Tuesday, January 27, 2009

A Letter to Tostitos Concerning Condiments

Dear Frito-Lay North America, Inc.,

Recently I’ve been trying to watch what I eat. Not so much sugar, not so much salt, not so much red meat, not so much bread and pasta. You know how that goes. And as a result of this change I’ve been looking for ways to keep my diet from becoming boring. That’s where you come in.

Salsa has fast become a favorite of mine and your chips are the tiny makeshift rafts that bring that zesty Latin flavor to my unprotected borders. Your chips are a good thickness, a good taste. Nothing about them has been done to excess because you know that they are at best an edible delivery service. And for that I thank you.

So, being that I'm so delighted with your chips I decided to take a cue from the front of the chip bag and try out some of your salsa too. The “All Natural Tostitos Chunky Salsa” to be exact. Medium. And, I’ve got to say that, where I enjoy the light, flakey, and salty taste of your delicious tortilla chips, I’m not so sold on your prescribed salsa counterpart.

Mostly because it tastes like crap.

Now before you say anything, let me expand a little on the subject. Tell you why I think your salsa might underperform against the local flavor. Or dirt.

There’s a local Mexican diner just 2 or 3 miles down the road from me that makes a pretty great salsa. Now, I’ll admit it can be a little runny at times, but the flavor is always intact. I think this might be because they use a base consisting of tomatoes and peppers and maybe a little jalapeƱo. They buy fresh vegetables, maybe a lemon or a lime, and take all that back to the restaurant. Then they cook these ingredients together according to a recipe, in a pot, probably on a low heat to let that flavor soak in. After that I imagine they refrigerate it so it can be as fresh as possible for their customers.

Now, I’m guessing that you’ve already picked up on some slight differences between that scenario and the way that you’re probably used to making salsa. Because when I taste yours I’m thinking that it’s less the market and kitchen and fridge kinds of steps, and more that you captured one of the last remaining goblins from folklore, tied him upside down, cut his throat, and then caught all of his putrid, rotting blood in an ancient and evil black cauldron, and then stoked the fires of Hell under that cursed pot to boil his life force away. Then more than likely just decided to throw the goblin’s corpse in there for thickness.

Maybe the Fires of Hell aren’t involved, I don’t know, I’m not an expert. But I’m not sure what else would give you that, “baby shit and dead grandmothers” flavor you seem to be going for. A flavor, I am sorry to tell you, is not as popular as your research team had led you to believe.

Regular people tend to like spice and texture, but not so much spices that taste shitty and have the texture of shit. I think getting away from shit and shit based cooking, and moving towards actual food, would be a good first step on the road to not poisoning people.

Because that’s kind of what it feels like you’re doing. You’re delicious chips proudly told me to go purchase this salsa because they would be “perfect” together. So either your chips are a bunch of goddamn liars, or they were purposely misinformed by you to trick me into buying an inferior and possibly dangerous product.

I mean, god knows what’s in this crap. Strychnine and batwings as far as the fucking taste test goes, right? It's kind of hard to pin down. So many things come to mind when I consume your salsa: dirty dish water, the inside of a small animal, starving children in India and how they wouldn’t eat this.

How can you fuck salsa up? I bet I could take random cans of things from my cupboard without looking at them, some pepper and taco seasoning, and make something that would get closer to salsa than this. Actually, when I think about YOUR shit, I bet I could take random cans and bottles from under the sinks in my house and get something closer to salsa than this.

And it’s not just compared to the local illegals. You are the worst of the STORE BOUGHT salsas. You came in last at the Special Olympics. What gives?

The chips are good, your queso isn’t horrible, what happened with the salsa? It almost feels intentional. I look at the bag now and see that suggestion of perfect companionship between chip and dip and it seems like a big “fuck you” printed right there in yellow, red, and green.

