“I Have Been Waiting So Long For My Prime Rib & Chicken Sizzlin’ Skillet, I Have Been Able To Read 7 Wikipedia Articles Chosen At Random.” (Infinite Monkeys)

“I Have Been Waiting So Long For My Prime Rib & Chicken Sizzlin’ Skillet, I Have Been Able To Read 7 Wikipedia Articles Chosen At Random.”

I really think that this is ridiculous, don’t you honey?  I mean, I have now just finished my seventh Wikipedia article at random, reading on my phone like a sucker, stuck in this booth and wondering if I should get a second refill of my diet Coke ™ before my food even arrives.

There is only so much a man can take, reading about Wyoming Highway 37 beginning at US Route 14A just east of Lovell, and continuing through the National Recreational Area and the Pryor Mountains  Wild Horse Range before crossing into Montana where it ends at a place called “Barry’s Landing,” and I am about at that point.

The point where I can’t take anymore, I mean. 

Look, that elderly couple? The ones who weren’t even out of their car as we walked across the parking lot and who you said were startled when I accidentally hit the ‘alarm’ button instead of the ‘lock’ button on the keys? They have their food.

You don’t suppose it was because we didn’t order appetizers, do you? Because I am trying to cut down, and the fact that my prime rib and juicy grilled seasoned chicken breast comes sizzling with fire-roasted peppers and onions alone makes it enough of a meal, even before I consider the sides of hash browns loaded with diced bacon and melted Cheddar cheese.

Don’t try to tell me it’s that some of the articles were short.  It’s not my fault that the entire entry for Ghafasi is only one sentence noting the town’s province and what Taounate it lies in, in Morocco.  They average out, after all, and I spent more than an average length of time learning that Rusty Hilger was picked 143^rd in the 1985 NFL draft by the Los Angeles  Raiders, later becoming the only Raider rookie quarterback to play in a regular season game as well as the only Raider rookie quarterback to ever throw a touchdown pass. 

Maybe I looked so attentively at my phone, trying to figure out how to pronounce the family “Raphitomidae,” in case I ever was called on to discuss the gastropod mollusk from that family referred to in the Latin as “Pseudodaphnella intaminata,” that our waitress thought we should not be disturbed?  But if that’s the case, how come those two intense young men in the glasses, who have been quietly debating whether the cop knew the killer all along, without interruption, got their plates, heaped high with French fries and some sort of BLT-ish sandwiches?

Well, I couldn’t help but overhear them, and also to wonder why someone would order, at a restaurant, something that’s so easy to make at home?

But would it have killed our server to simply ask me if I could be bothered to have her put down the skillet, with its tortillas and pico de gallo sauce on the side, even though I was clearly engrossed in discovering that a ‘discrete group’ is a group G equipped with discrete topology, a mathematical concept that can help one understand the Bohr compactification or the theory of Lie groups in group cohomology?

No, I do not myself understand the Bohr compactification, and I doubt I ever will, the way my stomach is rumbling!

Plus, my diet Coke ™ is all watery from the ice melting.

See, now that group of girls, the busty ones? They weren’t even seated until after we placed our orders, but there they are, all with salads, obviously trying to show each other how they are sticking to their diets.

I wasn’t noticing their breasts.  I was just saying that they are busty.

I think you look fine.

Well, it wouldn’t hurt you, either, to pay some attention to me.  I saw you looking away when I relayed to you that the third single from Taylor Dayne’s second album, “I’ll Be Your Shelter,” was a departure from Dayne’s dance roots into a more pop/rock, mid-tempo type of song but still was marked by the intense vocals for which she had become known.

No, see? If you had been listening you’d know the song was “I’ll Be Your Shelter,” while the album was “Can’t Fight Fate.”  That’s my point!

I’m not just hungry.  But I am very hungry. I can’t even see our waitress anymore. Do you think maybe she went home? I’m not sure a server can leave when one of her tables is still waiting for their food. But all these other waitstaff don’t look like the ones walking around when we first were seated.

You can say that if you want, but even if I had been more focused on the fact that the Sulawesi Cuckoo is often known as the “Sulawesi Hawk-Cuckoo” even though it appears unrelated to other hawk-cuckoos than I was on simple courtesies like making sure you were not too cold or loaning you my sweatshirt, I’m pretty sure I’d have noticed if there had been a waiter like that, with his hair all… so…, when we were seated.

Ugh. My diet Coke ™ is almost pure water, now.  I should check my email.