F— You, Make Me A Sandwich

A Menciian trituration of the constraints placed upon the biological imperative by speculative abstraction. A neoreactionary response to Josephine Armistead’s “The Silicon Ideology“.

“Do Your Dinnertimin’ at McDonald’s.” – McDonald’s ad, circa 1976

1. Marx is dead

We all know how important Marx is to most people. But like this slab of corned beef, Marx is dead. We can slice and spice him as much as we like, but he’s altogether deceased. Like Trotsky, who was picked well for this service, we begin to ask the question rather of his utility to us – does he taste good? Does he add to the flavor? Is it safe to consume him? Are we cannibals that eat to honor, or to rob the deceased of their strength?

Nietzsche once wrote, and more than likely also said, “God is dead.” It was a very Progressive thing of him to say, regardless of his thoroughgoing reactionary credentials; God is no longer relevant to society. We must move on from God, he thought, and make for ourselves new values. But Nietzsche is also, now, dead. To some great extent that means we must move on from Nietzsche, too—though he be like a fine cheese: it can only get so stinky before you have to admit you too, Ms. Armistead, are no fan of Botulism.

But who is even older and more rotten than Nietzche? Marx. Heck, even Jews figured out it was a scam:

[U]ltimately for leftist revolutionaries of all stripes, Sorel’s myth of the general strike was the equivalent of the Second Coming. According to this myth, if all workers declared a general strike, it would crush capitalism and render the proletariat—rather than the meek—the inheritors of the earth. Whether the implementation of a general strike would actually have this result didn’t matter, according to Sorel. What mattered was mobilizing the masses to understand their power over the capitalist ruling classes.

Maybe we should start looking to see what makes a society good, and how to be more consistent in the achievement of that excellence which is the indication of high civilization, rather than arguing over whose fault it is that the corned beef has gone bad. Like Marx, this corned beef has gone bad. And there is good reason for it. But before we examine the reason, we’re going to have to throw it out.

Good riddance!

2. Comic books are for children

The great Oxford Don C. S. Lewis noted that the mark of adulthood is no longer caring for whether something is viewed as childish or not anymore. However, he didn’t intend this to mean a man should spend his time drawing fan art. It’s good to know the themes in low-brow and children’s literature, but only because you’re concerned about the education of your children. Since it’s unlikely you will have any, you should probably consider moving on from Frank Miller to something more your style—we won’t go too far just yet, as the shock to your system might be too great, but maybe you’d like to bone up on your cooking and cleaning with Julia Child and Martha Stewart. Their works are approachable, well-crafted, and most of all, pass the Bechdel test with flying colors.

But we’re still nagged by our original question: Why did the corned beef go bad!? Why was it that the Dark Knight had to be an aristocrat in a democracy? Could not the system function without one strangely fixated on scaring the dickens out of bad people? Maybe when great men get terrorized, they respond with force and terror of their own. Or perhaps Batman is just a great way to talk about the depths of the American psyche regarding vigilante justice – particularly Social Justice.

But like I said, comic books are for kids. Look at the colored pictures! You hardly need to read to be able to understand them! Spawn probably requires a fifth-grade reading level at least, but have you seen Pogo? How about Mutt & Jeff? Are we going back far enough yet? Setting aside the picture-books, we must attend to the situation at hand: the corned beef.

It might be valuable to punish the person responsible for ruining the corned beef, but between you and me, it’s probably everyone’s fault here. So I guess we all stand in a circle and execute one another. Wait! I was only kidding. We’d rather figure out how to prevent further corned beef from rotting than killing everyone responsible. See, you’ve got hands, feet and a working brain. You, like me, can help use corned beef properly, at least before we give that task to the robots. You may be a winner of a genetic lottery that makes you uniquely suited to this task!

More than this, beyond comic books lies the matter of the basest and finest aspirations of man: Eating. You are what you eat, they say, and I am composed almost entirely of meat. Your results may vary! Let us begin at the very basics, and work our way up from there.

Corned beef does not exist in a vacuum, but rather is part of a process including farms, slaughterhouses, various food processing facilities, and ultimately… The Kitchen. Comic books might influence your children to cut the corned beef in this way, or in another, but ultimately when the command to prepare the corned beef comes, it will be prepared. And the place in which it will be prepared is The Kitchen.