I’ll forgive the subterfuge for the chips’ sake. No sense in having to go through some kind of baked tortilla layoff just because some corporate fat cat wants to put a pretty label on a mason jar full of things he found around the office and sell it as dip. It's really more my fault from listening to an ad on a label. It never works out how you hoped it would.

Well, that's the last time I let a bag of food tell ME what to do, I’ll tell you that much.

Ok, that was a lie.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Hates your goddamned salsa.
Really? Yeah, really.

Monday, January 12, 2009

A Letter to my Neighbor Concerning his Hobby

So I was trying to think of another meaningful letter to write. Something that really dug down at the core of what I wanted to express to the world. Or maybe to dig out some lost part of myself to revive into my personality.

Then my neighbor started some shit up and all that went out the window.

Happy New Year everybody!


Dear fucking Spike TV reject that lives next door,

Why, oh God, why must I live next to these fucking people? People who think working on their cars means revving the engine over and over and over again after the sun has gone down. People who are spending all their time "fixing up" real classics like a four cylinder 1987 Mustang hatchback or 199-generic year model Camaro. You know those Camaros right? The ones that look like someone started to design a new sports car, made a Corvette on accident, and then decided to change it just enough not to get sued?

Well, you got my attention, asshole. Let’s have a little walk outside and see why this teenager’s parents haven’t gotten annoyed by all the racket.

Oh, I see! It’s because you’re a forty year old man! Yeah, you got that cool shaved head but that grey goatee really kind of blows your cover. But at least now I see the reason for the car. What with that pot belly, Harley Davidson t-shirt, and looping Rush mix tape not getting you quite as much ass as you’d hoped for. Well good thing all these ladies are around to watch you get your "man on" by fixing your car up.

Oh yeah. That’s right. They’re not!

It’s just you, fucktard. You’re the only one in your back yard! So, why do you keep revving that goddamn engine over and over and over again? I’ll tell you why, it’s because you’re a moron. You’re a fucking moron. I’ve helped people fix cars. Big word there, fixed. And all we had to do was turn it on, rev it up slowly, and see if something gave out.

We didn’t push the pedal to the beat of “Highway to Hell” at 10 o clock at night. “Highway to Hell”, by the way, being the most overplayed and overrated AC/DC song EVER heard on a classic rock station! Get a fucking stereo with a CD player in it and play "Satellite Blues" before I jump over the fence, grab your ridiculous chin hair, and use it to pull your face into the cooling fan.

I mean, honestly. Do you have nothing else you could amuse yourself with?

You do? Oh, so, you will actually do something else that you wouldn’t mind doing while some of us are trying to lead lives that don’t make loud buzzing noises in other people’s houses? Well, ok, cool. I wasn’t expecting that. Thank you.

So, what is it exactly you’ll be—a four wheeler? A four wheeler.

A.

Four wheeler.

I’m going to murder you. I’m going to murder you so the stupid doesn’t decide to cast you off as a dead shell one day and possess my house like some Special Olympics version of Poltergeist.

Old Redneck skeletons trying to get their GED for that fry cook position, all floating up through the ground when we try to put our new pool in.

Fucking oak tree crashing through the window because his haunted ass is too drunk to stay up after a night of beating his saplings in his big mud doublewide.

I won’t have it. I have to kill you.

I’m going to string a steel cable across the road to clothesline you in half. I’m even going to hang bacon off of it, so, even in the event that you see it in time to stop; you will have already smelled the grease and won’t be able to keep yourself from driving towards it at full speed.

Just to be safe I'll probably also have to poison the ham. By the looks of you, you've probably taken a few beatings in your life. Wouldn't want the cable to fail and not have a back up.

Or you could just save me the trouble by turning off that ball of chipped paint you have in that adorable tin lean to you made back there, and go watch TV. Wait until the Sun, and your neighbors, are up before you start back into your failed American Chopper audition tape.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
MRRRR MRRRR MRRRR!!!! That's what you sound like, you piece of shit! I will set your babies on fire!