Can You Mail a Sandwich? Part 2
A comedy article
by Texicus  158  4
05/26/2011 05:28 PM 4747 views
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My hypothesis was that the United States Postal Service could deliver a sandwich to my friend, all the way across the country, while it was still fresh enough to eat. (read Part One here).
PHASE TWO: THE ARRIVAL OF THE SANDWICH
The worst things come in small packages.
I am sitting on the couch reading the newspaper when I receive an early morning phone call from Mike, who sounds groggy. The sandwich has arrived. Apparently it arrived yesterday, but he put in a long shift, and didn't want to reward himself with food poisoning after work. He says that he intends to eat it right now. I get my things and listen intently. He walks around his home looking for his digital camera, only to find Xerxes.
Xerxes assisting Mike in finding the camera.
The sandwich had been shipped on a Friday, and arrived on a Monday after its pan-American Journey. It had spent four full days in the heat of summer, and near the groin of a mailman.
Mike confesses that the box, has an UNHOLY stench. I ask him to define unholy stench. He makes comparisons to his childhood, which was spent pulling the corpses of horses out of a ravine. Apparently, this is a popular children's pastime in Texas.
The sandwich has made the trip in one piece, but the fruit is questionable. With trepidation in his voice, he begins to remove the sandwich from the parcel with all the care of an explosives disposal technician.
"I have survived, mortals"
Mike, astonished, says the sandwich has arrived untouched, unbroken, in all of its greasy goodness. I am amazed. He carefully sets the sandwich down to see how the fruit has fared. In a word, poorly. The clementine orange -- or as Mike refers to it, "The Frost-ing tangerine you sent me, you bastard" -- has fared well enough. (He's not actually angry, this is how we talk to one another.) Mike attributes its survival to the "impenetrable" skin that all oranges naturally possess.
Two spherical objects in a sack, insert joke. Zing.
The plum did not fare so well, it smelled like prison wine.
It had to be placed on a napkin, it was leaking a "curious fluid."
Mike describes the plum as smelling like a combination of awful beer and mildew. He puts the sandwich on a plate, describing it as the "consistency of warm Jell-O." He says the sandwich is partially warm, and smells faintly of rot.
At this point, I realize how dangerous this experiment is. I thought the sandwich would arrive with black mold spores, nobody would eat it, I would throw it up on the internet and everyone would have a laugh. Since there are no signs of growth or contamination, we're in that middle ground of, "Is it deadly, or is it delicious?"
I decide to err on the side of caution: I won't kill my friends with sandwiches, for they make lousy assassins. I tell Mike that he is under NO obligation to eat the sandwich, and like a duelist firing his shot into the sky instead of his opponent, honor has been satisfied without pain or hardship.
The secrets of the universe may be inside me, but you must taste me to find out...
Mike is a different sort of human being. He is curious, hopeful, and won't back down from the threat of horrible gastrointestinal pain or doom. Mike won't surrender his initial resolve to eat the sandwich. I ask him, "Mike, are you really sure you want to eat this sandwich?" He waits. He thinks. He replies, "My honor is at stake."
I try to stop him anyway, because that's what Japanese soldiers probably said before the fatal Banzai charge. "Mike, I really think..."
I am interrupted with Mike's battle cry, which happens to be "EXCELSIOR!" today. I hear him chew into the sandwich, with none of that familiar crunch of a grilled cheese. There is something completely else. I hear chewing, I hear horrible gagging noises, I hear swearing, I hear someone trying to fight their instinct to projectile vomit by clenching their teeth together.
Okay, I contain no secrets, after all. Only pain.
And then there is the regretful moaning. The moaning continues unabated for a few minutes before Mike is able to speak again. He takes a tiny, exploratory bite and explains the full "flavor" of the sandwich to me. He says that it tastes revolting, like rancid butter and soggy bread. The cheese he doesn't even remember tasting. I tell him to put the sandwich away, but he interrupts me: "I gotta take another bite."
