The Sentient Peanut

Hello, I’m the famous author Bryan Ray, and I’m back in full effect to rock your world and smash all your paradigms down to dust, by telling you about this crazy-insane new thing that I just discovered: a sentient peanut. 

Yes, this peanut is able to feel pleasure and pain. Listen close: do you hear? The peanut is howling in agony. Go ahead and crack open its shell — now bash it with your fist. Now do you hear that? The peanut is screaming, and its voice is saying “Stop hurting me.” So let’s have some compassion and hold back for a moment. Observe how the peanut is trembling: it’s visibly terrified. The thing is so shaken up: look, it’s now vomiting blood. You shouldn’t have struck him so hard; I only wanted you to pinch him to crack his shell — you went too far, and that’s what hurt him so bad and jangled his nerves. 

Drats, now our neighbor is at the door. I’ll answer it.

“What’s going on in there?” says our neighbor. “I keep hearing screams of agony, and a voice saying ‘Ow, ow, ow!’ Are you guys funded by U.S. tax dollars?” 

“No,” I answer and begin to fabricate a plausible tale to quell our neighbor’s curiosity. Meanwhile, you remain in the adjacent room with the sentient peanut — your hand is pressed firmly upon it, to mute its cries. You now lean down and whisper to the poor thing: “Either shut up, or I will eat you.” But the peanut won’t stop bellowing, so you pop it into your mouth and chew thoroughly and swallow. — Now muffled screams from your stomach pervade the atmosphere for the remainder of this week’s episode.