really understood what he was all about.  I expect, once we figure out what kind of meals he prefers, we could sit down and actually have a really good conversation about what would make the world a better place.”