Career Services

You know what must be a fantastic job? Animal Cracker Designer. I was talking to Hunter earlier today about my animal crackers because most of them are indistinguishable blobs and yet the cow has udders. I don't think he understood my concern at first because he took it upon himself to explain that udders are girl parts and only girl cows have them whilst bulls have penises. He's an expert on bovine genitalia and seeing as I'm helping him update his CV, I think I would be remiss if I didn't work that in there somewhere under "Special Skills."

Eventually I gave up using my words and sent him a picture. As you can see, Stouffer's isn't too concerned about capturing the true essence of most animals. 

 I think "Fat dog with a bump on his head"is actually supposed to be a hippo.

Seriously, what the fuck is that sloth/polar bear that seems to be ravaging the South East? And is seal dog supposed to be a lion or something? 

And yet they took the time to give the cow udders!

At this point, I instant messaged Hunter so that he would know that I had animal crackers all over my desk. If I had access to facebook, that would have been one a status update. Because people need to know these things.

He was fairly aghast at the lack of definition in the crackers and proceeded on something of a tirade about how I must be eating the generic kind and did I need money for the good kind of animal crackers. I know, right? Who knew he was such a connoisseur?  But that's when I realized that head of design of animal crackers must be one of the sweetest jobs out there. And I'd be a natural! Here are a few designs I whipped up:

I don't think I'm too far off, do you? Hunter did suggest that I write a letter to the good folks at Stouffer's expressing my concern about the shitty shapes. I asked if it should be strongly worded and he said that yes, to a degree, it should, but that I didn't want to make enemies. So far this is what I have:

Dear Sir or Madam,

      Here is a picture of a cat that I found on the internet.

Here is a picture of what I think is supposed to be a cat as found in my bag of your delicious animal crackers.

 What the fuck, dude, how do you explain that?

Yours respectfully,

Cat

Maybe they'll put it on their website as a customer testimonial. I don't really mind, though. I like a little mystery in my animal crackers. I mean, why should Stouffer's do all the work? And it's obvious that the person who designed these particular crackers is somehow related to whomever it is that designed the boundaries* in this country. With the animal crackers, you can make out the horse, camel, elephant, bison, and llama (if it is a llama). Everything else is pretty much a crap shoot. And this is what the U.S. looks like:

The cartographer finished Texas and Minnesota and then said "fuck this."

See how the east coast has a whole bunch of interesting shapes? And then you get to the west and it's basically rectangles and squares? At some point, the person in charge of defining boundaries got fed up with the thankless task and decided squares were fine, squares were great. 

Animal crackers guy probably just lost enthusiasm like map drawing guy. It happens to the best of us.

*I know that it wasn't just some guy who decided on state boundaries so no need to tell me I'm stupid. Everyone knows that elves did it.