Tubular Food And Its Disadvantages

When I am Grand Vizier of Creation, things will be different. Not necessarily better. But certainly different.

There will be blood.

Among the first to go up against the wall will be the packaging genius who devised the tubes that ready-made dough comes in.

You know these tubes. They’re all blue, for one thing – the original company that came out with them made them blue, so all the knock-offs make them blue. They range from six to ten inches long and 1.5 to three inches in diameter. Inside there can be anything from pizza crusts to cinnamon rolls.

And they are wrapped in paper.

Theoretically, you pull on a tab way up at the top of the tube, peel the paper back to reveal a seam in the cardboard tube, press on the seam and – POP! – out comes your dough, ready to be spread or arranged or whatever it is you were planning to do with unbaked dough and please do NOT leave me any further suggestions for use in the comments as I sincerely wish to sleep soundly tonight.

In practice, however, it always turns out differently. And this makes me channel my inner Andy Rooney, which is yet another reason why it is a good thing I have a blog, since otherwise I would be ranting and raving out on the streets about this stuff and then either large men in white suits would take me away to a place that hands out medication by the funnel-full or smaller men in blue suits would make me run for office, neither of which counts as a good time in my book. People expect this sort of thing on a blog, though. And since I rarely post cat pictures, this is what I’ve got.

You’re welcome.

In practice the first thing that happens is that the paper rips into tiny shreds, leaving you with no tab and an unopened tube of dough. At that point you have three options. The unsatisfying but likely more proper option is to pick slowly at the remaining paper until such time as the seam is revealed. The more satisfying and crudely effective method is to stab the tube with a sharp object as if you were a new nurse at the blood bank until you locate the seam, leaving the tube bruised and leaking and full of holes but your mission accomplished. The way more satisfying but generally counterproductive method is to beat the tube with a mallet until it and everything within a three-foot radius has to be scraped into the trash can and you go out for fast food because by now dinner is very late and you are starving and you would gladly eat a bucket of lard on a bun (“I’ll have a Number 4 with a Diet Coke, please”) and eventually you do this often enough to die of poor nutrition but you die with a smile because dammit you taught that freaking tube a lesson.

But let us assume that you have chosen either options A (paper) or B (sharp object) rather than the more satisfying C (mallet). You then press on the seam. Nothing happens. You press again, harder this time. Still nothing happens. You grip the tube with both hands, imagine that it is the neck of the troll who made fifth grade such a misery for you, and squeeze.

There follows a gelatinous roar.

Eventually the air clears, revealing a scene worthy of a Roadrunner cartoon with you in the Wile E. Coyote role, standing there amid total devastation with a quizzical expression on your face and your hands holding a tube-shaped piece of empty space.

There follows a prolonged internal debate regarding whether it would be more cost effective to hose down your entire kitchen or simply move to a new house. Eventually you decide that you do not care.

Nobody has ever, in the history of the world, actually consumed the contents of one of those tubes. For all I know they’ve stopped even putting actual food in them and simply fill them up with sticky foam for you to scrape off of whatever surface it lands on when you’re done with them.

When I am Grand Vizier, things will be different.