The Compound
June 26, 2017
Dear Mr. Vernix,
My mediocre scribe and I visited the produce section of your market, Vernix’s Grocery Enclosure, earlier this week. Your display of edible plant material, including fruits, seeds, tubers, leaves, roots, stems, flowers, and shoots, was truly remarkable, though it fell far short of being the “8th wonderment of the world,” as your published promotional material would have us believe. I noted how the artfully arranged, crisscrossing citadel of imperator carrots seemed to envy the even more Babel-like tower of red bell peppers next to it. “What the anvil? What the hammer?” I asked myself, marveling at the talents and audacity of he who had prepared this installation–a feast for the eyes but also quite practical in taking advantage of the display area. And most important, the wares were so colorful, so plump, so ripe, so moist, so crisp, so ready for consumption. As my scribe and I studied the layout and activities in this area for several hours, we noticed how every 10 minutes, as if the spinning of this giant forsaken orb depended on it, a mist began to blast forth, like the mist that rose up in Eden, the tiny drops wetting every square inch in the display area to keep the items fresh and succulent. And then in a few moments the mist shut off without the apparent agency of any man, and so cycling again and again every 10 minutes.
This state of affairs created a firm and reasonable expectation on my part that when I purchased your produce I was also obtaining a commitment and promise from the universe that this intermittent wetness would distill upon the produce wheresoever I might take it.
Imagine, therefore, my disappointment when, after I had been home with the vegetables for several hours, I did not one time see their skins magically bedewed. Your produce–that which is so precious to you and was once precious to me–is now all in a pile in my garden compost, on the fast track to achieve that atomized state that is the ultimate leveling out of all life forms.
For my misery I seek $100,000 in damages or naming rights to your new pinto.
Justice Korbin Minotaur
by hand of Eric of Cornwall
Minotaur Saith 