Hamburger Helper (Hand of God?)
a fictional tale
Last known photograph: dance party at a taping of the Today Show in Manhattan, 2017. Unverified reports show that this particular Hamburger Helper mascot was found at a strip club in East Harlem later that afternoon trying to recruit young dancers to come work for him. Allegedly, he said he was re-branding and changing his name to “Hamburger Help- a- Ho”. Crack rocks were found tucked away in his obnoxious hand costume.
Putting my dick in a blender perhaps would be better than being slapped by the hand of God. But the hand of God came to me dressed as the Hamburger Helper Glove and i was terrified to the point of blacking out.
This was the endless stream of dark thoughts i kept having since we last saw Hamburger Helper.
i killed the bastard. or at least he’s gone into hiding maybe in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan with Bin Laden’s nephews, or hanging out in Art Galleries with Hunter Biden, or out on the lamb going it alone. nobody knew.
it was a mystery unsolved.
It’s been a ride since then. i caught a lucky hand. I have enjoyed the capitalistic fruit of my riches over the last 7-8 years. i have created a profitable niche in the food industry as a mass marketing food consultant to some of the biggest food manufacturers & retailers in the world. Kraft, Mars, Unilever, Kroger ,Walmart were just a handful of Fortune 500 companies at my beck & call with the idea i had come up with.
when i brokered my 1st deal i was already making tall cash but when i first saw that check with six 0’s i knew the moment was something to savor.
i arrived.
i put a bid on a 5 bedroom, 10 bathroom house in Buckhead. Buckhead was old money and i was the new dog & pony show.
Fuck em’, i thought to myself. i love dog shows, not so sure about the Pony’s though.
Why 10 bathrooms? i thought to myself. Late night meetings that blurred the lines with house parties that my girlfriend, Collette, quickly steered off course. that’s why. once i hit a certain tax bracket it becomes the unspoken rule to entertain those that kiss your ass that simultaneously hold you in contempt for all the unforeseen riches that have graced your life but at least they can have sex in your wide array of restrooms after doing lines of coke and drinking to no end.
i only offered Columbian bam bam at my parties.
Collette was a cheerleader for the Atlanta Falcons or at least that’s how i introduced her to everyone.
Pissed and glaring at me Collette would launch into a diatribe:
Paul, you know i hate it when you pull that shit?
What?
(the glare intensifies)
What babe?
You know your just trying to get me worked up with that bull shit, it’s been 3 years already.
Collette was a hip hop dancer and ran her own studio which in turn held classes for all ages (mostly high school). This was her passion. Collette was 3 years removed from cheerleading for the dirty birds.
10 years my younger i am not sure why Collette was with me, I mean i knew but i didn’t want to admit it.
My way of saying I’m sorry always ended with Collette arranging a house party to begin as my late night consulting sessions with food executives from all over the country was ending.
But nothing ends at the Casa de Pace and chaos ensued.
Yes, in a way it was paying homage to 80’s Wall Street parties with all it’s collateral damage. Fuck you Gordon Gecko I’m enriching myself by making people die a slow death with the mass economical distribution of ultra-processed foods under the guise of meat replacement and better nutrition.
it wasn’t a handout, i wasn’t a Nepo baby, i wasn’t playing in crypto markets or some trust fund retard, i earned it the old fashion American way. i came up with an idea.
On one evening a Jr. Executive from Kraft foods hooked up with a cheerleader friend of Collette’s. It was the typical flirtatious no foreplay straight to the fuckie fuckie type evening for these young ones. Unfortunately they hopped in a car and decided to zip around the beltline at 2AM for shits and giggles. As the cheerleader went down on him he lost control of the car at 90MPH.
both of them were killed on impact and the young ATL Falcons cheerleader was thrown 50 feet from the wreckage and impaled on a large metal shard of the guard rail that was sticking up vertically. it was a gruesome scene.
7AM, next day, i hear a knock at my door and after slowly getting out a bed and into my robe and slippers i open the door, perplexed as to what i am seeing on my doorstep:
Yes officer?
Are you Paul R. Pace?
Yes
Do you own a 2022 BMW 8 Series?
Yeah, i lent it to a business associate last evening. he was driving a young lady home after our business meeting.
Was he intoxicated? is there anything you can tell us about how they left your home?
you know we always have a 1 or 2 drinks but that’s the extent of it. I was lying my ass off.
why do you ask? what’s going on?
your friend and the young lady he was with died in car crash early this morning on the 285 Beltline 5 miles from here.
Jesus, oh christ. Jesus no. I was in shock.
Do you mind coming down to the station for a few questions?
(my eyes focusing)
I think i’ll need to consult with my lawyer 1st.
After a few days, my lawyer suggested (with her presence) there was probably no harm in talking to the Police so we set it up at my house with the detective assigned to the case. The questioning was brief and to the point. I had informed the detective i had only known the Jr. Executive only for a few weeks and had just met the young lady that evening. Collette was upset and i did my best to console her. I had reiterated everything relayed to the officer from 2 days prior. Questions about drug use never came up to my surprise.
over the next two weeks we attended their funerals, made the rounds, paid our respects. However when we were in Chicago for the Jr. Executive’s funeral i felt the eyes of the Kraft Foods top executive upon me as we shook hands and exchanged the small talk that you typically exchange at funerals. But their eyes stayed with me as if they were waiting for me to fall on me knees and beg for forgiveness.
