South 12th

A final word on Word Idol.

This image was sent to us by a reader that must remain anonymous due to his or her sensitive position within the community. It was sent with special instructions to note the time on the clock: a quarter past four. What you are seeing, reader, is an image of people about to eat “an afternoon meal taken at 4 o’clock.” It is an image of, as our mystery correspondent puts it, “fourings in action.”

Is this not a pleasing image? Is this not an image that speaks to our most profound longings as a civilized society: the desire for community, for small snack items to enjoy, for the opportunity to sit in a roomful of be-tweeded ladies after work has ended? It does, and for once, we have an opportunity as a society to make a decision to start using a word that can give shape and form and meaning to these longings.

That word is fourings.

That is why I am asking one last time for you to vote for “fourings” in the Word Idol competition. You may do so here.

Reader, I am not as sophisticated as some of my silver-tongued competitors. I am a simple man, a man that resembles the logo for an unpopular regional brand of macaroons. But, as some of my competitors have pointed out, we are not voting for personalities. We are voting for words.

So on this Sunday evening, look one more time at the image above. You may recognize yourself in the long-dead faces in that mess hall. Their hunger is your hunger. You have the power to take those longings that well up within you, deep inside your heart — those longings for midafternoon nutrition, ritual and camaraderie. You have the power now to take control of them, to civilize them, and to assign them a word.

The word: fourings.

Fourings.

Also, vote twenty times or so, because Raynor is running some kind of banana republic shit where you can vote as much as you want. Fair enough — no one said this would be easy.

(On a parenthetical note: Some of you have already made fourings in your homes  — you know who you are. You have my sincere gratitude for your efforts. They prove definitively that the need for fourings was always there, and all that was needed was the word.)

What are these chuckleheads talking about? Ryan? Charlie sent this and he says it looks like me.

Shit just got real.

In honor of the increasingly heated Word Idol competition, our reader Alpha Lemon has just sent along this fourings-related image — a glimpse into an incredible future where fourings are served at Denny’s. Look at that plate! Nuts, cheeses, breadstuffs, little tomatoes! A perfect sweet/nutty/meaty/hot combo, as recommended in these very pages by the real/fake fourings expert team of Jim “J.P.” Norton and Sir Tony!

In fact, A. Lemon suggests an incredible afterlife for fourings: once it has been accepted as a culinary fact by people all over the world, and decadent Western moral relativism has kicked in, there is no reason that, like breakfast, fourings cannot enjoyed practically anytime. “FOURINGS SERVED ALL DAY,” diner menus will shout. Someday, even, second-tier screamo bands will be permitted by Denny’s to create their own custom fourings menu selections: FROM AUTUMN TO ASHES’ SUPER VICTORIA SPONGE.

Reader, this is the future we’re fighting for.

In regards to fourings, I forgot to mention: when you bring out the meal at 4 p.m., you have to introduce it by saying the name of the dish in a sort of drawn-out bellow, like:

VIIIIIIICCCCCCTTOOOOOOOOOOORIA SPPPPOOOOOOOONNNNGGGGGE.

No exclamation at the end. You know what I’m talking about. Anyway, that’s what you’d say if you were eating Victoria sponge. Like I said, we’re still feeling out what exactly constitutes appropriate fourings fare.

Also, if fourings gets a little manic, it’s a good idea to serve the dish by screaming “YOU GET A SCONE! AND YOU GET A SCONE! AND YOU GET A SCONE!” Everbody at the table screams along, too. Jumping up and down, crying maybe. Fourings is like that sometimes.

Look, I don’t like it anymore than you do. But the fact is, Oprah still rules 4 p.m. There have to be concessions made initially to get our foot in the door if this is going to work.

“Humans were not designed to spend their entire waking lives stumbling through an unending succession of cakehole-stuffing opportunities.”

…And so begins the Ragbag’s epochal Word Idol Week. All week long, Raynor has charged several of his semi-professional acquaintances with taking up the cause of an obsolete F-word and re-introducing it back into the wild.

I am one such acquaintance, and I have chosen ”fourings.” A four o’clock meal. Proletarian high tea. Post-work happy hour chowtime. Eating your feelings about Oprah’s imminent disappearance from daytime TV. Yum.

Stick around, consider carefully what I have written, enjoy the other entries, and then vote for fourings at week’s end. Or, better yet, consider adding fourings to your meal schedule. I will be posting fourings-related content much of this week in an attempt to begin moving my readership in that direction. You eat at 4pm anyway; might as well make a ritual out of it.