Anonymous asked: Is it wrong to eat fourings with a three-pronged fork?
Are there any other fourings faux-pas?

the answers to both questions are yes. other fourings faux pas include (but are not limited to):

• “guarding” your meal like a cowboy eating chow: fourings is about camaraderie and therefore sharing.
• competitive eating: if cramming matzoh balls down your esophagus is your game, then there are plenty of other venues for it. the atmosphere at fourings should be convivial not competitive.
• giving your friends purple nurples (this needs no explanation).
• fourings is a world meal: one should keep in mind that there will be a great many fourings this month throughout the course of the world cup. it is considered pure hooliganism to deride the fourings menus of other countries, especially the inferior countries that your country is playing. example: one must refrain from commenting on the greasy fish and overly-fried chips of england fouringses when having a fourings of perfectly-cooked sliders and a wedge of american apple pie during tomorrow’s big match.

howabouthatoodle-loo asked: i have this problem where i look at the clock and it's 3:55, look down, and when i remember to look back up at the clock, it's 5:01. i've missed fourings completely. how do i make sure i never miss a fourings ever again?

this is actually a very common problem. we would recommend setting the alarm on your casio wristwatch, but honestly, casio is an unfashionable brand nowadays—even for wristwatches.

therefore pierce has decided to start a fourings reminder pilot program. if you are eligible (namely, if you are a single female) you can give pierce your phone number and he will call you everyday at 3:59 to remind you to enjoy your fourings. please also do your best to ignore his heavy breathing.

A: There is no better fourings flower than the Mirabilis jalapa. It is known colloquially as the four o’ clock flower because that is the time when it is said to open and produce its sweet-smelling fragrance. Imagine an exquisite pink blossom opening up just as one of the girls knocks back a shrimp! How delightful.

Also beneficial is that the flower is a powerful purgative. So if you undercook the shrimp (the way you do from time to time), you and the girls can scramble to gnaw mirabilis leaves to assist nature in taking its inevitable course.

A: Fourings is not just about food, it’s also about camaraderie. Noshing a Charleston Chew™ by yourself next to dirty mops is not really in the spirit of this time-honored meal. Therefore, You may be able to solve both your problems in this manner:

1. Invite your boss to accompany you to the utility closet.
2. From your knapsack, pull out a 2 foot salami, some Grey Poupon™ mustard, and a box of Franzia Vintner Select Shiraz™.
3. Eat and drink and be comrades.
4. When the clock strikes 4:06, say something like, “Guess we need to get back to work, I might as well pour this Franzia Vintner Select Shiraz™ into the mop water…” If your boss is human, your boss will stop you and then will mention that it wouldn’t hurt things if your break was extended to 4:10 or even 4:15!
5. If everything goes according to plan, you will find yourself with more time to enjoy fourings AND a special person in your life to enjoy it with.

A: You might take pleasure in the following smells:

• kerosene
• muskrat
• petunia extract

and the following sounds:

• fanning the pages of a phone book
• a toilet flush
• a dog’s squeak toy

JUST KNOW THIS HOWEVER: at four in the afternoon, me and Gloria Estefan and certain ‘N SYNC bandmembers are going to get together for a little informal jam sesh with clams casino and sweet potato pies but sadly, you will have to miss out on this because you will be too busy sniffing muskrats and listening to toilet water.

If you live in the United States, you will be advancing your clocks this Sunday by 1 hour in observance of daylight savings time.

DO NOT FORGET that this means that your body will naturally want its fourings at three in the afternoon for the first few days this week. Please do not give in to the urge—after all, a small meal enjoyed at three in the afternoon is not fourings, it is something grotesquely different.

A: Even though fourings is a meal by the people, for the people, several celebrities have recently been caught in the paparazzi’s lenses enjoying fourings. To name a few:

• Gloria Estefan was seen in a posh Cleveland neighborhood chowing down on egg rolls at 4 in the afternoon.
• One of the members of ‘N Sync that nobody cares about reportedly ate a soft taco at around 4:00 last Tuesday.
• The guy who played the dad on Growing Pains was spotted putting a well-buttered bagel into his mouth at 3:47 pm on October 5th of last year.

A: Firstly, as far as we are concerned, there are no other meals or meal times. Were some omnipotent demigod to force you to enjoy only a single meal each day, your best option would be to select fourings. If you select breakfast, you would eventually starve. If you select dinner, you would grow unhealthy. If you select tiffin, you would die of embarrassment.

Secondly, fourings comes from a gerund as well and its etymology is even more delightful. To four was to engage in sexual fourplay (the original spelling of foreplay) this then lead to sex proper which in turn lead to smoking a clove cigarette and eating a greasy turkey leg. Thus fourings, a mid-afternoon snack that satiates a rapacious hunger, became a national phenomenon and everyone forgot about tiffin.

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this was a real question submitted by a real reader. you can submit your fourings-related questions about the controversial meal known as fourings to this fourings ask form.

A: Fourings is a movement by the people, for the people. If paperwork and worrying about proper licensing is your thing, then maybe fourings is not for your establishment after all.

A: The proper plural of fourings is fouringses. It is pronounced /ˈfɔrɪŋsɪz/.

A: Not a chance! Fourings back in the day was as totally rad as fourings is today. An 1813 Cantabrigian fourings menu lists, “1 pint of strong beer, bread and cheese.”¹ Fancy that—fourings has not changed much in the intervening 200 years!

Going even further back to the 1300s, we find that during harvest time, field laborers were given the following whacked-out victuals for their fouringses: “brown bread and milk…, dannecks or froises (pancakes with lumps of bacon in them), Norfolk dumplings of dough and yeast, with occasional luxuries such as furmety, chitterlings, gofers (tea cakes), apple jacks (puffs), and swimmers (light pastry).”² Sometimes, their daily fourings provisions included “sundry little interjectional stimuli (a most happy phrase for pick-me-ups) in the shape of whets, baits, snaps, snacks, and snatches, relieved by lowans of beer.”³

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1. Agricultural Revolution in Norfolk, by Naomi Riches p. 132 (1967)
2. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 162, p. 394 (1897)
3. ibid.

Further reading (because reading about fourings is as fun as reading erotic gardening narratives, which is to say that it is VERY fun): British Food: An Extraordinary Thousand Years of History, by Colin Spencer, p. 58 (2003).

A: Our ancestors enjoyed fouringses during harvest time, though in the modern era fouringses are enjoyed 365 days of the year (and 366 on leap years). This said, the ultimate day for fourings is April 4th. Fourings on this day is known as four-four-fourings. This is pronounced the way Oprah would pronounce POW-POW-POWERWHEELS.

A: The only word that rhymes with fourings is iron-corings. Think of all the possibilities!