August 24

  The return to Nash has not exactly been the non-stop party I wanted it to be -- there's been no music, no parades, and my bacon/pancake consumption is extremely deficient. Currently waging an all out war against a thrift store item in my bathtub that is eerily familiar to an episode from earlier this year that had disastrous consequences. The problem may lie in the inability to procure cold water from any faucet in the city during  the hellishly hot daytime hours, a dilemma I halfway solved with throwing a couple of those freezer packs into a full tub, but that particular stroke of genius may have come too late.

  As you can tell, I'm not going to have any good stories today. But that's okay, because I know someone who does. CB of xkcblag has graciously agreed to be our guest blogger for the evening, an agreement we arrived at after she sent me what has to be one of the top ten funniest letters ever penned by human hands. Without further ceremony, we bring you the story of:

"The Dishwasher Burn"

  "We really thought we were living the high life. Actually, we are, but high life doesn't mean disaster-free. Our beautiful apartment does come with some issues... nearby train tracks (apparently trains run from dusk til dawn, regardless of light sleepers who dream about noises they hear in their sleep. Let's just say being ran over by a train is much scarier in dream than in reality. I know because I've experienced both.), toilets that sound like women dying a horrible death (probably by train) even when no one has been near in hours, and a dishwasher...

  I've never used a dishwasher, except maybe to help (my grandma) load up after Sunday dinner. The only thing I really know is you still have to rinse dishes off before they go in and some things never go in. What things? I don't know! [...] Maybe those are old rules like don't wear white after Labor Day or bathing suits should go from neck to ankle (clavicle to lateral malleolus -- if those are wrong, just don't tell me. I like to pretend like I've learned something besides how to survive Broke Diaries style from VU). So, I decided we should put everything in there. Plates, silverware, wooden spoons. The first wash, everything goes great! Even if you have to rinse everything you're still saving 10 minutes standing at your sink.

  High. Life.

  The next night, we do the same thing. Everything in! And the next morning there is a sticky note on my bathroom door:

  "Cousin, why does our entire apartment smell like PORK?"

  I thought, "Shit! I didn't clean up after breakfast. Now everything smells like ham!" But... I'm not smelling anything... so I forget about it.

  When [my cousin/roommate] wakes up, she says she suspects our magical dishwasher. So, I open it up and stick my entire face in. And almost DIE! It was so nasty. It didn't smell like someone left a frying pan w/ ham grease out -- no, it smelled like someone slaughtered a pig and washed it in our dishwasher! I just slammed the door and walked away.

  Later, I found the problem. Our wooden spoons had fallen down to the bottom and burned like my breakfast ham. The smell would not go away! Tried lemon juice and vinegar and prayers. Still smelled like a raw pig. Then it happened again! We thought rearranging the spoons would help. No! Three or four fell back down there. Only one was damaged beyond use; the others were just charred.

  Plan 86 (because obviously, 1-85 failed) was to let the dishwasher air out and light some of my candles to cover the pig. So far, so good.

  Lesson learned: the one thing that is not dishwasher safe is, of course, spoons!

 Shoulda asked Johnny."


  Other highlights from the CB repertoire include this gem, carefully edited to conceal what/who we were laughing at:

  "... just thinking about [something terrible that happened last semester to us] made me laugh so hard that my entire face hurts and tears were streaming down my face like some sort of sad Jesus fountain -- for the first time this summer, they were not tears of sorrow/pain, but fear/laughter."

 Needless to say, CB writes awesome letters... all of which I keep in a locked box in my closet, where they are safe from the eyes of those who just wouldn't understand.