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!

the ballad of sassy and romeo

Dear Peanut Guy,

if i could ask one Question i would ask: is my dog sassy my old dog romeo?

~Kara, age 11

dear kara,

thank you for your spirited, if dumb, question. due to my long streaks of absence, it's no wonder my inbox is privy to such drivel. as my scores of dedicated readers know, 2007 is the sesquicentennial "année d'irresponsabilité" for all elder legumes of the peanut clan. once every 150 years we ritually forsake our duties in solemn praise to the lordly peanut slackers of old, without whose surly, unyielding apathy we would surely not rule mankind with a salty fist. hence the current whimsy with which i approach my letter-answering.

[you, dear reader, have no such excuse. email me your questions posthaste : the peanut guy at gmail dot com, or we shall all be forced to infinitely revisit karaesque blathering fortnightly].

now then, kara. regarding sweet, palsied sassy and your beloved, toothless romeo. lucky for you, the peanut scriptures have scrawled unfathomable quantities of scholarly text on the subject of canine reincarnation. each singular word would shake you to your pitiful core, young kara. to breathe but a syllable of these spiritual wonders would set thy tongue aflame with infinite dancing peanut devils programmed in ancient times to spring to life in the fiery mouths of the unworthy and feed upon their fierce dog-love until naught but a withered shell remains.

thankfully, peanut guy is totally effing worthy. i shall translate from ancient peanutese:

• in the afterlife, dog-souls are swept into a great, pearl vat and seasoned with rose petals and thyme over a slow boil for maximum corporeal rejuvenation. they remain in this "gestation period" for two-to-three afterlife weeks, which is roughly one to two weeks here on earth.


• one by one they are extracted by an enchanted williams & sonoma turkey baster and deposited into one of many earth-bound dog-tubes.


• these tubes project the soul-zygote at speeds of up to five seconds per hour into the womb of any presently active dog-wombs.


• in dogs, the soul rests in wombs, whereas in cats the soul rests in sperms. this is why cats can't reincarnate.


• dogs named "scruffy", "stormy," and "romeo" are immediately dispatched to vat B upon death, where they are withheld seasoning and primed for dead-end clerical positions in accounting at dog-pergatory headquarters.

so, in short, no.

with love,
the peanut guy!