Fiction and Reality

I want to start a series of pictures demonstrating the difference between fiction and reality. Here's the first swing. Dinner time at Oggy's house usually involves Grateful Dead music and some leftover chicken salad and crackers eaten off of a used paper plate or napkin, often a guitar is involved. This tasty baked chicken dinner from Marie Callanders was on the menu tonight. It looks so good on the box. Homemade by grandma and kid. $2.50. Set oven to 350. Remove plastic wrap from chicken. Mmmmmm. Sounds good and it isn't fried so it won't clog my arteries and leave me on a basketball court struggling to breathe as people stand around and say,
"He was fine one minute and then just dropped like a sack of cement. Smack!"
"Do you know who he is?"
"Naw, he lives in that van over there."
"Oh, well no wonder he's sick."
"Said he was saving money to go to Labrador."
"Labrador?"
"Canada."
"What does he do?"
"Said he juggles on the street for spare change."
"Oh, I've seen him downtown. He's a bum. He was babbling about killing wolves or something."
"Why else would he be playing tennis every day? What a loser."
"Is he trying to say something? Wait. Listen..."
"CALLAFUCKINGAMBULANCEYOUASSHOLES!"

I don't want that so I'm eating baked chicken from now on. I even passed up two slices of pizza today. You heard that right. I didn't eat two slices of pizza today. I'm getting off track. The point here is that the fiction of the homemade frozen dinner doesn't match the reality. It's way off.

Here's the fiction. Potatoes as white as the Norwegian families these models came from. Milk. Butter. The soft lighting is actually my mistake in the picture process. The aprons are repulsive. This is bullshit.

Here's the reality...attic apartment, living like a freak on applesauce and raisins. No job. No money. Borrowed life and borrowed time. Not even a nasty brownie desert in the single serve dinner. Just bones and dried out broccoli and an empty bed. You see an apron? I don't.

I think I could get a more grotesque picture, but this one will have to do for now. It's the reality, folks. There ain't nothing picturesque about a baked chicken dinner.