Of Shoes and Ships and Real-fruit Snacks and Randomness and Things*

The pop-tart is an exquisite animal. It's a food I think of often because, for some reason, the word "pop-tart" comes to mind when I can't find the word I'm looking for. Stereotyping male celebrities with a friend the other day, I accidentally referred to the ones who show off too many muscles as "pop-tarts"; I was temporarily unable to dredge up the term "beefcake" and my brain filled in the default word. But the allure of the pop-tart lies neither in its muscles nor in its handiness as a substitute for words I can't remember. The pop-tart is exquisite for its artificiality. It's one of those foods which trace their ancestry back to things found in the natural world, but which are are quite a ways out on the branches of that family tree.

Another food in this group is the "real fruit" snack. I'm a little old for the allure of these, but I'm no stranger to the allure of idea behind them. Due to an outbreak of a similar food, the fruit roll-up, when I was little, I've eaten my share of real-fruit-processed-until-it's-no-longer-real. As I remember them, fruit roll-ups retain a faint resemblance to actual fruit. I have found little to no resemblance to fruit in the "real fruit" snacks. These are like the love-children of gummy bears and low-quality peanut butter: sickeningly artificial flavor with a distressingly glommy texture. We could say (especially because I'm having trouble thinking of the right verb as I write this) that, in terms of artificiality, the real-fruit snack out-pop-tarts the pop-tart.
 

I've been trying to understand why we like these not-real-food foods. They're novel, for one thing (until you have one every day in your school lunchbox, as I did, with the fruit roll-up). They're also cute. Their cuteness lies somewhere on what I think of as  the novelty <--> randomness spectrum. I mean, why would anyone come up with foods so weird and un-food-like? And yet people do come up with them, and the foods become wildly popular. **

Such somewhere-between-novel-and-random cuteness comes across clearly in the (unquestionably random) (and unquestionably artificial) (and yet bizarrely appealing) pop-tart cat/nyan cat*** video, reportedly well-known and adored by grade- and middle-school-aged children. A friend who teaches English to sixth-graders sent me the video. I watched it all the way through to the end, but  you don't have to. You'll get all there is in the first few seconds.

I told my friend that I'm clearly too old to be cool. Not only had I not seen this viral video, but also I found myself asking very uncool questions like, "But why a pop-tart?"

He responded:
   
I've expended some energy on the question of why the young are so fascinated with the random.  I see 2 things:

- It's a nihilism, a balm to their feeling of powerlessness.  Fuck authority, parents, everything.  Up pop-tart cats!

- It's the opposite of sincerity / emotional vulnerability.  We're writing poetry?  I'll write about a pop-tart cat.  No way for that to get mushy.  No way I end up crying and laughed at by other kids.

I believe he's onto something important. Randomness has many uses. It can create or highlight artificiality (which has its own appeal). It out-pop-tarts novelty. It can be an escape, a defense, a trap. (Here I think of the entire poem The Walrus and The Carpenter.) Randomness is unquestionably alluring. The patterns we find in it, and the ways in which we use it, can tell us a great deal about ourselves. (Here I think of much of Lewis Carroll's work.)

We could analyze me in this regard: what does it say about me that my brain (apparently randomly) sticks "pop-tart" into gaps left by words I can't remember? But let's be a little more random (or a little less random--you tell me), and, instead, go back to these:

Cute, huh? Some are quite randomly colored, don't you think?

*with apologies to Lewis Carroll and his poem "The Walrus and The Carpenter"

**For example, there is a Pop-Tarts wiki, which says of itself: Pop Tarts Wiki is an in-depth space for you to share your love of Pop-Tarts breakfast pastries. Discover, share and add your knowledge about Pop-Tarts today!

 **The friend who sent the video tells me "nyan" is "meow" in Japanese.