Dad Reads Menu With Restaurant Candle Like Archaeologist Deciphering Ancient Runes

KANSAS CITY, MO—Bringing the flame closer to the strange markings scrawled on the sheet before him, local dad Joe Kurinsky reportedly read a restaurant menu with a candle Friday like an archaeologist deciphering the runes of an ancient, forgotten language. The 56-year-old father of three, as though translating Sumerian from the cuneiform script of a weathered clay tablet in a recently unearthed tomb, was said to have slowly mouthed the words “chicken fettuccine” before moving on to the next line of cryptic symbols. According to sources, Kurinsky then blew a tiny speck off the plastic menu as if clearing away the accumulated dust of five millennia, in what appeared to be an effort to make out which side dishes he might be able to substitute for the house salad. Holding his torch aloft, Kurinsky was heard to mutter, “God, they keep it pretty dark in here, huh?” as his family quietly waited for him to select an appetizer the way a crew on an archaeological dig might eagerly await the revelation of a secret recorded in the dead language of a lost civilization. At press time, reports confirmed the surprised table suddenly turned toward the approaching ominous sounds of a sizzling fajita platter that Kurinsky had summoned from the mysterious text.