Got a situation that you are just too passive to get out of?
Don't want to be a grown-up about it?
Have I got a solution for you, and it won't cost a dime! Check it out: Download last_word4.doc
OK, so on the surface this has absolutely nothing to do with food...and if you dig deeply, it still has no relationship to food. In fact, the only reason I'm posting this is that I put this together, along with a work friend and my former persona non grata roommate (see "Death of Liqueur Batch..." and this for the story on him).
The inspiration for Ya Basta! was a disastrous dating situation that I was in about 5 months ago. I was just seeing someone my friends referred to as "The Pocket Prof," a diminutive professor whose ego was inversely proportionate to his height (I won't say who it was, suffice it to say he was in the political science department at a maize n blu midwestern school that I attended for one year before my homicidal, now deceased, roommate sent me packing. Miracles come in many guises). It was clear it wasn't working out. After some unfortunate communication via email, I believed I had washed my hands of him. But he had to have the last word -- a month after "it" was ostensibly over (at least in my mind). He sent a letter, which said (to paraphrase), "After giving it careful consideration, I have decided not to pursue a friendship with you." This struck me as 1) awkward; 2) funny; 3) insulting; and 4) presumptuous. He assumed that I wanted to pursue a friendship with him, which astonished me given that when we "broke up" he initiated it via email (hello "Sex and the City") and couldn't bother to pick up the phone.
I complained about this to my colleague, Hal, who much to my surprise never seemed to have much work to do (it turned out this was because he had secretly moved his wife, child, and nanny to Washington DC, sold his house, found a new job, and was planning his escape from the company). Hal wrote up a draft, I punched it up, and my roommate put the finishing legal touches on it.
So Ya Basta! is essentially what I wished I had when I was trying to (ungracefully) exit the intrigue with the Pocket Prof. But it is written to be flexible -- it can be sent to friends, neighbors, colleagues, your boss. Here's the disclaimer: Ya Basta! is for amusement only. Now do with it what you will.
