Running With Scissors

Vignettes From The Good, The Bad, And The Dumbass

We at "Running with Scissors" pride ourselves with imparting some universal wisdom through the seemingly absurd tale of a borderline sociopathic human lawyer, but today, we will like to turn things around. We will still impart some wisdom, but not through Peter Katz & Co, but from them.

As such, we will open our fan-mail and answer some of the Universe's burning questions by pulling little nuggets of wisdom from Peter Katz—for even the most scornful person in the Galaxy can be used, at the very least, as a prime example of what not to do in any given situation.

Our first question comes from one of our readers in the Horsehead Nebula by the name of @everybloodyusername. They ask: "Is Cereal a Soup?"

Well, we are off to a great start! That's the question every great philosopher worth their salt has been asked, only to find mixed—and mostly useless—answers.

Epistemologists have stated that it can be a soup, if one were to acknowledge it as such. Logicians, on the other hand, say that one must prove it to be a soup, but that it is not their job to actually do it. Ethical philosophers mostly weight in on whether calling cereal a soup is morally correct or not (spoilers: morality is just a mental construct). Aestheticists only try to judge the beauty of the cereal, and how said beauty decays as the flakes become soggy, while Metaphysicians would question the existence of cereal in the first place.

Even L'yartg the All-Knowing failed to answer this question, only to say that the only thing he knew was that cereal was definitely better than ripe yeast and sweat.

If we were to ask Peter, he would adamantly deny that cereal was a soup in any shape of form, but not because he felt particularly strong about it, but because accepting that would be giving other people a carte blanche to call Deep-Dish pizza an actual pizza, instead of the disgusting love affair between a Quiche Lorraine and a Lasagna that it actually was.

In fact, Peter was a purist. He would see things as they were when stripped to their bare minimum. In that regard, Peter would say that cereal was a failed attempt at making bread. A watery dough, if you will.

Cereal is made of milk and corn flakes mixed in a bowl. It can also contain wheat, or even grains. What else can be made with those ingredients? Bread.

Of course, one must properly process said ingredients first to make a dough, but that's what why Peter thought it was a failed attempt—just an amateur con-job made by someone completely neophyte at cooking.

But there is a huge disconnect between thinking cereal was a failed attempt at making bread, and eating a failed attempt at making bread as if it were cereal. And yet, Peter was set on trying to make cereal by mixing a bunch of milk and flour, a task that was made entirely too difficult thanks to the fact that his hands were tied.

He wasn't doing it because he liked the taste of soggy flour, but mostly because he hadn't eaten anything in a few days, and there was nothing particularly edible in the storage room Hugo threw him in after the brief kerfuffle with the assassins at the restaurant—besides a Deep-Dish pizza the suspiciously scarred chef had thrown in for him to feed on.