BUT WAIT!...THERE'S MORE!!
(CONT'D)
* * * * * * * *
OK, so, as promised, the CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL.
That's right, a non-stop flowing river of chocolate decadence.
I have no idea how it's legal to have this thing. At first glance it's like, "Yeah, that's kind of cool, looks tasty,"
but then on further reflection you begin to think of terms like "vector" and "transmission" and "patient zero" and
start to reconsider. They don't let restaurants serve food "family style" (big bowls and serving spoons in a common
dish on the table) and this seems like family style on steroids. I dunno.
Bruce told me about the CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL one night on the way to GC. "Dude, they have like this chocolate river
thing now, you'll see."
"Is it good?"
"No, dude. No. Just watch."
Now, they have a person who stands in the dessert section who is supposed to, I guess, guard the CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL?
But they are not always there, and occasionally disappear into the back of the restaurant to do whatever it is that
is done back there. This is as effective as any guard who is randomly gone. But in case user 'goldencorral' is in
this thread, I will say that every gross/unsanitary thing I've seen regarding the CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL has taken
place when this person, who I will call Deputy Sweeto, was gone.
The way people are actually supposed to engage with the CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL: take a piece of something that would
be good with chocolate, stick it on a skewer, stick it under the chocolate, you are done. Put it on a plate so it
doesn't drop all over the place, go back to your seat, eat, enjoy, go home. Fifty return trips to the CHOCOLATE
WONDERFALL optional, but necessary.
So here are some things I've seen people do with the CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL. Note that the real threat to the
integrity of the CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL is not adults, who although they may do disgusting and unhealthy things to it
(such as using, say, actual fucking fudge as the material to be chocolate-covered) most of them are conscientious
enough to not be unsanitary.
Oh, but unattended children, they Do. Not. Give. A. Fuck. And believe me, at GC there's going to be some unattended
children, because mommy and daddy are trying to get their DPS up people, and paying attention to their precious
living things might result in someone else getting more of the mac and cheese crust covering by delaying their
second multiplate.
Chocolate chicken leg: This is what I saw the first time I went there and just before the only time I contemplated
chocolating something up. Just as I was about to get up, I watched a little kid, probably about 6-7 years old,
walk up to the CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL and stick a fried chicken leg in it.
Now, frankly, this is fucking hilarious. Just really think for a minute about seeing this, the little dude just
staggering over to the chocolate and plunging a fried chicken leg into it. There's no question at this point that
little bits of fried batter are getting knocked off by the power of the WONDERFALL and merging with the chocolate,
and I know there's nothing I'd like better on a strawberry than some soggy, chocolate-infused fried chicken coating.
So already Bruce and I are laughing so fucking hard we're practically injuring ourselves, but this gets better.
After thoroughly chocolating this chicken leg, the kid yanks it out from under the WONDERFALL, makes no attempt
to put a plate under it or anything, and turns and walks away from the thing, trailing the chicken leg at his side
like a caveman's club.
Well, it is dripping chocolate. Not a lot, but some, and no one is paying attention to it, so people are walking
through this liquid chocolate and just smearing it all over the place and making a hellish, God-awful mess.
Admittedly, it's just around that dessert section, which is tile, but still. Little dude walks back to his table,
looks at the chicken leg with some consternation, and then just throws it under the table on the floor.
I've seen a dude take a plate of bourbon chicken (which, to the uninitiated, is basically chicken bits in a brown
fructose sauce... but okay, it's delicious too), walk over to the CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL, and use a spoon to
completely cover his already-soaked-in-fucking-sugary-solution chicken pieces in milk chocolate. Ol' Deputy Sweeto
was there for this one, but didn't say anything because, well, what the guy was doing wasn't unsanitary or harming
the fountain or anything, it was just, you know, gross beyond belief at the cellular level. As he walked away
Deputy Sweeto caught me staring. We locked eyes across the restaurant, shared a brief look of "What have we seen?
Others have not...", and then went about our normal business, strangers connected by a shared glimpse into the
Maw of Chicken Madness.
Dude took his chocolate bourbon chicken over to the buffet, put a little rice on the side, and went and ate the
whole fucking thing. Frankly I was tempted to go get a chunk or two of bourbon chicken and do the same thing myself
just to see what the fuck that could possibly taste like and why someone would eat a plate of it, but then I
realized that I will at some point want to look at myself in the mirror and feel proud of my life as a human being
and so I didn't.
CHOCOLATE WONDERSPRAY: Occasionally you will get someone who is not satisfied with a single layer of chocolate on
their treat, and they will stand for a moment and let the chocolate on their tastybit harden a smidge and put some
more chocolate on it. OK so by occasionally I mean "almost everyone does this." I don't consider this horrid
gluttony unless you're up there for fucking five minutes and walk away with a chocolate baseball on a stick
(but yes, I've seen people stand up there and do that for literally five minutes before, I think they are mainly
just trying to drip as much chocolate as possible onto the plate they hold beneath it, "Whoops, now I guess I
have to eat all this too, mustn't waste!"). But this little girl takes the cake for that shit. If standing there
and maybe gently blowing on your chocolate-covered tastybit allows more chocolate, then you know what would be better?
