(This is a quickie for a change. You’re welcome.)
I will believe in God when gluten-free Pop Tarts exist. Right now, you can find gluten-free almost everything…but not gluten-free Pop Tarts. You can even buy fake-ass Trader Joe’s “toaster pastries.” (Puh-leeze. Don’t waste my time!) Trader Joe’s doesn’t have a gluten-free version of “toaster pastries,” either. You can buy gluten-free cereal, gluten-free bread, gluten-free children. Er, no, I’m sure they exist, but you can’t buy them. Or wait, can you? Let me ask Matt Gaetz.
Since precisely whenever, gluten-free exploded on the scene and into our worlds, and things have never been the same since. I’m okay with that, and I try to eat gluten-free myself when possible, but I can’t exactly go hardcore. That’s because gluten-free bread is pretty mediocre, and if you wanted to ruin my day, please, by all means, make me a fake-cheese sandwich on gluten-free bread and you’ve succeeded. Add some fake vegan mayonnaise, and you’ve succeeded not only in ruining my day, but ending our friendship. Seriously.
Ah, but let’s return to the earth-shattering topic of Pop Tarts, and the need for such delights as a gluten-free version of those beautiful things. I actually invented Pop Tarts with no gelatin, years ago, around 1990 or 91. Because I was dating a Pakistani Muslim at the time, I knew the world needed them. Then, in 1991, the huge corporation that makes the scrumptious rectangles didn’t radically change their Pop tart offerings, but I blame myself. I never presented the idea. I figured they would steal it, and I would never see a penny of the new line anyway, so why bother? Many years later, I noticed they do, now, have gelatin-free Pop Tarts. Good for them. Still not gluten-free, though.
Of course, if I had proposed gelatin free Pop Tarts, how can I be so sure the Pop Tarts people would compensate me fairly? They probably would never actually pay me, like with cash. Even if they offered me a life-time supply of the things, unless they were chocolate, I wouldn’t have wanted them. A life time supply is a lot of Pop Tarts. (Hopefully). Since I know I wouldn’t want them, who would?
With a “life time supply,” of the non-chocolate treats, I couldn’t even leave them in a closet somewhere to get old and stale and ultimately give them to my brother’s chickens. Then again, the chickens might have wanted them, and back in the people world, somebody must like “brown sugar” Pop Tarts, or “strawberry” flavor or whatever. I just don’t know those people. I don’t trust those people. If there are so many of those strange people anyway, how come the store never has “chocolate” ones, but they never seem to run out of the goddamn berry or lemon merengue flavor ones, or whatever they have instead of what they should have? Chocolate Pop Tarts.
As usual, I have strayed from the topic: believing in God. I really don’t. At the same time, I sort of do. The world is an amazing and beautiful place, big enough for animals and trees and plants and the humans who kill them, too. Monarch butterflies are now verging on extinction. The Black rhinoceros was declared extinct in 2017 after the final one died without a Black rhinoceros mate. (Good going, humans!) Yet, the world is still a beautiful place. With or without gluten-free Pop Tarts. The chocolate ones.
