Flying home from Georgia the other day, I upgraded to first class for the DFW – Burbank segment. The nice thing about first class — aside from the bigger seats, more legroom, and the whole “commoners to the back of the plane, please” thing — is that they serve dinner up there. While eating this dinner, I had what was probably one of the stupidest moments of my life.

I’m eating a salad — mixed greens with pesto-ranch dressing — and feeling pretty good about myself: “Look at me, Mr. Healthy, eating a salad. Go me!” I eat a cherry tomato, I crunch on a crouton, I spear a leaf of lettuce, I eat a grape– Ack! Full stop!

That grape tasted terrible!

I was expecting a nice sweet juicy little grape, and instead I bit into this bitter, sour, really not-sweet thing. It was pretty gross, actually. But I’m a trouper, I ate it anyway.

And then I reflected on it as I continued eating the salad. What the hell happened to that grape? Was it rotten? Nah, it didn’t taste rotten … at least not quite. But what was wrong with it? Huh, dunno, it was just weird.

A little further into the salad I came across another one of these grapes. I checked it out and it looked okay, so I bite into it. Again, sour, bitter, not-sweet at all. But this time I was expecting it, so it didn’t surprise me. This time I didn’t think it was so bad. Kind of good, actually.

So I started reflecting on what they might have done to a grape to make it taste this way. It was a familiar kind of flavor but I couldn’t quite place it. It was similar to a pickle, but more intense. So I tried to imagine how you would pickle a grape, and why you’d want to, and why an airline would then serve such nouvelle cuisine. I couldn’t figure it out. So I kept eating the salad.

I found one more grape as I finished the salad off. I saved it for last. I examined it carefully and didn’t see anything terribly unusual. It was thinner than a grape normally is, and had a weird little cross-hatched cut-out on the bottom and the top was cut off (probably to aid in the pickling process, I figured), but all in all it looked okay.

I bit into it and again got that familiar flavor — pickle-like, but a more intense, fuller flavor. And the texture was different, too, it was meatier than a grape normally is. And that flavor was so familiar… I could almost place it… It tasted like… like… like…

And then it hit me: It tasted just like an olive!

And then I started pondering why a cook might want to make a grape taste like an olive? What’s the point to that, what’s the goal? Why not just use an oli—

And then I realized that I am, in fact, a moron. The grape was an olive!

What a maroon.

At the expense of my delicate ego, I feel I need to clear up some confusion about me and the spammers’ offer regarding the penis enlargement problem. I seem to have given the impression that my problem is that I have a large penis (Why, oh why, didn’t that ever work in the bars back in the 80’s?) when that is, sadly, not the case.

Let’s examine the spammer message that inspired my last entry. They offered “The permanent fix to Penis Enlargement.” Doesn’t that suggest that having an enlarged penis is a problem that needs fixing? And if enlargement is the problem, wouldn’t making it smaller be the solution?

That’s what prompted my last post. My dangly bits are small enough already; I don’t need a solution that makes them even smaller. I need one that, well, enlarges them. So technically speaking, I need the solution to penis enSMALLment. Hence my last entry.

Look, I know that was the intent of the original spammer message, but it was so poorly written that it negated itself and defeated its own purpose. I want well written, concise spam, not something that means what it doesn’t say. Write it right, spam boys, or stay the hell out of my pants.

But if you’re serious about that whole enlargement thing? I’m in.