Let's Have a Prune Party!

ANOTHER Bonus Post? In THIS economy?

I’m in the mood for a party! A fruit party! The problem is that while I’m old, I’m not quite old enough for a Lemon Party (don’t Google that), so this seemed like the next best thing. After all, Prunes are "oh-so-easy", famous as the sluts of the desiccated fruit family, so there's a good chance the birthday boy will get lucky tonight! Or at least have a smooth and trouble-free trip to the toilet tomorrow morning.

Before we go any further, let's do some quick photo analysis, examining the image above for tips on conjugating the shit out of the verb "to party." Now admittedly, the girls on either end don't seem to be all that into the prunes; in fact, they appear to be ignoring the dried fruit entirely, and instead concentrating on their home-made incendiary devices, which I presume are intended as a protest against the lack of birthday candles on the cake. And the lack of a cake.

The girl on the right is treating her I.E.D. rather gingerly, perhaps fearful of a premature detonation, but the girl on the left is cool and ruthless, and probably went to Belfast after college and wound up in the IRA. Or perhaps she hiked into the Pyrenees and joined the Basque Separatist group, ETA. Or maybe even the SLA. At any rate, I'm sure that eventually she joined one of the many three-initial terrorist groups that end in "A", and all because of prunes.

The boy on the left is clearly attempting to eat around the prune, and seems pretty relieved by his success, but the boy on the right is overcome with despair and futility, and is actually cooperating in his own oppression by digging into the prune itself, because really, what choice does he have? He has been invited to a party, a party where cake is both expected and obligatory, and yet a party where there is no cake. He has been made to don a dignity-destroying paper hat, to sit awkwardly at a fragile card table, and to submit to the false cheer of his fellow partygoers, including a girl whose party dress and party hat are belied by the grimacing way she holds her party favor, which is most likely a bomb she has fashioned from straw and nihilism. In such grim circumstances, he no doubt wonders, why not eat the prune? Is not the prune, in fact, the perfect metaphor for human existence in a random and absurd universe: a dead thing, made even deader through dehydration.

Yes. Yes, he will eat the prune, for the prune is both the symbol and the essence of his own mortality.

But while the picture may tell a tale of existential and other kinds of nausea, the text is cheerful, optimistic, even manic about the menu:

Win their hearts with prune tarts

And win their minds with watermelon rinds. Why didn't we try this approach in Viet Nam?

Just yummy, Mummy!

Well, the prune is dry, wrinkled, chewy, and discolored, so I guess it does taste a bit like mummy meat.

Wonderful California prunes are fairly bursting with energy, iron, vitamins and minerals.

I was a lot like those kids when I was their age—fretting over iron-poor blood, and always buttonholing the hostess at birthday parties to quiz her about the mineral content of the cake. Anyway, dig into enough of those prunes and you'll be fairly bursting too, so you might want to grab a magazine.

To make delicious, decorative prune tarts just use your favorite prune whip recipe.

Don't eat that you idiot, it's just decorative! Jeez, you'll be gnawing on the decoupage next.

By the way, before you pull out the prune whip I should probably tell you that my safe word is "roughage."

Pour into tart shells and top with whole prunes, stuffed with almonds.

If you're going to force whole prunes on us, you might as well have the decency to stuff them with bitter almonds, because then we might swallow a fatal dose of hydrogen cyanide and die quietly in a corner during Pin the Tail on the Donkey, our dignity intact.

Hm. This is ending on kind of a downer note for a birthday party. How about we replace the prune tarts with some wholesome pre-Code cheesecake?

In honor of the occasion we've flown in Myrna Loy all the way from 1931 to give you kids with your "hook-ups" and your "sexting" a master class in "bedroom eyes."