In America, there are many types of food, and quite a few utensils to eat that food with. This is a result of the various cultures which make up the country. However, of the few utensils used commonly, there is one that can be found in several fast-food restaurants, whose design alone is an abomination: the SPORK.

There are three utensils that are commonly used everyday in America, and they are the fork, the spoon, and the knife. Each one is designed for a different purpose, whether it's stabbing food, scooping liquid, or viciously tearing apart what was once a cow or a pig. When Americans began to use these utensils, they found each one fit well at meals, and each was a joy to use. However, some Americans became lazy, as most people do, and decided it would be great to combine the utensils. Trying out a spoon and a knife, they found it to be awkward and inefficient. Then, they decided to combine a knife and a fork...but were met with the same failure. After much testing, they finally came up with something that they felt would benefit humankind, and after going through several combinations of the words "fork" and "spoon", they settled on the name "Spork".

For a time, it seemed that the perfect utensil had arrived. It allowed people to stop using two utensils when they only needed one. There were plans to drop forks and spoons from the concept of eating altogether. Thus, these utensils were heavily distributed in a few fast-food restaurants, where overcooked mashed potatoes and badly prepared salsa could be scooped with the same utensil that tore into greasy chicken and tacos. The first evils of sporks were shown when, due to the fact that they were usually made of plastic, they bent, cracked, or snapped apart. Furthermore, as people began to see that sporks weren't very efficient, they went back to using forks and spoons separately. This frustrated the companies which manufactured sporks, and they devised a plan. They began to send large amounts of sporks to these restaurants, more than people could ever use. Thus, people could rarely eat without seeing these diabolical instruments of food. In an attempt to rid themselves of these menaces, they grabbed huge handfuls of them each time they ate at a restaurant and threw them into the trash, or stored them in out of reach places in their vehicles or homes when they brought their food with them, where they would gather dust. Upon seeing this, the spork manufacturers decided to try a final, and desparate, approach.

Knowing that food was often messy, and people depended on napkins, spork manufacturers bought out napkin factories, and began packaging tiny napkins with sporks. Soon, when people ate at restaurants, they realized they could only obtain a napkin by getting a spork, and since the napkin with the spork was small and didn't absorb much, more sporks were necessary. Having a large abundance of sporks, consumers had to get rid of them. Throwing them away didn't help, as entire landfills were shut down because they were full of sporks. Recycling them was of no help, as the sporks were melted down to make more sporks. Some people were pushed over the edge, and they began to praise the spork, thinking it was a good thing. Others merely tried to avoid restaurants that offered them, deciding that expensive restaurants without sporks were a friendlier choice than affordable restaurants with sporks. Some people, seeing the sharp edges, even attempted to utilize sporks as weapons, only to find that they the sharp edges broke with even light pressure.

In current days, the problem of the spork has been put on the "backburner", as people are more concerned with other issues, such as the lack of shopping malls in rural areas. However, its evil is still corrupting the eateries of urban and suburban America. Be warned...

-Kinoko Otoko