While comic books may be for children, eating and food preparation are definitely adult activities, fit for people of poise, taste, intelligence, skill and overall states of moral excellence.

3. The Sandwich

The trophic systems of the world indicate that eating plants is generally more conservative of energy, but also that the native ability of other creatures, namely, animals, to isolate and store important micronutrients in a convenient form which we will call ‘fleshmeats’, cannot be underestimated. We therefore think it best to construct a balance of items across the trophic scale, as to not be too inefficient nor too rich in certain nutrients, but while also gaining the benefits of a variety of them. This construction will require both wet and dry elements, as well as hot and cool elements. The final product therefore must be a combination of variously prepared foodstuffs, arranged to maximize the satiating effect of their several flavors, while also making the comestible as manageable as possible.

By slicing bread, we may take a common item, produced from grain flour, salt, water and other ingredients, and create a multi-use container for other foodstuffs, presenting few overall restrictions in combination. By placing food between two or more slices of bread, we can construct a near infinite variety of comestibles with varying properties, varying according to taste and needed nutrition. This new, combined foodstuff is known simply as The Sandwich, supposedly after its inventor, the Earl of Sandwich. We will focus our efforts in properly understanding and devising efficient and wholesome ways to both prepare and eat The Sandwich.

First, we need a sandwich preparer. Someone familiar with the environment in which the foodstuffs are prepared for assembly, and assembled into sandwiches. This preparer is known as The Woman. Fortunately for us, The Woman, like the sandwich, also has many different uses, namely, bearing and nurturing children, being light of foot as to be able to navigate spaces without shoes, and generally having a good attitude towards life that comes from being a well-cared for domesticated creature.

You may, as suggested above, be a person who won the genetic lottery on this: it’s really a 1-in-2 chance. Either your zygote had two X’s, or it had an X and a Y. You may not need 23&me to determine the results; unless you never bathe, you already knew the answer long before you could put it into words. If you had two X’s, congratulations: sandwich preparation is for you.

A little note: if you happen to be a monarch or other person of royal dignity or great or small age, such that sandwich preparation would not be possible due to taking the jobs of valuable servants or not being able to safely use a knife, you’re exempt. We can do a lot, but we can’t do everything. The robots will probably do everything, though; however, neither you or I will probably know – unless they send news into the VR pods to let us know of their successes in sandwich preparation.

4. The Kitchen

Like any organization, there are failure and success states of The Kitchen. Some think of The Kitchen as primarily a place which may be suggested for the place of a murder, perhaps with a lead pipe, or a revolver, but The Kitchen is, if nothing else, an organization of material elements known commonly as a room. More than this, The Kitchen is a room with a great functions, as it pertains to and centers around that activity of both meanness and sublimity: Eating. Nowadays, even storage and some eating activity happens in The Kitchen, depending on the scale of those operations. The Kitchen truly is an essential element to human life.

That being said, we can assert there are five stages of The Kitchen’s state. These are not necessarily labeled as failure or success states, unless we can ascertain the will of the person influencing that order. To examine the state of The Kitchen, we will look at our most essential activity: sandwich preparation, and how it shows the level of order in our kitchen.

• War: the state of having a feminist harridan for a wife
• Peace: having tamed the shrew, but always she prepares the sandwiches with haste; uncertain if she is plotting to murder us with the petite carver
• Security: the sandwiches can be trusted to not contain inedible elements such as hair, or decayed elements
• Order: the sandwiches are made in a timely fashion, and the balance of flavors is acceptable.
• Freedom: the woman is so good at making sandwiches, they appear without asking, and she decides which ones to make

As you can see, each is in an increasing state of Order. Perhaps Order is not your thing, but Freedom is? Sadly, you can’t have one without the other. Perhaps perpetual war will do for you. For the rest of us, we’d like that fifth level, the level of Freedom. And do you know what the best part of the highest state is? The woman also gets to eat her own sandwiches. It’s truly a great deal for all men and domestic creatures everywhere.

