Planning Purgatory

The Industrial Revolution played havoc on God's civil engineers. Oh sure, Heaven and Hell were always pretty easy to organize. The people in Heaven were always treated like kings only much much better, and Hell was set up to treat its residents like some combination of prisoners and peasants, only worse. That way everyone felt appropriately awarded or punished. Purgatory, post Industrial Revolution, however, was a nightmare. It used to just be luke warm gruel and a typical day in the fields for the poor and for the wealthy a calf that was kind of fatted followed by a jester who had a couple of good jokes, but were all pretty obvious. Differences between men and women, the quality of tavern food, and complaints about work. With the rise of the middle class, and then further, the striation of the upper, middle, and lower classes into their own self contained upper middle and lower classes and the number of purgatories that God's civil engineers had to coordinate became a hydra to slay, for each slice of the population had to have an afterlife carefully blanded to their own life experiences. A hundred tv channels was a perfectly fine purgatory for the lower-middle class, but was practically heaven to the upper-lower. Supermarket beef wellington and chicken cordon bleu for dinner each night was hell for the lower-upper class, heaven for the middle-middle, but perfectly so-so for the upper-middle. Purgatory's designers breathed a sigh of relieve that at least a long work day with stupid co-workers stayed consistent through each level. After carefully constructing the Nine Circles of Purgatory, funding for the afterlife skyrocketed. Too many special orders, too many administrators. “Maybe it would save us money,” the engineers said to God one day after a budget cutting meeting, “if we just re-widened the gap between the rich and everyone else like the good old days.”

- Originally mailed to M.J. Navoy in Picayune, Mississippi

Gourmet T-Rex

“Falafel” Tim shouted as he lunged through the dense foliage of the park. “Gimme, gimme, gimme!”

Alas, Esmerelda Marcos, who at that time was enjoying the very falafel Tim smelled, did not speak dinosaur, so all she heard was a terrifying roar and the thunderous sound of dinosaur footfalls slamming against the jungle floor. Naturally, she ran, taking her food with her.

Dejected, Tim trudged back into the forest, once again deprived of a good meal. Being an epicurean T-Rex was harder than one might imagine. He had no money with which to purchase funnel cakes and curries and fine wines and his tiny hands could neither pull discarded plates of kung pao chicken from trash bins nor lift them to his mouth if he wanted to. For the unfortunate circumstances of his birth, being a fifteen foot tall seven ton giant lizard with a reputation for brutal carnage, he would never know the joy of fois gras, beef wellington, or chicken cordon bleu.

It was disheartening, he was so hungry. Alas. At least he could always count on the staff of the island park to provide him with veal tartare, even if it was lacking in spices and he had to mince the meat with his own teeth.

- Originally mailed to S. Gill of Ocean Springs, Mississippi

The Heart of a Tomato

When I was five years old, my brother used to tell me that plants have souls and feelings just like people do. I didn't believe him at first, because how can you? A plant doesn't talk.

“Does too,” he would say. “When you hear the wind whistle through the trees, that's not the wind, it's the trees.”

Plants can't move.

“Have you ever seen grass sway? Trees rocking back and forth?”

Plants can't cry. How can they be sad if they can't cry?

“You've seen sap, haven't you?”

How do you argue against that when you're five? He had an answer for everything. He even told me about plants that grab flies and plants that will move to face the sun. When I asked mom about it, she patted my head and reassured me he was only teasing me, and that grass was not sad when I walked on it because it did not, in fact, have any feelings at all. I asked her about the fly eating plants and she said they were real. I asked her about the sun chasers and she said they were real too. I asked her about how the trees howled during storms and rocked back and forth, reminding her that I howled and rocked back and forth during bad storms too.

“That's just the wind,” she said dismissively as she added beans to a simmering pot.

I asked her about tree sap, and she confessed she didn't know what purpose it served. That was how I knew my brother was right. He had answers to all of my questions, which meant he knew more than my mom.

“He's making stuff up,” she told me. “That's what brothers do. If he doesn't know the real answer, he lies so you'll think he's smart.”