There are more gagging sounds. Silently, I applaud his tenacity and resolve. The moaning returns, this time more pained. I can tell he is not enjoying this at all. His honor, however, seems satisfied by ingesting this horrible buttery doom. A sandwich shipped through the mail to his door. By request.
He tells me that the sandwich tastes like angel food cake that's been soaked in butter and left outside for a week. Then he begins yelling. "THE TASTE IS STUCK IN MY TEETH." That doesn't make quite as much sense as "I can't get the taste out of my mouth," but then again I have never eaten a butter-soaked sandwich that some Emerson sent me in the mail.
Mike informs me he isn't going to eat the fruit, as he has concerns about getting a DUI: the fruit has fermented into prison toilet-wine. Mike gives me more notes on the sandwich. "It melts in your mouth dude, in the bad way." I ask him if he could taste the cheese in the sandwich. He says "No, not at all, it just tastes like curdled butter." I try to control myself from gagging, and I'm not even there.
The rarely-seen "continental lunch"
The Osama bin Laden treatment: DUMPED
After the incident, Mike and I chat as two people that have endured horrible pain together. It is the same sort of casual conversation an interrogator and detainee might have after the waterboarding makes a "breakthrough." Mike sounds weary, as though the sandwich took a chunk out of his spirit.
He sounds damaged, but more or less intact. Slightly before I hang up though, he starts complaining of horrible stomach cramps, and vowing to "destroy his toilet."
CONCLUSION: You probably shouldn't mail a taste of home. It's dangerous.
More of Tex can be found at his blog, The Black Pants Legion.
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Like This? Rate It!
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Hilarious
21 votes
4.2
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Hilarious
3 votes
4.0
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Thud 68,525  19
05/26/2011 05:55 PM
Nice work. Aren't you glad you got "Mike" to eat it? He'll eat anything, won't he?
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Funny
3 votes
3.3
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just plain Jeen 47,815 51
05/26/2011 08:10 PM
Welcome, Texicus. Nice experiment. Gross! Is your other brother's name Davidicus?
By the way, your site didn't come up for me. (That's what she said.)
Service Unavailable
Error 503
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Chuckleworthy
3 votes
2.7
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Bill the Squirrel 53,270 54
05/26/2011 10:33 PM
Great Article! If John sees it, he'll post it to the front page. AND.... He'll fix it so you can link from one article to the other one. Tell Mike he needs to log on so I can click him too.
/ or \serious (I haven't decided yet)
Where's my sandwich, Bitch? I asked over the internet. You have to do it.
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Funny
4 votes
3.2
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UnderWhere? 101,398 77
05/27/2011 06:07 AM
Hey, Ollie once mailed me a peanut butter & jelly sammich. Oregon to Texas. It looked fine when it arrived, didn't smell. I wouldn't eat it though - I mailed it overseas to Jade. She kept it for like 3 years. By that point it was as hard as a brick but still had absolutely NO visible mold. It just looked like a PB&J.
Her father threw it in the trash.
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Funny
2 votes
3.0
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just plain Jeen 47,815 51
05/27/2011 07:01 AM
I think the real butter did it in. If he did it with margarine, it would probably not have soured. It would still taste like Shakespeare, though.
I leave butter out on the counter (covered, of course!), and in the warm months found I should only leave a quarter stick or so, so it doesn't go sour and smell like baby puke.
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Funny
1 votes
3.0
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John Hargrave 128,751 73
05/27/2011 11:41 PM
Incredible first effort, Tex. I laughed out loud at "prison toilet-wine."
Welcome to ZUG. You're going live on the homepage now.
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Funny
6 votes
3.2
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Whistler 186,138 44
05/28/2011 12:36 AM
The plum did not fare so well, it smelled like prison wine.
Bill the Squirrel just wiped away a nostalgic tear.
