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 jalapeño. 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.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
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!
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!
Friday, November 21, 2008
A Letter to Fear and Ego Concerning My Once and Future Death
Dear taskmasters,
Sometimes, more often lately, I think I'm supposed to have already died by now. I get this feeling that maybe I survived a car wreck in my past or avoided some tainted food when I shouldn't have. And now, fate not having planned me being around this long, I'm just wandering. Like legs fallen off a centipede; still twitching out of habit but no longer with any greater purpose.
Of course, then I realize I don't really believe in fate, so the feeling of aimlessness becomes something that needs to be quantified another way. Rationalization is always a good treatment for inner turmoil. And what is the feeling that you shouldn’t be alive, if not inner turmoil?
One explanation for the feeling could be the wait. I hate to wait on inevitable events. I'd rather just get something over with. This death business looms over every action of ever death like a cosmic midterm I forgot to study for. Maybe if I convince myself that I should already be dead, that would mean I'm not waiting anymore. The big moment came and went and forgot to pick me up. At that point death would be a simple technicality.
But, that doesn't make any sense does it? You can't have the even be the technicality. You can't assume death missed you, because then you're just waiting all over again. The clever metaphor hasn't changed anything. No, I think the feeling originated from a much simpler and selfish source.
I don't want to feel cheated.
You're watching the news one night and you see that some where an eight year old boy has been killed in a car accident or from some maniac psycho. The immediate reaction is usually some small degree of sorrow, presumably for the loss of someone so young, because youth is such a precious thing. But, really we're not sad because he was young. We're sad because his youth means that he never got to do anything. He never got to experience or express or contribute. His life, although precious and unique, from a logistical stand point was pointless. When thinking about what that life added to the world, a child dying at eight years old is almost the same as a child dying at one day old.
And there it is. There's the feeling.
If I died today, I'd be no farther in my life as a contributor then someone born tomorrow. I'm essentially a giant infant that likes to drink Merlot and scribble in his journal. And, not wanting to be an infant, I decided to look for something to accomplish. Something meaningful on legitimate scale, but, attainable as quickly as possible so I can get it in before some unexpected accident ends my expression before it's even really begun. And, barring that accident, I also wanted to work on something that I could enjoy the benefits of after its completion. Something that could afford me some attention before I die. Something that I could look back on for a brief moment, if I'm allowed one after a fatal event, and feel like I made it in on deadline.
It's a train of thought I explore often; the idea of significance before death. It monopolizes so much of my inner thoughts at times I become afraid that my entire life up to this point has been driven solely by a mixture of fear and ego. Then I try to assure myself I'm much to amazing for that to be the case.
So, if the pressing issue in my mind is to achieve before death, maybe thinking I should already be dead is a way to bypass the accomplishment. I don't trust the existence of some invisible Shangri-La to supply me with happiness after a life of hard work. I know I have to attain the happiness myself. If I'm supposed to achieve something before I die to be able to enjoy my life, and then convince myself I should have already died, it's like I've found a loop hole that allows me to relax. I can skip the contribution and go right to the good life, right? I can just wake up and go to work and let myself be soaked up into the millions of kilowatt hours powering the nation's entertainment demagogue and become euthanized in blissful peace, right?
Apparently not.
Until I've made some sort of meaningful, lasting contribution, in my own eyes, it feels any play time I manage to snatch from the day has been acquired illegitimately. It feels like I've defrauded those fleeting moments of happiness from the time in my life that I should be creating. The original idea that since I've already passed my end point and can now just relax has actually caused and anxiety to erupt out of my mind that reminds me that if I'm already supposed to be dead, then, I'm on borrowed time every minute of every day, and have a responsibility to use that time to create the things I didn't get a chance to in my real life.
On top of that is the fact that accomplishment isn't guaranteed to anybody. So that must mean that happiness isn't guaranteed to anybody. It means that we all just have to keep climbing in the fog without any promise that we will crest the peek and get to ride our red Radio Flyer down the other side.
Of course, this is just what it means to me. I can't tell you if life for others is filled with days of foggy climbing and nights full of dreams of red wagons. I just know that when I sit down to write it's not out of love. I don't think it is anyway. I think it's out of a mixture of fear and ego, because that might be the only thing that can motivate me anymore. Maybe it was the only thing that ever did.
Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Cheerful to a fault
Sometimes, more often lately, I think I'm supposed to have already died by now. I get this feeling that maybe I survived a car wreck in my past or avoided some tainted food when I shouldn't have. And now, fate not having planned me being around this long, I'm just wandering. Like legs fallen off a centipede; still twitching out of habit but no longer with any greater purpose.
Of course, then I realize I don't really believe in fate, so the feeling of aimlessness becomes something that needs to be quantified another way. Rationalization is always a good treatment for inner turmoil. And what is the feeling that you shouldn’t be alive, if not inner turmoil?
One explanation for the feeling could be the wait. I hate to wait on inevitable events. I'd rather just get something over with. This death business looms over every action of ever death like a cosmic midterm I forgot to study for. Maybe if I convince myself that I should already be dead, that would mean I'm not waiting anymore. The big moment came and went and forgot to pick me up. At that point death would be a simple technicality.
But, that doesn't make any sense does it? You can't have the even be the technicality. You can't assume death missed you, because then you're just waiting all over again. The clever metaphor hasn't changed anything. No, I think the feeling originated from a much simpler and selfish source.
I don't want to feel cheated.
You're watching the news one night and you see that some where an eight year old boy has been killed in a car accident or from some maniac psycho. The immediate reaction is usually some small degree of sorrow, presumably for the loss of someone so young, because youth is such a precious thing. But, really we're not sad because he was young. We're sad because his youth means that he never got to do anything. He never got to experience or express or contribute. His life, although precious and unique, from a logistical stand point was pointless. When thinking about what that life added to the world, a child dying at eight years old is almost the same as a child dying at one day old.
And there it is. There's the feeling.
If I died today, I'd be no farther in my life as a contributor then someone born tomorrow. I'm essentially a giant infant that likes to drink Merlot and scribble in his journal. And, not wanting to be an infant, I decided to look for something to accomplish. Something meaningful on legitimate scale, but, attainable as quickly as possible so I can get it in before some unexpected accident ends my expression before it's even really begun. And, barring that accident, I also wanted to work on something that I could enjoy the benefits of after its completion. Something that could afford me some attention before I die. Something that I could look back on for a brief moment, if I'm allowed one after a fatal event, and feel like I made it in on deadline.
It's a train of thought I explore often; the idea of significance before death. It monopolizes so much of my inner thoughts at times I become afraid that my entire life up to this point has been driven solely by a mixture of fear and ego. Then I try to assure myself I'm much to amazing for that to be the case.
So, if the pressing issue in my mind is to achieve before death, maybe thinking I should already be dead is a way to bypass the accomplishment. I don't trust the existence of some invisible Shangri-La to supply me with happiness after a life of hard work. I know I have to attain the happiness myself. If I'm supposed to achieve something before I die to be able to enjoy my life, and then convince myself I should have already died, it's like I've found a loop hole that allows me to relax. I can skip the contribution and go right to the good life, right? I can just wake up and go to work and let myself be soaked up into the millions of kilowatt hours powering the nation's entertainment demagogue and become euthanized in blissful peace, right?
Apparently not.
Until I've made some sort of meaningful, lasting contribution, in my own eyes, it feels any play time I manage to snatch from the day has been acquired illegitimately. It feels like I've defrauded those fleeting moments of happiness from the time in my life that I should be creating. The original idea that since I've already passed my end point and can now just relax has actually caused and anxiety to erupt out of my mind that reminds me that if I'm already supposed to be dead, then, I'm on borrowed time every minute of every day, and have a responsibility to use that time to create the things I didn't get a chance to in my real life.
On top of that is the fact that accomplishment isn't guaranteed to anybody. So that must mean that happiness isn't guaranteed to anybody. It means that we all just have to keep climbing in the fog without any promise that we will crest the peek and get to ride our red Radio Flyer down the other side.
Of course, this is just what it means to me. I can't tell you if life for others is filled with days of foggy climbing and nights full of dreams of red wagons. I just know that when I sit down to write it's not out of love. I don't think it is anyway. I think it's out of a mixture of fear and ego, because that might be the only thing that can motivate me anymore. Maybe it was the only thing that ever did.
Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Cheerful to a fault
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