Blow on it like you're Superman putting out the fucking Towering Inferno, that's what!
The little girl dunks her krispie, pulls it out, and proceeds to blow on it like Superman put- you get it. Well,
this results in little chocolate drops being blown all over the fucking place. The sheer violence of the blowing is
also denuding her little treat of chocolate, so she sticks it in again and does the same thing, with the same results.
So again. And again. At this point the area near her is beginning to resemble something that has seen the touch of
several shotgun shells full of chocolate birdshot. At last her mother saw what she was doing and came and got her, and
then, in an unusual and heartening twist, called for Deputy Sweeto and tried to help clean up. Your average mom at GC
would have grabbed her child, looked around anxiously, and then slunk away. So high five, moral and responsible mom!
What the fuck are you doing OH NAW DUDE DUDE NAW CHRIST: Short and sweet and horrible. Man gets soup bowl. Man walks to
CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL, fills soup bowl 3/4 full. Puts rice krispie on top. Walks back to table, crushes rice krispie
with spoon, begins eating pure liquid chocolate with minor crunchy bits, and I lose faith in the future of the world.
* * * * * * * *
So. Babies at Golden Corral.
First, let's just state that I love babies. They are nature's little Jokers, agents of chaos who just do not give a fuck.
About anything. They don't give a fuck about your rules, your controls, your social mores, or your laws. They will shit
on the floor like it's nothing. They are gonna do what they want, and when they find something they like to do they are
going to do it, and they will do it as long as possible and the longer they do it the faster they will do it and the harder
they will laugh. Seriously, they are about the best free entertainment in the world.
Literally the funniest thing in the world to me is to be in a crowded public place and have a baby start doing that kind of
crying where they are just screaming at the top of their fucking lungs with tears running down their faces, occasionally
pausing and falling almost completely silent to gulp in another big lungful of air before going back to 180 decibels while
the parent looks around frantically and begs them to stop. I mean, seriously, that's the funniest shit in the world. Bonus
points if this happens at Golden Corral and Trailer Park Romeo & Juliet (see below) look at the shrieking, obviously
infuriated child, shrug like, "Zis my porblem? Sheeeit izza baby, he's justa cryn," before going back to DPSing as hard as
possible. Holy shit I'm seriously LMAO right now just thinking about it.
Now, I am a childless man. There is a really good reason for this, which is that I am a selfish asshole who can't comprehend
not being able to wake up and just do whatever I want all day without being burdened by another living thing's requirements.
Shit, I can barely take care of my snapping turtle, who only requires some sort of flesh be tossed in his tank every week or so.
But that said, even I understand at the atomic level that when you actually do have a child, that child must take precedence
over absolutely everything else in your entire life including anything you may have wanted. You have to nurture it, guide it,
protect it, take care of it, watch over it, and teach it how to be a good person who will contribute to society.
Unless you take it to Golden Corral. At this point, a magical alchemy occurs and you no longer have any responsibility for
your baby, and you should just let it run free and learn on its own things like "steam tables are hot" and "a handful of
ranch dressing feels funny."
You see a lot of kids at Golden Corral, sticking chicken legs in CHOCOLATE WONDERFALLS and things, and you do see a lot of
babies also. Now when I say baby, I basically mean a being anywhere from womb-age to young enough it can barely walk
unassisted and does that terrifying hard-lean-forward baby stagger while you cringe and simultaneously fear/long for the
inevitable faceplant. Young enough to still have to stick in a highchair, basically.
Quite a few couples with kids you will see at Golden Corral fit the stereotype I think of as "Trailer Park Romeo and
Juliet." This means:
1 partner very large, usually extremely disheveled, with a wild eye and an aggressive demeanor who speaks very loudly
and has no problem yelling threats of physical violence to either partner or child, like "IMMA FUCKIN BEAT YOU" at full
volume in the midst of a crowded restaurant. If this partner is the female they will always, always have at least one large
facial mole with multiple black bristles sticking from it.
1 partner whisper thin, hellishly passive, instinctively flinching, watery-eyed, with a sick smile and a completely
whipped and beaten-down aura coming off them in discernible waves. If this partner is the male they will always, always be
sporting a disgusting pubestache with three very prominent hairs longer than the surrounding pubes which have obviously
been cultivated with love and pride.
People say stereotypes are the language of hate, but they become stereotypes by being repeatedly true over centuries.
