#430 Bag it

This is the season to reflect on the positive things in life. As we face the promise of the beginning of the new year, here’s one thing I’m happy to still see around: Sugar bags. Every time I get scared by changes in technology, by things like new computers requiring a gig of ram just to make sure there’s enough room for the operating system to move; things like people driving by my house being able to use my internet, that’s when I turn to the sugar bag. That hallowed institution of packaging that still, after all these years, is just paper and glue. Every time I unfold the top of a five-pound sugar bag and don’t quite break the seal of the primitive dollop of glue right, or find that the glue person has got a little too zealous and fused the whole thing unbreakably shut, and then I accidentally rip the paper so the sugar pours funny and messily for the duration of the bag, I thank goodness that some things don’t change. I bet they don’t even call their glue person an adhesive technician—I bet they still call him a gluer, or a glueman. Oh, I’ve learned a few things about sugar bags over the years. Like I don’t have to wait for the duration of the bag to correct that initial opening rippage. After a couple of cups I can trim the upper edge. And I should do it as quickly as possible because a rip in a sugar bag is like a run in a nylon. It keeps going and going as the sugar level in the bag decreases. And that means a mess. Although I don’t cry over spilt milk I do get nettled by spilt milk that hits a dusting of spilled sugar on my counter. Usually I don’t notice it till I take my coffee cup to a different location, leave it there for a minute, then pick it up to the viscous ripping of releasing stickiness. You say why, Funny Guy, don’t you transfer the sugar to another container? There are lots of glass jars and sealed pottery and crock creations available. Not to mention a whole bevy of attractive organizing accouterments from your friendly local Tupperware representative. Or a trip through any supermarket will reward you with a host of options that Rubbermaid has knocked off from Tupperware. Tupperware doesn’t make hardware and they view Rubbermaid as the original software pirates. I wonder, when you have a bevy of offerings is it more or less than a host of offerings? At what number does host kick in? Over a hundred? I mean, if a host of angels are singing on high around some shepherds in the field would it have been more or less impressive to have a bevy of angels? Speaking of which: I still find it oddly comforting that people go to the trouble of capitalizing the X in Xmas. I mean, here they are shortening a fairly hallowed name in an, if not blasphemous, at least mildly disrespectful manner, and yet they still go to the trouble of capitalizing the contraction. Like capitalizing nicknames. Like Bubba, or Bud. Or Sugar.
America, ya gotta love it.