Reflections on Ice Breaking

It's hard to believe sometimes what we use wall-to-wall news coverage to report on but I guess since we invented we'll continue to fill it up if not wisely then well. Don't get me wrong, on the treadmill every morning I switch between CNN and CBSN until my local CBS affiliate's newscast at 0430 (gotta have that weather even though I was out in it to get to the gym). I take solace in knowing that the world is going to hell in a handbag before most people are up. It's sort of my hobby.

So it was with ever-widening eyes earlier in the week that I watched CBSN report as part of their Money Watch segment at about a quarter past four that NECCO Wafers are suddenly the Bitcoin of the confectionary world.       

Our children may not even know what they are as we've done a good job of screening them through childhood into their adult lives but boy howdy, do I remember them. The article calls them "plaster surprise" and "tropical drywall." Nope, more like chalk with a side order of the sidewalk you were using the chalk to draw on. 

NECCO Wafers can bring people together, they really can. Take any two people with diametrically opposed views politically, sports, religious, whatever who agree on NOTHING and they will still agree that NECCO Wafers taste like a$$. It's sort of the candy's superpower. I've wondered most of my life why anyone would go out of their way to make something that's supposed to be a treat taste so awful (and I do appreciate the history behind them but still). I have concluded because they, whoever they are, are Evil Incarnate.   

As a child, I thought they might be a good idea as alternative Eucharists hosts at Holy Communion during the Mass. And Kelly wonders why he didn't get elected Pope. Holy Mother Church keeps records, my brother, and my well-intentioned suggestion didn't do much to help your candidacy.

In the article, I read the same folks make Mary Janes (I have no quarrel with Squirrel Nut Zippers or Clark Bars, move along), but with all due respect to the headlines about NECCO Wafers' popularity, Mary Janes should be outlawed under the Geneva Convention.  Kids (like me) who would eat anything in the goodie bag collected on Halloween drew the line on Mary Janes. 

I have never eaten kerosene, but I suspect Mary Janes are made in the same factory probably by the swing shift crew because those people are almost always bastards and Mary Janes is very much their idea of a practical joke. 

Meanwhile, newspapers and news channels are filled with the possible disappearance of NECCO Wafers and we pay no more than passing attention to other actual news because while candy is dandy, liquor is quicker. And Ogden Nash must be wondering if we've lost our minds.
-bill kenny