the tree of woe

Dungeness crab is a particular delicacy that is popular from the Pacific Northwest all the way down to San Francisco, where I have had the unfortunate experience of dealing with it.

It’s not that I don’t like crab. Crab is delicious. It’s the methods employed to actually get the crab meat that I have a problem with.

This website offers simple, straightforward, and unemotional methods of preparing dungeness crab. I will now offer you the real methods of preparing crab, the method no one tells you about until it’s too late.

Take several living animals, animals that could still have their entire lives ahead of them, and place them in a pot of boiling water. Count yourself lucky that they are unable to scream.

Once you have successfully boiled them alive, take the crabs out and put them on a serving tray. This is where the real fun begins.

Take a single crab and put it on your plate. Rip its legs off (legs that just hours earlier were engaged in a futile struggle for life), one by one, and suck out the sweet crab meat. If the legs prove too sturdy for you, simply use a nutcracker to smash them to smithereens.

After you’ve torn the poor animal limb from limb, crush its body with your bare hands. Rip out whatever is inside and stuff it indiscriminately into your mouth.

It’s not that I don’t like eating animals. Animals are delicious. The cuter the animal, the more flavor I find that they have. The difference is the level of violence involved. If every recipe for steak started with, “Go get a hammer, a hacksaw, and a rifle,” I’d feel the same way about cows.

Easter is right around the corner (not literally. Easter is a designated unit of time of exactly one day each year, the first Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon which is the first moon whose fourteenth day is on or after March 21st. As such, Easter does not occupy three dimensional physical space, and therefore cannot be described as “around the corner” in a non-metaphorical way.)

… Yeah. Anyway, Easter is right around the corner (see above), and that means that you cannot enter any retail establishment on Earth without being immediately confronted by Peeps. If you follow the link to the Peeps website, you will have a virtual library of Peeps information at your fingertips, all of which will go unused as you sit mesmerized by the humorous and whimsical tuba solo they’ve wisely chosen to tightly integrate with their website. In fact, it has been playing in the background the entire time I’ve been writing this post. I’ve become somewhat immune to it, so I’ll go over some of the information that you have no hope of ever accessing yourself.

Some select Fun Peeps Facts. As the website itself claims, “If you love peeps, you’ll love these fun facts!”

Fact #1: “Loyal peeps fans love their peeps fresh, frozen, stale, and even on pizza!” Yes, loyal peeps fans aren’t discerning in the least! They’ll go to any lengths for peeps. You’d be better off standing directly between a momma bear and her cubs than getting in between a peeps addict and a disgusting, peeps-laden pizza.

Fact #2: “It would take over 172 million peeps bunnies end-to-end to circle the moon!” We know this because this is the most logical way to count peeps. Some companies sell their products in cases of 12, 48, even 144. Not us. When your local grocery store orders peeps, they order them by the lunar circumference.

From what I understand, gummi bears “the candy” came about in the fifties, and gummi bears “the TV show” started in ’89 or somewhere thereabouts. I guess someone was just sitting around one day, trying the think of an idea for a new show, just eating some gummi bears, and…

“You know, these gummi bears are kinda cute. I could see them being dashing. Daring, even. Perhaps even courageous and caring. Faithful. Friendly. I wonder if they have any stories to share…”

Then he proceeded to crank out approximately  150 scripts where the gummi bears saved the day by bouncing around, as if that ever solved anything.

Edit: This may jog some memories.

I seriously hate “Spring Ahead” with a deep passion. It ruins my entire weekend. It’s like time itself is messing with us. “Oh, you thought it was what time? Because while you were sleeping I just went ahead and skipped two o’clock. You’re welcome.”

Dr. Pepper said a few months ago that they’d give everyone in America a free Dr. Pepper if the new Guns N’ Roses album came out this year. The Guns N’ Roses album is coming out this year. Now, everyone in America gets a free Dr. Pepper.

I’m not going to be getting one.

I can’t. This has gotten too strange. I’m used to getting a free taco after someone hits a home run, but if this is the start of a new trend of major corporations making wild and zany bets, I don’t want to do anything to encourage it. What’s next? It’s only a matter of time before everyone gets a free bag of Doritos if the Patriots beat the spread, or a free iPod Touch if Steve Jobs can’t throw a football over a house(this would require someone saying, “Hey, bet you can’t throw a football over the house” to Steve Jobs. If someone who knows him could do that for me that would be cool, because I could really use a new iPod.)