August 2, 2025
Even though it isn't a nut, reality is especially hard to crack these days. But if you closely observe daily life all around you, no matter how superficial it may at first seem, you will catch many glimpses of why this may be so. The signs of falsehood are everywhere here in the land of make-believe, for those willing to decipher them. The big lies and deceptions of politicians, intelligence services, and their media minions have their counterparts in trivial encounters where, as Melville said, "A smile is the chosen vehicle for all ambiguities." Such smiles plaster not just human faces, but appear in the signs and symbols of the wider culture everywhere you look. They are meant to tranquilize with trivia. They are offered as bait to induce people to stop worrying and be happy as their leaders smash the world to bits.
I recently chanced to look down the cereal aisle of a supermarket where my already florescent-irritated eyes were further dazzled by an entire row of technicolor boxes of the garbage that Americans eat to begin their days. First came the poison laid low down for the kids so they can reach the traps and pester their parents for what would better be served to rats. These I passed, only to stop at a big orange yellow box that was advertised on sale. I had seen it before, just as often as I had seen pictures of Van Gogh's sunflowers adorning dentists' offices and funeral homes, twin bright colors before which we are beseeched to smile and be happy like Vincent. The cereal was General Mills' Honey Nut Cheerios.
At the center of the box in large letters outlined in bright orange screamed the words "made with REAL HONEY." I quickly grabbed a box since I am always searching for reality, but then it struck me, as I fell off my motorized horse like Paul on the road to Damascus (not today's bombed Damascus), that such an assertion was strange, for the cereal is called Honey Nut Cheerios, which would imply it was made with honey. So why are they boldly asserting it is? Perhaps because the honey used is so minuscule it's necessary to use a bullhorn to assert its reality. Or perhaps the clue lies in that word "real," whose meaning is really confounding. It sounded like politicians in reverse who claim war is peace when it isn't or introduce all their words by saying "to tell you the truth," as they proceed to lie. So it always was, is, and will be? But then my existential search brought me to that ah-ha moment as I looked at the ingredients list and realized there were no nuts in the cereal. Where were the nuts, the people buying the cereal or me? By next year will the box announce REAL HONEY and REAL NUTS?
Or will they say it is made with REAL HOLES? Who knew that? Who knows that the holes are more real than that which surrounds them, or that nothing is more real than nothing? Why are some people always trying get something or other into holes, while others try to ignore their reality, even as the final holes patiently await us?
It then occurred to me that this semiotic search of mine (the analysis of cultural objects like advertisements, food, or activities such as golf, etc. for deeper meanings and social myths), like those of Roland Barthes in his acclaimed 1957 book, Mythologies, would not go over well with those who like being deceived, which seems to be most people. But my search continued, despite my wife calling out, "Come on, Honey," to which I murmured to the cereal box, "Really?"
My existential search then went into rapid overdrive, for when a wife says, "Come on, Honey," who can hold back? I saw that the box cover read that the cereal was "naturally flavored," which felt so reassuring until I wondered what they meant by "naturally" and why they were so insistent upon announcing that as well. Lower down on the box in large bold letters it said that eating the cereal "Can help LOWER CHOLESTEROL* as part of a heart healthy diet." That asterix led down to much smaller and harder-to-read gibberish words that said that eating the cereal, within a larger low-fat diet, "may reduce the risk of heart attack." Mr. Death is natural, too, I thought, but he wasn't mentioned.
I was getting sick of my search and took another look at the cover whereupon the picture of a cartoon-looking bee with a honey wand - Buzz the Bee, I later learned they call him - reminded me of Tinker Bell from Peter Pan, the story of a boy who never wants to grow up because death comes in time as with the crocodile who has swallowed a clock and eats Captain Hook. No one dies in Neverland except the bad guy. Yet everyone seems to do that in our Neverland, where the bad guys kill the good people through a cornucopia of means.
For a long time there was a store in the town where I live called Crystal Essence that recently closed. I called it the rock shop. It sold a wide assortment of New Age products from crystals and rocks through incense and books on how to be happy forever. Somehow deathless. One day I passed this store, which was highly successful with tourists and locals alike, and saw a poster for Fairy Dusting. Perverse thinker that I am, I inquired within about this procedure. They sent me upstairs in the rear of the store where a woman greeted me with a big smile. "Did I want to be fairy dusted?" she asked. I said I was just inquiring as to what it was and how much it cost. She said $40, and you lie on a table as I circle you while dusting you with my wand filled with fairy dust, as Tinker Bell did. "What was the point?" I asked. She said it cleansed your aura and gave you a healthy journey through life and multiple reincarnations. "So it will help me not to die?" I asked. "Yes, she said with a huge smile. I said, "Thanks" and left, but not without thoughts of Peter Pan, Tinker Bell and a country that will never grow up. A look around in the most ordinary places will confirm that.
Still standing in the cereal aisle, I thought of my fairy duster and Buzz the Bee with his wand on the cover of the box that I held in my hand. Everywhere we look we see promotions for products that will dust us so we will live forever. The American culture of death threatens and kills while simultaneously offering anodynes. Deny, affirm, and cure. Honey Nut Cheerios, full of good cheer.
As I shoved the box back on the shelf, I noticed it said down low on its side that it was bioengineered. They want to bioengineer us all, I thought, mechanically petrify us, and so I revved up my engine and hurried to find my wife.
She had already checked out and was waiting for me at the door. She called out, with an enticing smile, "Come on, Honey!" And despite my deep existential semiotic search for truth in the cereal aisle, and with an inner nod to Barthes, I ran after her, for when a woman says such words to you, what man can hold back?
Cheerio!
As Jeffrey Epstein wouldn't say: Beware the honey trap, My Lost Boys.
Cheerio!
Reprinted with the author's permission.