Eat Me Whispered the Corn Flaes

As a cub reporter for the third largest agricultural newspaper in Tufton Flats, Iowa, I'm trained to keep my eyes open for a story, any story which might enlighten and provoke our readership of six hundred strong. You might even recognize my name if you're a fellow member of the fifth estate—it was I who in 1998 went undercover to penetrate the secret cabal of county fair judges which unethically gave the award for Best Holstein Calf to Artie Sampster three years running in exchange for free annual tune-ups of the head judge's Toyota Camry. I made many enemies the day that sordid tale was printed, but the brush with controversy only encouraged my lust for journalism. I wasn't ready for the big time, though, until last October, when I wandered into Lazy Eyes Grocery and Meats for my usual weekly food run, only to stumble across a story that I knew would soon have one-third of downtown Tufton Flats scrambling for every word I wrote.

I had already carted all the basic supplies necessary to sustain a single gal of twenty-six until her next paycheck—six cans of tomato soup, six cans of Calves-Be-Slim, six cans of wontons—when it struck me that I was almost out of cereal. Cereal to me is like the Koran to Cat Stevens, so I beat feet to the breakfast aisle and surveyed the fall line of offerings. Praisin' My Raisins was too sweet for my taste, Bran Francisco ("the Golden Gate Bridge to good colon health") was too insipid, and Eat Oats Like You Mean It was somehow intimidating. I had just about settled on a super-sized box of ever-dependable Lick-O's when I saw a cereal two feet to the left that riveted my reporter's keen gaze.

It was a very bland, plain rice cereal in an unassuming yellow box. The edible bits were of no particular shape or color. All in all, just another lame offering from some anonymous company committed to middle-of-the-road discount breakfast fare. But the name of the cereal—that was something different. It was called, simply, HOT WET CHOODLE.

Shell-shocked, I grabbed a box of the stuff and, leaving my cart behind, strode right up to Yimsy, the egg-shaped weekday cashier who occasionally had to be rushed to the hospital in mid-shift for swallowing her gum.

"Yimsy!" I said, thrusting the box in her face. "Did you have any idea this was on the shelf?"

"Well, it's cereal, ain't it?" she replied, a minty yet somehow tomblike odor gushing from her gob. "Where else would it be—up your butt?" She cackled knowingly.

"Never mind," I said testily. I was about to ask her to page Gus-Gus, the owner of Lazy Eyes, but then it occurred to me that the best thing to do was go straight to my office and make some phone calls. I didn't want anyone else muscling in on my story.

Now when I say "office", see, the thing is, right now I'm sharing a desk with a few of the guys from Distribution. Some would call them "paper delivery boys", but they're pretty mature for fourteen. Anyway, the phone works fine, and with my box of Hot Wet Choodle (contents sold by weight, not by volume) in hand, I dialed a 1-800 number that connected me with the consumer affairs department of the Profit Pusher General Product Corporation. After wading through various menu options, still staring in disbelief at the name of the cereal contrasted with the cartoon images of two perky elfin creatures hopping about on either side of the bowl depicted on the box, I finally got a customer service representative to pick up.

"Profit Pusher," the man said. "This is..."—he emitted a slight grunt for some reason—"...Curt."

"Hello, my name is Donna McTippit, and I'm a reporter for the Tufton Flats Herald-Newsulationist," I informed Curt. "I'd like to address the name of one of your breakfast cereals."

There was a slight pause, and I heard Curt shifting in his chair. Then he held the phone away from his mouth for a moment, muttering, "Don't stop now, Snookie, I'm real close!" to someone in the background. "Hello?" I said.

"Sorry, yes, ma'am, what is the name of the product in question?" Again he grunted and breathed in sharply.

"You're marketing a cereal called Hot Wet Choodle!" I said. "Do you realize how offensive that is to a woman like me?!"

"I'm afraid I don't understand, miss," said Curt before sighing blissfully for some strange reason. "How is that offensive exactly?"

I rolled my eyes. "I don't know what things are like in Salt Silo, Missouri," I said angrily, "but here in Iowa, you can't just go around referring to a woman's...

place...

so openly. I think our six hundred readers will be most interested in hearing about this affront!"

"Could you hold on for juuuuuust one second, Miss?" Curt asked, and before I could respond I heard the phone set down on a tabletop. After that, there came a "Holy JESUS, you can swallow a lot of funfoam!" from Curt, and then he instructed the girl in the room with him to "say the Pledge of Allegiance now....lemme see it spill out the sides of your mouth." He picked up the phone again. "I've just been talking with our legal department, miss," he lied.

"You have not!" I exclaimed. "You've been receiving oral sex on the other end of this phone!"

