fandomhigh | Cafeteria; Monday Lunchtime [ 01/30 ].

Entry tags:

cafeteria

Cafeteria; Monday Lunchtime [ 01/30 ].

Not only did it seem entirely unnecessary, it was even so oxymoronical that even Britta, with hypocrisy imbedded into her to her very core, was skeptical.

"Are you sure there's no meat in the vegetarian meatloaf?"

The cafeteria staff was making it quite clear on their expressions that this was why they hated Mondays so much, they should be serving lasagna.

"I mean, did you make it yourself, or did you get it from somewhere else? How can you be sure?"

The lack of response was not going to prevent Britta from continuing.

"No meat? None whatsoever? Meat by-product? Anything?"

Eyes went back to the board mentioning the offerings. Someone went ahead and underlined Vegetarian.

"I can have this checked out at a lab, you know."

The staff remained unphased. Britta sighed, holding out her tray. "Fine, I'll take some. And some mashed potatoes, too. But no jello. They use horses hooves for that, you know."

With that, she got her lunch, found a table, and set to the task of leaning in very close to the square of supposed meat-free meat on her plate to search for signs of animals, though, really, she didn't know what exactly she was expecting to find. Maybe a slice of bacon or a snout or something.

[[ open cafeteria is open, of course! ]]

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Tara had been reading over a plate of tuna salad a few seats down at the table. She made the effort of leaning over to talk to the new (okay, new-ish) girl.

"Is anything moving?"

Not that anything ever had, but she was always afraid it would. Which was part of why she didn't eat in the cafeteria often.

"...no," Britta said, after a moment, looking up from her plate. What was once non-meatloaf had basically become ground not-hamburger. She somehow managed to sound equal part relieved and disappointment with her assessment, and the next part came out as if some great justice had been resolved in the world. "I think it's legit."

"Oh, good," Tara said, though she was squinting at Britta's plate as if she was afraid to ask legit what?. "It's -- bad when they serve non-legit food. I usually just get the tuna salad plate."

Which she poked at with her fork, as if demonstrating.

"And, uh, I'm Tara."

"Well, I mean," Britta cocked her chin toward the board listing the food available today, "vegetarian meatloaf sounds a little suspicious, don't you think? This is why I usually don't eat in places like a cafeteria, but..." There was a bit of an intake of breath. "I'm broke."

She tried a faint smile at the other girl, though, to push all that aside. "Britta," she offered back, scoping out the other girl thoughtfully, before smirking slightly and asking, "Come here often?"

Oh, that was what it was. Tara added vegetarian meatloaf to her list of foods not to try.

"A lot suspicious," she had to agree, giving Britta a friendly once-over in return. "And ... only when I have to, I guess? This makes a good pit stop before my movie class." She made a face. "Which, I actually signed up for thinking it'd be about philosophy."

"Movies and philosophy?" asked Britta with a quirked eyebrow. "Okay, I guess I can kind of see how they could go together, but it seems like a stretch. You can be philosophical about almost anything if you really wanted to, though."

Like this meatloaf. Britta's eyes slowly ventured back to her plate, and there was only going to be a short window of time in which someone could intervene before she proved her point with the meatloaf as an example, but no one wanted that.

Tara rolled her eyes. "It's called Philosophy," she explained, and speared a piece of lettuce. "But really it's just watching movies. Last week it was this horrible one with a leprechaun killing people. Which ... is sort of offensive to Celtic mythology, right?"

"Totally offensive," said Britta, emphatically, though she really didn't know anything about Celtic mythology. "I mean, why would a leprechaun be killing people anyway? Unless he was just really sick of all those people trying to steal his gold, but could you blame him, then? The guy's probably had to deal with people trying to steal his gold for centuries; there's only so much oppression a person can take."

"That you Britta?" Matt called out as he navigated over toward her direction, a tray of food balanced on one hand and his cane in the other.

