Today in Really, Really Bad Ideas

Satan's own testicles

Today, I had a great idea. A really brilliant idea. On one of my runs through campus, I had noticed a prickly pear cactus - and it was fruiting. I decided to go out in the evening, pick a bunch of fruit, and take them back to La Maison du Blonde, where I would proceed to make jelly out of them. It was foolproof: easy, free, and most importantly, it would distract me from this hell hole they call a college town.

Although cooks.com assured me that I needed leather gloves and BBQ tongs to pick the fruit, when I got out there, they looked so harmless: no big thorns, and definitely nothing that would necessitate BBQ tongs. I scoffed at cooks.com's hyperbole. I reached up and grabbed. I will henceforth refer to this as mistake number one.

The reason you can't see any visible stickers on the prickly pear fruit is because the entire goddamned thing is covered in miniscule, hairlike thorns. And now, so was my hand. I tried to use my other hand to brush them off, but as dermatology.org would tell me about an hour too late, this was mistake number two, because the thorns will stick to anything your rub them against. Now I had billions of tiny thorns in both hands. Attempts to shake them off, or as I like to call it, mistake number three, only managed to lodge them in my tongue, lips, and the roof of my mouth. Oh yeah.

At this point, I was about a mile and a half from home, covered in very small and, might I say, quite painful little thorns, and completely alone. What to do? I pulled out my cell phone, called my only friend in this time zone, the vivacious Prarie Oyster, and sheepishly asked her if she could do a google search on "cactus spine removal" for me. She gave me far more sympathy than I deserved (seeing that I've just done the most moronic thing possible) and soon I was home.

The answer? Candle wax. Remove the really stubborn ones with tweezers. Or rather, have your significant other remove them with tweezers. I'm right handed, and tweezing with my left hand requires a dexterity that I don't currently possess. Unfortunately, I also don't currently possess a significant other, which means I'm still carrying quite a few thorns in my fingers. I got out enough of them to type and go to the bathroom. You know, the essentials. I'm going to have to take out my contact lenses eventually, but I'm going to cross that bridge when I come to it. Let me assure you, though, that nothing makes for a fun evening like pulling tiny, sharp hairs out of your tongue. It goes right next to stepping barefoot on legos on my list of things that suck balls.

Morale is at an all-time low here in la maison. I'm exhausted, in pain, my kitchen is covered in hardened wax, and my attempts at whining are like a tree falling in the forest. I quit - I'm going to bed.