Day 44

I like vanilla ice cream. I like chocolate chip cookies. I like bread with butter. I like cheddar cheese. I like saltine crackers. I like to melt cheddar cheese on saltine crackers, which must be the whitest kind of nacho imaginable.

My tastes are simple, but that’s not to say they’re humble. I know nothing of foie gras, but if I did I’d have opinions. Let me tell you, I know a good saltine cracker from a bad one. Years ago I did a comprehensive study of all the saltine brands available in reasonable proximity to my post-college apartment.

Lean forward, for what I learned my surprise you.

A good saltine is made from one layer of rolled dough. When it bakes, trapped air makes it puff up, and it has those little holes keep it from blowing up like a balloon. Saltines may be thin, crispy and dry, but at their heart they’re honest-to-goodness bread. They aren’t meant to put up much too much fight, but they should have some substance. A bit of legitimate crunch.

I conducted my study because I could tell the saltine game had changed. Some pointy-eared, beady-eyed, rubber-wristed, pencil-necked, bean counter decided there were profits to be had if saltines could be made with less saltine in them. Brilliant, right? They did some sketches and hired engineers and designed a machine that made a layer of dough one nanometer thick, and another machine that laminated two such layers together. When baked, the pretense at crackerhood would puff out to a normal saltine shape. It would look like a saltine from the top. It would look like a saltine from the bottom. But it would not be a saltine. It would be Emptiness itself, wearing a saltine costume.

You can tell you’ve been swindled into a box of weresaltines by the way they dissolve on your tongue like cotton candy, gone before your mouth ever knew them.

Thankfully, not everyone took the devil’s bargain. No. The grocery store brands couldn’t afford the fancy equipment to make non-saltines. They’re still making the real thing! It won’t matter by the time some future historian finds these forgotten pages, but at least you can know of a glimmer of beauty that existed once. Store brand saltines cost less money, and they’re the real goddam thing.

The national brands, the “premium” brand, if you will, or the one gets tossed out of a hollow tree, are made from two of the thinnest sheets imaginable. They’re the least even a charlatan could dare to call a saltine. They’re made of lies and vapor. At the lightest touch, they return to the nothingness from which they were conjured.

Anyways, this post has been about Angel Soft Professional Series “Two-Ply” Bath Tissue.

Screw you, Angel Soft.