Fruits and Vegetables

// The Robot Diaries | Chapter II

By Elektrovideo .
08.16.09 // Fruits and Vegetables

The Robot Diaries Chapter II from elektrovideo on Vimeo.

View Comments / Aug 16.09 / Fruits and Vegetables / by Elektrovideo

// Poor Judy

By Charles Hodges .
08.16.09 // Fruits and Vegetables

I am riding in the elevator with this big time movie executive.  He has his sleeves rolled up like he is ready to fight.  He smells like tuna fish and Vaseline (anyone’s guess).  I am scared.  But I know it’s my chance.  Because I have this idea.  Because it’s always been there.  Because we were all born to die, or something philosophical like that.  So I tell him:

“Hey, I know you’re famous but you have to hear me out.”
“What?”
“Just listen.  I have this idea.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, it’s an idea for a movie.”
“And?”
“And in the movie there is this one girl who is allergic to fruits and vegetables.”
“And?”
“And she can’t follow any kind of healthy diet and has to live on candy.”
“And?”
“And, in the beginning of her life, all of the kids at school are jealous and tease her.  She always cries on the way home from school, but then one day she realizes she can give some of her candy away to make friends – standard supply and demand.  So she buys friends with sour brite crawlers and other kinds of consumables made out of high fructose corn syrup.  She deals them on playground, in the woods, away from teachers sight.  She gets invited to birthday parties.  She gets invited on other people’s family trips.  She loves this because she never gets to do any of these things because her parents operate a go-cart track on the outskirts of town.  Did I mention that?  About her parents?”
“No.”
“Well, yeah, so she’s like poor, but out of her keen dealing ways she wiggles through the social strata by dealing candy to her friends because she is allergic to fruits and vegetables. So, very early in her life, she forms extremely tight bonds with another social class.  While, in the beginning, these relationships are based on a material source, the other girls come around and realize that Judy, that’s the girls name, has real, human qualities to offer and that she isn’t some genetic freak who gets to eat all of the candy in the world because of a doctors note.”
“That sounds kind of interesting.”
“That’s what I’m saying, so, anyway, after the fifth grade graduation, we flash forward to one of the other girl’s weddings.  Judy is a bridesmaid.  We don’t know much about what has happened in the time since fifth grade, only that Judy is now successful, attractive and blind.  So, at the reception, Judy asks one of her friends to get her a plate of food.  Her friend comes back and gives her the plate.  Her friend, Samantha, has always subconsciously hated Judy because of her ability to overcome obstacles (this is implied by music).  We zoom in closely on the plate.  It’s a piece of quiche.  On the side, there are beets.  She is a little tipsy from all the champagne, and she mistakes the beets for chocolate wafers.  All the girls go to do the electric slide and, in the fourth stanza, Judy has an allergic reaction and dies on the dance floor.  Everyone is freaking out except for Samantha who is eating the rest of Judy’s beets.  She is dressed in red.  This shows us some element Samantha’s culpability.”
“What?”
“Just wait for it, dude.  So, we have a slow zoom out from the viewpoint of the chandelier above the dance floor.  We see Judy on the floor with her sunglasses on – remember she is blind.  We close with her father admitting kids for a birthday party at the go kart track.  Remember that go cart track?  So, basically, it’s a story about opportunity in adversity, jealously, regret, the inability to change, the ability to adapt, the chains of freedom, the pickaxe of paradox, the wisdom of not knowing, the murmurs of our beating hearts.”
“That is the worst thing I have ever heard in my entire life.”
“Fuck you.”

I push the emergency stop button.  I take his iPhone.  I punch him in his black turtleneck.  He arrives on the top floor, late to a meeting.  It’s a production company pitching their services.  They provide lunch.  Lamb.  Organic salad.  With beets.

View Comments / Aug 16.09 / Fruits and Vegetables / by Charles Hodges

// The Superior Species?

By Jordan Childs .
08.15.09 // Fruits and Vegetables

View Comments / Aug 15.09 / Fruits and Vegetables / by Jordan Childs

// The Killing Beard

By Tristan Smith .
08.15.09 // Fruits and Vegetables

Pity both the fruit and the vegetable.  In a world where hair growth is a sign of virility in other organisms, hair growth on an orange is the beginning of the end.  Wispy whiskers, silver gossamer spreading across the surface of vegetation signals an invader’s progress.  And as the life is slowly sucked from our oblong or orb-like friend, its insides liquifying, its skin wrinkling, one cannot help but be envious of the mold.  He arrived first, and so he gets to taste the juices.

Well played, mold man.  Well played.

