# we're at a latin american festival busy preparing food in a huge kitchen chopping exotic vegetables and smothering them in extra virgin olive oil there's over fifty people in here all working on shining seamless stainless steel work surfaces people shout and laugh and somewhere there's happy guitar music playing we can't exactly tell if we're inside or outside brightly colored banners and ribbons hang everywhere the food is amazing the fresh bread the fried fish spicy alongside spiced vegetable dishes of all kinds we're feeling hungry and excited we then overhear someone nearby make a point to a colleague apparently once they decide on who they're sleeping with that night during the festival it's a done deal they happen to be looking at us and smiling and our eyebrows raise because they're an absolute fresh faced beauty and we sense we're gonna get our serious sensuality on later on this evening we mean happily embarrassing and surprising levels of intimacy all ir colleagues happen to be art critics we even pull a sophisticated prank on them and they start to receive constant sarcastic phone messages in ir own voice about unlikely sounding bs e-art events downtown towards the end someone is complaining about a fellow cook's chocolate cake making technique specifically ir use of bitter walnuts - nasty little fragments of which they angrily suggest guests simply pick out of the cake instead of complaining they then make the cake 'properly' pouring rich dark milk chocolate powder into a large spinning vat the machine beneath then spits out delicious slices of perfectly decorated cake as well as candies and sugary treats of all kinds us and the guest scoop a bunch of them into a box and run back to the main kitchen where we find the festival has already begun people are carefully selecting what food they want from the tables the bread in particular looks beyond appetizing almost a blessing and that's it - sorry we've forgotten what happens next it probably concerns summer-based existential depression along with the fact the gorgeous person severely interested in us can no longer be found // republic of bob