Some Enchanted Ovening
2003-10-19 - 11:29 p.m.

It was a very large oven. Not that I’m normally the sort to be impressed by the size of appliances, but this oven was freaking huge. It was big enough to hold a full turkey and four sides. Seeing the inside, I imagined it could hold a small bit of dressing as well. It really was a marvel of mechanical engineering.

The woman presenting the oven wasn’t the sort of woman to lie about things either. She was a full-figured woman, with a broad, trustworthy face. She was the one talking about putting the poultry and the side dishes in the oven all at once. It was easy, with her verbal guidance, for me to imagine the turkey sitting in the hot oven, the steam and heat basting and cooking it, making it ready for consumption.

According to the woman, this oven was a god among ovens, a piece of equipment that transcended its categorization as a machine and almost became, dare I say it, a friend. I had to have this oven.

I pulled on my shoes and ran a comb through my hair, excited to go get myself one of the miracle ovens as soon as possible.

It took me awhile to find my car keys. When I finally found them, I was bending over to pick them up when I saw an ad for the most incredible set of knives I’ve ever seen.

There was this chef, a big, Italian-looking guy, and he was showing how these knives could cut through most anything. He cut roast, ham, turkey; the knives were absolutely mind-blowing. When he gave the price, I could hardly believe my eyes. What luck! With those knives and that oven, I could be the chef I’d never realized I wanted to be.

Everything would’ve been great if I’d left right then, but the couch cushions didn’t look quite right to me, and I felt the need to straighten them. When I turned from straightening them, the scene on the box had changed again. I watched for a few minutes then headed off to buy my knives and my oven.

So now you can see the chain of events that led me to where I am today. This room isn’t too bad. It’s a little too white, and there’s no TV, but the whole thing is soft, which means I can go to sleep almost anywhere. Sometimes I miss my bed, and wonder how things would have gone if I’d just taken those people out of the oven before the police got there. Thing is, I wanted to show them how much I’d fit in there. Why, if you cut at the right places, you could fit two and a half grown people into that oven. Who can blame me for being a little proud? I’d made super oven even more super.

So you see, all this isn’t really my fault. I’m a victim of advertising. I can deal with being in prison though. I just think about what I watched that fateful day: The oven commercial, the knife commercial, and some guy’s autopsy.