"Madam, please....if you agree not to run a story criticizing our company, we'll issue an immediate recall notice for the remaining boxes of Hot Wet Choodle."

"Not good enough," I countered. "This is going into the paper tomorrow." "Well, then," Curt said as I faintly heard his zipper being drawn upwards, "how about a coupon for three free boxes of StrawWOWberry Toast-B-Qs?" I paused. He really had me in a bind. This could be a truly huge story for me, and maybe even a chance to impress those pompous bigshots over at the Tufton Tribune and Lottery Watcher. But I had a tragic weakness for all the Toast-B-Q flavors, including BlueBURSTberry and ChocoCHOCOlate. "All right," I agreed, "but those boxes had better be off the shelf in this state and all other states within a week, and I'll expect that coupon FedExed to me."

"Very good, ma'am. Have an orgasmic day." With that, he hung up the phone. I'm sure he was satisfied in more ways that one, but I was not feeling so complete. Had I sacrificed my journalistic integrity somehow? I wasn't sure.

A victim of loneliness and a ravenous hunger for Toast-B-Q's, I went through my free boxes over the course of a long holiday weekend. I had always prided myself on keeping a nice trim figure, and I knew I'd have to start working those pounds off immediately, so I put on a sports bra and bicycle shorts and jogged down to Lazy Eyes for some kelp patties and bottled moisture—which has eighty percent less water than normal water! As usual, I was greeted with prurient stares from all the local single men, who gazed at my jiggling backside like they were watching a total lunar eclipse or the late innings of a Tufton Ticks game.

I knew I shouldn't have trusted myself to buy only health food, though, because naturally I wound up in the cereal aisle again like a junkie looking for a fix. The boxes of Hot Wet Choodle had been removed, I saw, so everything was back to normal. I took a small box of Four Grains and a Nut of Some Kind and headed for the checkout line. I stopped dead in my tracks when I passed a pyramidal display at the end of the aisle featuring a new, typically bland wheat cereal from Profit Pusher.

Yeah, bland as a Tufton Tuesday, except that the cereal was inexplicably called SHOVE THAT WANGIE INSIDE ME. The little elfin creatures were back, dancing around the bowl like demented....well, elves. EIGHT ESSENTIAL NUTRIENTS! one shouted in a cartoon balloon. YUM YUM YUMMY! yelled the other. I ran to the nearest pay phone, shrieking at the top of my lungs.

"Profit Pusher General Product Corporation, this is Helen," answered a pleasant-sounding young woman after I had punched in an interminable sequence of ones, twos, threes, and pound signs.

"Yes, I need to complain yet again about the name of a new cereal!" I said loudly. "I'm an important reporter and you people have gone over the line!" "I understand, ma'am," Helen said. "I'll be happy to assist you. To better help in this matter, I'm going to need a bit of information from you, is that okay?" "Sure sure," I told her. "But then I'm going to need the name of the CEO!" "Certainly," Helen said soothingly. "Can I have your name please?"

"Donna McLudlow McTippit."

"And where are you calling from, Ms. McTippit?"

"Tufton Flats, Iowa, fifty-five miles east of West Lemon City."

"And what, may I ask, are you wearing?"

"A sports bra and bicycle shor—wait a second, why do you need to know THAT?" I asked in disbelief.

"Just for a mental image, sweetie," Helen the Operator told me, in a lower voice than she had started the conversation with. "Mmm, I bet your caboose looks amazing in those shorts. Is the sports bra nice and snug against your bulbs?"

"Why yes it is, Helen, and you're going to see just HOW snug when I fly up there to demand to speak to whoever's in charge of that nuthouse you call a company!"

"Mmmmmm, I like to see a woman in a tight sports bra. Tell me about your nipples; are they—"

I slammed down the receiver and ran home. Then I made sure the box of Shove That Wangie Inside Me cereal was secured in the grocery basket of my moped and set out for the airport. By the time I returned to work, I hoped to have an exclusive that would shove yesterday's nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan onto page six of the Family Living section—and perhaps finally arouse the hoidy toidy attentions of those stuffed shirts over at The Mid-Central Iowa Farm and Fruit Stand Reader! I did a little research on the company on the flight to Salt Silo, thanks to the nice man sitting beside me who let me use his computer. It was a lot like the kind the newspaper finally bought last year, which broke immediately. (It was so weird—I was just sitting in front of it, doing nothing for three minutes, and suddenly the screen went dark and it looked like I was soaring through stars in blackest outer space. We've all been afraid to even touch it ever since.)