View Comments / Aug 15.09 / Fruits and Vegetables / by Tristan Smith

// Scurvy

By Todd Lamb .
08.14.09 // Fruits and Vegetables

View Comments / Aug 14.09 / Fruits and Vegetables / by Todd Lamb

// Carrots: Clandestine Crusaders

By Bobby Nelson .
08.13.09 // Fruits and Vegetables

These orange, crisp vegetables that take a phallic-like shape (hell, let’s get the dick joke out of the way early) can actually be credited as a pivotal contributor to the Allies’ victory in World War II. Carrots are also at the center of an optometric conspiracy driven by parental ignorance and hearsay on the part of farmers, both a result of their central role in defeating the Nazi regime. Don’t believe me? Watch as I unfurl this legitimate fact about the vegetable that kept the British from speaking German as a national tongue.

In 1943, British engineers fashioned a device that allowed pilots to see enemy planes in the night sky and through thick cloud cover. That device was Airborne Interception Radar. Such an inception sent German planes down faster than a terrible oral sex joke. The Britons were wary about revealing such a piece of valuable technology, and rightly so; the Germans were reported to have one of the best pan-European spy networks at the time. As a result, several British scientists were asked to publish in journals under pseudonyms touting the excellent marksmanship a result of a carrot influx into British pilots’ diets. British households began including carrots at every meal in an effort to improve the vision of family individuals.

Upon receiving word of this, many German generals were skeptical about the newfound Carrot power (a power reserved for only the shittiest superheroes). However, Hitler’s innermost cabinet (though it remains to be said if Hitler actually approved as well) thoroughly believed the carrot hype and subsequently spent an exorbitant sum on carrot-farming in lieu of ammunition production even as German resources dwindled. Such a consequence was unintended by the British government, but well-received nonetheless.

The British continued to protect the English channel under the guise that carrots helped their pilots see at astonishing rates and eventually defeated the joint-forces of Canada and Venezuela in the Great War of Mars. Alright, I’m screwing with you, but I felt like I was losing you amid all this historical noise. The rest, as the proverbial “they” say, is history and the British fended off the Germans and preserved that adorable accent, though pronouncing their ‘h’ sounds wouldn’t kill them.

World War II is arguably the war with the most influence on the modern world. It changed the way citizens of the world view poverty, religious tolerance, dictatorships, and warfare in general. However, the most overlooked part of this war is the pervasive belief that carrots improve vision that still persists today. In sciency word language, it’s true that beta-carotene and Vitamin A help preserve vision and lessen the chance of certain eye disease, but does it actually improve vision? Hell to the no. However, if you don’t want to eat them, fine by me. But if you want to pay homage to a true war hero, have a carrot or two. After all, what the hell has Asparagus done for the world?

View Comments / Aug 13.09 / Fruits and Vegetables / by Bobby Nelson

// The War On Terra

By Joey Camire .
08.13.09 // Fruits and Vegetables

There is a silent war going on under your feet.  It’s a slow war. A war that has lasted millenia.  A war so slow and boring you would have thought Michael Bay directed it.  But… No explosions, so that is clearly not possible.  No, this is a war fought in our mouths. (She never said that.) The vegetable’s war against the humans. A war to avoid being eaten.

Vegetables are slow.  They’re susceptible to diseases.  They are the only thing in the world that could be killed by a caterpillar.  In general, they are pretty much just huge pussies.  If they went to elementary school they would go commando due to the amount of tearing they invariably would have already incurred in their grundle/taint regions from excessive wedgies.  They are just easy targets.

With all that said, you are probably wondering how this war is going down?  What are the vegetables’ secret tactics?  The answer is shit.  They were trying to taste like it.  Over centuries they had evolved to smell and taste awful.  It was an ingenious plan.  Some even escaped the mouths of the masses.  Take lima beans and brussell sprouts for example.  Warriors so disgusting, even hardened vegetarians wouldn’t eat them.  They assumed that no one would want to eat shit.  And they were right.  They almost won the war.

But Humans got wise to this, the vegetables’ plan.  And they were hungry, because the obesity rates were skyrocketing.  So they invented ranch dressing.  A savory syrup, creamy and delicious enough to mask the taste of even the foulest of vegetables.  If things were bad for veggies before ranch dressing…they were badder after.  Humans claiming to “eat healthy” drenched entire gardens in the dressing.  Slaughter in tortilla bowls.  Entire lunch menus dedicated to this gruesome killing.  We were actually tripling our caloric intake, but we didn’t care, we were “watching what we ate!”  Evil, thy name is SALAD!

