(Rant) ‘More Than Food.’

The music at the end is BWV 600, from a forthcoming ‘electrified’ arrangement of Bach’s Orgelbüchlein.

The beautiful passage toward the end of my rant— with the koto accompaniment and bird song— comes from one of my absolute favorite books: R.H. Blythe’s writings about Haiku. Blyth considered the three greatest geniuses of time to be Basho, Bach, and Shakespeare— in that order! Wow! What am I missing with Basho!?

More than a podcast. This is WTF Bach.

I take my groceries from the bag and notice the bag says,

This is more than food.

More than food? But I want to eat …food. Just food. Maybe they’re referring to the packaging? This is more than food: it’s packaging wrapped around the food. But then I read on:

This is impact.

Impact? Do I want to eat impact? Does impact have gluten?

My chocolate bar, too.

This is more than chocolate.

Uh-oh.

This is freedom.

Yikes. Should I …eat the freedom part? Maybe I shouldn’t. Sounds like something a dictator would do.

How would you like your freedom Signori Mussolini?

Rare. Very rare.

My milk says something too. Goddamn! When did food get so talkative?

For Family Farm Dairy, milk is more than just a drink.

Oh here we go again…

Our Cows are family.

Family? With, like, beds in the house? I thought dogs in airports was too much, but now: cows… Do not pet. Emotional support heifer.

And while I’m in the airport, I need something to eat. I’m still hungry because this all this impact and freedom hasn’t filled me up. I see a sign,

Eat beautiful.

Eat beauti…ful…? Oh I get it, ‘Subway. Eat Fresh.’ now this. But this is somehow worse. We all want fresh food, even if it is grammatically incorrect fresh food, but beautiful food? I’m not ready for that. Especially since it’s …at an airport.

Eat beautiful? What was wrong with eat beautifully? But then again, what is eating beautifully? Picture Sophia Loren eating sushi. But eat beautiful? Sorry, don’t eat adjectives.

Eat photogenic. Eat prepossessing. Someone will drop one of these on us soon enough.

Sirs, our data reports show that people are consuming 20% more beautiful, but they’re not eating enough of our product! Hence, our new slogan: eat sexy.

Oh yes, yes! Eat sexy. Fantastic, brilliant. Maybe we can get some pink ribbons and black and white photos on the edamame. Could we wrap the steaks in lingerie? Who would eat beautiful when they could eat sexy?

Spread the Happy.

This is a real one. These are all real ones. Honey, can you, uh, pass the happy? I know we’re in a sexless marriage and our children never call, but if we just spread a little more of this Happy…

Cadbury told us to Free the joy

Now it’s on us to free something? To free an emotion? We wouldn’t have to if they didn’t trap it in there. One chocolate bar is freedom, another is enslaving joy. Poor joy, all trapped in that wrapper. Here let me set you free.

It’s all spin-offs on Coca-Cola, anyhow, the greatest grifters of all time. Open happiness. God, it’s brilliant. It preys on people. Open happiness, I even like it.

But then they changed it to taste the feeling. The feeling. What feeling? The feeling of… tasting? Taste the feeling of tasting. It’s weird. It’s just shifting around words until they’ve lost all meaning. But that’s old hat by now because these days coca-cola tells us it’s real magic. Magic. We’ve gone from happiness to magic.

Ah. I see where this is going Allow me to save coke years of market research, what you’re after is, “Coke: the Carbonated Christ.”

Food is out of control— and arrogant! I liked it when food was food. I’m sick of eating beautiful and happy. I want a meal! Would you care for some freshly ground joy on your magic? Oh grow up! Are you living in Never-Never Land?

Remember, “the best part of