I almost believed her, too, until I saw her cut a tomato in two to add to the pot. I had seen the heart of the tomato and knew my brother was right after all.

- Originally mailed to P. and D. Goff in Madison, Mississippi

Super Model Dinosaurs

Life as a super model was almost everything Edmont and Cera had ever wanted. The work was easy. They went to the gallery and posed from sun up to sun down, while everyone, men, women, and children, fawned over them and took their pictures. Their pictures beamed, bright and glossy on billboards and magazine covers and promotional items for their managing museum. People came from all over the world to see them. They were magnificent, and they knew it.

It wasn't all sunshine and roses, however. They didn't get to travel as much as they would like. They didn't get to travel at all, in fact. They would never see Paris or New York or Milan. They would never share the Fashion Week runways. They never got to wear the best designers. For that matter, they never got to wear anything at all. They were only ever hired for nude work, and some days it took all they had not to feel degraded. Most of all, however, they disliked the diets. It was not uncommon for models of their fame to look emaciated, but for fear of being replaced, Edmont and Cera felt compelled to eat so little as to remain down right skeletal.

Still, they were stars. It had taken a long time—sixty-five million years to be precise—but they were finally famous.

- Originally mailed to P. Wilkinson from Vancleave, Mississippi

Inflation

When the bottom of the economy finally fell out, inflation kicked in with a vengeance. Being an intelligent guy, Hans Mauer immediately took all the cash he could find and went to a store, knowing that goods would always be worth something, whereas his money might not. By the time he arrived, the price of candy had already almost doubled, so he bought the whole box. Candy was a luxury good, after all, so those lucky few who had wealth would pay a hefty sum for it later. When he arrived home, the same candy was selling for five dollars. A pack of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups came to more than fifteen by lunch, and by the end of the week, inflation has spiraled so wildly out of control he could have bought a brand new car with the money he made, presuming of course that the price of automobiles had not also skyrocketed. But nothing lasts forever, and Hans knew this. When it looked like the economy could take no more, when the neighboring nations would have no choice but to intervene, he sold every scrap of candy he had. He made hundreds of thousands of dollars, and exactly as predicted, the government stepped in with a new gold standard currency. The old money was virtually worthless. As a sort of kindness, the treasury allowed for the old currency to be traded in for pennies of the new stuff, but Hans didn't take the deal. Instead, he waited for all the old cash to die away, to be collected and burned. Then, two years later when he had one of the only supplies of the old dollar bills, he sold his hoard off to museums and collectors one bill it at time, on average getting twice the printed dollar value. In the end, his box of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups netted him a cool million goldbacks. He retired early, all over a little candy and a lot of patience.

- Originally mailed to J. Ransom Raper in Batesville, Arkansas.

Cake Die

Sonya Novaski was a devout gamer, so naturally when it came time for her birthday, she requested her cake be in the shape of a die, a six-sider out of consideration for the baker. This consideration did nothing to save the poor baker, however, for as serious as she was about her hobby, she insisted the die had to be fair and true.

“What?” asked the baker. “You intend to roll the cake?”

“Of course,” said Sonya. “It is a die, isn't it? And I expect a random result.”

The baker slaved for days, weeks, trying to find a cake that would be sturdy enough to be rolled hundreds of times but still soft enough to eat. He fretted over the icing and how to keep it from smudging and smearing. Finally after more hard labor than he was being paid for, he created the perfect cake. Six sides that, while uneven, produced a statistically perfect spread of numbers over one thousand rolls. It was a masterpiece of baking, a work of culinary and engineering perfection.

Sonya loved it, rolled it several times, and gave the baker a nod of approval. After playing a game of Settlers of Catan with the cake and another die (“Why didn't I order two?” she thought), she and her guests cut in to enjoy their delicious randomizer. It was chocolate, which Sonya hated. She couldn't complain, though. She had never specified the flavor, she realized. Besides, it was never really about eating the cake.

