Burkina Faso encased in pie
Tortured on July 23, 2006.
The effects of that disastrous pie-eating contest held in Bermuda last week are apparently far, far worse than everyone first feared. Coming into port in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso on board the graceful Alyssa Milano’s Feet, I witnessed a horror that will stick in my gooey greenish-brown brain for the rest of my life: Thousands and thousands of helpless refugees clogging the streets beneath the abortifacient skies of the city, fleeing from the horror that the Bermudan pie-eating contest visited upon their shores. All of them—every last one of them—were covered head to toe in lemon merengue and pecans. Some were slathered in chunks of apple, pumpkin, or squash; others were smeared with hefty dollops of whipped cream and rhubarb. Many of the poor buggers didn’t even have any arms or legs anymore!
I should have known something was amiss before even reaching Ouagadougou—Burkina Faso is supposed to be landlocked!
The burning air.
The local constabulary told me that, so far, over 15,000 people had died, or become, as he put it, “encased in pie—that is, empied.” A whopping 5,237 fell victim on the first day alone, and by the time the emergency had passed over Ouagadougou, 80% of the citizens were expected to perish—or, at least, to never desire to touch another pie as long as they lived. Côte D’Ivoire was already a total loss. Damn those Bermudans and their terrible, short-sighted contests.
By Friday morning I had set sail on Alyssa Milano’s Feet again, headed as far from the now-poisoned Atlantic as I could get.