So anyway, these are the kind of people who will trail 3-4 kids from ages 1-6 into a Wal-mart and turn to the 6 year-old
and say things like, "NOW LITTLE BECKY YOU WATCH YER SISTERS OK" and then walk off to the bathroom and leave them alone,
or think nothing of knocking a kid to the floor when the least bit irritated.
To put it more plainly, abominable genetic misfit monsters who should never have been allowed to breed and shouldn't be
entrusted with the welfare of a human child. Oh, but they have them, and by the bucketload, and then they take them...
to Golden Corral.
Oh and before I say anything else YES, I know what I am about to describe sucks ass for the server. I'm well aware of this.
I tip extremely well when I go to any place like this because I know the poor people working there aren't making dick and
are specifically having to deal with shit like this, so rage against that machine somewhere else.
If I had a baby, and I took the baby to Golden Corral, I know exactly the steps I would take. Here they are, in order:
Put infant in high chair.
Go get food when infant is safe.
Bring infant back some small piece of appropriate food they can gnaw on, if they are old enough to do so.
Occasionally feed infant small safe bits of food off my own plate.
Parents, is this reasonable? I hope so. Here is what I would not do:
Get infant a plate completely full of nacho cheese sauce and top with some chips.
Place on highchair tray in front of infant.
Ignore infant as it goes buck fucking "samurai wild" on the incredibly inappropriate thing before it.
So, you know how when a baby does something it thinks is amusing, like, say, lightly slaps a stuffed animal and you go,
"Ow!" and it laughs? What happens next? Well, the baby is amused, and it wants more amusement, so it will slap the stuffed
animal again. Harder. And faster. If it continues to be amused, it will continue to do this. Harder. And faster. Again.
And again. Until it's a little sped-up blur of slapping and hysterical giggling. It's practically a law of nature, you
could probably make an equation for it.
(Baby amusement) = (Force of strikes)(Speed of strikes)
Something like that. Note that term A only gets bigger if terms B and C constantly increase, and term A must increase
because FUN FOR THE FUN GOD! So, now, imagine putting a full plate of viscous canned cheddar sauce before a baby.
What the fuck do you think is going to happen?
Well, you can guess. Baby stuck its hands in the cheese, sucked some cheese off its hands, and eventually came to the
realization that by sort of hitting the cheese, it could cause an amusing pattern/feeling/spatter. The baby looked at
his own cheese-laden hand, fascinated, and then he laughed.
That laugh was the key. The equation had begun. There was no stopping it now. Across the room, I nudged Bruce. "Shit's
about to get real, bro." He looked up from his mountain of cabbage and roots and other leafy shit and saw where I was looking.
"Oh fuck yes, they gave it nacho cheese, how God-damned dumb are they? They gave it a whole plate!" This said in the same
tones you'd use to say something like, "It is El Dorado, a whole city made of solid gold!" Man I love that guy, he's awesome.
Now that first baby cheese-slap was just an experiment. We've all seen it, and you all know exactly what I mean. "What is
this? What does it feel like? How does it respond to my power?" But once baby has figured out that A)cheese isn't fighting
back and B)hey that felt funny and C)things around me turn orange! there was no turning back.
"I am Golden Corral's reckoning. Here to end the borrowed time you've all been living on."
A second slap landed in the plate of nacho cheese. Significantly harder. Significantly more cheese went flying. Already at
this point Bruce and I are laughing our asses off, because just these two slaps by themselves have made a hellish mess,
baby is covered in cheese, cheese is everywhere, mom and dad are DPSing and so don't have time to pay attention to their
precious child, and you can just see where this is going already. See this in your mind, friends, the child's arm speeding
up, harder and faster each time, the child giggling, its arm turning into a little pinwheel of destruction.
>SLAP<
Cheese flies.
>SLAP<
Cheese flies.
>SLAPSLAPSLAPSLAPSLAPSLAPSLAPSLAP<
FUCKING CHEDDARCAUST
There's fucking cheese everywhere. The kid looks like they took a nacho shower, there's cheese in his fucking hair, and I'm
not talking an isolated drop of cheese, no sir, I'm talking "Fuck it shave the baby, there's no way we're getting this out"
cheese-in-hair. The area on the floor around baby's highchair looks like someone murdered a Taco Bell with a power drill.
Mom and dad don't give a fuck. "CURRR-TIS!" mom says, affectionate and exasperated. "Why'd you do that?"
Uh, maybe it's because you gave something without the current capacity for rational thought the equivalent of a food WMD,
lady, just guessing. So after seeing the ELE-level mess her kid had made, Momma Fats just moves the cratered nacho plate away
(which she ended up eating, a common enough fat person justification, "Oh honey do YOU want a giant plate of food you can't
possibly eat OH I GUESS I WILL HAVE TO FINISH THAT FOR YOU CAN'T WASTE") and handed the kid a fucking chicken nugget.
This mess was so awesome that the server for that section literally called over multiple other servers to see it.