Donut
From Plastic Tub
donut, doughknot jk. 1. A torus shaped edible, usually fried and composed of flour, yeast and sugar. 2. Progenitor of the donut hole and in such capacity a creative element of the pleroma. 3. For many, the actual shape of the earth.
Usage
"There are no donuts in jail."
- -- A. Dacusse to Adid, upon his second arraignment for brawling, spitting and drinking in public.
Extrapolation
Ryan O'Donnely (founder of the O'Donnely's Ribhouse and Honkytonk chain) has been called a racist, a man's man, a son-of-a-bitch, and a ham-fisted pugilist with a muscular Christianity. But he's no dummy. Despite his good-ol'-boy, God-wieldin' ways, in 1968 O'Donnely hired a crack team of demographic experts from New York City to help scientifically determine the best location for O'Donnely expansion. This team stumbled across a curious fact that helped make O'Donnely rich: Winston Salem, NC, on a per capita basis, has the highest annual level of:
- donut consumption
- rib consumption
- cigarette consumption
Not to mention more illicit pregnancies and legal cockfights.
This sounded like a weird coincidence (e.g., it's just big town o' sinnin'), till they demonstrated that the strong correlation between these factors extends across the United States and has existed for decades; in other words, these "industries" rise and fall together across cities and time.
Well O'Donnely's a smart man, and he ran with it. His chain took off like greyhound with a firecracker up its ass. But he wasn't one to ask why. The statisticians' work was done; they were fired, and that was the end of that.
Ryan's son Patter was a more curious man. When he took over the chain in 1990, he rounded back up the very same team stats gurus and asked them: "What gives?" -- so they tried digging a little deeper. They were able to determine that the highly correlated "sins" had a strong negative correlation with per capita membership in the Latter Day Saints. But that was about it. Statisticians are good for finding relationships, but they tend be slow with cause and effect. At any rate, they were a group of old men by now, and one-by-one, they succumbed to dementia and remarkable unmysterious deaths.
Patter was left holding the question of why, and it nagged at him. He eventually offered a $1000 reward to anyone who could explain the thread that tied donuts, ribs, stinking weed, illicit pregnancies and legal cockfights -- all while keeping the Mormons at bay. He figured anyone who could crack this nut could establish heaven on earth. Or least one helluva Honkytonk.
The reward, incidentally, remains unclaimed.
