vituperation

February 27, 2008

Mr. Bruce R33d, Founder
Brust3r’s Real Ice Cream
730 Mulb3rry Street
Bridg3water, PA 15009

Dear Mr. Re3d:

I am writing this letter to share with you a recent experience I had when trying to enjoy some of your delicious ice cream, a horrific affair that nearly landed me on Skid Row, and to make an impassioned plea to you for a change in the way your ice cream is served.

This past Saturday, on the way home from a funeral, my wife and I decided to stop at our local Brust3r’s for a couple of peanut butter cup sundaes. While we enjoy the plain ice cream and Blasts, we adore peanut butter cup sundaes. As far as we’re concerned, there’s not much better in life.

At home, my wife handed me the cups with the admonition to be careful because they were overfilled, and while she went to lock our chickens in their coop I made my way to the door with the sundaes. Unlocking the door with both hands full presented a bit of a problem, so I set one sundae down on the stoop. When the door was open, I picked up the sundae and started into our house. Unbeknownst to me, the very loose top on the cup had tipped slightly, and like Niagara Falls, ice cream suddenly poured over my hand and fell like rain to the floor.

I tried to set the other sundae down on a table just inside the door, so I could get my hand under the flood of dripping ice cream, but in my haste I actually bumped the table with the cup and it slipped from my grasp. When it hit the floor the ensuing geyser went almost as high as my head. Had I not been so upset I would have been impressed.

One of our cats raced over and set about licking up the ice cream. Fearful that she might ingest some chocolate—deadly to cats—I picked her up with my now free hand and pitched her out onto the stoop, slinging ice cream all over the place. Angry because I knew the dropped sundae would be labeled “mine,” I slammed the door behind her. The melting sundae was still plopping bits of melted ice cream and whipped cream all over the floor, so I carried it into the kitchen, where I found our cat Mister Boogers urinating in the sink, probably because the slamming door scared him so much.

I grabbed some paper towels and went back to wipe up the mess just inside the door, leaving Mister Boogers to finish his business in peace. My wife came in, laughed at me, and went off to change clothes. I got the ice cream wiped up, managing to only grind one knee right down on a peanut butter cup. Later, when my wife was cleaning up after me with liquid floor cleaner—for some reason she didn’t think wiping the ice cream up with a paper towel was good enough—I tried to be helpful by suggesting she get some q-tips to clean in the crevices between the boards in the floor. Our house is 75 years old, and some of the floor boards have shrunk a little, which let the ice cream really get down in there.

My wife did not appreciate my suggestion.

I had to take Mister Boogers to the vet the next day, because we were concerned that a urinary tract infection may have caused him to urinate in the sink. It cost $176 to find out he’s perfectly fine. The chocolate wouldn’t wash out of the pants, which cost $30. In my haste to get my pants into the washer, I neglected to take my cell phone out of the pocket and it went through the full cycle, rinse and all. The used phone I bought on eBay to replace it was $40. Finally, my wife got so angry when I helpfully recommended she use q-tips to clean between the boards that I had to go out and get her a new sewing machine, which set me back almost $200.

As you can see, this incident nearly put me in the poorhouse, and it’s all due to the overfilled sundae cup with the loose-fitting top. Therefore, I would like to suggest that Brust3r’s make their sundae cups just a bit bigger to prevent overfilling, with tops that fit just a little more tightly. I’m sure experiences like mine happen every day across the country, so you can imagine how much those small changes would help our economy.

Yours in destitution,

Fred Anders0n

No pigs yet, dammit.

Everything is pretty much ready: I fired up the electric fence, I’ve clipped the t-posts to the field fence, and I disassembled the old chicken shade structure and used the hog panels from it to enclose a small area in front of the pig shelter.

All I need is for the pig man to call–

pig man callin’ now, nothin’ is real
he’ll never know just how I feel
from out of the county he’ll call on the phone
sell me some piggies let me make ‘em my own!
(apologies to J. Cafferty)

–and tell me it’s time to come pick them up, so we can start makin’ bacon.

Every time this song comes on the radio, I turn into this guy.