rise of the phoethanix

Dear Peanut Guy,

I am the youngest of five kids. Am I doomed to be the typical spoiled baby of the family? Do you have any advice to help me survive the teasing of three older brothers and the babying my sister gives me? Seriously, she thinks I am a big dress up doll to play with. Help!

~Ethan, age 3 (asked via his mother)

dear ethan,

ah, the dismal existence of the dress-up toddler-puppet. not only must you succumb to the treacherous whims of your siblings; your very own tyrant of a mother now commands thy voice like some depraved, sadistic ventriloquist. has she but placed a spell on you, ethan? or does she even now rule your thoughts with sinewy brain-strings wrought from her psychotic puppeteer-gland, thus commandeering the Brainship Ethan in malevolent contempt of all things righteous? has she become the heinous inquisitor-czar of the fruit of her own loins?

free ethan!

i assure you, ethan: peanut guy can relate. as a soft-rinded legumeling in the sweet georgian nutpatch of my birth, i too was dressed up by my larger, if imbecilic peanut kin. oh how ken kenningken would squeal in bestial mirth when he affixed the miniature oil funnel to my dome, placed a wee buttercup inside, and pronounced me "johnny buttercup" to the savage delight of all but peanut guy!

and how my wrathful might rained down on ken and his sect of villainous kudzu-worshipping miscreants years later when the Peanut Armada paid a little visit to kenningken island.

thus, ethan: to break the shackles of your wretched siblings; to free yourself from the vile charisma rays of your marauding mother; i urge you to leave your nutpatch and set sail for a life on the open sea, where the salt is neverending and the stalks ever-quenched. there shall you find the strength and the seafood to rise up like some haunting, ungodly union of man and phoenix (phoethanix?) and dress your siblings in car parts and flora for millennia to come.

enormously,
johnny buttercup!