And as soon as Britta turned her head to the sound of her name and saw Matt there, struggling with both tray and cane, she was on her feet and rushing over. "Oh, Matt! Did you need help with that?"

See, by asking a question instead of just helping or telling him she'll help, she was empowering him to make the choice.

"I'm okay," Matt said with a wry grin. "I'd rather do this myself. It's an indepence thing.

He's a brave soul, isn't he Britta?

"Mind if I sit with you?"

Brave and empowered! It was a real shame that Matt couldn't see the proud, admiring smile on her face as she nodded and gave him space, though her arm was still out as though to guide him in the right direction.

"Not at all; have a seat. No reason why we should all be eating alone, right?"

"You're eating alone? Can't have that," Matt agreed as he let himself be guided to a seat. "Were you here for the weekend or were you off to New York again. If you did you totally missed the weirdness."

"Not New York this time," Britta admitted. "I was feeling like my partying was getting in the way of more important things, so I went to D.C. for a protest. Did you know about SOPA? It's very important."

Actually, Britta, who still didn't realize she was in the 21st Century, didn't know anything about SOPA, but it sounded important, and someone had weed, and so it was now one of her favorite causes.

"Anyway, what sort of weirdness did I miss here?"

"Oh, all the guys turned into women," Matt said in an offhand manner. "Apparently I'm pretty hot looking as a girl. But tell me more about SOPA!"

"It's, like, censorship and stuff," said Britta, but she was distracted by something even more important. "But what do you mean, women? Why?"

And even more important than even that, "Did anyone take pictures?"

She was now glad that Matt couldn't see her eyes roving over him, picturing him with a wig, lipstick, and a push-up filled with tissue paper. Cute as he was, she wasn't sure she could agree with this apparent assessment of hotness.

"Saturday morning almost all the boys woke up as girls. Literally. Breasts and... All the other female parts," Matt said with a grin. "I'm sure someone took a picture or two."

"You better hope so," said Britta, eying Matt skeptically, "because you realize that no one's going to believe that without proof."

"Trust me," Matt said as he opened up his soda. "It happened. Ask Rebecca if you don't believe me. I woke her up and everything. Plus the radio covered it as well."

"Yeah, but, that doesn't make any sense," Britta said. "How does stuff like that just happen?"

Apparently, Britta forgot everything her big sibling tried to warn her about and everything around her practically every day that she mostly attributed to needing to cut down on drugs a little bit.

"Beats me," Matt shrugged. "Apparently kids from our future are supposed to show up one of these days too. I wouldn't believe it either if it hadn't happened to me."

"Okay," Britta tried to sound like she believed Matt but, like most other things, she wasn't very good at it, "and this meatloaf really is vegetarian, too. I got it."

Matt smirked a little. "Don't believe me? That's okay. Go find Topher. He'll turn into a bubbly mess if you ask him about his breasts."

Or at least he did on the radio. He couldn't stop talking about it.

Britta considered this collection of words put together, mostly because she had no idea what to make of them. She shook her head, decided it was probably best to take it in stride, and marveled at the whole conversation a little....especially the fact that she was even having it.

"Bubbly mess? What, like, in glee or something? Typical. Get a guy near some breasts and it's like they're putty in your hands."

That last part was spoken with a sort of knowing confidence, too.

"Oh really?" Matt asked with a grin. "Do you think I'd turn to putty in your hands?"

See, now, that was a complicated question, since it wasn't like Britta could just show Matt her boobs for them to be effective; instead, it would have to be a much more in depth process. But she had an answer to trump anything else, due to a disability that Matt had that surpassed even his blindness.

"You're male, aren't you?" she prodded.

"Today, I am," Matt said with a grin. "But if that's your only argument I'm going to need better proof."

"You don't believe me?" asked Britta, lifting an oh-so-challenging brow. "Men are pigs. Boobs always work."

"What if they're gay?" Matt asked with a smirk.

