Home
Warren Ellis - The Dinner of Cathcart Zen [entries|archive|friends|userinfo]
Warren Ellis

[ website | warrenelliscom ]
[ userinfo | livejournal userinfo ]
[ archive | journal archive ]

Links
[Links:| warrenellisdotcom myspace badsignal ]

The Dinner of Cathcart Zen [Oct. 18th, 2005|10:59 pm]
Previous Entry Add to Memories Tell a Friend Next Entry
[Current Music |Lush - When I Die]

"God's flaming uterus," Cathcart Zen groaned, "I think I just shat out my own shoulderblade."

"Please," said Annabel, the nurse, "please either let me go or just kill me. Don't make me stand here in your bathroom."

"This is your damned fault," Zen hissed, shifting his weight on the toilet seat. "You will witness the consequences. Listen to me, young lady. Food comes from animals. It does not come from the fields they graze. Cows can digest vegetation because they have five stomachs. This is a law of nature. If humans were meant to eat leaves, we would never have descended from the trees. How dare you have Metz serve me something made out of undergrowth and nuts and tell me it's granulated rabbit meat and parrot arses. I would never have allowed it to sully my lips if I'd known there was things from grasslands in it."

"Mr Zen, I'm begging you. Vegetables are so important. If I'd known they would have this effect on you -- "

"I haven't eaten a vegetable since the day a busload of special-ed children crashed and burned outside my last home," Cathcart Zen said. "Oh my God. I need to push." Cords stood out in his neck as he convulsed on the toilet.

"I don't believe that," Annabel said, trying to suppress her gag reflex as a wave of hideous, life-crushing gas emanated from the clearly cracking toilet. "You have to eat vegetables."

"Not since 1971! And that vegetable was sticking out of David Bowie's arse! Let me tell you something. Meat is essential to human evolution. When we grazed like cattle, we did not take on enough nutrition to be able to plan or invent. We had to eat grass all day just to get enough sustenance to live. Only when we learned to rip meat, beautiful and steaming, from the flanks of the beasts of the field, did we begin to grow. Sweet, protein-rich meat meant we didn't have to eat all the time. We could sit, bellies full of the food of the future, and devise things. We had the time to make tools, and create strategies. It started us on the path to technological superiority. Why, today, we only have to press a button to kill some stupid fucking animal and get more meat. I have eaten nothing but meat for more than thirty years, and that is how I have become the superior human and utter fucking genius I am, and therefore how you make an obscene amount of money in return for keeping me alive. And what do you do? You sabotage my bowel with bits of tree!"

"Oh my God," Annabel wept, more from the blinding anal fumes than from genuine contrition. "What can I do to help?"

"It is time," Cathcart Zen sighed, "for the trick I learned when I was trapped in a Tokyo hotel with Led Zeppelin. Bring me a bucket of warm water, a box of wadded-up newspaper, a shovel and some of that glue they use to waterproof bathroom walls."


(c) Warren Ellis 2005 etc etc
LinkReply

Comments:
Page 1 of 2
<<[1] [2] >>
[User Picture]From: [info]lokmarie
2005-10-18 10:05 pm (UTC)

(Link)

hah, he literally would be dead if he had done as he said...
[User Picture]From: [info]razrangel
2005-10-18 10:06 pm (UTC)

(Link)

AHAHAHA

I just scared my co-workers, laughing out loud! Excellent! I was having such a shit day, too. Cathcart Zen brings a smile to my face.

which tells you just how awful it's been. }:>
[User Picture]From: [info]tintintin
2005-10-18 10:11 pm (UTC)

(Link)

Reminiscent of the scatalogical excesses of Mark 'Zodiac Mindwarp' Manning at his most sordid. Well done!
[User Picture]From: [info]radiumx
2005-10-18 10:16 pm (UTC)

(Link)

What was the vegetable sticking out of David Bowie's arse?!
Inquiring minds want to know!

"I haven't eaten a vegetable since the day a busload of special-ed children crashed and burned outside my last home,"
I am quoting this.
[User Picture]From: [info]seangrimm
2005-10-18 10:22 pm (UTC)

(Link)

Waaaaaait...is that insuating he ate a 'vegetable' as in a retarded kid? If it is I'm going to laugh my ass off, my first thought was he had compassion enough not to eat meat but now I doubt that thought at all.
[User Picture]From: [info]theweaselking
2005-10-18 10:17 pm (UTC)

(Link)

Cathcart Zen is my new hero.
[User Picture]From: [info]arariel23
2005-10-18 10:18 pm (UTC)

(Link)

"I haven't eaten a vegetable since the day a busload of special-ed children crashed and burned outside my last home,"


Every one of these seems to top the last. I'm not sure if I should be horrified, aroused, or both.

From: [info]torinosu
2005-10-18 10:19 pm (UTC)

(Link)

Fuck. I just snarfed coffee on my monitor.

:)
[User Picture]From: [info]actingbunny
2005-10-18 10:20 pm (UTC)

*GRIN*

(Link)

fucking awsome
[User Picture]From: [info]fatfred
2005-10-18 10:22 pm (UTC)

(Link)

Great. Now I am hungry.
Shouldn't there be a python in that list?
[User Picture]From: [info]seangrimm
2005-10-18 10:24 pm (UTC)

(Link)

I'm going to greet the next person I see with "God's flaming uterus!" I'll do it damn you!
[User Picture]From: [info]lamuella
2005-10-18 10:32 pm (UTC)

(Link)

I don't know which disturbs me worse: this piece of dirty genius, or the fact that I picked up Bad World this week and I knew personally two of the nutcases in there.

When you read a book on the most fucked up people in all of humanity and you've had conversations with two of them, it kind of makes you wonder.
[User Picture]From: [info]se_dogaru
2005-10-19 03:59 am (UTC)

(Link)

God's Flaming Uterus! is that the Flying Spagetti Monster!? hang on, i must find my damnable pirate hat (so as to show proper respect...)
[User Picture]From: [info]capslockfonetik
2005-10-18 10:34 pm (UTC)

(Link)

I read that while eating a cucumber sandwich.

Pass me the steak.
[User Picture]From: [info]fnoo
2005-10-18 10:35 pm (UTC)

(Link)

Easily my favourite so far.
[User Picture]From: [info]gunn
2005-10-18 10:40 pm (UTC)

(Link)

This as I've been eating vegan for a month. A very HST character.
[User Picture]From: [info]doktor242
2005-10-18 10:43 pm (UTC)

(Link)

this one's getting sent to all my vegan friends.
[User Picture]From: [info]landstander
2005-10-18 10:50 pm (UTC)

(Link)

This reminds me way too much of how I've spent the past couple days. Brilliant!

(They have mudsharks in Tokyo?)
[User Picture]From: [info]7171177711
2005-10-18 10:55 pm (UTC)

(Link)

At this point it's no longer news, but the "special-ed children" line is magic. Cathcart Zen is wonderful! The last three editions have been my favorites. :)

Will we get a story some day actually featuring David Bowie? He seems to have played a pretty interesting role in Mr. Zen's past.

7
[User Picture]From: [info]ece_drihten
2005-10-18 10:58 pm (UTC)

(Link)

you're the best, mr. ellis.
You've made my week.

bus full of retarded kids.... gold....
[User Picture]From: [info]pavel_lishin
2005-10-18 11:19 pm (UTC)

(Link)

This is the best one yet.
[User Picture]From: [info]aberranteyes
2005-10-18 11:29 pm (UTC)

(Link)

I can kind've relate to this story; my major intestine has been giving me gyp for the last few days (maybe the last week or so). Quite often, I will feel a sense of something descending into my colon, as if the entire contents of my digestive system were making a rush for the emergency exit. I will then race for the nearest lavatory, get my lower regions uncovered, seat myself... and usually expel either a series of immense and surprisingly odorless farts or, once in a way, a small ballistic turd emitting a disproportionate amount of butylmercaptan stink redolent of tire-fires and dead skunks.
[User Picture]From: [info]piratehead
2005-10-18 11:32 pm (UTC)

(Link)

I imagine him as talking like that wasted dealer in Withnail and I. "'Ow 'igh will you go befaw you let go?"
[User Picture]From: [info]redwolfoz
2005-10-18 11:59 pm (UTC)

(Link)

Oh dear. I can picture the hordes of militant PETA protesters descending on Cathcart Zen's residence now. On the upside, it would mean he'd be in fresh, grain-fed meat for a while.
[User Picture]From: [info]firepile
2005-10-19 12:08 am (UTC)

(Link)

Goddamn I'm loving this series.
[User Picture]From: [info]ritalinbaby
2005-10-19 12:17 am (UTC)

Oboy

(Link)

and we just discussed that very thing in Biology; it's what separated Cro-Magnon from its ancestors.

Can't wait to see the teacher's face when I mention this.
[User Picture]From: [info]telecart
2005-10-19 01:45 am (UTC)

(Link)

I love you when you rant about food.

Every once in a while I reread your essay on GM food.
[User Picture]From: [info]chaoset
2005-10-19 04:47 am (UTC)

Hmmm...

(Link)

I don't believe I've seen this essay. Where is it located?
Page 1 of 2
<<[1] [2] >>