prompt: blend, title: station break in misc. flash fiction

The Thin Mint Blizzard isn’t “exclusively” at Dairy Queen, no matter what the ads on teevee say. Anyone can put ice cream in a blender with mint-chocolate cookies. Branding means nothing. A brand’s a blistering scar burnt into something someone else owns. Don’t be owned. Throw those cookies in and blend away! Congratulations, your Thin Mint Blizzard is equally as valid without the upsell of a corporate seal of approval. Be your own sundae artist instead. Seize the means of dessert production!

You don’t need to go to the Girl Scouts for those cookies, either. Granted, the cause of little girls getting to go camping is less evil than the dividends for holders in Iced-Creams Incorporated, but even that isn’t as clear as you think. A drop of profit on those overpriced glucose-delivery pucks goes to laudable things, certainly, but on the balance it’s just more cash for Big Cookie, using an adorably quaint child-labour pyramid scheme to launder those Samoan simoleans.

You can bake for yourself! You can mint your own chocolate cookies and even call them “Thin Mints” if it blows your hairs back, as long as you don’t try to sell them to other folks under that name at commercial scale. You can probably even get away with calling them that at the church bake sale, they don’t have enough lawyers to outnumber us yet. If you’re not quite that bold, you can go to the Dollar Store, buy a box of “Grasshoppers” or “Mint-O-Greens” or “Chocolate Mint Foodstuff #486” and it’s basically the same goddamn thing. Throw them in that blender and call it a “Thin Mint Blizzard”, anyway! They control trademarks but they cannot control your words, though I’m sure some corporations would love to give police the power to do so.

The hockey rink in Utica is “The Aud” not The Bank of Thesethatwhatevers Arena. If I were an announcer for their radio network, I’d say whatever they paid me to say, but as long as I am not getting checks cut in my name, I call The Aud The Aud. Albany’s basketball arena is The Knick, Syracuse’s mall is Carousel Mall, they couldn’t even pay me to call it “DestiNY USA” because that’s the stupidest name in existence. Scientists have confirmed this with math, read a book!

The Thin Mint Blizzard isn’t exclusively at Dairy Queen, isn’t exclusively anywhere, because the world doesn’t work like that, words don’t work like that, only business works like that and business is blessedly imaginary. Stop believing in it and it ceases to be, like the monster under your bed as a child or Yahoo Serious’ brief run at mainstream celebrity.

Don’t let your life and your joy be defined by brand deals, don’t go on social media trying to make yourself a brand, either. The only exclusive thing out there is your soul and that is your own. Put that in your pipe and blend it up good. I’m certain it’ll be more delicious by far.