Laurie Johns Weblog

Ginger Chews 

I am in love with Reed’s Ginger Chews; the little sugary, chewy, rectangular, gingery candies. I am in love with all things about them. First, the packaging is ingenious. The ends are a series of tiny orange stripes folded in like a present. Once the ends have been unfolded, the little rectangle, perfectly weighted and sugared, can be unrolled. The second act of packaging genius happens here. The candy is unrolled to reveal a second thin wrapper that unrolls in the opposite direction, and in some cases this thin wrapper is actually edible.

Directions:

Unfold at stripes, unroll in one direction, unroll in other direction and then in a perfectly balanced and delighted state bring the thing delicately with thumb and index finger (in gyana mudra) to your mouth and try not to anticipate the act of unrolling another one and beginning again. Just eat it like it’s the last on earth.

Somebody’s Stealing my Lines

In today’s New York Times in an article called: MAKING IT WORK; The Best-Stolen List, I read that anything by Bukowski must be practically nailed down in bookstores and that thieves are equally interested in philosophy particularly Jacques Derrida.

What makes them so in? Is it their stripped down approaches to language that’s got me, and apparently a host of shoplifters, paying attention? What links these two men to each other and to me, and is this a reflection on the tastes of thieves or something more than that?