You Can’t Have Your Cake and Shit On It, Too

Lest you  think that the only thing people in Pennsyltucky do for amusement is stand by while highly connected adult men “horse around” with pre-teen boys in university showers, here’s how the hoi polloi pass time:

Three Pennsylvania teens must clean toilets, urinals and bed pans after admitting they iced a birthday cake with faeces as a prank on a high school classmate.

The Daily Local News of West Chester reports the girls were also ordered to pick up dog droppings at a local park during their 200 hours of community service in return for guilty pleas stemming from the March incident at Avon Grove High School.  —stuff.co.nz

You read that right — “feces” spelled with an a.  I think it’s a Brit thing.  Like the u in colour and neighbour.  And you know how to pronounce “ghoti”?  Try “fish” — gh as in enough, o as in women, and ti as in nation.

But back to the shit icing.

Amazingly, it wasn’t discovered until the classmate and her family ate it and got sick.  Evidently these swifties from the land of Hershey aren’t quick enough to detect that something that smells like shit probably tastes like it, too — exactly like it, as it turns out.  Good thing they didn’t step in it, as the old joke goes.

I didn’t learn what specific feces they used, but my best guess, as one familiar with that part of the world, is horseshit.  That’s horse country up there, which is why the mushroom industry flourishes.  Mushrooms are grown in beds of fragrant horse manure: it’s spread by the ton in dark wet grow houses, and on summer nights the air is thick and fetid.  Living in rural Chester County is like inhabiting a colostomy bag — if you could get mugged or converted to Pentecostalism in a colostomy bag.  Maybe you can.

Finally, I commend the wise jurist for his or her selection of adjudication.  Addressing the kids’ fascination with excrement, the Court’s order provides for not only a useful service, but one that will save taxpayers money.  Maybe dog droppings are a step down from the horseshit the kids are used to, but hey — it’s a solid principle of justice that a punishment fit the crime.

That’s the straight poop.