A Descent Into The Anecdotal
More and more, I feel that my entries are turning into collections of humorous or quasi-interesting anecdotes. I fear this tendency, so I'm going to head it off by getting as many out of my system as I can.
Tonight, Wash U's food provider, Bon Appetít, is hosting a special one-lunch-only event: they are offering food items from within a 150-mile radius, to show their support of local agriculture. For the last two weeks, every table of every eatery on campus has sported this flyer. The reverse side of the flyer advertises today, the local eating challenge.
Let's break this down, in case you missed it. In the flyer, they describe all the reasons you should eat locally: 1. Apples out of season will be imported and force ripened in a warehouse. 2. Salmon out of season will be chock full of environmentally unfriendly chemicals used to stimulate their growth, which has an impact on you when you eat it, as well as the farms they come from. 3. A cheap hamburger is, apparently, made so unsavory through cut-corners and cost-reducing efforts, that Bon Appetít doesn't "even want to tell you what goes into making that possible". All of these are very good reasons not to eat out of season, and why you should only eat American-grown foods and blah blah blah.
The thing that gets me is, they've basically detailed their own business practices for every other day of the year. This one day, Eat Local Day, they offer a lunch made entirely of local ingredients. Every other day of the year, they will import, drug, fertilize and cheapen the food they sell to you. Furthermore, the implication that they are, somehow, helping the environment by doing this is immediately cancelled out by the fact that they've put little paper flyers on every flat surface on campus. We'll just ignore the fact that the Eat Local Challenge did not take place everywhere on campus, but at some undisclosed location.
To show their support of local agriculture, they have used only local ingredients for a single meal at a single eatery. Sell the farm, Jedediah, you've finally got the money to move to Beverly. Thank you, Bon Appetít, for this pittance. Thanks, again, for taking advantage of Wash U's characteristic "rich white-guilt" to enhance your own image.
It's an advertising phenomenon that works surprisingly well. By admitting how horrible their business practices are 364 days of the year, they convince you that you can trust them. It's a catch-22, how we will trust people who admit some horrible fault, even if they show no signs of fixing that fault. The Georgia State Patrol used this same tactic when promoting their 100 Days Of Summer Heat campaign. The idea is that, for 100 days, the police will enforce the law harder than they usually do. This suggests that they don't usually enforce the law hard enough.
I should note that Alfonzo's speeding ticket on the way up here was a direct result of the 100 Days. If only he had been better informed.
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Anecdote #2.
While waiting in line for an imported, fertilized-soaked wrap, I overheard a conversation which I felt I should share with the world. Let's set the scene :
We have, directly in front of me, a tall, broad-shouldered, football-type guy. While we are waiting in line, a relatively tall, bubbly Indian girl bounces over to him and jumps into his arms. She chatters for a bit, before noticing that her man was reading the newspaper. She scolds him for doing so, saying "I read the New York Times and the Economist and I'm no less smarter."
At this point, you can practically hear the mice on the wheel in her head. After a moment of silence, she laughs and corrects herself. "I'm no MORE smarter. No MORE."
I tried my best to write it down without being noticed. As a form of karmic retribution, no doubt, this girl and her mother implanted themselves in line in front of me. I suppose I deserved it, for being such a judgemental person, but I was overtaken by it. I had never, in all my days, encountered an Indian Ditz.
Oh my, I've hardly run out of anecdotes. I'll try a lightning round, later, with out so much vivid detail.
-Alan
Tonight, Wash U's food provider, Bon Appetít, is hosting a special one-lunch-only event: they are offering food items from within a 150-mile radius, to show their support of local agriculture. For the last two weeks, every table of every eatery on campus has sported this flyer. The reverse side of the flyer advertises today, the local eating challenge.
Let's break this down, in case you missed it. In the flyer, they describe all the reasons you should eat locally: 1. Apples out of season will be imported and force ripened in a warehouse. 2. Salmon out of season will be chock full of environmentally unfriendly chemicals used to stimulate their growth, which has an impact on you when you eat it, as well as the farms they come from. 3. A cheap hamburger is, apparently, made so unsavory through cut-corners and cost-reducing efforts, that Bon Appetít doesn't "even want to tell you what goes into making that possible". All of these are very good reasons not to eat out of season, and why you should only eat American-grown foods and blah blah blah.
The thing that gets me is, they've basically detailed their own business practices for every other day of the year. This one day, Eat Local Day, they offer a lunch made entirely of local ingredients. Every other day of the year, they will import, drug, fertilize and cheapen the food they sell to you. Furthermore, the implication that they are, somehow, helping the environment by doing this is immediately cancelled out by the fact that they've put little paper flyers on every flat surface on campus. We'll just ignore the fact that the Eat Local Challenge did not take place everywhere on campus, but at some undisclosed location.
To show their support of local agriculture, they have used only local ingredients for a single meal at a single eatery. Sell the farm, Jedediah, you've finally got the money to move to Beverly. Thank you, Bon Appetít, for this pittance. Thanks, again, for taking advantage of Wash U's characteristic "rich white-guilt" to enhance your own image.
It's an advertising phenomenon that works surprisingly well. By admitting how horrible their business practices are 364 days of the year, they convince you that you can trust them. It's a catch-22, how we will trust people who admit some horrible fault, even if they show no signs of fixing that fault. The Georgia State Patrol used this same tactic when promoting their 100 Days Of Summer Heat campaign. The idea is that, for 100 days, the police will enforce the law harder than they usually do. This suggests that they don't usually enforce the law hard enough.
I should note that Alfonzo's speeding ticket on the way up here was a direct result of the 100 Days. If only he had been better informed.
---------------------------------------------------
Anecdote #2.
While waiting in line for an imported, fertilized-soaked wrap, I overheard a conversation which I felt I should share with the world. Let's set the scene :
We have, directly in front of me, a tall, broad-shouldered, football-type guy. While we are waiting in line, a relatively tall, bubbly Indian girl bounces over to him and jumps into his arms. She chatters for a bit, before noticing that her man was reading the newspaper. She scolds him for doing so, saying "I read the New York Times and the Economist and I'm no less smarter."
At this point, you can practically hear the mice on the wheel in her head. After a moment of silence, she laughs and corrects herself. "I'm no MORE smarter. No MORE."
I tried my best to write it down without being noticed. As a form of karmic retribution, no doubt, this girl and her mother implanted themselves in line in front of me. I suppose I deserved it, for being such a judgemental person, but I was overtaken by it. I had never, in all my days, encountered an Indian Ditz.
Oh my, I've hardly run out of anecdotes. I'll try a lightning round, later, with out so much vivid detail.
-Alan
posted by Alan Orlanski at 6:56 PM
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