Words and Thoughts: June 27, 2024

Hello again, alleged readers! My tunnel is finally complete! Say goodbye to the pedestrian mundanity of simply walking from the living room to the kitchen. Say hello to the exhilarating novelty of falling five feet into a hole and stumbling through uneven darkness until you have to climb up seven feet of dirt wall to get to the fridge! The return is even more wild: seven feet down, stumble again, five feet up; but this time you do it carrying things from the fridge. I’m in the process of marketing a do-it-yourself kit for anyone of you who might be interested in this capital improvement project. It’ll come with a big shovel, two augers, a small plastic sand shovel that you can quickly switch to when guests come over to make them think you’ve been doing the whole project with a little yellow sandcastle shovel (think of the amusement), and one optional 2×4 to help keep the tunnel ceiling from caving in. I have faxes out to several national hardware chains — 47 pages of hand drawn stick figure diagrams explaining my product. No words whatsoever except a label on page 15 that reads “superfluous pipe”. I encountered two superfluous pipes, and one fluous pipe, in my tunnel.

…is how this week’s correspondence would have started if someone didn’t call the building inspector. “Zoning law” this, “structural integrity” that, “not even your house” mumbo jumbo.

I’m still marketing my kit though.

Anyway, someone offered me a Bavarian cream donut recently. I asked that person what Bavarian cream is. They didn’t know either. Based on this, I think I can confidently state that no one knows why Bavarian cream donuts are called Bavarian cream donuts. It’s like we just started assigning random geographic adjectives to things. I can do that too. Here’s a Latvian Scooby Snack. Here’s a Peruvian sandwich cookie. These sound sexual, and a little repulsive. Here, watch this: “Sweetie, why don’t you come to bed, and give me a Bavarian cream donut.” See?! Sex. Can we just please start calling Bavarian cream donuts “the donuts with the yellowish discharge seeping out of the little orifice at the back of the donut”?

That’s not to say I’m anti Bavarian, anti donut, anti sex, or anti any combination of the above. I just think we as a society can do better with naming conventions. We have so much potential. We are the very same species that invented penicillin, the tortilla chip, and crazy straws. Clearly, the only limits we face, like zoning laws, are self imposed. Let’s unimpose these limitations! Build the tunnels. Rename the donuts. Un-ban lawn jarts. Only together can we cast off the chains that we, together, have bound ourselves with.

Also, alleged readers, can we please start looking into what entity it is that has the power to crop people’s tops outside of a computer? I don’t have the capacity — in more ways than one — to do this right now. But knowing I struggle to crop photos on certain software programs, I tremble at the thought of the entity or entities who — out here in the real world — are cropping people’s tops. Thank you for upholding the tenets of vigilantism with me.

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