Pear-ish the Thought

Today's Weird Li’l SIS:  Pear today, gone tomorrow
Date:                    10-26-13
Location:                My back yard
                        

As I'm standing here cooking breakfast, there's a deer outside eating the last of the fruit from under my pear tree. Stupid deer. I hate them. They shit all over my yard. If it didn't require extraordinary effort on my part, I would run right out and smack that deer upside the head with my frying pan. Of course I would never catch it, and I don't want to be known amongst the neighbors as that guy who chases deer with a frying pan. Especially since I'm not wearing pants yet.

To add insult to injury, my dog apparently believes that the tender little nuggets of deer poop are Milk Duds, and she scarfs them up like a suicidal diabetic. I believe the dog and the deer share the same stupid brain, and when she eats deer poop, I'd like to smack her upside the head with my frying pan too. The wife has a problem with that, though. She's fond of both the dog and the good frying pan.

But let's stay on course. The pears are the real enemy here. As much as I hate deer and deer-poop eating dogs, I really hate pears. Pears have no business being part of the biosphere, and should be rounded up and driven off a cliff like lemmings or Kardashians. And since I don't endorse mass fruiticide lightly, here's the reasoning behind my anti-pear stance.

Pears are Asymmetrical

Real fruit (apples, oranges, Oxycontin) look pretty much the same as you spin them on their vertical axes. That's harmony and balance achieved through evolution. Pears, on the other hand, have weird little tops that twist and turn like a Bill Clinton congressional testimony or, if Paula Jones is to be believed, his genitalia. (I realize that's a really dated reference, but pears have sucked for a very long time, so it's still in play.) Just so you know, contorted, asymmetrical protrusions are nature's way of telling you that you are a biological dead-end, and natural selection is probably not picking you up again for the fall season. By their very shape, pears are basically screaming, "Don't look at me! I'm a hideous mutant just waiting to go extinct." Anything that desperate should not be trusted.

Pears are Teases

They sit on the limb for over a month with their bulbous, come hither shape looking fairly edible.  Go ahead, pick one and take a bite.  I dare ya'. Remember the old balsa wood airplanes you could buy when you were a kid? Ever bite one? Same exact taste as a September pear. No big deal, you think, my fault. I just need to let it get ripe a little longer. Although that won't happen until sometime in October, you'd better pull up a chair, clear your calendar and start waiting now. Because when they do ripen, you only have about six seconds, at which point the weight of the swarm of bees that forms on a newly ripened pear causes it to crash to the ground and it immediately starts rotting. Within moments, all the pears from any given season are lying on the ground, turning into vinegar, and being jealously protected by a swarm of bees. But you still gotta' clean them up, or your yard starts to smell like a great big douche.

Pears Taste Like Shit

Pear pie, pear jelly, pear shortcake, pear upside down cake, pears in a blanket. You know why you don't know anyone with a good recipe for these desserts? They don't exist. And yet people preserve pears too, but not because they crave pears all year round and want to capture that taste in a bottle. No, people preserve pears because they hope they can store them long enough until someone actually comes up with something better to do with them. They are like the Walt Disney's head of fruit. Admittedly, there is one edible thing you can make with pears. It's a lot of work, but you can make pear sauce. With a lot of boiling, peeling, grinding and the right amount of added cinnamon, nutmeg and brown sugar, it tastes just like apple sauce. You know what else tastes just like apple sauce, though? Fucking apple sauce, that's what, and you can buy that anywhere for next to nothing! At their best, pears are posers.

Pears are gritty

Gritty? Really? Is that even a fruit adjective? Sweet, crisp, juicy, tart, mouth-watering: these are fruit adjectives. But gritty? That's not even remotely appetizing. Ever see a child eating an apple and the thing pops out of his hand and falls in a sandbox? If he picks it up and starts eating it again, he's pretty much eating a pear. In no version of reality is that appetizing. And if your kid enjoyed eating apples he dropped in a sandbox, you'd take him in for a psychiatric evaluation. We should do the same for people who say they like pears.

Okay, I'm done ranting.  I feel better.  I'm going to put on some pants now and go rake up the rotting pears, because even though it's mid-morning in late October, around here it's beginning to smell a lot like a Summer's Eve.

m. karvinen