--elaine

Hey, Elaine.

It sure is hard to type that without spaces. You should try typing, plasmafunkguy@plasmafunk.com every time you want to check your e-mail. It’s quite the task. I’m glad you did it right, though. With the exception of not capitalizing my name. Thanks. You know…if you’re tired, you should check out my 175 things to do while not sleeping list. It’s pure gold! Anyways…I should get to your question.

I never thought explaining this would take two e-mail responses, but apparently I was wrong. To avoid further confusion, let me just put the whole thing right here for everyone to read.

“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers;
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked;
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?”

Firstly, it is a nursery rhyme. So, I guess that means, like, rapping for babies or something. I could totally bust that out over a beat by Dr. Dre. I’m not really sure what I meant by, “bust that out” but I’m gonna stick with it.

Ok…to answer your first question, pickled peppers are just peppers that have been pickled. Which means they’ve been preserved. The process consists of putting the peppers in jars with a heated pickling salt and vinegar mixture. While pickling recipes vary on the type of peppers you want to pickle, those are the standard ingredients. So, pickled peppers is really just a fancy way of saying preserved-vinegar-salt-jar peppers. So, you’re with me so far, right? I’ll assume you just nodded acknowledgement of that statement.

Now, I was always under the impression that Peter was a shady character. I’m also going to assume that he was lazy. The rhyme states that the pickled peppers seem to be missing. It could just be that the poem is stupid, and can’t seem to locate the peck of pickled peppers. However, I like to believe the theory that Peter was too lazy to pick his own peppers and pickle them. It says he picked peppers, but it doesn’t say he picked them off the plant or anything like that. He could’ve picked them out of a jar or a barrel of some sort. I’m guessing he stole the peck of peppers from somebody else and then hid the evidence, and that’s why no one knows where the peck of pickled peppers went.

So, there you have it: Peter Piper is a bad person. He also seems to be some sort of piper. Go figure.

Furthermore, I would like to apologize for the lack of time and work I put into the last Peter Piper e-mail response. I just wasn’t on the ball that day, I guess.

Ok, so thanks for the e-mail. Everybody have a nice day. I’m going to pickle me some stuff.