Phil Elmore: Individual Authoring Services

Lies, Damn Lies, and Hot-Pockets
A Third Slap In My Trilogy of Assaults On Popular Culture

We encounter many things every day that we take on faith. We take them on faith because to do otherwise would be to admit that almost everyone in every part of the world around us is smiling and lying to our faces. To admit that these lies exist, freely and every day, would be to accept as fact that our society isn't as user friendly as we would like it to be. But I contend that persisting in this delusion will only make things worse; the longer we actually believe that the button mounted on the post at the crosswalk actually enjoys some level of control, no matter how qualified or indirect, over the traffic signal at that intersection, the closer we get to spending our twilight years wearing an orthopedic helmet whilst banging our heads against the padded walls of our suite at the House For The Feeble-Minded.

When your waitress or waiter brings you the check and says, "I'll take that up whenever you're ready," that's a lie. What she or he really is saying is, "I'll take that up in about twenty minutes when I get around to coming back to this table. And then I'll keep you waiting another ten minutes before I bring you your change. And instead of bringing you even a single five-dollar bill, I will bring you five one-dollar bills in order to encourage you to tip me generously despite my maddening habit of failing to make eye contact with any of the occupants of my tables to prevent them from disturbing my day with frivolous requests for drink refills."

Hot-Pockets are a lie. Yes, it is true that many of us, myself included, seem only too willing to consume our food in "pockets." With the exception of that delightfully fluffy pita bread, however, no food on earth naturally occurs in the form of a "pocket." Hot-Pockets are not a convenient dinner-delivery system; they are an ingot of vaguely cheese-like substance laced with something masquerading as a derivative of what might once have been an animal in the same Phylum as the animal from which we get ham. There is nothing reassuring about this, no matter how happy the people in the commercials seem to be.

You know that little cardboard sleeve lined with some sort of gray, nonmetallic foil that comes with Hot-Pockets? That thing that is supposed to make the Hot-Pocket crispy? That's a lie. The Hot-Pocket sleeve imparts as much crispiness as the crisper in my refrigerator. Which is to say, if it's possible, that a negative quantity of crispiness is permeated through the Hot-Pocket. Sleeve or no sleeve, a microwaved Hot-Pocket is nothing so much as a brick of sludge laced with Spam's special-bus-riding younger brother, wrapped in a leathery envelope that feels and looks like Dr. Laura's neck. The crisper in my refrigerator is not where wholesome fruits and vegetables go to get crisp; it, too, is a lie. The crisper is where green peppers go to die, not the Stephen King pet graveyard where broccoli manages to come back to life just long enough to murder your family and encourage you to bury them there, too, on the off chance that they won't come back nursing a grudge about that time you left the door ajar and the light stayed on all night and all the juice and milk containers started to sweat. Well, okay, maybe that's the wrong metaphor.

When the cashier tells you to have a nice day, that's a lie.. Your cashier hates you. Your cashier hates her life, her family, and her minimum-wage job. Your cashier hates his primer-spotted car and living in his parents' house, and he's not too sure about his significant other. Your cashier hates the fact that anyone over sixty-five is convinced that some sort of organized crime pyramid scheme is taking place at the checkout, a crime that can only be foiled by holding up everyone in line by disputing every single price produced by the scanner and then laboriously examining the receipt while muttering suspiciously with a furrowed brow. Your cashier would like you to take your badly-bagged groceries and go the hell away, thank you. And if, by some sadistic twist of fate, you answer the question "Paper or plastic?" with the answer, "Paper in plastic," your cashier secretly hopes you will be run down in the parking lot by a woman named Edith Krunkel who is not watching what's in front of her Buick Roadmaster because she's still reading the expired coupon for Metamucil that she's certain they should have accepted and which she intends to mail to the State Attorney General along with a sternly worded letter.

When you insist on post-dating a check, that's a lie. You're lying to yourself, and your teller is lying to you indirectly, if you harbor even the slightest notion that he or she is going to bother to look at your check, much less make the determination that the date on that check is later than today's. And your bank teller hates you every bit as much as your cashier hates you, just on general principle, if not due to the stress of having to keep office hours for almost three out of every 24 hours a day, nearly 100 days a year.

There are countless other lies, big and small, that we tell ourselves every day. The biggest, lie, though, oozes under the surface of everyday life, invading everything and touching all, clinging with the tenacity of those stickers on the spines of new CD's and more relentless than the sparkling white Thorazine-induced smile of the New York State Lottery's Yolande Vega (and please forgive me if I haven't spelled that correctly, Ms. Vega). That lie is told every time you turn on your television, every time you listen to your radio, and every time you pick up a newspaper.

That lie is that popular culture is popular. And I could go into further detail, but my Hot-Pockets are burning.