- Originally mailed to S. Donohue from Allen Park, Michigan

Concentrate of Thailand

Feeling misunderstood on an international level, Thailand felt they needed to promote an awareness of their customs and culture. Unfortunately, with the global economic downturn, they lacked the resources to do a full on world wide public relations effort. What they lacked in wealth, however, they made up for in two things: top notch researchers and pineapples. Through careful crop breeding and flavor manipulation, they distilled all that they felt it meant to be Thai and genetically encoded the taste of Thailand into their world famous pineapples.

When bottles appeared on store shelves and in kitchen pantries across the world, no one noticed. Not until the cracked open the safety seal and took that first sip of the nation's new pineapple juice did they notice the new flavor contained within. Like the nation's Buddhist past, the juice was a perfectly balanced blend of flavors with no one part overpowering another. Their taste buds danced to “Phleng Chat Thai,” and they savored the flavor of sixty-six million people with a GDP per capita of $9396. Mingling with the rich sweetness was the taste of tropical forests, green fields, and towering mountains. It tasted not of rice, but a thriving rice industry, and a culture deeply enriched by its agrarian roots. Though the pulp had been removed, the juice still had hints of respect toward one's ancestors and elders, and a strong spirit of generosity. It packed the energy of soccer and muai thai with the tranquility appropriate to the golf capital of Asia. Those who drank the juice felt a certain kinship for the small nation that they had not known before. True to the country's hopes, appreciation for Thailand blossomed in markets where the juice could be purchased. The effect was short lived, however, as people soon stopped purchasing the bottles. Though the experience was pleasant, former customers said, the juice didn't taste much like pineapples.

- Originally mailed to M. Blackwood of Los Angeles, California

Invisible Exits

Many people carried a very ill opinion of the owners of the Cornerstreet Cafe. They thought they were manipulative imprisoners of their clientèle. People who attended their establishment often felt trapped, like they were being held in the restaurant against their will. They would complain about being barred from the exits by iron fences or bathroom signs on a blank wall.

The owner and former magician Mister Santos Lizanne did this deliberately, but not the way people imagine. People said he put signs up where there was nothing, or made certain parts of his cafe impossible to reach. This was utterly false. However, through clever use of paint and lighting and forced perspective, he made the way appear blocked. He felt too many people in the world lacked faith in humanity and trust in each other. They had grown cold and distant and clung to the words taught at childhood, “stranger danger.” So he used optical illusions to show them that they could trust people. That if the sign said there was a way out, you could believe that there was a way out, even if you could not see it.

Mister Lizanne was a man of his word, but you just had to trust him on it.

- Originally mailed to D. Murphey from Ocean Springs, MS

The Judas Cow

“Tomorrow when they open the gates, do not follow me,” the cow they called Judas said to me.

“Why not?” I asked, for I was new to the pasture.

“They take you do your death!” he cried.

“That is absurd. Everyone knows they take you to Sunshine Valley where the grass is always tall and green. You don't get to go because you have no faith.”

“It is true! None who go ever return!”

“Here we have this field where there is hay and a roof over our heads and room to stretch and graze. I am milked daily so that my udders do not swell. If they wanted to kill us, why would they take such care of us?”

“They intend to eat you!” Judas said. “They carve the flesh from your bones and devour your body.”

“Nonesense. They have no claws, no sharp teeth. They lack the speed of wolves. Ha! As though these few creatures could overpower us or consume so many.”

“I know what I know,” said Judas and walked away.

The following day, we followed him up a ramp, but he was diverted at the last minute to another pen, his punishment for having no faith in Sunshine Valley. As I walked up the ramp, however, I couldn't shake what he had said. I decided, though too late for the decision to actually mean anything, that even if we were being led to the slaughter, the caretakers have been nothing but kind to me. I will not do them the unkindness of breaking our trust now.

- Originally mailed to J. Cox of New Oreleans, Louisiana

Motivational Doors

The Life Cafe decided early in its planning stages that all of its instructions would be presented in the form of motivational phrases and life advice. Their doors told people to “Push Hard.” At the order counter signs advised customers to “think before you act!” and “plan ahead!” Urinals advised customers to “be a straight shooter” and the signs above the bathroom sinks told customers to “do as you would have others do.” To cut down on food waste, which attracted raccoons and homeless people, plates and bowls had messages like “Don't give up!” and “Always finish what you start.” Their no refunds policy was followed with “You can't please everyone.”

