As promised before, Jurgan brought my attention to a charming pair of letters. But let me tell you the whole story, because it is pretty great from beginning to end.
Sainsbury’s is a very big grocery store chain in the United Kingdom. And for years, they’ve sold the bread we know as Dutch Crunch under the brand name Tiger Bread. You can see why. Some tigers do have that kind of fur coloring. Obviously that isn’t typical. Tigers tend to have stripes. Maybe it’s more like a Liger. But three and a half year old Lily Robinson had other ideas. On 31 May 2011, she wrote to Sainbury’s asking why they called their Dutch Crunch “Tiger Bread” when it clearly looked more like a giraffe and thus should be called Giraffe Bread.
Just two weeks later, 27 and a third year old customer manager Chris King wrote back. He said that he thought it was a brilliant idea to rename the bread. He also noted that the original baker who first named it was perhaps being a bit silly. (Note: “silly” is a great word.) Here are the two letters. You won’t be able to read the response at this resolution. Just click on it to see it at full resolution:
The letters went viral on Twitter but then died down. Twitter, of course, has the attention span of a gnat with ADHD. But then, as always seems to happen, it went viral again for no particular reason other than the madness of crowds. So in January of 2012, Sainsbury’s released a statement:
As far as I know, the grocery store is still selling it under the name Giraffe Bread. As a nice postscript to the story, Chris King quit his job at Sainbury’s to go back to college to become a primary school teacher. I think he has the perfect temperament for it.
Afterword
I do not like Dutch Crunch under any name at all. The crust is nice enough. But inside is a doughy tasteless white bread. I’m surprised that it is as popular as it is. There are so many better breads around. According to that BBC article I linked to above, “Rice paste is brushed on to the surface before baking, forming the pattern as it dries and cracks while it bakes.” That means you could put that crust on an actually good bread. But as you can see in the image above, Giraffe Bread only costs £0.75 — making it a very cheap bread. But it seems to me it is much more expensive here in the states.
Last week on The Majority Report, Sam Seder mentioned on old mockumentary, Norbert Smith: A Life. It is a direct parody of the British series The South Bank Show. In fact, the host of the show, Melvyn Bragg, is the host of Norbert Smith. So a good deal of effort was put into making it all seem like the real thing.
This tweet came to my attention via the great Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns & Money, 
I always like the opportunity to pass along good news, so I’m very pleased to report that 
At the last Republican debate Ted Cruz mentioned the 
I remember old people and the way they talked about Johnny Carson. He was special to them in a way he was not to me. I still really liked him. I especially remember a joke he told in 1976. (That’s right: at 12 years old, my parents let me stay up that late. Is there any wonder I turned out like this?) Jerry Brown was running for president. Carson told a joke that I will paraphrase, “Reporters asked Jerry Brown if he had a response to those who said he was just a hippy with his head in the clouds. Brown responded, ‘You give good karma out; you get good karma back in.'” That’s a solid joke. But it died. So Carson ad libbed, “How about: he said it while meditating on ten pounds of raw liver?” I died. Brilliant joke. So I liked Carson, but he was never for me what he was for people 30 years older.
Last week, Edward Snowden got his own twitter account. It came as a bit of a surprise to me, because I just thought that he would have had one. But what surprised me even more was that a lot of conservatives were outraged by this. For example, 
Everyone needs a chance to meet the voting public. I think that’s crucial. Whether it’s a town hall-style debate where audience members pose questions, a series of formal head to head match-ups among the top contenders, or an iron cage, no-rules bloodbath where the losers are dispatched without mercy… we all want to feel these people went through a real vetting process on the way to the White House.
When I first heard about Pizza Rat, I figured that people would hate it because it was a rat in the subway. But apparently, they like it. They see it as something like that ant in the Frank Sinatra song, “High Hopes.” Plus, a dirty rat tail tends to make it look like it has fur on it, and I’ve always thought that people’s biggest problem with rats is their tails. Because rats are actually quite charming looking. They aren’t much different from squirrels and chipmunks. But the fact that the pizza is about five times the size of the rat doubtless helps too.
Last week, a great event took place, 
Jeb: “There’s one thing I’ll tell you about my brother: 
Marmaduke creator Brad Anderson has died and it’s worth taking this opportunity to remember what a pile of hot, steaming garbage not only Marmaduke but the entirety of the newspaper comics has been for decades. On the “funny” pages, it’s amazingly still basically 1958, with children now drawing their parents ancient comic franchises. You have Family Circus with its suburban, idealized white family untouched by any social changes. You have Beetle Bailey with the same sexist jokes that were stale in 1973 and that is evidently only read by people who think the military jokes are funny because it reminds them of their time in the Army just after the Korean War. There’s BC’s revanchist politics. Garfield sure hates Mondays! For Better or For Worse was interesting enough for awhile, but even there the creator decided to stop moving through time and just go back to sentimental material about kids. Peanuts is now in Car Talk territory with long retired or dead artists being recycled for the ancients who can’t imagine not reading or hearing it…
