Uncultured cheese.

I'd like to talk about circumcision today.

There's a Velveeta commercial that runs frequently on the Food Network, Discovery Health, and other networks that cater to women and the insincere idle. It's cartoon-bright, but live action. There is a very catchy jingle, set to the hokey pokey, that exhorts you to "Put Velveeta in/Leave the Cheddar out/With lumpy, oily cheddar, who KNOWS what will come out/With Velveeta, there's no doubt"

The characters in the commercial seem to be a family. There is a grandmother character central to it, and sundry others. It appears she wants to make a dip, perhaps for an occasion. And she wants to use the microwave. There is no dialogue; this is just what I gather from repeated viewings. And velveeta, the commercial seems to say, is the only reasonable option. Only Velveeta is guaranteed to melt smoothly unsupervised, while cheddar leads to uncertainty. Who knows what will come out? The jingle singer's voice extends the "knooowwws", in familiar comic parody of absolute fear. (Seriously- it's almost like how the guy singing the 'Monster Mash' says 'Monster"- Same extensions). Melting cheddar is something to be feared. Anything could happen. Lumps. Oiliness. Our velveeta grandma would be humiliated, trying to serve a lumpy, oily dip to her family. In what I like to think is a flashback, grandma looks at a bowl of melted cheddar, stringy, oily, and hard. It breaks chips. Grandma looks disgusted, at the cheese. And I detect a little bit of shame.

Velveeta has hit on a surprising honest ad campaign here. Kraft knows what velveeta's appeal is. It's not taste. It's constancy. Velveeta will never surprise. Velveeta will always be the same, melt the same, taste the same. It will melt smoothly every time. It will never lump. And that's why it's bought and used. It's certainly not for taste. Velveeta, if you haven't tried it, tastes halfway between margarine and cheeze whiz. It's no longer even qualified to be referred to as a "pasturized processed cheese food", but now must be marketed as a "cheese spread". The texture is flabby and perfectly smooth, with no tooth at all. Cheddar would win on taste every time. Or swiss. Or even american. Maybe. Velveeta will never delight you, but it will never embarass you.

Velveeta sells on fear of cheese. People don't know how to deal with ambiguity in their sauces. Nobody learns roux at maman's knee; Alton Brown does what he can, but he's not everywhere. Cheese can be hard. It can be inconsistent. It's scary to some. Some people think that when the edges of cheddar get a little dried up in the fridge, you have to throw it out. Some people don't know you can cut the mold off hard cheeses. It's mysterious. It's possibly dangerous. Nobody really cooks anymore. People refrigerate like it's a religion. Microwave directions given biblical reverence, sell-by dates are epistles. We're scared of food. We don't want to get sick, and nobody feels very confident about cooking. Restaurants and fast food are seen as sanitized, clean, consistent. Home-cooked food is foriegn and possibly diseased. Velveeta is manna from heaven in this way; it offers home cooks the sanitized predictability of prepared food.

Americans fear inconsistency because they've lost the ability to tell difference from contamination; and all contamination is suspected to be seriously compromising. I've begun wearing gloves while working on the espresso bar. They protect my hands from the milk rags, not at all to protect beverages from my hands. (There is no reason that my hands would ever come into contact with any component of anyone's beverage. Ever. Milk into pitcher, beans into hopper, shots into shot glasses, shots into cups, milk into cup, done) But many, many customers have taken me aside to thank me for wearing gloves, and ask if maybe I could persuade the other baristas to wear them, as well.

I will fuckin not. Gloves slow you down, need to be changed frequently, make your hands smell funny, and slow the transition between various positions. Nobody else has as severe a reaction to the milk chemicals as I do, so nobody else needs them. And there's no reason to assume that anyone needs them. You can see what we do, if you lean over by the register. You know we're not sticking our thumbs in to check temperature. But people still reacted to my gloves. And at least weekly, someone says something to me about people not leaving the slip of pastry paper in the bag when we hand them a scone. (It's against health codes, by the way- once you put the scone in the bag, it's a food container, so you can't leave something you've touched with your bare hand, it's contaminated) How will they know, they ask, that we used pastry paper to take their pastry from the case, unless they can see it in the bag?

Faith?

So there exists a powerful cultural force, currently, that fears contamination, fears uncertainty of taste, smell, and texture. Which brings us to-

Foreskin.

Not many parents are willing to force their sons to undergo a surgical procedure to cub masturbation anymore. It's not a big new modern motive. (However, if there were a surgical procedure that would place a time-seal on the vagina, only allowing the hymen to be breached at a parentally determined interval- say, 21 years, I'm sure it would be hugely popular right now). Parents are willing to admit that boys will masturbate and it will neither damage nor damn them. In fact, a certain segment of parents think that it's not only normal and natural, preteen sexual exuberance is kitshy and cute.

But many parents still circumcise their sons. Why? Fear. An uncircumcised penis is less predictable than a circumcised one. It's less, well, dry. A foreskin is a mucus membrane. It has secretions. It traps sweat and occasionally urine. It has smegma. Boys must be taught how to take care of their foreskin. (Of course, their parents also teach them how to piss and wipe their asses, but we haven't designed a way out of it yet) It's unpredictable. Its smell, taste, and function might vary on a day-to-day basis. It's this that parents cite when choosing to circumcise their sons. They cite hygiene. Some mothers even state that they can't picture their son getting a blowjob later in life, if he has a foreskin (when otherwise mothers love to picture their sons recieving fellatio). Others picture girls ridiculing their son's penis, and want to save him the embarassment. They want his penis clean, dry, sanitary, predictable- American. It's the only way they can picture it being (sorry) appetizing.

Everything must be controllable. Everything must be presentable. By creating a western wonder world sealed off from grit, blood, death, farming, childbirth, mucus, odor, and uncertainty, something fundamental has been altered. Research is beginning to support the hypothesis that many childhood allergies and chronic illnesses may be getting more prevalent due to the sanitization of society. Children don't eat enough dirt and bugs and slightly rotten food to develop full immunities; they get delicate. It's suggested that feeding children worms may prevent crohn's disease. People are so scared of illness and germs that they hover over toilet seats and crap on the floor; they hector poor baristas about hearing them sneeze in the back room; they throw out eggs, milk, and yogurt on their sell-by date. People are so scared of the unpredictable nature of food and cooking that they'll eat unidentifiable, factory set cheese type spread, which tastes of nothing but failure, to avoid the possible humiliation melting cheddar may bring. (Mmmmm...melted cheddar. Yum. Need Nachos. With Quickness)

And people are so obsessed with predictability, scentlessness, cleanliness, and so on that they have their children's genitals surgically altered (without aneasthesia).

Deal with it, folks.

You can learn to like a stinky cheese.

(knob)