But what if the woman decides that it’s not worth it, ascending through Order to Freedom? Perhaps she will buy pre-prepared food. Probably, this food was prepared by robots, and will be inundated with heat or radiation until it has an edible texture, though not always an edible temperature. Certainly in her case, a VR pod would cut out the middle man. It might even raise the kids, if those kids are just going to buy pre-prepared food. Everyone wins.

Therefore, let us propose the best way to structure this organization we call The Kitchen, so as to make it most likely that Sandwiches will be made freely and excellently, and no one will have to smell rotting corned beef again.

5. The New Structure

That’s a joke, for those of you who don’t know. We can’t propose a structure to simply remedy the problem of the miasma of death emanating from old foodstuffs; we can establish all the rules we want, but when our back is turned, if they don’t follow them, what can we do? We suppose we might have to use the back of our hand, and that might certainly move our Kitchen from the state of War to the state of Peace, but perhaps all of our readers will recognize that such a war as this benefits no one, and go peaceably about obeying our rules.

But more than this, most organizations that are effective in the world are not created whole cloth by fiat. They are not revolutionary, but evolutionary. They are, in fact, the result of tinkering and incremental decisions. But more than that, we need the right incentives so the incremental decisions can possibly give an orderly result, and we need good incremental decision-makers.

To start with, I’m hungry, and you need to make me a sandwich. As I understand, this order has an imperial character to it, making one wonder what Victorian garden I’ve ambled in from, saving my skin and moisture-sensitive linen suit from the end result of excessive sun-exposure.

“No!” you say? Well, this is my kitchen, even though you run it. Maybe I’ll throw you out of the kitchen and lease it to someone who will bring me its fruits in their season. What? That’s how incentives work. It’s my kitchen, so I’ve got an incentive to see that it produces food in good time and with good quality, and that, included in this, it doesn’t stink to high heaven with bacterial activity.

I can’t? Well, as it stands, I’m stronger than you. That’s what my genetic lottery got me – I’m also taller, too. Height has a surprising effect on leverage. Maybe this is all a misunderstanding. So if I did want to physically remove you from this Kitchen, I’ve every reason to. You will make my life hell? Well, no you won’t. You’ll sleep in the basement until you feel up to the task of behaving like an adult. See, that’s the second part. Being a good incremental decision maker. It’s remarkably easy to teach men to be good decision makers, especially when women have an incentive to listen, and men have an incentive to make the things they own produce things of value.

So here we are, and we’re wondering, where are the Julia Child books I promised? They’re coming. I think robots are delivering them from the Amazon rainforest, or something. I take it that means the pages are made of pure pulped mahogany wood, but don’t quote me on that.

6. Some Basic Sandwiches

I’m not without a heart, nor am I without a stomach. So let’s get down to some nuts and bolts: Actual sandwiches. I’ve done the service of supplying The Kitchen with the necessary ingredients to concoct these sandwiches, but going forward you will be required to also undertake Quartermaster duties, that is, I’m hoping that you’ll enjoy the task of sandwich-making enough to be able to take a provided stipend and fill the necessary provisions for the fulfillment of that duty.

The enjoyment part is not strictly necessary; it’s rather a side-effect of doing things well. Perhaps you don’t yet understand that. Well, yes, you do. You’re quite good at making a nuisance of yourself, and clearly, you enjoy it. See? You already understand.

