Janie Boschma

Dear Ask Anything,

– Peppermint Patty

Dear Patty,

As in-depth as I could get with your question, I know I must not be too wordy as I don’t want my thoughts to run off of the paper like last week. So, I must be as focused as I can when answering your query, treating every single word I write as I would a droplet of water in my canteen as I crossed the Sahara Desert in search of Matthew McConaughey’s shirt.

Actually, if I was really trying to conserve space, I probably wouldn’t have written the last 70 or so words in that first paragraph explaining how I was trying to conserve space. Or that last sentence. Or that following sentence. Or … crap!

Anyway, when I was devouring all the literature I could about candy canes in search of your answer, I slowly began to realize how the history of the candy cane closely reflects the civil rights movement in the United States. In the beginning, candy canes were only one color, the same color our voting population was for a long time – white. But around 1900, some radical candyman shook up the candy cane status quo, adding red stripes and the peppermint flavor. Though the name of this individual has been lost in the caverns of history, I think it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to put him or her in the same league as Martin Luther King Jr. in terms of social change in this nation.

As for your confusion about the advent of new colors and flavors, it is simply the next step in the process of diversifying our candy cane population in this country. Asking when different flavors of candy canes appeared is akin to trying to pinpoint the exact date the United States integrated Latin culture into our own. It’s just a normal, gradual progression of justice being served to all different types of coloreds … er, colors. The diversity is a natural one and reflects that of our American culture – honestly, asking “what’s with” the wide-range of types seems borderline racist to me. I would recommend diversity training of some kind before your fear of multiple candy cane flavors transfers to real life.

Dear Ask Anything,

– Santa Stalker

Dear Stalker,

You are lucky you are asking me this question and not my co-Ask Anything-er Scott Hansen, for I am more adept at geography and more handsome than he is. The last part will ultimately have no bearing on my ability to answer your question; I just thought I’d like to point that out.

If you are searching for the geographical North Pole, I suggest you bring a swimsuit and a medic trained in dealing with hypothermia because it is very much underwater. Located in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, scientists (if you trust those guys) measured the water depth at the North Pole to be 13,980 feet – 4,261 meters for our friends from everywhere else in the world. This would mean you have to take a boat of some kind to get there, which really isn’t worth it since it’s all just water.

But if you’re looking to get to Santa’s North Pole, well… that’s a bit trickier. The difficulty in visiting there can be blamed on scientists (see, you can’t trust those guys) since they have been unable to pinpoint the exact location of Santa’s workshop despite all the advancements in satellite technology. The easiest way I can think of to get there is to stow away under Santa’s sleigh when he comes to your house to deliver presents, a la Robert DeNiro’s character in “Cape Fear.” If you are able to hang on while Santa spends the night flying around the world at a rate far exceeding the speed of light, you will be brought back to Santa’s North Pole.

What happens next is a bit of a mystery, though. When he finds you underneath his sled, will Santa reward your ingenuity and strong grip with a tour of his workshop? Or will he be pissed and kill you? I can’t imagine Santa is going to want to deal with you staying at his home for a whole year, so I’m leaning toward the latter option.

Does the thought of Santa Claus killing someone shock you? It shouldn’t, really. He’s a slave owner, a solitaire and borderline communist – these are not the characteristics of a kind person. Plus, “Santa” is an anagram for “Satan,” and “anagram” rhymes with “pentagram,” and he doesn’t deliver presents to Jewish kids, no matter how good they were in the past year. Sounds kind of like Hitler, if you ask me.