Tuesday, March 25, 2014

The Tale of Artisan Toast

I had an epiphany. Now I know most of you are going to see how long this reads and skip it, but for the rest of you my tale may save you some stress.

I'm driving home listening to NPR. Now I'm listening to a story on This American Life and thinking, "Hey, this isn't bad. It's not revolutionary journalism but at least it's a decent story. At least I'm getting something out of it. Unlike CNN it doesn't pretend to educate you while detracting from your overall intelligence."

Then the story changed. Now some man was talking very eloquently about "Artisan toast." I started feeling conflicting emotions, irritation, anger, befuddlement, but also calm and acceptance. The soft spoken man went on, "Artisan toast selling at four dollars a slice."

Gourmet toast

He went to describe artisan toast as a trend in the San Francisco area, a fad at the end of its lifespan even. He mention there was already a backlash against artisan toast. A backlash against artisan toast.

Yes, my initial reaction was enough to fry the circuits of a blood pressure checker, but I knew being angry at stupidity is almost as stupid as the stupidity itself. So it hit me, I'm a step ahead of the game. But then I realized I was not only angry at the fans of artisan toast, but angry at the people who were angry at artisan toast.

And it hit me, "Forget it, man. Forget anger, forget knee-jerk reactions, forget cynicism as a crutch. Forget even that a national radio program partially government funded is doing a 12-minute piece on artisan toast."

Like filmmaker Ingmar Bergman said, "From having been exceedingly dogmatic, my views on life have gradually dissolved. They don't exist any longer..." I have nothing cynical to say. I have nothing negative to add. This is merely a new state of being. This is my new belief system.

When anyone asks me, "Do you believe in god?"

I'm going to say, "Artisan toast exists, and a backlash against artisan toast exists, and National Public Radio covered this topic."

And the answer they take from that will be up to them.

2 comments:

  1. Be happy that you were not one of the imbeciles with nothing to eat & too much money in your pocket who were the ones responsible for this supreme idiocy. Ya can't blame the restaurant owners who when realizing that if they called it "Artisan" toast,The nitwits wouldn't flinch when charged $4 for a 10 cent slice of toasted bread, but would instead happily pay for the "new" experience of eating a slice of bread that was craft toasted, order MORE & then gush over the delight they had enjoyed to all of their equally stupid friends who also had too much money, but were now consumed with jealousy that wouldn't be soothed until they too had enjoyed & then boasted to their other stupid friends about the obvious delicacy that IS "Artisan toast" The only artisan thing here is that toast is being sold by Con Artisans...

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  2. "Con Artisans." Nice. Thank you for your thoughts, Bob.

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