Matilda’s stream-of-consciousness and complaints about life

I’m sure people have talked about this before, but I feel compelled to go on the record.  I was reminded by my sandwich posts that sliced bread is, by far, the most overhyped invention of all time.  I’m not saying the concept is bad, I’m just saying the creativity required is essentially nill, which pretty much defeats the purpose of inventing in my book.  I mean, presumably people have been ripping chunks out of bread for millenia.  I think animals probably do similar things with very large prey items (I think I saw a special on this once.)  To me, the creativity required in the jump from “amorphous chunk ripped out of bread” to “carefully ordered and equivolumnar slices of bread”–nay, the incredible leap from “let’s divide this bread into approximately equal hunks by tearing at it whilst beating our chests” to a careful, machine-orchestrated process–was ultimately time-saving, useful for putting sandwiches together, and boring.  The real innovators, I think, were the first astute individuals who realized that putting a whole loaf of bread into one’s mouth led to wide-spread choking and often death.  Such chunk-ripping pioneers are the truest examples of creative genius.

Another regular feature of matilda’s posting world!  I complain a lot, in case you haven’t noticed.  It wasn’t long after my first complaint that I realized these should be extensively documented for posterity.  Misery loves company.

A lunch on the go is the most daunting prospect in England for the lactitionally challenged.  I know this because I have looked at the ingredient list of every single sandwich at every single distributor of sliced bread I’ve ever run across.  I have certainly not learned any sort of lesson from this as of yet, as I still check the ingredients for every single sandwich I run across (bar those with ‘cheese’ in the title. unlike back home, i’ve yet to detect a british cheese that doesn’t actually contain cheese or dairy.)  In the amount of time it takes me to do this in the 10 minutes I have before my bus/train/interview/exam, I could easily buy bread, meat, and condiments separately and make 14 of my very own sandwiches for a mere fraction of the cost.

I suppose when it comes down to it, I keep checking because I’m an eternal optimist (right?) and because the sandwich market seems to change faster than any other food genre.  I guess I hope that one day a whole slew of lactodeficient options will appear, but thus far my quest has been futile.  Most recently, at Cambridge Rail Station I turned at least 50 sandwiches upside down in four different shops.  I thought I must have struck gold at WH Smith’s with their ‘Simply Chicken’ selection.  I excitedly knocked six other choices onto the floor (presumably explaining why the cashier leapt into action to enthusiastically attach ‘free-range’ stickers to these casualties, but I digress) and scanned the allergen list (a most helpful innovation, actually).

“Contains egg, gluten, milk, mustard, soya, wheat”

Another failure.  I would hate to see the Complicatedly Chicken.

I think that one of the most unfortunate aspects of society is that we insist on variety and choice.  I know that whatever fine purveyor of sandwich I go into will have a Hoisin Duck Wrap, and that there is a 100% chance that I will be able to eat this.  I also know that there is a 99.9% chance that this will be the ONLY thing I will be able to eat.  Now, I”m quite a fan of duck.  But.  Going in with the a priori knowledge that this is always my bakcup (and essentially my only) choice makes me very much hate the Hoisin Duck Wrap.  It is always the non-exciting, dependable, fall-back choice.

I haven’t had one in two years.

I love England immeasurably, and could easily write a book about my experiences there.  However, I see several things as barriers to such an opportunity.  The primary problem is that my experiences are so incredibly boring that any work wouldn’t be so much a book as an encyclopaedic stream of mundanity that would render even the most easily-entertained of readers (you know who you are) catatonic.  If a book seems a bit ambitious, perhaps I should start out in the middle ground (between that and, well, nothing) with a short series of dull and witless observations.  Stay tuned