As with every Sunday, I “had to” work on Easter — it’s when I write the stories for True (and edit the ones that come in from the writers). I pull together 10 or more stories each Sunday (11 yesterday, as it happens, plus one that I’ll be adding to the blog later since it must include a photo).
It came together quickly and well, which left me a bit bored. I decided to have a little fun on Twitter. I “tweeted”:
Was going to get Peeps for Easter, but couldn’t find any that were cage-, hormone- & antibiotics-free. Demand organic Peeps!
I quickly followed up with:
Dunno if it’s true, but I hear Peeps’ feed includes bodies of other Peeps who died in their cages! Demand free-range Peeps!
My goal was to get some good reactions from others who were also a bit bored — and I got them!
I Actually Wouldn’t Consider Eating One
If you don’t know what “Peeps” are, by the way, they’re a marshmallow-based candy shaped like chicks which are — for some unknown reason — popular at Easter.
My assistant Becky was working too, sitting behind me, and I could hear her chuckling at what I was doing. She quickly weighed in:
I hear they cut off the Peep’s beaks to keep them from fighting through the cages, too. It’s just cruel.
About the same time, I thought of something else to add:
It’s a tragedy that they’re grown in cages, away from natural sunlight, being force-fed to fatten them up.
Well, that did it: other readers started to weigh in. There were scores of “Likes” on Facebook, and lots of comments. Here are the best:
- I just threw up a blue peep. YUCK -Tami
- Organic? I’m not sure there’s anything actually edible in a peep. -Larry
- Is it wrong then to put them in the microwave and watch ’em swell to ridiculous sizes? Just asking… -David
- Don’t they realize that [feeding them other, dead Peeps] can lead to peepine spongiform encephalopathy (aka mad peep disease)? -Tom
- I hear they’re left in the sun to bleach out after Easter and later used in making Twinkies. -Liz
And a number of people threw in the “Soylent Peeps” concept.
And The “Winner”
But surely the best comment by far:
- I hear peeps are trapped in groups of 12, for many days in cardboard cartons, sitting in their own sugar… -Ana-Marie
The thought of Peeps having to “sit in their own sugar” made me roar with laughter!
Thanks, all, for having fun with me!
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You are having WAY too much fun! The sitting in their own sugar is priceless. I want to grow up and be you….. or at least grow up and have your job…. but then again I don’t ever want to “grow up”…. so I’ll just continue enjoying reading what you write.
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Yep, this is a fun job. There certainly are headaches and stress moments, but all in all, it’s a fun job because I designed it to be, and enough people have responded to it to make it pay. I call it “The New American Dream”! -rc
Was going to get Peeps for Easter, but couldn’t find any that were cage-, hormone- & antibiotics-free. Demand organic Peeps!
The laughing started there. And just continued on through the responses. But you do realize, of course, don’t you, that you’re going to suffer some nasty “unsubscribes” from those who feel that it’s a slam on their Holy Cause (whichever Holy Cause, since it’s a combination of three or four readily identifiable ones).
“All Great Truths start out as blasphemies.” ~George Bernard Shaw
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Yeah, I realize that I’m treading on sacred ground — you know how holy marshmallow chicks are, I know (not to mention the Holy Bunny and its Multicolored Eggs), but I’ll just have to take that chance in my lifelong pursuit of Ultimate Truth. Oh, and Shaw was pretty darned wise sometimes! -rc
My heritage is Jewish, and my wife’s heritage is Catholic. Neither of us is observant. Our kids are now grown (the youngest is 22). However, several of my wife’s relatives are very observant, and some of their kids are teenagers… so of course we have an Easter Egg hunt. This year, for the first time, the hunt was at my new home.
(My side of the family has a long history of traditions celebrated on Christian holidays. For instance, every year we used to get together on Christmas to put together a jigsaw puzzle.)
Because of an incident that happened on Easter long ago, we don’t ever use “real” eggs. (One year we hid 40 eggs, we found 38 eggs. The next year we hid 40 eggs and found 41 eggs, but one of them was quite disgusting.) Instead, we find hollow plastic eggs, and fill them with candy, and in a few of them, we add a little bit of money.
Since my wife and I were going to host this year, I decided to find some “Passover eggs” — all I had in mind was some Easter Eggs with a Star Of David on the side, or maybe a picture of matzo, or even people wearing Yarmulkes. Alternatively, we would by plain eggs and some Jewish decals.
Shockingly, there is no such thing as a “Passover egg” and I simply couldn’t find the decals I wanted.
Am I really the only person in United States that would have purchased such a product?
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You might want to patent it immediately! Know any good lawyers? -rc
Randy, would it be considered cruel to bite the heads off of my peeps?
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Cruel, no. But be sure to look up the original (“carnival”) meaning of the word geek. -rc
Totally proud my “sugar” comment made you laugh. 🙂 I found your whole peeps posting very funny. Confession: I never eat peeps (or fruit cakes), I just pass them on to others.
Thanks for the Easter joy.
Passover eggs? Yes, there IS such a thing. We use (roasted) eggs on our Seder plate as part of the ritual meal the first 2 nights!
How about a kosher Cadbury (Easter) egg?
I stock up on peeps after Easter and let them get stale until camping season. They make great s’mores with the added bonus of grossing out my husband.
To Allan, Fontana CA: My wife and I are in a similar “mixed” marriage, and I can tell you that, along with the kids, we’ve made Easter/Passover eggs with with yarmulkes and stars of David. It just takes a little creativity and wax pencils.
(Picture of matzoh? What would a picture of a matzoh look like? Like a portrait of a cracker?)