Ranch dressing, however, was just the beginning.  Today vegetables stand little chance.  As if they weren’t weak enough, scientists have completely taken control of the one chance they had left to save themselves.  Their genetics.  Sexual selection.  The plan that took a millennia to execute, to taste absolutely awful, was thwarted in decades by small, nerdy, shapeless little men and women in white lab coats.  Somewhere these nerds are slowly reversing the the shit taste.  Within a few short years vegetables may actually taste good.  A few more years after that… potentially delicious!  If they can make an avocado taste like bacon, what can’t they do?

In the end, there is little we can do to stop the mass murder of vegetables.  And to be honest, no one really cares to.  Vegetables are kind of annoying and never really contribute much to conversation.  But, if you had to be a vegetable, be a cucumber, they gets all the ladies.

View Comments / Aug 13.09 / Fruits and Vegetables / by Joey Camire

// Fruits and Vegetables: A Cornerstone of the Death Panel

By Sarah Pappalardo .
08.12.09 // Fruits and Vegetables

For once, Sarah Palin is right. Death panels are a reality in the United States.

Diet fads have come and gone, but fruits and vegetables are always high on the list of good things to eat. Turns out, fruits and vegetables have been keeping an eye on us. Nature has been death paneling all over the place, killing unproductive members of society for centuries, because Nature’s death panel hates you and your fat. Fruits and vegetables are the only sacrifice we can make to this fickle panel of dead socialists.

We don’t need more government workers for a new death panel; nature does it for us. If you eat enough steaks and subsequent shakes, nature will kill you. But there’s hope: turns out, the death panel loves fresh peaches. The more people eat unrefined, whole foods, the less likely we are to die a vicious, gangrenous death, like Nick Jonas.*

Nature’s death panel has been violently unfair to the living, deciding who will live or die based on “genetics” and “lifestyle.” Didn’t like calcium-rich spinach so much? Death. Liked orange juice but hated the fiber-filled orange? Death. Bacon? Super death. You get the idea. Nature will kill you way before the government does.

*Nick Jonas actually has Type 1 diabetes, which means that he didn’t get diabetes from eating too many McGriddles. He is also not dead. He will die someday.

View Comments / Aug 12.09 / Fruits and Vegetables / by Sarah Pappalardo

// What Am I?

By Alex Aloise .
08.12.09 // Fruits and Vegetables

View Comments / Aug 12.09 / Fruits and Vegetables / by Alex Aloise

// It Was Funny In The Shower. I Swear.

By Jake Dubs .
08.11.09 // Fruits and Vegetables

We choose to go to the fruit, not because it is easy, but because it is hard.

Forescore and seven fruits ago, our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation…

Imagination is more important than fruit.

Today, December 7^th, 1941, is a day that will live in fruit.

I did not have fruit relations with that woman.

Give a man a fruit, it will feed him for a day. Teach a man to fruit, it will feed him for life.

Fruit unto others as you would have them fruit unto you.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this fruit.

Speak softly and carry a big fruit.

If at first you don’t succeed, try afruit.

I pledge allegiance to the fruit of the United States of America…

To err is human, to forgive fruit.

There’s a lady who’s sure, all that glitters is gold, and she’s buying the fruit to heaven.

That’s one small fruit for man, one giant fruit for mankind.

If the fruit does not fit, you must acquit.

Ask not what your fruit can do for you, ask what you can do for your fruit.

An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world fruit.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its fruit.

When you come to a fruit in the road, take it.

Nobody puts fruit in the corner.

View Comments / Aug 11.09 / Fruits and Vegetables / by Jake Dubs

// A conspiracy theory.

By Ben Cheney .
08.10.09 // Fruits and Vegetables

Fruits and vegetables were developed by the government in 1933 to ignite the hearts of Americans with optimism and gift baskets.  The Great Depression was in full swing; soup kitchens and Hoovervilles were popping up all over the place.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced fruits and veggies as part of the New Deal.

During a radio broadcast, Roosevelt alerted the Nation to the existence fruits and vegetables, saying they were discovered on an exotic island in the Pacific and were known to have near magical qualities.  They could improve health and happiness and sex drive to boot.  They were also job creators.  Importing fruits and vegetables from the islands was too expensive, so Roosevelt procured seeds from the natives and began government run farms.  He hired thousands of people to work on the farms, producing apples and broccoli and cumquats and string beans.  Workers were compensated with the fruits and veggies of their labor.

Roosevelt’s plan was an immediate success.  The Nation was in a frenzy over fruits and vegetables.  And not only were more Americans working, but Americans also believed they were happier and healthier.

Roosevelt’s New Deal included many nontraditional aspects* that aimed to pull the Nation out of deep economic turmoil.  But to this day, historians still credit the introduction of fruits and vegetables as the most effective part of Roosevelt’s New Deal.

*This is also why we have murphy beds, even though they weren’t quite as effective.

View Comments / Aug 10.09 / Fruits and Vegetables / by Ben Cheney