Author: Threeyzmonkeys

Ice cream

Dear Steven,

I had an ice cream today. I got one of those soft-serve things. You know the kind? Tall and beautiful. Looks like one of the turrets of a medieval French palace, if it had been made out of ice cream and not brick. So, I got one of those. And it was a cold day, so I knew I wouldn’t have any problem with it melting. It was -35℃ and blizzard conditions. The other people at the South Pole station wanted to know how I managed to get myself a soft-serve ice cream. I had to tell them that I’d ordered the machine on Amazon. Unfortunately, the south pole is one of the few places Amazon doesn’t deliver to, so I got the pilot that flies our supplies out every month to dump something else and bring it. I mean, what do you think people would rather have? An AED machine, or a soft-serve ice cream machine? Am I right or am I right? So, I made a glorious ice cream, sat on a chair and watched some penguins sliding around. But the ice cream was so cold it froze to my lips. I tried breathing on it, but the ice cream had frozen my mouth shut. I couldn’t call for help because the wind was too loud, and I couldn’t open my mouth anyway. I tried to get one of the penguins to sit on my face to melt the ice cream, but they didn’t want to. In the end, I had to go back in and sit next to the heater. The doctor thinks I might lose all of my fingers. He kept asking me why I hadn’t worn gloves. I told him that you can’t eat an ice cream with gloves on because it would make them all sticky. I don’t know how I’m going to use the soft-serve machine if I don’t have any fingers. Hmm. Or hold the ice cream cone! Maybe I could just flick the lever on with my head and then just let it pour into my mouth. I’ll let you know what I decide.

Your friend,

Kevin

Bags

Dear Steven.

I went to the shop today. I only wanted to buy a bag. I got to the cash desk and asked for the bag. And a very nice lady gave me a bag. It was beautiful. Had a ladybird on it. And then I asked for a bag to put the bag in. And she looked at me as though I was crazy. But, why is that crazy? If you buy anything else, you get s bag to put it in. So, why wouldn’t I get a bag for my bag? After about 30 seconds of staring at each other, she gave me a bag. And I put my bag in the bag. But then I realised the situation I had put myself in. Because now I had no bag to put my bag for my bag in. So I looked at her, and she looked at me, and I said, “can I have a bag to put my bag for my bag in?” She blinked slowly. And then she gave me a bag. Now I didn’t know what to do because I had a bag for my bag for my bag, but what did I put that in? So I said to her, “can I have a bag?” She looked at me. I looked at her. She reached under the counter for a bag. She started to slowly pull it out. The second it hit the counter, “can I have a bag?” Bang. “Can I have a bag?” Bang. “Can I have a bag?” Bang. “Can I have a bag?” Bang. “Can I have a bag?” Bang. “Can I have a bag?” Bang. It became a game. A challenge. A meeting of minds. Who would blink first? Well, she did. She ran out of bags. And I struggled home with my mountain of bags.

Your friend

Kevin

Time travel

Dear Steven,

Have you ever wanted to travel through time? I bet you have. I know I have. When would you go to? I have always wanted to go back to … ahem … that day. You know the one I’m talking about. If I could change that one day, maybe a lot of the other things that have happened in my life wouldn’t have happened. Who’s to say? Anyway, I can’t travel back in time. I don’t know how to. But, I have come up with a time machine that will let you travel into the future. Well, not any point in the future. It will only let you travel within your own lifetime. But, still, that’s pretty cool, right? I’m calling it the Disconbobulator. No, wait, my name’s not Bob. New name: the DisconKevinulator!! Oh yeah! It’s pretty simple to use. It looks very much like a standard stopwatch. (It’s not though!) You decide how far into the future you want to go, press start, and the DisconKevinulator takes you there. Say, for example, I want to go an hour into the future. I press start, and in exactly one hour, I have gone an hour into the future! I’m a genius! I am definitely getting the Nobel prize for this one. So far, I haven’t tested it on anything longer than a week, but it worked. I wanted to see what I was doing a week on Saturday. I pressed start, watched the little numbers whizz around, and there I was, one week on Saturday! This is an incredible invention. I will send you yours as soon as I can.

Your friend,

Kevin.

Squirrel donkey

Dear Steven

Have you ever tried to ride a squirrel? No. Wait. That’s a stupid question. I’m sorry. Nobody could ride a single squirrel. They’re tiny. “Have you ever tried to ride a squirrel donkey?” is what I mean. I feel that needs some explaining. A squirrel donkey is many (turns out 156 is the magic number) squirrels tied together in the form of a donkey. You put a lightweight saddle on top and off you go. It’s actually not as easy as it sounds. I’ll tell you how I did it. First, you have to get yourself some squirrels. This is the easy part. Just leave piles of nuts in your garden every day for a week and the squirrels flock to you. Then you have to catch them. I tried with tiny lassos at first. That didn’t work. Then I tried nets. That was too difficult. Finally, I hit on drugs. I drugged the nuts. I’m not going to tell you what with, because then we get into the whole “how did you get your hands on drugs like that? Who gave them to you?” line of questioning and I don’t want to go there. Suffice it to say, I was able to drug a lot of squirrels. While they were asleep, I tied them all together with string. It was kind of tricky to get them all tied and in position and it took longer than I’ d expected. I had to redrug them every now and again. Still, patience is a virtue, and I had my squirrel donkey. You would have thought it would be easy to ride, but you would have thought wrong. It was not easy. The squirrels wouldn’t stay still, and they wouldn’t go in the same direction. They ended up going round and round in circles. I hadn’t taken account of their teeth, either, It’s not that difficult for a squirrel to chew through a piece of string. My squirrel donkey that took days of planning and hours to make, ended up coming to pieces in about 4 minutes. I never even got to ride on it. And now, whenever I go outside, the squirrels throw things at me. I think I may have made an enemy for life here.

Your friend,
Kevin

Fun-eral

Dear Steven,

I was asked to make a presentation today. It’s always nice to be wanted. I was asked to talk about the use of cleaning products in the work place, a topic that you know I hold dear to my heart. I spent a lot of time making the slides. I wanted it to be perfect. Just the right balance of pictures and text. The perfect presentation. Just enough animation to make my point, but not so much that people would be put off. I was up all night. It was a wonder … a true beauty to behold. And I memorized the speech as well. I had jokes, anecdotes, thought provoking points. It was exciting, funny, emotional. You name it, it was in the speech. You’d be hard pressed to find a better speech in any TED forum or university lecture hall. It was one of those things that are so good, you can say, “Ok. I can die now. My life is complete.” I got to the hall early. I didn’t want to get anything wrong. I found the computer they had set up and loaded my presentation. It all worked. I checked it twice. Then I sat down and waited for everyone else to come in. We started. We sang some hymns first. I hadn’t expected that. A lot of people were crying. Other people talked. I was really nervous and didn’t listen much. Then it was my turn. I set all my cleaning products out on this strange table and got going. It was a flop! Nobody laughed at my jokes. Not a single person! Even the one about how the TV shows were wrong and you could clean up blood from a crime scene! Then they dragged me out. I wasn’t even halfway through. Somebody kept yelling something about “fun-eral”! I mean, what is a “fun-eral” anyway? I didn’t have any fun! They threw my cleaning products at me and I never even got my USB back. All that work! Not going there again.

Your friend,
Kevin

Alien

Dear Steven,

I saw an alien today! Wait. I know what you’re thinking! You’re thinking it’s going to be something stupid, like a car, or a microwave. But it was real! A real alien! I saw it! I was walking home from the post office and I heard it rustling behind the recycling bins at the edge of the park. You know the ones? Clothes, bottles, cans, plastic, stuff like that. I get a lot of my clothes there. You know? The one I got stuck in for five days last summer. Well, I heard the alien rustling behind there. It was looking for something. Now, to be honest, my first thought was that it’s probably a raccoon, or a dog, or something like that. But, then I thought of ET! Have you seen it? There’s that scene where ET makes a spacephone out of the trash and things he finds lying around Eliot’s house. You remember? Well, I thought, it must be that. So, I crept closer. I got really close. I lay down and squeezed myself under one of the bins. I got covered in some pretty yucky stuff, but that’s nothing to an explorer like me. I got so close. I could almost reach out and touch it. Black it was. With white bits. The end of its tail was white. And one of its feet. It had four feet. It was so alien! Furry. I guess it came from a cold planet. It was about a foot tall. Then it saw me, hissed, jumped about four feet over a wall, and disappeared through a bush. I bet its spaceship was through there! You should have seen it jump! There must be lower gravity on the planet it came from! Awesome. Not a bad day!

