WEEKLY WHINE

The great food divide

If you’ve been paying attention to world news, you are probably desperate, pessimistic, and perhaps suicidal.

But if you have, you may also have heard about last week’s court decision in the US state of Massachusetts, where a judge ruled that burritos are not sandwiches. It’s easy to believe that a reasonable person wouldn’t need a court decision to be able to tell the difference, but remember, this is the United States of America, where suing for the most inane reasons is an inalienable civil right, but privacy isn’t.

If you are planning to lease a storefront in a shopping mall that already has a sandwich shop, you might want to keep track of which things are sandwiches and which are not. We asked the GoobNet Special Projects Enhancement and Enforcement Division [SPEED] to look over these food items and tell us whether they are sandwiches or not. Their response: “Members of the GoobNet SPEED hereby consider that you have got to be kidding us.”

In the end, though, the team agreed to conduct these evaluations on the condition that we provide them samples of the foodstuffs in question.

• Pita sandwich: Sandwich
• Fajita: Not sandwich
• Quesadilla: Not sandwich
• Wrap: Not sandwich
• Salad: Not sandwich
• Soup: Not sandwich, no matter how many crackers you crumble in it
• Open faced sandwich: Sandwich
• Oreo: Sandwich cookie, but not sandwich
• Hamburger: Sandwich
• McDonald’s hamburger: Not sandwich, because it’s not food
• Sandwich board: Not sandwich, but edible if you are a lion or a cannibal
• Sandwich coin: Not sandwich, but edible if you are less than two years old