The Wine Glass

Live from Cancer's Case...welcome to The Wine Glass! What a cute name. I didn't come up with it. Anyway, that puppet said I needed to do something around here, so here I am, away from the ship's bar, speaking with one of our contestants for the fifth iteration of the CRAB tournament. I'm your host, Barbara, and this is my guest. I didn't pick him. Uhh, Freezer? No. Cooler. That's his name.

Barbara: Welcome to the show, Cooler. I suppose I'm obligated to ask, how are you doing?

Cooler: Is it um, is it just me or is it a little hot in here?

Barbara: That's on purpose. I wouldn't want to get cold just wearing this dress while you're all cozy in your snow suit, after all.

Cooler: Ahh...

Barbara: Cooler comes from this planet you can see back there, which I'm sure has a name that I don't care to learn. It has been described to me as split down the middle as either "a frozen wasteland or an unlivable volcanic hellscape". Not my words. How do you feel about your home being described that way? This place sounds completely and utterly terrible.

Cooler: Oh well, it's not so bad! We Icekimos are a simple people of the ice, and we make do with what we got! But it's not all a complete wasteland, we have plenty of different animals that live in the frozen tundra, from the tiniest ice mites, to the biggest Snowlephants! Being a farmer myself, I've handled a lot of these beautiful creatures and rely on them for our survival. Besides, thanks to the Space Government, we also have a few modern amenities that have made living in our "wasteland" a lot more tolerable.

Barbara: And the other half...?

Cooler: Now.. the unlivable volcanic hellscape.. I can't really defend that. Don't go there.

Barbara: I have been told you are in search of a partner to marry. As a matter of fact, this seems to be the sole goal of every single member of your entire species.

Cooler: You would be correct, and-

Barbara: First of all, I'm single, in case you were wondering. Second, I'm not open. Third and fourth, why do you feel the need to make that your life mission and is the frigid atmosphere of your home world colder than the feeling of loneliness that eats away at you?

Cooler: Ah.. that's a shame. I'd love to have a wife as pretty as you. But to answer your questions, yes. We Icekimos do indeed go out to the dark reaches of space to find a wife, and I think everyone deep inside wants to find someone to love and spend the rest of their life, it's sad to not fill lonely void with love, nothing is colder than that.

Barbara: I see. But it says here your home world indeed has women on it, so I was wondering why you don't just try with them? Is it a personal failing on the part of your entire species or am I just making a baseless assumption?

Cooler: Yes, we do indeed have females on our planet on the volcanic hellscape side of my planet. I've always been told since I could remember the danger of our females, the horror stories of what they do to us, and that not matter what we do, there is no reasoning with them to change…

Barbara: So you think there is no reasoning with a woman? What an endearing character trait.

Cooler: But I'm gonna be honest, and this goes against conventional Icekimo wisdom.. I believe that some day we can get along with our females and traveling to space will not be a necessary part of Icekimo tradition anymore. Now to be fair to my fellow Icekimos and their horror stories, I've never interacted with a "Lava Savage" before like they have, but I wouldn't mind meeting one, I hear they are really pretty.

Barbara: Lastly, it says here your species does not allow anyone outside of it to see you under that suit of yours. Is there a reason for that or is it a result of personal shame, like all the men who won't show their face on their dating profiles? Surely you would want a woman to know what they're getting in to. What are you hiding?

Cooler: Yes, it is our one great taboo to be seen without our suit, and it's always been that way in Icekimo culture. If it's found out that one of us have been revealed outside wedlock, it brings great shame to themselves and to their families, and are banished forever from our civilization. It's always been that way for me, my father, his father and so on and sort forth, that means I'm extra careful to not show any part of myself except for my newly wedded wife! Hmm, now that I think about it, it's not actually uncommon for families to see each other without a suit. I've bathed with my brothers mutiple times so we all know what we actually look like, in fact a little while before being abducted to this place me and Coolidge were bathing and then we started to compare our.. EHERM.. um, anyways, you are right that women we try to court are taking a gamble on not knowing our appearance. I've heard of stories of newly weds immediately separating because the wife didn't like how his husband actually looked like, and that is a big fear of mine.

Barbara: Glowing reviews, huh.

Cooler: Hopefully my future wife will love me for who I am and not for what I look like inside the parka, and if she likes what I look like, that's a bonus!

Barbara: Well, there you have it. If there are any ladies in the audience in the market for an eligible bachelor with seemingly about as much respect for himself as the winter air does for the blood flow of an unclothed individual, who owns perhaps the worst real estate in the galaxy, you know where to find him. Any last comments, Cooler? Any words for your opponents or are you just going to give us more of that annoyingly polite demeanor?

Cooler: Uh.. are you you're not interested? I do really find you pretty, and…