The Least Intimidating bakery in the village has closed for good so now I’ve got to go to the Intimidating Bakery, it’s awful. If you don’t have a PhD in being French I don’t recommend going to that bakery, here’s the humiliating account of the 3 times I’ve visited it so far:
the first time I went in there I pointed at one of those extra-skinny baguettes and said “a flute, please” feeling pretty sure of myself, and the baker said “… that’s a ficelle” (you idiot) (was implied) “a flute is twice as large as a baguette.”
That’s insane, first of all, a flute is a skinny instrument. Call your fat baguette a bassoon, lady—I made some timid remark about how it would make more sense for a flute to be a skinny bread and the baker said, “In Paris it is. I thought you were from the South?”
oh, that hurt
I guess I’m from the part of the South that’s so close to Italy the bread’s waist size matters less than whether it’s got olives in it, but I left the bakery having an existential crisis over whether living in Paris had made me forget my roots
the Least Intimidating Bakery just had normal baguettes vs. seedy baguettes vs. horny baguettes (easy mode, some have seeds, some have horns), while the new bakery has breads that are only different on a molecular level—there’s a good old loaf and then another, identical loaf called a bastard? google told me a bastard is “halfway between a baguette and a bread” but denouncing them like “those are not regulation-sized bastards” would get me banned from the bakery for life
on my 2nd visit (while I stood in line discreetly googling baguette terminology) there was an English tourist who asked for a baguette while pointing at what was either a rustique or a sesame and I felt a bit worried for them, but the baker just clarified “this one?” to waive any responsibility if they found out later it wasn’t a classic baguette, then handed them the bread without educating them in a judgmental tone and I felt envious
I know it’s because she thinks the English are beyond saving but still it made me want to come back with a fake moustache and an English accent so I wouldn’t be expected to play bakery on expert mode just because I’m French. I asked for a pastry this time and the baker asked “no bread with that?” which felt cruel, like she wanted me to sprinkle myself with ashes and admit out loud that my level of bread proficiency isn’t as advanced as I once believed it was
The third time I went, I had lost all self-confidence and I hesitantly pointed at a bread and said “I’d like this, uh—what is it called?” and the baker looked at me in disbelief and said “That’s a baguette.”
God.
for the record, if that stupid bread had been flanked by a skinny bread (ficelle) and a fat one (flute) then yeah of course I would have known to call it a baguette, but in the absence of reference points I now felt lost and scared of being called a Parisian again
it’s hard to express the depth of my suffering so I’ll just let the facts speak for themselves: this morning a French person (me) stood in a French bakery in France surrounded by French people and pointed at a baguette and said “what is this called”
You can only reblog this today or until the next Monday, June 19th, 2034.
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cashier: ok that'll be $20
me (visibly sweating): ah, yes, of course! a perfectly reasonable price for a grilled cheese and a small smoothie! that was exactly the price i expected you to say when i ordered a single grilled cheese and a smoothie and my vision is NOT getting blurry as we speak! i am a perfectly normal temperature and my speech patterns are natural and even because this is the countenance of an individual who expected to pay 20 american dollars for a single grilled cheese and a smoothie!
cashier: where's all that blood coming from
everyone on r/aita is doing polyamory so wrong and i think they could learn something from tommyinnit. I'm not going to say hes doing it any better but he is being really funny about it
Pete's height is expandale to me. I think Ruth and Richie should be able to climb him like a tree. I also believe he should be a lot shorter than Steph. He can either be Nick Lang's or Joey Ritcher's height. Pete's height is whatever I want it to be. I can strech him like Putty then squish him
i remember adults telling me, as a kid, to listen to doctors and get my flu vaccine and any shots i could because they remembered Before.
then they started fighting Covid precautions.
i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that the ozone was disappearing and the earth was dying and we needed to recycle and save the planet.
now my parents think climate change is a myth.
i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that racism was a plague, that we had to love and accept everyone, that we should never judge before walking a mile in their shoes.
then they told me that protesting for my Black siblings was wrong.
i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that we needed to give to the poor. working at soup kitchens. making quilts. collecting food and money and supplies. building houses. because it was the christian and just plain right thing to do.
now they look at me, on food stamps with their grandchildren, and lament the "welfare state".
i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and that any rich man, especially an immoral one, should never run our country.
you can guess who they voted for.
i remember adults telling me, as a kid, so very much.
when did they forget?
i need to look like a man so i can dress like a woman
i think it's time to take a page from the james flint gay agenda manifesto; stop trying to convince people that the queers are not a danger to society, and become a menace to civilisation instead. the real queer agenda should be to overthrow any and all social systems. work in tandem with other marginalised groups and set heteropatriarchy on fire. become ungovernable, ignore social norms, uplift new voices. assimilation should not have ever been the goal. queer people are different. difference is good. the real enemy is conformity. conformity is responsible for every man made horror in history. war, poverty, hate crimes, slavery, genocide, they are all made possible by the existence and desirability of a status quo. remove the desirability of normalcy and you remove the foundation for all systems of suffering. systems work because a majority of people have decided it was in their best interest to uphold them. but is it really? remove the desirability of normalcy and you have no grounds for competition. keep quiet out of fear that the system will decide you are abnormal next, and you are making sure it will. fuck civilisation, fuck normalcy, fuck the status quo.
i may be physically deteriorating, but at least i’m mentally falling apart
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