I had slugs in my mouth today. Ick ick icketty. It's, like, my thing that I
don't do (I also don't cut my scrotum open and pack it full of salt, but
that's more of an inclination than a doctrine). I like to avoid all slippery
slopes - to madness, to Val d'Isere; chin chin - but the one I make a
concerted effort to avoid is the slippery slope to having a lion in my
mouth. Slugs, slags, flags, flats, Fiats, fials (come on Americans until
they have no choice but to spell it like that), foals, coals, coats, boats,
boots, boons, loons, lions. Slippery. I see that glint in your eye: the idea
of boons appeals, you think you can control your slide, and stop there. It's
not for me. Even - and it's a very big even - if I was able to find a
sixpence to stop on, all it would take is a slight slip to one side and I'd
be giving Spike Milligan a blowjob, or worse still, Harry 'Deaded' Secombe.
No thank you, bucky.
It's not the size that worries me: I'll be all stretched and supple from the
descent, although the jump from slugs to slags may be rather extreme,
leaving me mighty sore. What petrifies me like a forest is the claws and
teeth. Scratching and biting my uvula? Pass. Nuh uh. I'll skip that, skippy.
I don't want a lion in my mouth, and so I don't want slugs in my mouth
either. If we tolerate slugs, we open the floodgates for lions. I'm not
shitting on anyone's lifestyle choice - personal morality is just that:
morality - it's just that I don't want a big slavering lion having carte
blanche in my mouth. If it means I'm some sort of old fashioned fuddy duddy
because I live in a cave, eat small dinosaurs, and have an objection to
having slugs in my mouth because it puts me on the slippery slope to having
lions in my mouth, well then strip me naked, paint my toenails green and
call me old fashioned. Oh please do. You can skip the old fashioned bit and
the stripping me naked, but please paint my toenails green: I think it'd
really suit me.
There were two slugs, one might have been dead; the woodlice that I nearly
also had in my mouth (woodlice, foodlice, foodrice, ..., lions) certainly
were dead, drowned, swollen fat with water, not moving, just dead. One slug
oozed away, the other lay in the sun, but moved a bit later, perhaps not
dead, perhaps evaporating, shrivelling on one side not the other. On
checking up again, I find it's now very dead, very dry. I suspect it was
dead before it entered my mouth, although I can't rule out that being in my
mouth killed it, or that it died of an unrelated incident in the intermilan
time. I'd like to hold on to the latter option so that my molten iron
stomach can keep from oodling the noodles; had the woodlice gone in I would
have been a fount of chunky wisdom. With a lion in my mouth, vomiting would
be my sôle defence mechanism; it might antagonise the brute, but if a lion's
in your mouth ripping holes left and right (there already is a big hole in
the centre) you do what you can, secure in the knowledge that it can't
possibly get worse.
It just got worse.