Sunday, May 26, 2013

Can you say "ersatz," boys and girls? . . .

I drink no-fat milk.  I use whole wheat spaghetti noodles and pizza dough.  I eat low fat cheese.  I use turkey sausage, not pork.  One morning, for breakfast, my wife made "pancakes" using grated apple, banana, and egg.  (They were good.)  I use artificial sweetener.  My hamburgers have no burger in them, so they have soy and nuts instead.  I think the little bits of bacon in my salad are really flavored bits of brown styrene.  My buttery popcorn involves no actual butter.

I could have teeth "whiter than white" by use of an inexpensive product.

My shirts don't need ironing after washing. 

My car shifts its own gears.  The gasoline in its tank comes partly from corn alcohol.  The fabric of my pants comes from an oil well.

So, it occurs to me that I am living an inauthentic life.  And I'm not alone in that.

Is it then any wonder that we can hear the pitchman on television say, "Get the facts, just try it for yourself," and not even hear the  clanking of the logic underneath that statement? 

All the phony we live with has nourished our stupid quotient.  (If you can have an intelligence quotient, I.Q., then you can have a stupid quotient.)

So, don't get me started on politicians.

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