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joke du journal 4-17-01
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By Funny Guy, Section Culture
Posted on Tue Apr 17th, 2001 at 08:08:09 AM PDT
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joke du journal 4-17-01
As I'm not much of a TV watcher, (Imagine this, I've never seen Friends) I sometimes get blindsided by new things in our ever-changing corporate commercial culture. Largely because I miss all the commercials. Life is change, to be sure, but the pace in our native country is far faster than the rest of the world.
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| Speaking of the rest of the world, I just heard the AMA proclaim yesterday the America is suffering from an epidemic of obesity. Leaving aside for the moment that epidemics are usually brought on by pathogens and suchlike, isn't this really, really sad? The rest of the world is suffering from an overabundance of nothing but hunger. Famine and starvation plague the denizens of the cesspools of the third world, yet we here in the USA are suffering from an "epidemic" of obesity. Has it got so good that it's that bad? Yes, Virginia, if there's one thing we suffer from in America, it's too damn much cheesecake. Tragic.
Anyhow, I walk into a Subway the other day, cause I got a hankering for a pseudo-stuffed loaf of white bread with bland meat and lots of veggie matter. I'm totally shocked. They've got four or six different kinds of bread to choose from (I'm not sure, I was so taken aback). No longer just white and wheat, they got Italian and crusty Italian and partially crusted but sort of smooth Italian and herb and garlic and who knows Italian what all. I ask for an Italian combo with a semicrusty loaf and notice something else: they start cutting the bread different. They don't do that patented funky Subway carve-out-a-triangle-off-the-top cut. The one where they end up with a shallow trough which they then "pack" to make it look like the bread is stuffed really full with lots of meat and vegetables. Instead they start cutting from the side like they do at Blimpies. But I begin to get suspicious, cause they still use their little
whittle knife instead of a big French knife that would cut through the bread in one fell time-saving swoop. Sure enough, they're just starting from the edge, but they never cut all the way through, so although it looks like the bread is headed for two halves, it really just ends up with another version of the same shallow trough, which they then pry apart like a Filipino faith surgeon and "stuff" with their own version of magical chicken guts. While I'm reflecting on
this, I sample the various types of new Subway bread cubed out in a basket before me and I notice something else interesting. They all taste the same. All right! Six different versions of the same thing. They're telling me I have a choice. But really I only have a choice that looks like a choice. Kind of like the different shaped marshmallows in Lucky Charms or the different colored coatings on M and M's. Looks: Different. Taste: The same. Ah, marketing. Feed the need we
Americans have for change to boost sales, but don't do anything really different to cut into your bottom line.
ut the bread thing really does stand to reason. It's just an extension of their meat philosophy. For years Subway has offered a lot of different kinds of meat, but no matter whether you order salami or bologna or turkey, it all tastes exactly the same. Yep. Generic processed meat flavor. Goes perfect with six kinds of generic flavored processed bread. Which of our generic flavored processed sauces would you like on that?
You got to hand to our country. With the taste of food available to us, we had to work awful damn hard to bring on that obesity epidemic. |
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