What you see is a salad grown on the grounds of the restaurant, contained in a bowl made entirely of Parmesan cheese. In the background is a plate of raw seafood: tuna with an Italian styled herb and oil sauce, scallop, and a caviar/cheese bite. Very tasty. And yes, that is a picnic table. I ate outside! 

 Tapas Media

Many of my long-time readers have been wondering where all my entries went. Short answer: they went into a book. Yes. A book. Yours Truly is now an author.

I have many misgivings about this process, not the least of which is “editing”, otherwise known as the period of time I must endure people telling me to revise the mistakes I have made with my life, like some kind of time-traveling white wash. I cannot revise history. It happened as it did. This is not a fiction.

But I suppose the fact that I must continuously say this to editor and agent alike proves the original point I had been trying to make (which you may remember, gentle reader), that humanity is no longer capable of parsing fiction from reality. No one believes me when I tell them what I am. I am crazy, eccentric, or devious, but none of these make me a monster. They make me “artistic”. 

I have remained staunchly opposed to rewrites. You can imagine how odd the conversations have become when the editor says “I think this scene would work much better if…” and i say, “But I killed him. He didn’t talk because I broke his neck. There’s no changing that, even if his pleas for help might make me less or more sympathetic.”

I have not been very popular, to say the least.

I have been told that I am to discuss the upcoming release of the work, though how I am to do this, really is quite a mystery. It turns out that the publishing industry has changed a great deal from when it began. No real surprise. We now have ebooks and audiobooks, and all sorts of wonderful contraptions, but one thing has not changed. The writer still does all the work.

Being a “new author” (though I have been alive longer than most of the people who keep telling me this) I am expected to engage my readers in a much less passive way. I offered to skin a few of them. This was frowned upon. They will settle for Twitter, Facebook, and blogging. I drew the line at Pinterest. No one wants to see a thumbnail of anything I produce. I can assure you.

So here I am, on my blog, which had been effectively terminated given the unfortunate circumstances surrounding the…well, I’m not allowed to talk about that because it’s apparently under copyright law. My blog was shut down, but now I have been told to start it up again, much to Detective Porter’s chagrin. I will use it as a platform to discuss the aspects of my life which will not be featured in the books: recipes I come across that look interesting, food news, the sorts of oddities that amuse an immortal monster, and even encounters I have. All of this, I am told, will funnel people to my work. Which, I suppose, is better than being funneled as part of my work…

Yes, that was a athropophagic (people-eating) joke. I do occasionally make these.

Back on topic. I have allowed the barest of editing. Names have been changed, some dates have been tweaked. I have altered certain clues to my whereabouts which were far too obvious for my own good. The book is to be released in two forms: it will be cut into pieces like the Dickensian serials of old! They will also be combined and sold as a volume. I have seen the cover. It is both mildly offensive and terribly amusing. I will update with dates as they become available.

I am already working on the “sequel”, though to say that is obviously a misnomer. I am still alive, therefore, I am still eating, and things continue to happen to me. It’s just that now, I am only allowed to send my “faux-oir” to a former accountant who reads it and determines if my audience will approve.

Please ignore the bitterness in my tone. It is a natural consequence of arguing, far too many times, about whether or not my book should contain recipes for human. Never mind that the most frequently typed phrase on my computer is “Preheat the oven…”

I am the thing your fairytales warned you about. You can’t really expect me to be nice and unthreatening, can you?

No, I thought not.

If you are brave enough to track me down on the safe and anonymous alleys of the internet, you may find me on Twitter with @SAnthropophage or on Facebook by my name Simon Alkenmayer. Is that an alias? The answer is, my name is Simon. The last name is one I have used before, elsewhere. So technically, yes, it is my name, but no, you will not be able to track me down using it.

I welcome correspondence, but please, as usual, do obey the rules of etiquette. Our engagement will be confusing enough. Rules will make it much easier to communicate, I promise you. And rudeness, as Hannibal Lector once intimated, only makes me hungry.

I will answer any questions you may have. Please do not ask me to send you proof. This is still an experiment, and if I sent proof, then the burden of decision would no longer be on you. I have been, from the beginning, challenging you to believe me. You must either do so, or forgo it for the sake of entertainment.

It is up to you.

The modern human has embraced this concept as it would one of those adorable, goat-cuddling kittens on YouTube, but I am not sure the true meaning is well-understood. Which could have something to do with the fact that “educational centers” no longer teach philosophy as part of the general curriculum, but stock the kitchens with canned vegetables, pizza pockets, and plastic covered pastries.

You really are killing yourselves. That is not an aside. It goes to the point.

Which is, that the thrust of hedonism (the philosophical school) was not merely “pleasure is the only good”. Rather, it should be understood that if we were to find some way to measure or quantify “good”, our only yardstick would be pleasure. Any situation that maximizes the number of happy folks, and optimizes their feelings of contentment is intrinsically good. Therefore, hedonistic.

This inevitably ties the person to the material world, the substance and form of reality. You cannot feel satisfaction at eating a Big Mac, if you do not have said sandwich in hand. Therefore, belief in the hereafter or any other imaginary thing is erroneous. This is known as atomic materialism.

But it was Epicurus who typified this.

He has become irrevocably enmeshed to cuisine and the stylizing of it, but in reality, his philosophy was far more graceful. To him, life was best lived in utter simplicity, seeking knowledge for the sake of a purer understanding, and therefore enjoyment, of the universe. To call oneself an Epicurean is to align with a truly virtuous cause, and so I am often bothered when I find it so inextricably linked with gluttony.

Yes, I have said it, gentle reader. I do not like something that ties to food. You never thought you’d hear it. But it is there for all to see.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things for which you only hoped.

So do not, modern human, confuse hedonism with gluttony. All Big Macs are sandwiches, but not all sandwiches come from the unholy limbo that is the McDonalds drive-thru.

So you see, I am both a humanitarian and an epicurean, with any meaning you choose to employ for those phrases, for tonight I dine on a fraudulent restauranteur. I will put an end to his technicolor presentations of sybarite pleasure palaces designed to bankrupt yet another retiree to fund his next seafaring purchase. I do this in an effort to obtain a more perfect sense of joy, I assure you.

Cheers.