2 months later, my phone rings, it’s the one of Senior Managers from the product development team at Kraft Foods. I let it go to voicemail. 3 more times he calls and i don’t pick up. Several hours later the following text pops up from an unknown #:
your going to hell.
you don’t know what this is.
get ready to bleed for this.
Hamburger Helper has been a staple in homes all across this country for decades. For working parents raising families it has been an integral component of quickie prepared meals as families are juggling work, school, kids-sports, extracurriculars, and generalized mayhem of middle class life.
Ingredients: Ground Beef, Pasta, Seasoning Add Milk, Water & Butter
and just like that dinner is served under 20 minutes. you can’t lose, a cake walk, easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
I had skyrocketed to success by killing it or at least coming up with a healthier option to it. I was finally able to put my UGA food science degree to some use. i felt vindicated maybe or maybe it was a big fuck you to my Dad. after years of abuse and him telling me i wouldn’t amount to shit i wanted to piss on his grave with a big fat fucking grin.
I had come up with Soy Nugget replacers to meat and when you added water to them they swelled and became the perfect protein filler for any meat dish. At the end of the day i was replacing the animal protein with plant based protein. By U.S. Law i had to meet the minimum protein % thresholds as mandated by the USDA. For food manufacturers this was music to their ears as the cost of soy fillers was a fraction of what even the lowest of low grade meat costs in their processing plants. It was a gravy train and they wanted a 1-way ticket. Their profits soared. I had become a hero in many circles especially animal rights activists.
My new product would dubbed by Kraft Foods: Hamburger Healthier
ingredients: GMO free Soy Nuggets, GMO Free Seasoning, whole wheat pasta, Oat Milk
In my home i wouldn’t eat the shit. I hated it. But it sold and traditional Hamburger Helper sales plummeted, lost shelf space in all the major grocers across the world.
More than creating anything of my own, i killed it. I was responsible for the death of Hamburger Helper.
Upon my return to Atlanta, leaving the airport i hopped in my Land Rover and started driving. It was a red-eye flight and i had not slept for over 20 hours or so. As i approached my neighborhood i came to a stop light and suddenly i heard loud CRACK & CRUNCHING sounds coming from the roof or my car. Something was crushing the Rover and the roof was collapsing slowly. i unbuckled and tried opening the driver side door then all other side doors, they wouldn’t budge. sweating profusely and breathing heavily i crawled my way to the back hatch and took one of my large metal Kettelbells that happened to be there and slammed against the back windows as much as is could until it cracked, i proceeded to kick the glass out and break through. I crawled out cutting my upper arms and chest from shards of glass still in the window frame & rolled out onto the ground and there it was, The Hamburger Helper Hand had descended out of nowhere and was crushing the Rover. I sat there, shirt ripped and already blood stained, helplessly exhausted and still not believing what i was witnessing. After a minute or two more the Rover was flattened like a pancake, and suddenly the Hamburger Helper Hand stopped and looked up:
your going to bleed for this
what are you? I gasped.
this is God’s plan, you killed me. Now i am back and on a mission.
what, what mission?
to crush you Soy Boy
(after this i passed out)
Waking up in cold sweat i was back in my hotel room in Chicago. Bad dream. Bad Dream. Holy Fuck. I muttered to myself. Collette was confused and rubbing my back: it’s ok babe, it’s ok.
Putting my dick in a blender perhaps would be better than being slapped by the hand of God. But the hand of God came to me dressed as the Hamburger Helper Glove and i was terrified to the point of blacking out.
Perhaps all along these were premonitions i thought to myself.
When I returned home to Atlanta i opened the front door and we walked into the main family room only to find 6 of Collette’s friends all dressed in black adidas jump suits holding steel pipes that were about 2 ft. long.
what the fuck, what are all of you doing here? I asked.
Collette, what’s going on?
i glanced down by their feet. they had laid down industrial strength plastic down. they wanted to go to work on me but not leave a trace.
Collette, what the hell?
(the steely glare came back, i felt her eyes on me, she lit a cigarette)
since when do you smoke?
i told you not to fuck with the ATL Falcon cheerleaders. You have denigrated me and my sisters more times than i can fuckin’ remember. now one of our sisters has perished and blood is on your hands. you should of stopped them that night, why did you let them leave in that condition? Brooke is gone forever and you could of prevented it and now you have to fuckin pay!
Hey wait minute, it was your party too for fuck’s sake. Don’t put her death on me!
(Collette’s tribe of cheerleaders closed in on me, i threw a table lamp at one and a chair at another to fight them off but with nimbleness and breakdancing moves they quickly evaded my lackluster efforts, as it turns out Collette had all of these ladies in hip hop classes since the age of 14 or so. They even took a class in Break Dance Fighting which was hip hop /judo fusion or something, fuckin’ figures, this was my demise??)
After the 3rd or 4th blow of heavy pipes to my cranium everything went to black and all i saw was the Hamburger helper hand waving at me from a blood red sky then giving me the fat middle finger as i laid in a Soybean field burning. i couldn’t move, it was like i was tied down but i didn’t know what was holding me, no ropes or anything, my arms and legs wouldn’t budge and my eyes were pried open for eternity in burning fields and smell of my burning flesh.
i was in an invisible straight jacket, I thought to myself.
The stench of burning Soy filled the air. My face hot with tears i heard a faint voice:
Rest easy Soy Boy,
you built an empire but now its the dirt you lay in,
welcome to hell.
The killers came to mutilate the dead
But ran away in terror to search the town instead
But Lorca's corpse, as he had prophesied, just walked away
And the only sound was the women in the chapel praying