"Then they're just fabulous," Britta stated with authority. "Are you gay?"

~~"Depends on what fanfiction you read."~~

"Nope," Matt said cheerfully. "But I had my own set of breasts over the weekend and I wasn't putty in my own hands."

"That might be a sign," said Britta, nodding her head very gravely. "Maybe we should look into that."

"We should," Matt agreed. "A scientific experiment."

"Not science," Britta said, making a little bit of a face, "that's too...clinical. A...humanitarian effort towards self-discovery."

There. That sounded much more properly unpretentious.

Totally unpretentious.

"Self-discovery?" Matt said with a sip of his soda. "I like the sound of that. How should we go about that?"

Britta considered her mass of supposedly animal free meatloaf, pulverized into a mess from her investigations, and shrugged her shoulders. "This meal blows anyway," she said. "Wanna go see if any of our roommates are are busy doing other things?"

"Sure," Matt said offering Britta his arm. "I'm sure they won't mind using our rooms for humanitarian efforts."

"Right!" Tara answered, with an empathetic nod. "Most fae are pretty live-and-let-live. I mean, I'm a witch, so all the stereotyping in horror movies just gets to me."

[OOC: So I went to a meeting after work and never got back online oops?]

Man. This chick was just so new-agey and cool, so Britta found herself nodding along. "Oh, totally," she said. "I mean, I'm not a witch or anything, I'm not sure I believe all of that, but I do believe in holistic healing and everything."

Same basic thing, right?

"You can't walk, like, two feet without running into stereotypes."

Okay, maybe more actually new than new-ish.

Tara smiled skeptically.

"You aren't sure you believe in magic yet? I mean, it's up to you, totally, but ... this place tends to kind of turn people around on that one."

"Well, I mean," Britta offered, "if it can be proven or makes sense as a theory, then there's no reason not to believe it, but I haven't encountered anything,"--yet--,"that couldn't be explained by good old science. Although..." Her eyes drifted toward the mess on her plate, "I don't think even good old science could explain vegetarian meatloaf."

"Yeah, what's actually in that?" Tara asked, diverted for a moment. "Is it like chickpeas and oatmeal?"

That would (kind of) explain the color, at least.

"Anyhow" -- she added with a little shrug -- "what about all the boys being girls for the weekend? That doesn't seem very science-y."

Britta shrugged. "I wasn't here, so as far as I know, that could have been a mass delusion, something in the air," she reasoned. "I was in D.C., protesting."

There was a slight pause, and she poked at her plate with her fork again. "And I think there's carrots? I hope those are carrots."

Tara snorted. "Yeah, I bet the guys would be happier if it was a delusion," she said, but dropped it to eye Britta's plate. "Oooh. Maybe some spinach, too."

She took another bite of her tuna. "What, did you go to Occupy D.C. for the weekend?"

"No, it was something called SOPA," said Britta, eye lighting up with excitement. "I hadn't heard of it before," because she was still stuck in 1997, mentally, "but it was all about censorship, and I can totally get down with that. I love being so close to D.C. now. I bet I can find a different cause and a different protest practically every weekend! Maybe we can even get together a whole group us and go down and really buff up the ranks!"

Tara had heard of SOPA, a little. She nodded even though protests weren't really her thing. (They were loud and angry, and she wasn't a huge fan of either of those things.)

"Sure," she said easily. "I'm so lame about getting into D.C. I think last time I went might have been taking somebody to a gay bookstore."

"Did you have to go all the way to D.C. just for a gay bookstore?" asked Britta, brushing right past her surprise that there were actually whole bookstores just for gay. "Now that's lame, if you ask me."

"It's a teeny tiny island," Tara pointed out, not seeming terribly bothered by it. "We're lucky it has a bookstore. Which is ... I mean, it's cute."

She lowered her voice. "I usually just order off Amazon."

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Cafeteria; Monday Lunchtime [ 01/30 ].

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject