Well, this is awkward.

 Only four and a half months after my most recent endeavor into the world of wheat, grain and other fruits of agrarian labor, I have returned. Missed me? Me neither. I don’t even have a valid excuse for missing these posts – I’ve just been one lazy son of a bitch-slapping butterscotch breadhead. But, like the cornfields of blonde suburban Protestants whose fathers ‘built this country’, I’ll choose to blame Biden’s economic policy – or as it is alternatively known, Bidenomics. 

That last sentence probably pissed a lot of people off, not in the least because ‘Bidenomics’ is one of the worst-sounding Presidential-economic-policy-portmanteaus since ‘Taftonomics’, ‘Fordonomics’, and, inexplicably, ‘Bush Junior Economics’. I think Presidents in general are, like, overrated – why place so much executive power in the hands of a single individual? What if they turn out to be an idiot? It’d be like if you went to a Starbucks with your friends and asked one friend to get you a mocha latte – but then said, ‘Hey man, if you want to, like, change my orders without telling me, and without my having any say in the matter, that’s totally okay.’ And then you realize your friend is funded by several super PACs committed to eradicating mocha lattes and takes campaign contributions from Latinos against Lattes and voted for the Iraq War. And then, before you know it, your friend has placed a moratorium on the separation of Church and State and you’re living in a dystopian Protestant theocracy where free speech is confined exclusively to the phrase, ‘Hey dude, my fathers built this country!’

In unrelated news, my ex-girlfriend was a Protestant.

Just kidding. 

Anyway, this is supposed to be a blog about bread. Since I’m running out of types of bread to talk about, I think it’s time to unleash our inner scientists, traverse deeper into the dimly lit chambers of fundamental organic chemistry, and talk about yeast!

Yeast is really interesting, because, uh, well, mmm, it’s cool, and it makes bread, and uhhh, well, okay I’m going to admit it I don’t know what the hell yeast is. Like, I know what it is, but I don’t know what it is. Is it a microbial organism? Is it just, like, living wheat? How does yeast just transform boring-ass grains into airy, buttery, delectable garlic bread? Again, I could blame this gap in my knowledge on my own ignorance, but I’m going to choose to blame it on the education system. And therefore the economy. And therefore Bidenomics.

Man, we need to elect a President with a cool last name, just so that their economic policy, good or bad, would roll off the tongues of political historians for decades and centuries to come. I’m talking cool last names, like ‘Nahasapeemapetilon’, so that when President Nahasapeemapetilon institutes trickle-down economics and inexplicably cuts corporate income tax rates, we can get together and be like, ‘Wow, I hate Nahasapeemapetilonomics!’

(Cue music: AC/DC’s Highway to Hell)

(Strained whisper) ‘You idiot, that’s the wrong song…how many times did we practice this…’

(Record scratch)

(Cue music: AC/DC’s Back in Black)

That’s right, ladies and gentlebreadheads, I’m back! After a month long hiatus spent in the torturous chambers of Work and Hell, I have returned with prodigious grandeur to my intellectual steam room, as it were: the Land of the Bread! (Not to be confused with the land of the dead) (Not to be confused with a graveyard) (Not to be confused with a retirement home) (Not to be confused with the White House). 

Just to be clear, I am aware of how pretentious these kinds of sentences sound.

Let’s try this again.

(Record scratch)

Dearest breadheads, we’re back! How I missed you! Milk and honey for everyone! Recently, I’ve been plagued with requests to focus on more bread-related topics specifically, rather than tangentially discussing societal topics, as is generally the norm around these parts. I can’t say it doesn’t hurt that you breadheads don’t want to examine philosophy with me, but what gives? I have to do what you say! Money talks, after all. And, trust me, bread-writing is a high-stakes business. A rough-neighbourhood-kind of business. A car-doors-locked-at-the-intersections-kind of business. Like, literally, I get my shoes shined by venture capitalists, who start sweating when they hear the kind of risk I assess on a daily basis. Then they hide under their desks and cradle their cardboard briefcases. Turns out writing jokes is harder than seed round funding. 

Speaking of seed round funding, if there are any venture capitalists reading this, preferably as representatives of some faceless, predatory hedge fund, hit me up. I’ve got a super savvy business idea that involves selling bread to people for money.

Oh dear. I’m doing it again, aren’t I?

(Record scratch)

Okay, no more digressing, and no more pretensions! Let’s get on with the topic of today’s article: How To Make Bread. Today, I’m going to be walking you through how to cook a delicious loaf of homemade, heart-warming, golden-brown bread. And I promise I will not digress or satirize or make anything weird in any way. That being said, let’s get ahead with the bread!

Step 1: Take a bowl of water. Add yeast; dissolve half a tablespoon of warm water. Ensure that bubbles form on the surface. Whisk sugar, salt, and a couple cups of flour. Stir oil, flour, and watch your dough form.

Step 2: Knead the dough for up to 15 minutes. Add oil to a bowl, cover, and leave in a warm place when possible. Wait for around 2 hours for the dough to rise.

Step 3: Ambush Nazis on sight. Prisoners must not be taken. The most effective way of catching Nazi guards is on bicycle, preferably with a double-barreled shotgun in one hand, a cold, bitter Lager beer in the other, and the third hand clutching the handles of the bicycle. Sing Allied national anthem of your choice for supplementary psychological warfare. Be VERY WARY that target Nazi officer is not an Allied officer in disguise. An easy way to check this is to ask whether they have seen the movie ‘Inglorious Basterds’. If it is an ally, they will say no. If it is a Nazi, they will say nein. Our undercover allies have not yet learned German and as such are currently masquerading as pseudo-mute soldiers only capable of saying the word ‘no’. Once you have successfully felled the Nazi, remember to bring back the body to your home as a trophy of your success. You may use the cadaver as you please, but remember to treat it with respect.

Step 4: Punch dough down, shape into loaf, place into loaf pans. Rise for 2 hours.

Step 5: Bake at 350 degrees Celsius for half an hour.

Step 6: Enjoy your bread as you are haunted by ghosts of Nazis past.

(Cue music: AC/DC’s Highway to Hell)

Good afternoooooooooooooooooooooooooon, breadheads!

It’s actually past midnight as I write this, but hey, maybe it’s afternoon for some of you. In any case it’s the thought that counts and it’s always afternoon in the eternal pseudo-sunset of my flighty heart and time is a relative conception anyway and e is equal to mc squared and THANK YOU EINSTEIN FOR RUINING MY DAY.

I have digressed.

Big news for us breadheads: we’re diversifying. Since I’m rapidly running out of new types of bread to eat and produce social commentaries about, I’m ‘broadening the lens’, as it were, to bread-based food items. Today, I ate waffles – which kind of counts as bread if you’re progressive enough, I guess? Who are we to indiscriminately bisect bread society into arbitrary confinements of color, taste or inherent value, anyway?

This says a lot about society. 

To me, eating waffles carries with it a heartfelt nostalgia – I have very fond memories of a particular trip to Australia that I took with my family years ago when we exclusively ate over-sweetened Belgian waffles for breakfast. I did not enjoy said waffles. However, I am grateful for the memories that that experience bestowed onto me, and for that, to Belgian waffles, I am deeply and truly grateful. Nostalgia is a powerful, powerful emotion – the most powerful human emotion, I think (apart from fear, of course). I’m a pretty sentimental guy, so maybe it’s just me – but I’m particularly susceptible to a strong and unexpected outburst of raw reminiscence for the past; transfixing, resolute, like an unflinchingly visceral voice from the indefinite depths of long-forgotten memory; a warm, enveloping embrace from the benevolent, faceless past, gripping me into a misty-eyed, rose-tinted desire to return to that place that exists only in my mind and nowhere else and I think I’m tearing up I can’t see the keys ob the keybokard clearly

This says a lot about society.

Not really. But hey, it sounded cool. Orwell calls it ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’: basically a desire to make things sound cool. If I’m being honest, this is one of the driving reasons behind why I write – the main reason being to give y’all breadheads some food for thought! But anyway, enough about me – let’s go back to nostalgia.

Think about a place that you miss. Or a person, or a thing, or anything for that matter. Better yet, stay up late and play the music you listened to a few years ago. My guess is you feel nostalgic, and it hits hard. Man, it hits me hard. I think manipulating the human penchant for nostalgia is an untapped market that modern corporations haven’t yet found a way to package and commodify and advertise and turn into an All-In-One-Super-Duper-Nostalgia-Maker-O-Nater-200000 (Buy 213 get 1.5 free!), available now in stores near you.

This says a lot about socieOH SHUT UP.

Ranting about market fundamentalism always reminds me of Wall-E (which, I think, is a masterpiece). That is all. I do not feel particularly nostalgic about watching Wall-E.

I think maybe nostalgia is also what drives reactionary politics – I don’t mean to point fingers, but many modern conservative American talking points revolve around restoring things to the way they were (see: Make America Great Again). This isn’t an inherently negative sentiment by any means, but it can be used to tap into older voters’ belief that things were just Better when they were young, even if they weren’t. 

In conclusion, waffles are Republicans. In this essay I will argue that this says a lot about society

Today is Taco Tuesday, so I ate tacos for breakfast.

It’s actually Sunday, but hey, it’s Taco Tuesday in my heart. As I ate the tacos for breakfast on a Sunday morning, I felt particularly pessimistic about the fate of the world – not in the least because I was eating tacos for breakfast on a Sunday morning. Anyway, I’ve felt this sort of existential dread for the past couple of weeks – the feeling that life and existence is just darkness; and it feels like I’m falling through space, no, floating in space, suspended time, and there is nothing at all around me as my body crumbles into a million pieces; and I feel, see and hear nothing, and there is an absolute silence, and I stare into my unfolding fate as present and future become one; my life and destiny are trapped together for eternity in an inescapeble and endless hall of mirrors, and I can see infinity, but I can see nothing. 

I know what you’re thinking. That’s not how you spell inescapable! Well, dearest breadheads, that should tell you everything you need to know about just how pessimistic I feel this particular Sunday morning – spelling, I think, is an endeavour that rapidly declines in importance when you consider that the fate of the world rests in the hands of our generation, and humanity’s very existence faces a grim and unyielding peril, ranging from climate change to global pandemics to the fact that Marvel movies just aren’t as good as they used to be (there, I said it).

Sbo abyway, I’mm sppeling everythibg ibcorrecdly naow, jsust 2 emphasaize howe uselezz spellidg iz ubless oui doo subthing aboud thee fuchure oph ower wurld.

Never mind. That’s probably giving you a headache, and I think my Google autocorrect thing just had a stroke. 

Anyway, as you can probably tell, I was quickly overwhelmed by the sheer existential terror of it all, and my toes started to tingle in a most ominous way. But then my mom called me upstairs to give the dog a bath, and these thoughts promptly shuffled to the back of my mind with only a moment’s notice. I guess that’s humanity’s coping mechanism – trying to consider the entirety of our problems at one time is much like trying to give a dog a bath – almost impossible, and decidedly unreasonable. I sometimes feel bad for politicians – might be the first time anyone’s ever said that – for having to tackle the entirety of a country’s political, social and economic instabilities, facing the pressure to humour the interests of disparate sectors, factions and people all at once. But then I remember that they’re politicians, and I laugh it off.

I guess what I’m saying is, pick your battles – you can’t possibly advocate for change in every single field you encounter. But what do I know? Maybe you breadheads are just better, more talented people than I am. Go get ‘em, boys and girls!

Also, I just remembered that this is a bread blog, so I’ll close with a quote from a brilliant but misunderstood scholar named W. I. K. Pedia on rye bread.

‘Rye bread is a type of bread made with various proportions of flour from rye grain. It can be light or dark in color, depending on the type of flour used and the addition of coloring agents, and is typically denser than bread made from wheat flour. It is higher in fiber than white bread and is darker in color and stronger in flavor.’

Today I ate a dosa, which is a thin pancake or crepe common in South India consisting of lentils and rice. My mother told me she made a dosa because she was too lazy to make Real Breakfast for us (whatever that is). I do not enjoy dosas much.

Laziness is, I think, Public Enemy Number Two. I think Anthony Bourdain put it best when he said, ‘There’s a guy inside me who wants to lay in bed and watch cartoons and old movies. My whole life is a series of stratagems to avoid and outwit that guy.’

In case you’re wondering, public enemy number one is mosquitoes (only my equatorial friends would understand).

I do not want to be lazy, but I am. It is an ethereal misconception; a poignant transcendence. To any physical reality that inextricably binds me thus to this Universe, I propose an abject refusal: I will not be tied down by those miscellaneous forces of all-powerful quiescence that compel my worthless inexistence to Reality and Work; I exist merely in the starry abstract of the mind’s impulsions. This world obdurately asserts itself onto my slight imagination, commanding that I leave behind some substantive oeuvre, some creative characterisation of my consciousness, some productive realization of my intellectual traversions; but all I wanna do is watch netflix and sleep and be That Guy.

I AM LAZY. And maybe you’re too. I’m not going to tell you that being lazy is good – we need to outwit That Guy. I find that what works for me is leaving my comfort zone, doing things like dancing or getting up early or being kind even when you feel like the grumpiest human being alive. What with this pandemic and all, I’m terrified of falling into the same routine for too long, because then my life invariably aligns into one timeless, meaningless inexistence and I cannot discern anything from anything and my consciousness is distilled into a blurry, abstract Nothing with zero hopes or aspirations and I start to stress eat.

My advice: Try new things! Go out! Explore! But who am I to give advice – it’s nine thirty on a Wednesday and I’m typing this from my mom’s room wearing two layers of sweatpants with one hand in a bag of nachos listening to OneRepublic. 

Tomorrow I will brave the waters of Not My Comfort Zone Ocean, and eat another dosa.

Today I ate a bagel and immediately began an existential foray into the intangible abstract world that has become the equivalent of some figurative gas station that my Fiat of a mind visits every few weeks when it is running out of philosophical-dread-fuel. 

Let’s talk about Afghanistan.

Just kidding. I’m having a bad hair day and, as everyone is painstakingly aware, bad hair day means bad life day. So let’s not talk about Afghanistan.

So anyway. Picture the scene. I am sitting at the breakfast table, bagel in hand, bad hair on head, feeling uncomfortable in my own skin (as you do) and wanting to escape the mundanity of the frustrations of the back-breaking stress of a thousand Universes that accompanies everyday life because all I want to do is drink mocktails on the beach and write postmodernist critiques of Life and other things and brush my teeth once a day because hell, I value my autonomy. No, Mr. President, I will not brush my teeth twice a day. I am a FREE AND INDEPENDENT CITIZEN AND THE GOVERNMENT WILL NOT TELL ME WHAT TO DO!

Is that what anti-vaxxers sound like? 

So anyway. Anyway. Anyway. My head hurts, and .. / -.. — -. – / .– .- -. – / – — / .– .-. .. – . / .. -. / . -. –. .-.. .. … …. / … — / .. / .– .. .-.. .-.. / .– .-. .. – . / .. -. / — — .-. … . .-.-.-

Demystifying the ethics of political autonomy in a state is a topic that you’re probably inclined to Not Care About Very Much. But it’s interesting to think about – Benedict Anderson, for example, in his seminal 1983 book Imagined Communities, conceptualizes a nation as the socially constructed sum total of the imaginations of people who consider themselves as part of said nation. So if we ALL stop believing in nations at once, it will cease to exist, right?

No! Well, theoretically, yes. But realistically, with the trail of evidence, as it were, that we have left behind, in the form of the tangible products of the intangible state (e.g. a traffic cone in a government parking lot), would betray the existence of some higher order to which we previously subscribed. 

One asks oneself: why does humanity feel the compelling necessity to organize itself? Is it a positive feedback loop? A product of evolutionary psychology? A command from the simulation? How are we to demystify the intangible abstracts of the political world around us when we cannot observe them in the first place? 

Moral of the story: Saying ‘I don’t know’ is a good answer to pretty much anything. Nothing is everything, and so my bagel is nothing, and black is white, and white is black, and everything is grey, and someone is dying on a zebra crossing soon.

Today I was eating a tomato-mozzarella sandwich, which was decorated with a pretty toothpick and a basil garnish. I feel like food nowadays is all about image – when I’m ordering bread from restaurants nowadays, be it disguised as a margherita pizza or a Subway footlong, I just look at the pictures, and the nihilist inside me thinks ‘OOOOOH, PRETTY!!’ I end up choosing the prettiest food, even if it doesn’t taste all that great. It’s the same reason I love having any sort of blue ice cream, even though it’s a universal fact that any ice cream that is blue is usually some artificial flavor that tastes like the chemically engineered perspiration of a newborn albino rhinoceros (or in other words, Red Bull).

Food is all about imagery – put a picture in the reader’s mind, and it sticks. My tomato-mozzarella sandwich did not taste great, but it sure looked good, and I took pictures of it, and that’s all I’m probably likely to remember. 

In case you’re wondering what a picture looks like, here’s a reference:

word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word 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word

Or, as a minimalist would say, 1000 words.

Or, as a programmer would say, print ‘word’ *1000. I don’t know how to code, okay?

Hope that clears up any residual confusion you may have had about pictures. Anyway, mozzarella-tomato sandwiches taste okay, but boy do I have to admit they look great. 

Oh well. C’est l’imagery.

Today I was eating garlic bread – the mainstream fan favorite – and I started to think about working out. One of my friends is what can only be described as a ‘gym bro’, the sort of weirdly endearing individual who insists on microanalyzing everything that goes into their mouths using a fitness app and a tape measure and a mass spectrometer and goodness only knows what else.

I don’t mean to get cynical – some of these gym guys and girls are the fittest, happiest people I know, and they really are truly inspiring. But, as is life’s second law, everyone is the butt of the joke at some point or the other – so if there are any Gym Bros out there, sorry. You guys are handsome and smart enough to get over it.

(In case you’re wondering, the first law of life is that you should obey the second law).

Anyway, a lot of those people have been talking about no-carb diets, and I was intrigued. Sinking my teeth into the garlic and the bread of the garlic bread, I felt guilty – like a perpetrator of some horrendous crime. I imagined my gym bros surrounding me, watching me devour the forbidden fruit (carbs), shaking their perfectly shaven heads resting upon their absurdly muscular necks, and I wondered what it would be like to be a GYM BRO. My imagination took over, and I visualized myself at the gym, talking to a bro.

—

-Hey, ask me if I work out.

-Okay…do you work out?

-Yeah, I work out. What makes you think so?

-Oh, it’s just that you seem like the kind of person who works out. I think you have a vibrant, positive energy and you seem pretty diligent and committed!

-Wow, that’s so sweet of you to say!

-You’re also wearing a T-shirt that says ‘Nothing Tastes as Good as Being Jacked Feels’. Your Lycra gymshark leggings are bright pink and you’re wearing five separate wristbands that each say GOLD’S GYM in different fonts. Your Facebook profile consists exclusively of heavily edited mirror selfies in which you inexplicably constrict your body into shapes and sizes that all vaguely resemble the letter ‘S’. You eat screw heads and steroids for breakfast and refuse to drink anything but whey protein shakes and whiskey sours. You have Arnold Schwarzenegger’s face tattooed on your rear and Jeff from ATHLEAN-X’s rear tattooed on your face. You dress up as yourself for Halloween and you’re currently carrying three critical bacterial STDs. You wear hydration packs to business meetings and knee braces to divorce settlements. Also, we’re standing in a gym right now, and you’re lifting a dumbbell in each hand as we speak.

— 

Anway, garlic bread tastes really good, as long as there isn’t too much butter.

Objectively speaking I am not a bread enthusiast. That’s the truth.

But, dear breadheads, I will endeavour to be that persevering idealist; that timeless agent of truth – that which folklore refers to as a so-called ‘bread head’. Join me, as I begin this intransient foray into the starry-eyed world of bread (and other things); as I attempt to demystify the love that so many people have for this gallant, all-encompassing carbohydrate. 

Basically I’m going to be talking about bread, and what I think of when I eat said bread. That rhymes! By the way, can you think of something that rhymes with ‘orange’? If not, I am afraid to inform you that you are not Eminem, because he totally can. No, seriously:

‘Still in my skull’s a vacant empty void been usin’ it more as a bin for storage

Take some inventory

In this gourde there’s a Ford engine, door hinge, syringe, an orange an extension cord and a ninja sword

Not to mention four linchpins, an astringent stored…’

If you are Eminem, that’s cool too. I’m a huge fan of your songs, dude. Although I can’t seem to understand why you insist on screaming ‘Mr. Worldwide’ before every single one of them.

Anyway, I digress. This is a bread blog first and foremost, as you lovely people will soon see. I’ll try to be as regular as I can, but I really can’t tell you when I will return. One thing’s for sure, though:

I’ll be baaaaaaaaaaaaaaack (Terminator voice).