1. The Cuban: Ham, roasted pork, Swiss cheese, pickles, mustard, on “Cuban Bread”. You can substitute French or Italian bread if you’d like; I’m not Cuban. Additionally, salami can be added for a little punch.
2. The Reuben: Corned beef, sauerkraut, swiss cheese, thousand-island dressing on rye. I think there are other optional elements to this sandwich, as long as it is bitter and sour enough to be noticed, but not to overwhelm the other flavors. Swirled bread (rye and pumpernickel) works too, as does turkey, though beef is a superior meat.
3. The BLT: Bacon, lettuce and tomato, with mayo and deli mustard, on any kind of bread. You can substitute other kinds of pork belly, as long as they are salty and sweet.
4. The PBJ: Peanut butter and Jelly on any bread. The masters of PBJ put butter down on the jelly side before putting down the jelly, and if the bread is very soft, then make sure to toast it lightly first. The best PBJ sandwiches are really coarse: use a bread with some kind of nutty ancient grains like spelt, natural peanut butter (not the kind with peanut oil, though) and fruit preserves. The best kind of fruit preserves are known as ‘marmalades’.
5. The Grilled Cheese: Cheddar cheese, any kind of bread. Note that grilled cheese needs to be grilled, so whatever bread you choose needs to stand up well to it. Ham can be added for extra flavor and protein. Don’t use American Cheese. Like most things American, it’s expensive, shoddy, and made by extracting the essence out of something and reconstituting it later, like a strange simulacrum. Sort of like robots.
6. The Cheeseburger: Ground beef, cheese (usually cheddar), ketchup and mustard, pickles, onion, lettuce, tomato, on a roll. The roll can also be a bun and ought to be lightly toasted. The combined flavor of ketchup, mustard and pickles is not unlike a Chutney, once popular in Colonial America. The beef should be of good quality and be cooked to medium rare, or if the quality is in question, medium. Do not blacken the beef. You may add bacon, mushrooms. hot peppers or avocado for a ‘southwest’ feel, one of many possible variants to this jack-of-all-trades sandwich.
7. The Italian. A sub or flatbread with salami, capicola, ham, provolone cheese, vinegar, olive oil, salt. black pepper and oregano. You may add a variety of vegetables to this, most commonly onions, tomato and a light lettuce, and of course some peppers – red, yellow, green, brown, hot, sweet, whatever. This is basically a salad wrapped in meat, wrapped in bread. Be creative.
8. The Clubhouse. Toasted bread with sliced turkey or chicken, bacon, lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise. Some clubhouse sandwiches are upgraded BLT’s, and the clubhouse is usually just called a ‘club sandwich’. Additionally, you slice it very neatly and put toothpicks in it to keep it together. Therefore, you’re free to make this sandwich a double or triple decker – even perhaps the legendary Dagwood.
9. The French Dip. Roast beef on flatbread or a sub, with fried onions and melted provolone cheese, au jus. Add horseradish and other spicy things to taste; remember there are secret laws of what bitter and sweet things go best with which meats. Au jus means you get beef drippings and dip it in it while you eat it. It should be hot.
10. The Egg Sandwich. At least one egg, not runny, on bread. Sounds simple, but it is the source of many wonderful breakfast sandwiches. The bread should be a biscuit, a croissant, an English muffin, or toast. The egg can be prepared any way so long as it doesn’t make a mess. Cheese is often added, usually cheddar, and some kind of ‘breakfast meat’ – sliced sausage, bacon, or ham. Canadian bacon also works, although it’s considered cheating. If you’re really creative, you might make an eggs benedict style hoagie – the poached eggs, the hollandaise sauce, the asparagus (spears, halved) with a filet of salmon, cooked rare. Don’t say I haven’t offered you great freedom.

And finally, we remember the sacred rules of sandwich preparation:

1. Toast the bread just before you put it together
2. Always break or cut the bread
3. Put it on a nice plate. Chargers (round plates) are preferred, but a plate that provides ample room and also accentuates the natural shape of the bread is preferred. On John the Baptist’s beheading-day, round plates are forbidden.
4. Give thanks to God prior to eating the Sandwich.

7. What are you waiting for?

Seriously, though. If I’m a fascist, I’m a very bad one. Mussolini made the trains run on time; but I can’t get you into the kitchen in a timely manner. I mean, see how many words I wrote just to get my message across! Meanwhile, children in the dining room are starving. Are those your children? Ours? You don’t say. See, we wouldn’t need to have had this conversation at all if you’d been raised in a house with a properly ordered Kitchen.

Step away from the comic books and the articles written about people who read Adorno. Has this household not had enough of the Frankfurt School for an evening? Frank Miller can wait, he’s always there with Will Eisner, drinking whisky, smoking Cubans and arguing about which caliber is best for home defense. Guys! Higher calibers penetrate less and thus do less unintended damage in the case of a discharge! We need a change of incentives in this library. For one, it’s now the den, and it’s my den. It was always my den, but now it’s double mine. And the kitchen? It’s yours.

What are you waiting for, Woman? Make me a sandwich.

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