Profit Pusher had been founded so recently that they hadn't even issued their first earnings report yet. By all accounts, it seemed to be a perfectly normal establishment which planned to manufacture everything from waffle smoothers to butter shapers to bobblehead dolls of the great vice presidents in history. They had begun with breakfast cereal, and were truly a virgin company asking for bigtime trouble by going overboard so quickly with their perverted ideals. I was infinitely disturbed by the fact that their website was sponsored by six or seven pop-up ads beckoning the web surfer to "CUM SEE THE SLUTTIEST BRAILLISTS WE COULD FIND" or "LOG ON NOW FOR THE HOTTEST AFTER-HOURS MUSEUM SEX EVER"!

The central office was on the fourth floor of the Van Vangel Building in the snootiest shopping district in all of Salt Silo. I walked into the receptionist's area and was greeted with the shock of my life. Greeting me was not the smiling face of a helpful secretary, but a strange man's naked buttocks as he thrust himself repeatedly into some woman he'd lifted onto the front desk! She was urging him to "give it to me like you did at SeaWorld" when I shrieked at them to stop.

"What on earth is wrong with you people?!" I yelled. "Have you no sense of decency at all?!"

The man pulled up his pants quickly and, patting down his mussed hair, dashed off down the hallway. The girl ran behind her desk and sat down in a fevered state, smiling at me and asking me if I had an appointment. "I'm here to do a news story about this sick, sick organization," I told her. "I want to see the president, now."

"Um, okay," said Miss No-Panties, pressing a button on her intercom. "I apologize for the gadoogling, miss, but after all, it IS casual day."

"Great," I said disdainfully. "I'd hate to see the office Christmas party!" "Mr. Bootingaily, a woman here to see you," the receptionist said over the intercom.

"A woman, eh?" came the reply. "What's she look like? My type? Ah, it doesn't matter, I'd shnazz almost anything today."

My eyes widened angrily.

"This looks like official business, sir," the secretary said nervously. "Shall I send her in?"

"Sure thing, Sweet Beams," Bootingaily said. "And bring us some coffee if you can. What color is your bra today?"

"No bra at all today, sir."

"Just the way I like it!" Bootingaily said, and I was already on my speechless way down the hall. On the way to the office, I witnessed yet another horrendous sight. A man and woman in business attire were standing by a water cooler, chatting amicably about an upcoming conference in Boxmop Junction, while the woman absently stroked his jutting wicket through his open fly. I blinked in an effort to make it go away but it was of no use. They smiled at me as I passed, as if nothing was wrong. A tall man in his late thirties opened the door to a spacious and tastefully decorated interior office. "Hi, I'm Ted Bootingaily. Come in and have a seat. In the chair, on my face, wherever you'd like."

"Mr. Bootingaily!" I said. "I am Donna McTippit, a star reporter for the Tufton Flats Herald-Newsulationist. And I'm also a woman who is about to report you and this entire company to the highest court in the land for gross sexual harrassment!"

Bootingaily frowned. "Oops. Forget I said that. Please, take the chair, let's discuss this all before you do something drastic."

I sat opposite him and leveled a serious finger at him. "Your company is marketing cereals with pornographic names, and conducting an aggressive office policy of open coital activity between employees. What can you possibly say in your defense?"

"Well, Ms. McTippit, we're a very new company. Sometimes you hit a few stumbling blocks before everything gets straightened out." At that moment, 'Sweet Beams' came in with the coffee. Topless.

"Uh, Snuzzer-pie," Bootingaily said abashedly, "you might want to cover up while Ms. McTippit is here. I'll explain later."

"Okay," she said, stopping herself in the middle of rubbing Sweet 'n' Low on her nipples, which was apparently meant for her boss to slurp off. "I'll be outside." With that she sashayed out. I felt nauseous.

"Now then, Ms. McTippit," Bootingaily continued, "what is this 'sexual harrassment' you speak of?"

"You mean you really don't know?" I asked, dumbfounded. "You don't know the definition of that term?"

"Um....sorry," he said, looking not at me but at my chest. "That one's new to me."

"For God's sake, do I have to show it to you in your own employee handbook?" I asked, sitting straight up in my chair so he couldn't get any more cleavage than he'd already sampled. "Do you even HAVE one?" "Oh yes," he replied, enthused. "Just had it printed last week. Here." He pulled open his top drawer and shoved a forty-page booklet towards me. "Read my introduction. I have a blonde joke in there that will absolutely slay you!"

I gagged when I saw that the cover of the booklet, entitled WELCOME, CITIZEN, TO PROFIT PUSHER!, bizarrely showed a man engaged in cunnilingus on a woman as she sat on a bench in what appeared to be an orbiting space station. Testily I flipped to the table of contents to point out the chapter that would explain why Profit Pusher should, for moral, ethical, and legal reasons, exert slightly less effort encouraging rampant intercourse and lewd cereal names.

