Good Shit #2

I like today’s title very much, partly because you can almost sing it to the tune of “On the Good Ship Lollipop,” and partly because a certain delightful repetition obtains in the words Good Shit Number Two. Shit, in any case, is the true focus of my life and not because I believe shit is amusing (not that I don’t) but because my Celiac situation forces me to assess my life with an intake-and-output mindset, whish is to say if I intake the correct gluten-free things, the consequent gluten-free output generates occasion for happiness, contentment, spiritual centering, and bunch of other wonderful conditions both mental and physical.

Look, I know this kind of talk drives you crazy but we’re friends and with whom can I share my problems but my friends?

So pictured above is the hog trough area at Whole Foods in Glendale, California. Predictably enough, we see skinny women situated in front of the vegan selections and we see a non-skinny fellow, alone, in the arms-folded Mussolini posture of thought, contemplating the chicken salad with mayonnaise. Me, the guy taking this poor photograph with a cell phone, I was in line for a 24 ounce iced coffee – black, no sugar – because I wanted the experience of spending my life savings in one shopping trip to be really speedy and really electric, which is the problem with Whole Foods: It’s too fucking expensive, right? It’s Whole Paycheck. It’s Hole in Your Wallet. And so on. And for sure if you purchase items from the hog trough or if you get three pounds of sashimi-grade tuna from the seafood department or if you buy an assortment of fancy cheeses or jellies or soap – and on and on. Obviously, you have to think carefully at Whole Foods if you want to leave with your personal finances intact. But if you have celiac disease, Whole Foods is without question the finest source for gluten-free items you will ever find. On their website, for instance, to which I won’t post the link because I figure you’re smart enough to get there on your own, they have huge lists of gluten-free items that are in stock at each Whole Foods location and these gluten-free items will not leave you with a functioning shit system and an appointment with a bankruptcy attorney.

This being said, because I’m not rich in the first place, I wandered the store for about a hour examining the gluten-free selections – breads, pastas, cookies, flours, and even gluten-free gluten! – and I ended up only purchasing a three-dollar bag of gluten-free petite madeleines because what middleage man with a sickness doesn’t want to revisit Marcel Proust? (I’m not explaining that, if you don’t get it.) The madeleines were definitely some good shit.

Verdict: Whole Foods rocks. Study up before you shop, and of course make sure you have an high-income job if you want to shop there regularly.

Good Shit #1

See the ‘g’ in the lower left corner? That doesn’t mean ‘G’ in the old-school rapper way that the white kids in Iowa have never understood in the first place. The ‘g’ means this product is safe for Celiac sufferers. The ‘g’ means Mag can consume what’s inside and not have it emerge from his ass in increments over the course of a entire weekend reading of Anna Karenina.

‘g’. ‘Gluten-free.’ Fuck. This shit is good, though. Not as a good as a Five Dollar Goddam Footlong from Subway. But it’s still goddam good. $2.99 a bag. I am dipping one of these fuckers in tahini right now and for forever and ever, amen.

Verdict on TRADER JOE'S THIN MINI EDAMAME CRACKERS: Serve early and often during March Madness.

Point: “When there’s nothing bad to say, there’s nothing to say.” – Lao ‘G-motherfucker’ Tzu.

Counterpoint: “Something’s fucked up with these elephants.” - ‘G’ Hannibal, citizen of Carthage.

Bad Shit #1

The name of this product gets astonishingly close to summarizing its quality. Take the L out and you’ll have it in a nutshell – or a nutless shell maybe? Or better yet, a tasteless nutless shell? I have to ask: Why the hell wouldn’t you the L out of the name? Everything else has already been taken out of this shit: Wheat free, gluten free, fat free, no sugar, low sodium, no cholesterol, only seven calories per cracker. Sure, a poor, long-suffering, shit-unstable Celiac can eat this these ‘crackers’ without experiencing complete intestinal collapse, but Jesus fucking goddam Christ, you might as well cut strips of typing paper and spread them out on a plate and people can dip these strips of paper into your Trader Joe’s tahini when they come over to watch the game. That’s right: These HO – GRAIN CRACKERS are simply awful, worse than awful, not even worth feeding to a starving chickadee in Saskatoon on the coldest night of the year. HO -GRAIN CRACKERS make communion wafers seem like they’re Kettle Cooked Salt and Vinegar potato chips (incidentally, do you think Christ would be mad at me for mentioning Salt and Vinegar chips in the same sentence as communion? He had some bad experiences with vinegar, you know, and might still be in therapy over it). To make matters worse, which is almost impossible that matters with this shit could be worse, HO – GRAIN CRACKERS are almost six bucks a box at Whole Foods.

Now listen, the first thing that happens when you realize you have to live on a restricted diet is that you search for the things you can eat: And Celiacs can actually eat all sorts of neat things, including Mission Tortilla chips, which are completely totally one-hundred-percent kickass in every possible way, and I guess Fritos are sans gluten, too, but since we’re keeping Christ in the mix today, let me say this: As Christ as my goddam witness, I declare that Fritos ain’t got one iota of donkeyshit on Mission Tortilla chips. Ah, the joy of having a disease! So yeah: celiacs can also eat rice and meat and cheese and potatoes and anything that fuckin-A doesn’t have any gluten in it. All those wonderful items that celiacs can eat: fattening. Or maybe they’re not really fattening. Maybe it’s that when you realize what you can eat in the context of what you can’t eat, you naturally feel the need to eat more each time you eat because you think that’s all the food you’re going to get. The consequence for me is I’m eating my gluten-free way into the Pillsbury Doughboy look. Which is not optimal.

As a corrective measure then, I spent way too much money on HO - GRAIN CRACKERS only to find out they suck. And I’m pissed.

Final verdict: The only good use for this product is as tinder to start a fire.