Your friend
Kevin

Office chair wheels

Dear Steven,

Have you ever wondered how fast the wheels on an office chair can go? Well, you don’t have to wonder anymore. It is 82 miles an hour. I did the experiment for you. You’re welcome. Although, in all honesty, I didn’t really do it for you. Or in the name of science, for that matter. No. I rolled into town on my office chair to save the rubber on my new shoes. Then, while gazing in the window of a kitchen shop, I somehow got the straps of my backpack caught on the back of a bus. Unfortunately, (or fortunately for our experiment) it turned out to be an intercity bus that traveled on the highway. Also unfortunately, (or fortunately) the driver had a heavy foot. So, how do I know the speed? The police pulled us over after about an hour and a half. “Do you know how fast you were going? 82 miles an hour! Here’s a ticket. Oh. And by the way, there’s a guy on an office chair that’s been following you for the last hour and a half. ” The bus driver unhitched me. The bus and the police drove off. It took me two days and nights to get the 103 miles back home on my office chair. Still, what an experiment, hey?

Nut

Dear Steven,

I was in the toilet today, doing what you do in the toilet. You know? Training Robert the Squirrel to flush after himself. I was sitting there and my attention got drawn towards this bright, shiny nut on the top of the pipe. It was almost hypnotic. I could see everything in the room reflected in it and it looked so cool and perfect. I wanted it. You know what I mean? I wanted to have it in my pocket so I could hold it whenever I’m stressed. You must have things like that. So, I put Robert back in his cage and went to get my wrench. I knew I was going to have to be careful because I didn’t want to scratch that fabulously shiny surface. I took off my underpants and gingerly put them over the nut, then applied the wrench. It took more power than I would have imagined. I pulled, strained, grunted, and “pop”, it came off! And I had it in my hand!! A glorious memento! There was one thing that I hadn’t considered though, which, with hindsight, should have been the first thing I thought of. The nut was holding back a large volume of high-pressure water. I’m writing this four hours later and it still hasn’t stopped. It’s almost worn a hole through the ceiling. I guess I could call a plumber to fix it. But, they cost a lot of money. And, anyway, it’s not my house. You should see this nut! It is incredible!

Your friend,
Kevin

Plow

Dear Steven,

I plowed my first field today! I know! I’m pretty impressed as well. I was eating my cornflakes when I had the strongest urge to go out and plow something. I’d never done it before, but I had a good idea that you needed oxen. And a plow, of course. I had no idea if they even have oxen here, but I remembered there’s a petting zoo in town for the next week. It’s on that bit of open land next to the bank. You know where I mean? They didn’t have any oxen, but they had a donkey and a sheep. So, I “borrowed” them. Ha ha. I thought it would be harder, but all I had to do was hold out a bag of carrots and they followed me. Nobody even noticed! Then I needed a plow. It had to be sharp and it had to be heavy. Luckily, I just happened to have my wheelbarrow with me. I knocked the front wheel off and used a rock to hammer the frame into a kind of sharp point. I filled it with bricks to give it weight, then, with a bit of rope I found, we were good to go. The donkey was better at pulling than the sheep. He seemed to have more of a knack for it. The sheep was more interested in the grass. Before we started, I’d had an image of me riding the plow, like a gladiator on a chariot, but I ended up walking in front of them doling out carrots and grass. Still, we had fun. And we plowed! How many people can say they have plowed a field? Well, it wasn’t really a field. It was the 14th hole of the golf course. And we didn’t get to plow much because they called the police. But, still, we plowed!! Yeah! And the donkey and sheep liked it so much, they don’t want to leave! What an awesome day! A plowed field and two new pets. I’m going to call the donkey Floyd and the sheep Big Red!

Your friend,
Kevin.

Bus

Dear Steven,

I got stuck on the bus again today. It seems to happen every Wednesday when I go to see the Colonel. We meet up every week to talk philosophy and play a quick game of Twister. He has bad arthritis and the beginnings of Parkinson’s disease, so I usually win. But, I haven’t seen him for seen weeks now because I keep getting stuck on the number 47 bus. I should have learned after the first three times, but it just keeps happening. The problem is my skis, you see. I can get on the bus with them, buy my ticket, and then walk down the aisle because I am going in a straight line and I’m being careful. But, when I sit down, they get tangled under the seat in front of me and I cannot get out. It doesn’t help that the ski boots are so stiff. Every week I’m stuck on the bus until it gets back to the bus yard and the driver can help me out. It was seven hours last Wednesday. The bus driver said I should stop wearing skis when I get on the bus. He said it’s a stupid thing to do. I told him I have to practice for our skiing holiday this winter. He said there is no point on any skiing holiday where you would have to wear your skis on a bus. But, he would say that, wouldn’t he? He’s just annoyed because he has to help me out each time. He says that he won’t stop next week if he sees me in skis. He will though. He has to.

Your friend
Kevin