The trickiest part of their grand vision was finding a way to convey food allergy information. Though they couldn't find any appropriate phrases about peanuts or shellfish, they did make a habit of listing ingredients and following the words of Titus Lucretius Carus particularly useful. “The food of one may be poison to another.”

- Originally mailed to J. Dunn from D'Iberville, Mississippi

Hipster Food

 

It's hard to believe this unassuming photo would change pop culture history. In the early part of the 21st century, portions of society known as “hipsters” would routinely share digital photographs or “pics” of their food before eating it, though the reason for this practice is the subject of much debate. Historians do agree, however, that Hugo Carpenter (1983-2092) changed this practice on a fundamental level in 2013. While others posted “instantgrams” of food to Facesbook, a primitive social media network where people bragged, plagiarized, and complained to win the most Likes, Hugo decided to embrace the hipster philosophy of celebrating a thing before it is another thing by sharing a photograph of his dinner “before it was food.” Soon, others emulated this food regression, which in turn inspired Noah Wilkins (1998-2088) to share an image of a cow in a wheat field with the caption “My cheese burger before it was ingredients.” This photographic regression escalated with photos of lakes which were “sodas before they were well water before they were clouds” and parents who were “macaroni and cheese before buying ingredients after having a kid and changing their eating habits to 'whatever the brat will eat' (my parents don't understand me).” The trend culminated in 2025 when Arabella Jones wrote a hundred thousand word annotated caption to a photograph of pure blackness, tracing the origins of her sushi all the way back to the Big Bang. This comment would eventually be published as the best-selling book My Dinner Before It Was Anything: How I Won the Hipster Internet. Following this seminal scholarly work that combined physics with geology, anthropology, history, sociology, and many other disciplines, the hipster movement fell apart, and camera sales plummeted to pre-internet lows.

- Originally mailed to M. Haley of Lake Orion, Michigan

Talking Salad

Oscar Wilde once said “When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.” For many, this is much hoped for money that is inherited from a lost loved one or a job that creates more problems than it solves. For one vegetarian animal rights activist, the gods had bigger plans. She would pray at night that the savages of the world would understand the suffering their food endured before reaching its plate. In the morning, her soy latte bemoaned the pain of being ground and boiled and her salad lunch cried at the agonies of being ripped from the mother vine and hacked to bits while still fresh and alive. By dinner, her perspective on food had completely changed. She would eat only nuts and fruit that had fallen from the tree, and of course meat she killed herself, the free range cow having had a fair chance to fight back.

- Originally mailed to K. Ballard of Owensborough, Kentucky

Skeletons Wait

Lawrence had a loyalty to his wife Shirley that could never be matched, so when their short trip to the grocer's for low fat, low sodium garden vegetable water crackers took longer than expected, he waited. When she searched the whole cracker aisle and came up empty, he waited. When she asked every employee, every manager, and eventually every customer where to find them, he waited. He waited while she personally checked the entire inventory, and waited when the manager told her there might be some on the truck next Tuesday. He waited through the salmonella scare, the factory strike. He waited through product discontinuations. The company went bankrupt and closed down and still he waited. After seven years, when another cracker company, Whitman's Wafers, created a similar product, his waiting paid off. His wife returned to the car, tried one, and lamented that they were not as good as the old ones and she would have to find a different sort of snack to satiate her craving. His ghost agreed and he waited while she returned for the store for a quick peek around.

- Originally mailed to  H. Ainsworth of Gulfport, Mississippi

Ming

Ming loathed his nickname. It was wholly unfair. He wasn't merciless. Yes, from time to time opponents would threaten his power or his life and he would be forced to dispense righteous violent justice upon them. This, he would say, was not a lack of mercy but simply common and reasonable practice. One cannot abide traitors or assassins if one's government is to have any sort of stability. For this they called him merciless? What about the puppies he adopted, or the time he took everyone in the office to lunch at the food court? No one would dare call him merciless now, not if they wanted a brownie with their sandwich and lemonade.

- Originally mailed to B. Bowser in Brandon, Mississippi