It’s that time of year when everyone becomes obsessed with pumpkin spice. You can’t go anywhere without running into it. From Starbucks coffee to Hostess Twinkies, everyone is trying to inject pumpkin into your day.
Personally, I’m not a fan. Pumpkin deodorant? No thanks. Chocolate deodorant, sign me up! Pumpkin car detailing spray? Hard pass. Make my car smell like a chocolate pie, take my money. Twice.
I think you get the general sense of where my brand loyalty lies. And it’s not at the foot of the Great Pumpkin. But, business is business and you’ve got to give the people what they want.
So, not to be left out of this annual Fall cultural phenomenon, I’ve scented all my punctuation with pumpkin spice this week. If you need your fix, just press your nose to the screen and smell the commas.
In completely unrelated news, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want to be buried. As some of you faithful readers may remember, I had planned to have my body and gravesite rigged to be a giant jack in the box, with “pop goes the weasel” playing as you approach, and my body spring-loaded to pop out of the grave and wave to you at just the right moment.
Both the State of Indiana and an even higher authority (my wife) have vigorously vetoed my design, so I was forced to come up with Plan B. Over the weekend, I succeeded. Here are the new details of my burial wishes:
I would like to be cremated with the urn placed inside a coffin. Accompanying me in the coffin should be the complete skeleton of a razorback hog. It should have a monocle in one eye socket and a dog leash around its neck.
Additionally, there should be exactly 1000 peanut M&M’s, an authentic German beer stein filled with toenail clippings (not mine of course), a lute, a pocketknife, a transistor radio, and a sealed bag of cheddar popcorn.
The inside of the coffin should have a pillow, but no other fabric or cushioning. Instead, the walls should be made of wood. Carved into the wood should be every line of bathroom graffiti from the filthiest truck stop in Baton Rouge, LA. None of the handwriting (or hand carving as it were) should match.
My coffin should not be buried in a cemetery, but rather at a depth of eight feet, on a 70-degree angle, at the exact longitude and latitude where the bendy straw was invented.
As you can see, I’ve given this a lot of thought. And that collection of artifacts should keep a team of future archeologists working round the clock for decades trying to uncover and understand the funeral rituals of the people of our time. Just doing my part to keep the wheels of academia turning.
Carry on, Citizens!
