Why You Should Send My Wife to the North Pole, Not the South Pole

Penguins.
Let's be honest. Who, besides the occasional fad blogger, doesn't think penguins are cute?

Well, they are. They're built to be cute. Even cuter in cartoon form.



Nature made them that way.



Cartoon penguins are cute in any language.



Here's the problem, my friend: You go to the South Pole, you see a penguin, and you do what anyone would want to do — hug the penguin. Don't say that you wouldn't, because it's built into our DNA. We have to hug penguins. Why do you think they put bars up around the penguin patch at the zoos?

Because — and I shouldn't have to tell you this but penguin-cuteness blinds you to this fact — penguins stink. They're like half-bird and half-fish, and they smell like the worst of both species.

Sure, they look all cute in their little feather-tuxedos, but imagine your hairy uncle Ned wearing a tux to your cousin's wedding, getting drunk like he usually does, falling asleep in the cab and waking up in a fetid puddle outside a Canal Street market that hangs strangled ducks in the windows as a lure to attract customers.

That's what Chilly Willy smells like.

So we can't have the wife going to the South Pole, because despite the smell she might want to bring back one of these beaked little bastards, and we can't have that. Send her to the North Pole instead, and she'll satisfy her visit-one-of-the-ends-of-the-earth jones up there.

If this convinces you that you should send my wife to the North Pole, please click this text which is in fact a link that will take you to her essay so you can vote for her so she'll have a chance to go to the North Pole. Thank you.