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Chuckleworthy
5 votes
2.6
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Texicus 158 4
05/28/2011 02:32 AM
Epilogue:
Mike informs me that the after effects of the Sandwich were Horrific. He does insist, fully, however that he "Regrets NOTHING" and wished he had eaten the plum so he could have spit poison at people. Like a boss.
-Tex-
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Funny
3 votes
3.0
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TheFoye 55,700 16
05/28/2011 09:21 AM
Yes you can mail a sandwich if done right. I had a friend order me a Philly cheese steak once because I told him I had one before and it was "alright". He had to prove to me that in Philly they are superior. I have to agree after tasting it. It was not cheap though.
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Hilarious
3 votes
4.0
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Texicus 158 4
05/28/2011 09:35 AM
I could have done things the right way, but it certainly would have been a completely different article altogether. It turned out better than my first thought, which was to mail a bowl of oatmeal. Still considering that one.
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Funny
6 votes
3.5
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Bill the Squirrel 53,270 54
05/28/2011 09:44 AM
The plum did not fare so well, it smelled like prison wine.
Bill the Squirrel just wiped away a nostalgic tear.
*sniff*
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Chuckleworthy
2 votes
2.5
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Bill the Squirrel 53,270 54
05/28/2011 09:44 AM
Aw, who am I kidding? That stuff tasted like Shakespeare.
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Funny
5 votes
3.4
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Mary Kitt-Neel 2,902 10
05/28/2011 11:48 AM
In the early 90s I made friends with a group of scientists from the former Soviet Union, and they insisted on bringing gifts with them when they visited. On one visit they brought me a bottle of Soviet cognac. Now, I don't have the sophisticated palate to be able to tell it from prison wine, but that Shakespeare was potent and scary. The only time I ever drank it was when I broke my ankle and needed a distraction. I am convinced that had Mike had access to some Eastern Bloc hooch, it would have wiped the taste out of his mouth completely (and probably taken thousands of taste buds out in the process).
(Another time they brought Soviet cigarettes and enjoyed watching their Western friends turn green and cough up bits of lung when they tried them. Good times.)
Unfortunately, I lost the precious libation, as well as the Russians, in a nasty divorce, so I'll never get to test out my theory that it could counteract Postal grilled cheese. *cries softly*
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Funny
5 votes
3.4
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Bill the Squirrel 53,270 54
05/28/2011 12:53 PM
Now, I don't have the sophisticated palate to be able to tell it from prison wine, but that Shakespeare was potent and scary.
Let me enlighten you. If you're getting Frosted in the ass by a thick necked guy named Bubba while drinking it, it's prision wine.
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Chuckleworthy
2 votes
2.0
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Dogs Akimbo 211,626 32
05/30/2011 11:38 AM
they brought me a bottle of Soviet cognac
It was probably Armenian cognac. Which means they truly liked you.
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Chuckleworthy
3 votes
2.7
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CrackedBag 198 6
05/31/2011 02:37 AM
Speaking of prison wine, once in college my mom sent me some homemade cornbread. I decided the best course of action was to hide it from my roommate...but in the process I hid it from myself. Several months later, I discovered the fermented goodness still wrapped nicely. Naturally in college, anything fermented is fair game, so we seriously considered tasting it. I don't remember the next few years after that.
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Chuckleworthy
1 votes
2.0
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Terry_Jim 2 4
06/11/2011 11:43 PM
Next time, try Express Mail.
On second thought, a mailing success
wouldn't have been funny at all.
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Chuckleworthy
2 votes
2.5
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charlie guitea 29 8
06/25/2011 01:47 PM
Have a look for 'will it post' on youtube, its some English college students that have tried posting everything from spoons to cactii
Awesome experiment!
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Chuckleworthy
2 votes
2.5
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Fratberry 283,052 53
02/01/2012 09:01 PM
I missed this the first time around. It is bump worthy. So sayeth Bumpy Worthington. Shut it.
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