Ice Cream is Ruining My Summer

Surviving the weather, the internet, and pants.

“Hey, man, I love ice cream. But trying to scoop the ice cream out of the little pint carton is practically impossible. What can I do?” — Impatient Steve

Häagen-Dazs is pretend Danish for “Concrete.” I’ve met Ben and Jerry, if those are their real names. They did not like my idea for a flavor. It was to be called “O Captain My Captain.” And would have been vanilla ice cream with Cap’n Crunch frozen in it. OK, that’s cool, Ben and Jerry. They’re communists, they didn’t want to make any money for some reason. They want other ice cream companies to make tons of money. It’s some kind of redistribution of ice cream wealth that they’re after. And now they’ve sold out to Unilever. So who’s laughing now, Jerry and Ben? Dutch people, probably. And makers of spoons. The spoon industry does very well because of their ice cement. All of my spoons are completely bent backwards because of their insane frozen mindfuckery.

I don’t know who decided that ice cream ought to be as hard as a rock and impossible to scoop for like half an hour after you take it out of the freezer. When I take ice cream out of the freezer I want to be able to eat it right that second. Not like an hour later. This is America. Not North of the Wall, in the frozen wastelands. When I was a kid, there was only one kind of ice cream. It was made by Breyer’s and it was vanilla. And we liked it. We took it out of the freezer and ate it immediately. It did not bend spoons like some kind of bewitched ice nightmare. Sure, it had some air blown through it. We did not mind the air. Air is good.

My first advice is that Häagen-Dazs and Ben and Jerry’s should change their packaging. I’ve been mulling it over and I’m undecided between having it pre-scooped in a bag like those Pod bags detergents use. Or, even better, those Pod detergent boxes. Imagine 50 perfect scoops just waiting to be pulled out and immediately enjoyed. Pint cartons are too small an amount of ice cream, anyway. Also possible that ice cream should come in cubes, I am working on this presentation and it’s a mess so far. But a promising mess.

I don’t know about the rest of ice cream eaters. But on Friday nights while I’m watching True Crime stuff on TV, I do not yearn for human companionship. That’s what those True Crime shows on TV are there to remind us of on Friday nights when we’re alone and always will be. Most people are murdered by the people they’re in relationships with. According to TV, being in a relationship with someone usually ends in death. I don’t want to be killed at all. I fear death and I fear intimacy. I’m pretty sure if I let someone in they would kill me and put letters under my fingernails.

My advice for you, Steve, is to stay single. And also cut that pint-sized ice cream right down the middle with the biggest knife in your kitchen. Put it upside-down on your cutting block and just hack it in half. You don’t have to play the sick mind games of ice cream makers. You don’t have to wait to be murdered by the people you love. It’s your world! This is your life, Steve. This is still America.

“I made fun of someone on the internet like 10 years ago and they’ve made it the full thrust of their life to destroy me and my online business. What should I do?” — In Trouble on The Internet

Just like the internet is forever, so is the shame that the internet can bring us. That is forever, that never goes away, no matter what. I agreed to let someone do an article about me in the Village Voice a decade ago. They sent over a photographer. It all started rather normally. I was wearing a shirt and pants at the beginning of the session. But they took photos for hours and having your photo taken is a weird experience. One minute you have pants on, and the next you’re in your underpants pouring Lucky Charms over your nipples.

So the resulting photo of me that was on the Village Voice site is me in my underpants, acrylic painted heart on my chest, Spiderman bedsheet tied around my neck like a superhero cape. It is a damned handsome photo of me. But one that comes up when you google me and did come up when a job I applied for and then didn’t get. I will basically work in bookstores for the rest of my life or until people stop reading books, around 2019.

Am I vengefully angry at the photographer or the Village Voice? Hell, no. Well played, all. I am not capable of decades-long obsessive anger. I mean, who gives a crap? I’ve made fun of millions of poets since the beginning of the internet. I know that some day they will all have their revenge on me. That’s how the internet works. You publish my sex tape, I sue you for $140 million. I’ve read those French revenge novels and seen those Korean revenge movies. Revenge never pays off, it always leaves you masked in the Bastille and later hypnotized and sleeping with your daughter somehow. And no one wants that. That is a bummer.

I used to think of the internet as an endless game of bumper cars. We do not bump people in bumper cars because we hate them. It helps, but is not necessary. We bump because that’s what people on the internet do. We’re all insecure and surprisingly sensitive. The internet amplifies this. And stores it forever. But, like poets, nothing we truly do matters. Money is an illusion. Fame is fleeting. And you’re but one tiny person in the universe. Who told you you could be so angry forever about some article on the internet no one really cared about?

There’s nothing much you can do if people you’ve written about want to spend the rest of their lives trying to destroy you. Chances are, they will lose interest after a few decades. Or something else terrible will happen to them that will be fixated on that for a while. You could stop making fun of people on the internet, but that’s too much fun and you are just too good at it.

“I am told that men should not wear shorts during the summer. Is this true?” — Hot Harry

You’re a man, Harry. And if you feel like wearing shorts in the summer, you should definitely do that. I’m not big on shorts because I really want to save my calves for the people I’m intimate with. My calves are one of my sexiest parts, next to my elbows, which are hawt. I am trying to create a pair of long pants with hidden vents for people who don’t like showing off their legs but want to stay cool during the summer. But I am not a tailor and all I’ve done is make a giant mess. Melted ice cream cubes and scissored pants everywhere. But I am working on it! Stay tuned!

Jim Behrle lives in Jersey City, NJ and works at a bookstore.