Half Baked

Has anyone else ever had this happen to them? You're out shopping at your favorite supermarket - you know, the one where the stuff just seems fresher, the help is friendlier, the prices are lower, the squeals of rats dying in traps less obvious, and you pass through the bakery department. You notice what appears to be a lovely lemon danish on display. It LOOKS perfect - exactly what you would paint if you were to paint a scrumptious lemon danish - although I'd avoid eating it then, because the lead in the paint, especially Cadmium Yellow - probably not good for you. But, it "speaks" to your eyes and your palette and says - EAT ME!!! So, since you haven't had a danish in forever, you take a few and scurry off to the checkout lane, praying that the checker doesn't drop your cans of Garden Vegetable Progresso soup ($1 a can!!!! This is normally like $3 a can soup!!! I told you it was cheaper here!) onto the delicate pastries in the bag. You make your way home, and when you get there, after finding a place to store more cans of soup than you'll probably eat this year, you sit down with your treasured danish and take a bite. Before the pastry even enters your mouth, your sense memory has already employed the template of what this danish should taste like and as the dough hits your tongue and your teeth slice in, the only thing you can think is "that's not right?!?!?".

And so you take another bite, as if the first just happened to be taken in the one spot of the thing that tasted different for some reason. And again, "nope, still not right. Well it'll be better when I get to the lemon part". Bite, chew, chew, chew. Lemon bite, chew, stop... chew, stop. "That doesn't even taste like lemon. It doesn't taste like anything!! Why hast thou abandoned me, o Lemon Danish?" And then it hits you. It's the We Only Do One Thing Right syndrome. Never heard of it? Well, the rule of thumb goes like this: If you find something you enjoy that is manufactured by a given place, and you try something else that they make, it will never be as good as what you already like and it will certainly never match that same thing from a different place. Now I very much like the black seeded Kaiser rolls from this supermarket's bakery, AND I like their cherry turnovers, although they may be a bit too sweet. Which, if I had any sense, and employed the WODOTR rule, it would have told me that I cannot buy any other bread product there or any other baked sweet because they will not be to my liking. Which, now that I have tested it, has proved to be true. But it's not just food that this rule applies to.

Like a particular brand of jeans? They fit you properly and don't wear out immediately? Great. Buy a bunch. But DON'T buy the same brand sweatshirt. It'll almost certainly be of inferior quality (that won't be apparent) when you get it home. It'll shrink. It'll fade. You'll forever be pulling down the bottom to cover your back while you're sitting. Like that iPod Classic? Works great, never had a problem with it? Great. But now you need another one, for the office, or for while you run etc.? But you don't need one as big do you? So you buy a smaller one - a Nano or a Shuffle or a Micro or an Electron (this one is amazing btw - literally a free electron which circles a point of light and holds 6000 songs...). Well, don't do it. Because you'll have nothing but problems with it. The battery won't hold a charge or you won't be able to turn it off, or to change songs or something. Just think about the times this has happened to you. "Oh I love this place's crab cakes. But I don't really feel like them today. So I'll try the steak. And what winds up on your plate is the moderately warm sole of a combat boot covered in A1 sauce...

I mean, is it just me? Well, the track record says it probably is, but still, I can't be the only person this happens to. Can I?