Noun: Bacon.  Opinion: Love.

The first workday after a long weekend tends to find me pretty ornery, and seeing as how I’m getting it as good as I’m giving today I’m concluding that I’m not alone.  On this blog I’ve been veering wildly between the pedantic, the sentimental and the ridiculous (all the while rooted firmly in the dumb and bitchy) and my preaching ass is tie.  Yurd.  Given that ridiculous is the least exhausting of the three, we’ll order another plate of that.  So I want to lead the lemmings to a safe haven.  A happy place.  And take a short think nap.

Heaven, according to the sound stage used for every Hollywood depiction of it, is a destination made of large wisps of dry ice.  People, even men, wear long white dresses and everyone but God whisper-speaks like they’re in a library.  Citizens smile placidly, stoned on the rapture of goodness, and float around delicately, as if afraid of breaking something.  Heaven’s fancy and sounds like harp music.  Heaven is the lobby of the St. Regis.

Everyone knows that’s bullshit.  If heaven is worth getting into, which is to say if it’s worth the time I didn’t spit in that jackhole’s Pinkberry after he cut in line, then it has to be more interesting than a mid-market accounting firm’s conference room.  Blue sky as vast as eternity.  Bright sunshine gleaming off frizz-free hair.  Rolling hills carpeted with fresh, bugless grass.  A rainbow stretching overhead, with a Pegasus galloping on the violet bridge.  Puppies wagging their tails and reaching their wet noses towards your extended hand.  You reach down to pick one up and it’s as soft as a microfiber dishtowel, warm as if it were resting on a stove.  You tell it how cute it is, and it thanks you in English.  Then it tells you how smart and good-looking you are.  The Pegasus offers you a ride.  You hop on and exchange pleasantries in mid-air with a very funny duck who makes you laugh so hard you snort.  Then after you land you skip off to find that all of heaven is a trampoline, and you bounce around gymnastically, waving to Virgil and doing a double somersault over Gandhi.

Envision, if you will, this heaven.  It’s nice, yes?  The people are very nice there, yes.  The soundtrack is just to your liking, yes.  No more school, no more work, no more leaky faucets, no more bills, no.  Ice cream for breakfast, yes.  Crowded subways, no.

It looks beautiful.  It sounds wonderful.  It smells…like bacon.

Every time the soft breeze carries the aroma to you, it slithers around your body like a boa constrictor and tickles your nostrils with its tail.  Salivating, you follow the source to a tall, handsome tree.   You approach its trunk.  You recognize the smoky, delectable scent it’s emitting.  You lick the bark and shudder in delight.  Bacon.  You look up into the canopy and see little fruits dangling from the branches.  You pluck one and unfurl it—a hot, sizzling strip of bacon.  But it’s too crispy for you, so you pluck another one at a different point of maturation—it’s perfectly cooked, just enough fat and chew.  You look around you.  More bacon trees.  You’re in a grove of bacon trees.  Bacon grows on trees in heaven!  Even vegans can eat bacon in heaven!  Bacon’s super kosher in heaven!

You get into a conversation with one of these trees (everyone and everything in heaven speaks English, but increasingly more Spanish), and it tells you on Earth they used to be pigs.  But what with the wallowing in mud, dining on slop, being looked upon with disdain and slaughtered for their meat, they decided on a change once they came over to the other side.  Who needs it, right?  Right, you say, plucking another rasher of bacon.  Eat all you want! invites the pig-tree.  The pig-trees are so nice in heaven.

As are the tomato, lettuce and toast plants.  Very nice. Very generous.  And delicious.

So with the salty, savory taste of bacon meat mocking your mind’s tongue, I will now count backwards from ten.  When I reach one, you will wake from this heavenly reverie.  Ten.  Nine.  Eight…

You know what, stay there.  Have some more bacon.  Take advantage of it now, just in case you do end up spitting in someone’s Pinkberry.  I’ll wake you tomorrow, what’s one more day to a long weekend.