Whiter Shades of Pale (10 page)

If you are looking for a relationship with an unsuccessful white male with few job prospects, these festivals are second only to World Bank protests in terms of sheer numbers of ineffectual men.

But Adult Swim has a broad appeal to white people, and as a rule virtually every white person has at least one season of
Aqua Teen Hunger Force
on their DVD shelf.

While you could use these DVDs to entertain yourself, it is not recommended. Instead you should secure one and watch the whole thing in
private to test your progress with white people. If you find it funny, congratulations! You are ready for deep and meaningful friendship with white people. If you do not find it funny, you have some work to do.

Many cultures deal with the concept of compulsion. That is a higher power compelling you into action almost against your will. In some cultures, this compulsion can drive some to religious ceremony, others to charity, and even others to violence. In white culture, people are compelled by something much more important: whole wheat. It would be nice to believe that a white person has a choice in bread or cereal, but in reality they don’t.

When a white person is asked “Whole wheat or white?” they are legally prohibited from saying “white.” Watch them at any sandwich shop or restaurant where they are given a choice. It is so ingrained in their heads that when presented with a list of options they will not let the waiter continue after he has said the words
whole wheat
.

When a white person eats whole wheat bread, it’s pretty much as close as they will come to experiencing communion. Except instead of accepting the body of Christ, they are accepting a well-balanced diet and their daily recommended intake of fiber and riboflavin.

To reject whole wheat in favor of white bread is tantamount to rejecting a communion wafer in a Catholic church. Though some might say that rejecting the whole wheat is a far more major crime. At least the Catholic church has absolution.

Though they strongly prefer whole wheat bread, white people will eat white bread when there are no other options. And they will generally enjoy it, making the best of a bad situation.

When this happens you might be tempted to tell white people that being forced to choose white due to a lack of options sounds like your collegiate dating career. It is recommended that you avoid this, as white people might find this offensive. Not because you were forced to date white people, but because it will remind them that they are going to have to get their fiber from something else.

Regardless of how often a white person cooks or how long they have lived in their current home, they all have a tube of sea salt in their pantry. In fact, it’s one of the few foodstuffs that white people will actually bring with them when they move. This is because sea salt is expensive and while white people have money, they didn’t get that way by throwing away $7 packages of salt.

When white people think about regular salt, all they can think about is sodium and poor health. When they think about sea salt they think about France. So it’s no surprise that it has become so popular.

But sea salt is like Trader Joe’s, Banksy, or the Shins—entry level to its field. Therefore it is important that you learn about other, more expensive salts such as pink Himalayan, black Hawaiian, and
sel gris
. This knowledge will allow you to complain about not having them. To a white person, this shows that you know and love expensive things but feel sad that you can’t yet afford them.

From here you can fill up an entire evening by making the same complaints about art, real estate, or Europe.

One of the best things about a farmer’s market is that you can get food there. One of the worst things about a farmer’s market is that you can
only
get food there. If only there were a way for you to go shopping outside in a dog-friendly environment and you could buy vintage clothes, vinyl records, mid-century modern furniture, and kitchy pop culture items from the 1950s and ’60s. Wait, there is! It’s called a flea market, and it’s tailor-made for white people.

Forget your old visions of flea markets as a place where strange and poor people shopped for necessities and novelty items. Those days are over. Once again white people have taken over something that poor people used to like and made it extremely expensive. Sort of like what they did to Brooklyn, and Asheville, and Portland, and Silver Lake, and denim.

The popularity of the flea market has grown in recent years as it has found a wonderful niche in a perfect white Saturday. With hours that often fall between 9
A.M
. and 3
P.M
., the flea market can easily be fit into your time between brunch and dinner. A successful brunch followed by a clothing or furniture score at a flea market is about as close to a perfect day as white people are ever going to get.

Sadly, unless you are sitting on a boatload of old headphones or cigarette advertising, the flea market will be of little financial or social benefit to you in your mission to befriend and understand the white race. However, if you want to play a fun game with white people, tell them you know about a secret flea market just outside the city. You have never been but you have a map and you’ve heard stories of people scoring mint-condition
Scandinavian credenzas for $150. But be warned: they won’t leave you alone until you divulge the location.