"My God," I said after a moment's scanning. "You HAVE no sexual harrassment policy at this company!"

"I told you, we're pretty new," Bootingaily said lamely. "Still crossing the T's and dotting the I's. We haven't even connected the Tivo in the break room yet."

Suddenly it came to me in a flash, exactly what had happened. This new company, deprived of an official policy prohibiting sexual harrassment in the workplace, had become the worst case scenario of what could happen without one. They'd all gone insane with sex, and it had now spread to an outside world where innocent children could not even pour a bowl of their breakfast cereal without being exposed to Profit Pusher's rampant smut! "Sales of our new cereal are pretty slow, actually," Bootingaily said, scratching his chin. "Do you think if we had one of those sexual ass-cement policies, we could foster a workplace in which we might thrive?"

"Sexual HARRASSMENT," I corrected him, "and yes, I think you have no other option but to stop the insanity right now! Call your lawyers and have them crank out something today!"

"Oh, I will, Miss McTippit, I will," Bootingaily said, repentant. "In the meantime, is there anything I can do to dissuade you from running a negative story about us, just until we institute a sexual harrassment policy?" "Well..." I said. "I'm not sure...."

He smiled. "How about I come around this desk and gadoogle your cute midwestern choodle till you pass out?" Then he slapped his head as I leapt to my feet in outrage. "I'm sorry, that just slipped!"

"The story runs tomorrow," I told him, turning away with purpose and determination. It was then that he hit me with the lowest blow of all, which was an offer to go down to the production floor and pull the giant handle that released the honey coating onto two thousand pounds of soon-to-be Toast-B-Qs. Despite the absurdly obvious symbolism of that act, I couldn 't resist. I was suddenly not just an eater of cereal; I was, for just a moment, a creator of it! In return I offered to give them one last chance. I would come back in two weeks to see if things had become normal around that carnal zoo they called a corporation.

Damn those freaks, their perversions were even starting to creep their way into my own mind. Sitting down at home after my flight from Salt Silo to eat the tasty contents of that shiny box of Shove That Wangie Inside Me (waste not, want not), I was seized with a strong urge to change into a bra and panties and watch men's golf on ESPN. But I resisted, and even though my dreams that night were tortured by images of men in bikini briefs, and me on the production floor of Profit Pusher whipping them on to churn out the cereal faster, faster, faster, I was okay by morning, and I'm proud to say that my hands strayed only once into my No-Zone. Meanwhile, I was very interested indeed in what I would find in Salt Silo in two weeks' time. Only eight days passed before I had to rush back there, my anger roiled as it had never been roiled before. On the Tuesday after I had met Ted Bootingaily for the first time, I received a coupon in the mail for a free box of Profit Pusher's newest banana-flavored cereal. GREETINGS, VALUED CUSTOMER! it read in bold green Century Gothic type (a personal favorite font of mine since childhood, which made what came next even worse somehow). THANKS FOR TAKING THE TIME TO EXPRESS AN INTEREST IN OUR PRODUCTS! HELP YOURSELF TO A FREE SIXTEEN OUNCE BOX OF VAGINALICIOUS PENISPOPS, APPEARING AT A GROCER NEAR YOU NEXT MONTH! A PRIZE IS INCLUDED IN EVERY SPECIALLY MARKED PACKAGE —WILL YOU GET THE VIBRATOR OR THE FLUORESCENT CONDOM? OPEN IT UP AND FIND OUT!

Within hours I was walking into the offices of Profit Pusher, pad and pen in hand, and this time nothing could stop me from running the story of the century. Nothing, that is, but the wall of bodies I stumbled into upon pushing open the glass door that led into the reception area. There must have been fourteen or fifteen people in there, all of them obviously Profit Pusher employees, engaged in every sort of sexual act imaginable. Half-dressed, one-quarter-dressed, and not dressed at all, they copulated with abandon, on the front desk, under the portrait of Martin Luther King on the south wall, and beside the Anne Geddes calendar on the west one. Ties, belts, cufflinks and panty hose lay everywhere. One woman was getting shnazzed from behind while she bent over the copy machine, her fingers working the TRAY SELECT button with admirable, but disgusting, concentration. Another woman was deep-throating a man's foghorn as he sorted through his personal electronic organizer, searching for an elusive phone number. A tall couple, both dressed in the most formal of business attire, were intercoursing on the floor directly in front of me, and as they did so, they discussed the proper formatting for a loss prevention spreadsheet due on someone named Dicky's desk that Friday.