If I buy one more carton of milk that goes bad before its printed “best before” date, I’m going to start executing dairy farmers. Nothing makes me angrier.
It’s not the inconvenience. It’s the betrayal.
When I buy a gallon of milk that says “best before March 30th”, and I consume it on March 26th, I want it to taste exactly that: its best. I don’t expect it to smell like a teenage boy’s armpit. I don’t expect it to mingle with my coffee and clump off into a dozen rancid cheese flakes, floating like a parade of tiny white flags, signaling the surrender of American Dream.
There was a time when you could trust your grocer. It was a safer time, a better time.
It was a time when these gatekeepers of agricultural plenty had some fucking integrity. What do we have now? Lies. Not just lies, but proudly printed falsehoods on that most cherished patch of our retail landscape: the milk carton. Are those kids on the side of the carton really "missing"? Or is that just another cynical marketing ploy? To make us feel good about "Big Milk" and their fight against child snatchers? Did the milk industry kidnap those kids itself, to boost profits? Maybe. I don't know what to believe any more. I can no longer trust milk.
Think about that. Let it really sink it. YOU CANNOT TRUST MILK. MILK IS A LIE.
This universal symbol of hope, and of mornings, and of motherhood… is now a cruel joke. What’s next after a week in the fridge? Will cookies taste like dog shit? Will apple pie putrefy into baby vomit?
Don’t tell me I’m over-reacting. Don’t tell me “it’s a living substance, it goes bad sometimes”. Hogwash. That is fascist hogwash. Milk doesn’t just go bad early sometimes. It goes bad early all the time. Here’s an idea for solving that problem: make the “best before” date closer! Warn us it may go bad earlier!
But the arrogant dairy boys and their milk distribution cartels and their grocery syndicates and all their other merchants of milk death would hate that, wouldn’t they? Then they couldn’t sell me that dream - that fantasy – in which I trust my milk will be safe to drink for seven whole days. And what happens when I find out the milk is bad? Of course, the coffee is already made. Of course, my recipe is only half complete. Do I go out and buy another carton of milk? Of course I do, and those fat-cat parasites in their glittering milky towers laugh all the way to the Swiss bank.
I’m switching to soy.