The Line Must Be Drawn Here, This Far, No Further!
I was born in America. God willing, I will die here. Preferably a long, long time from now in the comfort and safety of my own bed surrounded by my loved ones. And by "loved ones" I mean the great-great-great grandchildren who watch in awe as I expire when the experimental anti-ageing serum I'd been testing finally runs out.

Even as a 200 year old man, I will still love my country. I would do anything to protect it... short of actually doing anything that threatens the longevity of my precious, precious life. It only makes sense: how can I keep loving America if I'm dead? The dangerous and necessary things that need doing I choose not to do, I love America that much.

I feel no shame or dishonor. It's a well-established internet paradigm. If the chicken hawk Yellow Elephant able-bodied non-gay 20-something College Republicans can call for war and war and war as right and good and necessary and the best thing for America and then refuse to volunteer for actual service, I can do my bit from behind the safety of my keyboard as well.

Since I'm sort of against this whole war thing, I'm off that particular philosophical hook anyway. Me, my main beef is with the Foreign Man. I've made no bones about it here, I don't trust 'em. They come here with their weird food and not-English words and make us print all the signs at the post office in multiple languages. It ain't right.

Sure, I could go out and join up with one of those crackpot vigilante border-patrol groups, but you know what, all those places they're patrolling? Very desert-y. And I freckle. So that's a non-starter.

I can do my bit in the war of ideas, make my difference in the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people. Subset: people who read blogs. Sub-subset: people who read this blog in particular. Among that audience, I've got nearly half of your attention, I'm sure.

What I want to say is that a line is being drawn. Right here, right now. By me. Not a real line, a metaphorical one, but still, it's a line.

No, you know what? Fuck it. I'm drawing an ACTUAL line. Hang on... there. Right here in my house. You can't see it, but it's there. I have to figure out how to get black Sharpie off the carpet before my wife gets home, but I don't even care about that now. I've done something. Eat that, Creeping Foreign Invader!

Today my enemy is ciabatta.

I know, you're thinking: "Isn't that some kind of bread?" And I tell you no, it is no mere bread. Baked within it's crusty golden... crust is the threat of total piecemeal annihilation of the American way of life. It is a Trojan bread horse, the hard, crackly outer shell of which protects the light doughy payload of compromised cultural identity.

Time was bread was just bread. If you were feeling uppity you could get yourself a wheat bread. Roman Meal and that was it. Yeah, it said "Roman" in the title, but it said it in English. Other than that you could choose from a range of breads from Wonder to Webber to... well, that was about it. It was squishy, it was gummy, it had almost no nutritional value, but it could hold the fuck out of a peanut-butter-and-jelly shmear or a slice of baloney with American cheese. American bread. White bread.

I'm sure not all of you, dear Bucketeers, live in states that include Jack in the Box fast food restaurants, but these are the foreign-loving commies I blame for the ciabatta invasion. They put it around hamburgers, casually casting aside the honest white-bread bun for this fancy Italian interloper.

Sure, we had whole grain breads and oatbran and stuff like that, but even though that stuff came from dirty, dirty hippies, they were our dirty hippies. We could shoot them if it came down to it.

But Jack in the Box betrayed all of us with its ciabatta fixation, seduced by this Mata Hari fresh-baked culinary harlot.

The limited reach of Jack in the Box cut the impact of what could have been a national disaster, but now... I have to speak up now, because the insidious ciabatta has now moved in on our precious, heretofore inviolate 7-11.

First of all, who the fuck goes to 7-11 for a sandwich? 7-11 is strictly for Slurpees, beef jerky, lottery tickets, porn mags and the occasional bladder-stretching half-gallon diet soda. Why do you think they have those 80-year-old hot dogs slowly rotating in the light-up glass bin? They are meant to discourage your appetite. The whole place screams "Seriously, you don't want to eat here."

I'm disappointed because a) 7-11 is ubiquitous and b) as an institution, it is synonymous with good honest hard work and what can be achieved if one only follows the American dream. Plus, the ease of ownership means we can keep the Arabs we have here right where we can see them.

It's bad enough to Foreign Man has brought us words like "macchiato" and "biscotti" when we used to just have coffee and cookies.

If I have anything to say about it, this is it: there will be no Ciabatta Revolution. Maybe writing an overlong blogpost is all I intend to do about it, but by Gum... why can't that be enough?



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 7.11



Pops
- posted by Pops @ 10:03 AM