SWARTHOS

The Burger King Incident

We were cruising down the existential highway, me and my trusty hound Urt, a motley collection of fur and fervor that could only be described as a four-legged embodiment of my more dubious impulses. Every week, like clockwork, we made our pilgrimage to the sacred fast-food altar known as Burger King. I would fork over a couple of crisp greenbacks for two plain burgers—no frills, no nonsense—just pure, unadulterated meat and bun for my loyal companion. After all, in a world spinning off its axis, a dog deserves a taste of normalcy, a fleeting moment of burger-induced bliss amidst the chaos of daily life.

On this particular day, however, the cosmos had other plans for us. I had my voice recorder perched like a silent witness, ready to capture the absurdity that unfolds in the depths of the American Dream. As we pulled up to the drive-thru, I was greeted with a polite demand to “hold on for a moment.” There it was—the harbinger of chaos lurking just around the corner.

My patience, already stretched thin like a cheap vinyl record, began to fray as I looked ahead. Two Sheriff’s Deputies were busy wrestling some poor soul to the ground just a few feet away, while the driver behind me, obviously more attuned to the insatiable demands of hunger than the somber theatrics unfolding on the pavement, swung around me in a huff. The audacity! I could practically hear the sirens of impatience blaring in his mind.

“Excuse me!” I chirped into the abyss of the drive-thru speaker, “Am I going to lose my place in line here?!” The disembodied voice reassured me with the kind of calm that can only be cultivated through repeated exposure to madness. “No worries, they won’t serve them first,” it chirped back with a gleeful indifference, as if we were discussing the weather instead of some poor bastard’s imminent booking.

I placed my order, all the while imagining what absurd twist of fate had led us to this moment. It wasn’t long before I reached the window, and that’s when the real nightmare began to unfold. The employee, a harried soul wearing a plastic smile that barely concealed the exhaustion of a thousand drive-thru interactions, leaned in conspiratorially. “The reason for the delay,” he began, “is that some guy pulled out a razor blade and started slicing up his arms.”

Right on! Just another fine day in La La Land, where the sun always shines on the surreal and the absurd is the norm. I glanced down at Urt, who was blissfully unaware of the madness swirling around us, happily gnawing on the prospect of a plain burger, a taste of heaven in a world gone mad.

Here it is—the Burger King Incident, live and unedited. The surreal tableau of a drive-thru unfolding into a scene that would make even the most jaded observer raise an eyebrow.

Welcome to America, folks, where the burgers are plain, but the insanity is anything but. Buckle up—this ride is just getting started.