Anyhow, I thought this was a very fun thread, totally goofball have-to-work-on-Sunday silliness. Peeps are such cheerful little balls of blech, whether pink, blue or yellow. (Collect them all!)
My mother loved them, at least in her waning, dementia-addled years, not sure about earlier when she had a lick o’ sense, I myself have a major sweet tooth and still won’t/can’t sink it in one of these treats. Must be those GMOs and Auntie Biotix, but those things don’t taste at all NATCHR’L — the wrapper is more convincingly FOOD than the product. But they ARE cute, bright, happy little goodies, gotta give ’em that! Just LOOK, don’t touch, and DON’T EAT!! (ew ick!)
Is this a trial balloon for your new newsletter: This Is Peep???
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Man, I thought you people liked me. But you want me to do more work? I’d be dead within the month. -rc
This is Peep? How much? Where’s the Subscription Page?! Sign me up! 😉
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Mr. Cassingham was found dead this afternoon at his computer. Anyone with a valid claim against his estate should file their claims in no more than 90 days. -The Executor
THIS WEEK’S HONORARY UNSUBSCRIBE goes to Randy Cassingham. Cassingham, a long-time writer of such online newsletters in the “This is…” line (including the most recent addition “This is Peep”), started his career as a journalist, but eventually ended up working as NASA’s JPL. In the early 1990s, as the WWW swept through nerdy places like JPL, and later started leaking into the general public, Randy realized that content would be the driving force of Internet growth. At the time there was precious little content available online. Long the bastion of nerds and academics, even the thought of online commercial activity was discouraged. There was no business model for Randy to follow when he came up with his idea for a weird news commentary column, so he created his own. In essence, he realized that his earlier dream of being a syndicated columnist could be accomplished online: he could use the Internet to bypass the gatekeepers of newspaper editors and large syndication agencies and speak directly to his audience.
However, it was his own success that led to his downfall, as his audience demanded even more “This is…” columns. While a couple of paragraphs sufficed in the 110BPS days of Teletypes, with bandwidths now reaching a million times that, he found it increasingly difficult to provide more than a few millisecond’s worth of content. He died this afternoon of an apparent buffer overflow.
In an ironic twist of fate, it was Cassingham who created this very “HU” list which he now joins.
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Heh! Pretty nicely done, Ken. However, while I did go to journalism school, I never worked in the field (unless you consider this “job” to be in the field). I went essentially directly from school to JPL, even if I was doing some freelance science writing on the side. -rc
Randy, you are having WAY too much fun, and it’s got to stop! Dammit, man, I’m paying you to WORK, not have FUN!
I cannot believe how many companies there are where I’ve heard that line. But the all-time classic has to be the one where I was threatened with a written reprimand for Excess Frivolity…(!) (And no, it wasn’t a hospital or funeral home, but a Fortune 100 manufacturing plant.)
I don’t wanna grow up ’cause
I’m a “This is True” kid…
Before his untimely demise, Randy’s faithful assistant anxiously waited by his deathbed, waiting to faithfully capture his last words so that she could share them with his thousands of subscribers.
Strangely enough, not a single peep escaped his lips.
NEWS BULLETIN!
Unable to find any peace in the Afterlife, Randy Cassingham was returned to Earth 4 scant days after his tragic “Peep Induced” demise.
Apparently, he had a “Get Out of Heck Free Card” in his pocket, and Satan had to honour it….
Heaven JUST wasn’t ready for the man. Especially what with him being on a Peep sugar jag. Votes were taken, and the entire population decided to send him back (for us to tease), and everyone also subscribed to his mailing list. Email servers round the world were overwhelmed. (SEE: The Truth behind the Sony crash.)
Meanwhile, members of an obscure Star Wars Jedi faith, are claiming Randy as one of their own.
Oh, well, All’s well that ends well. Peeps around the world rejoiced that Randy will never eat one of them again…..
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Um, are you saying, then, that I miraculously rose from the dead? Hm. That could be a disturbing precedent. -rc
This was great! A cheerful line of fun from beginning to end.
Tom in CO Spngs – You win the Spew Award! I was chuckling through the whole thing, but when I got to your “…not a peep…” post, there went the sip of tea. 😉
Thanks all.
On a separate note, my daughter was recently diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, so the Easter basket was rather un-sugary and bland. However, my wife decided to get her a little bit of candy and dole it out in small amounts. Peeps are actually mostly air, so there are not a lot of carbs in them. Funny thing, though, my daughter would rather play with them as if they were toy animals rather than eat them.
At my workplace things are rather informal and there are often pranks. One of the most “evil” is what we call “peepsing” someone’s office. It happened to my officemate once, and it wasn’t pretty. I have never seen so many peeps in my life. They even opened up a clear glass water bottle and dropped Peeps into the water to float there. I still have an image seared into my brain of him shaking the bottle experimentally, and the peeps flying apart into a thousand disgusting rainbow-colored pieces.
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The horror… the horror…. -rc
I have loved reading your “This is True” for years now, have not upgraded yet due to no work, but this last posting had me falling out of my chair. Love the peeps comments. I have always liked the peeps growing up but now I am afraid of eating them. Thanks for the laughs. You are awesome.
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Frankly, it’s probably smart that you’re afraid to eat them! -rc
“…my daughter would rather play with them as if they were toy …”
You’re lucky, my daughter would rather skewer them onto a straightened out paper clip and roast them over candle flame. EEEeeeeuuuww, do they ever STINK!
Mike in Dallas…I once received a “verbal warning” at work for being “too cheerful” when I arrived at 3pm to start my shift. After all, they’d been there since 7am and were tired and couldn’t tolerate happiness! Insane!