Sound Bites, Healthy Bites, and Other Things that Bite

I am an avid reader of cereal boxes. Always have been. Always will be.

Our cereals are all healthy, nutritious, and all natural. (One wonders what an unnatural cereal would be like, but I digress.)

However, faced with a cereal box that is trying to inspire me to better myself, I am bemused. Nay, affronted. And it’s not even my cereal box. It’s my husband’s. It urges me to complete the sentence, “ I will…” – with several examples of exemplary, life-improving behavior. I supress the impulse to shout, “I will buy an expensive sportscar and use it to snub all my friends and neighbors!” This is not a difficult impulse to suppress, because my arthritis prevents me from getting into a sportscar, regardless of its cost. Besides, my husband, peacefully eating his cereal, would worry.

Nonetheless, I resent the cereal box’s presumption. Am I not in charge of what I will or will not do? Do I need the assistance of cardboard and grainy consumables? That I can’t even consume? (Arthritis is less painful if I don’t eat wheat, don’t you know.) Am I prey to the whims of market researchers and advertising copywriters? Probably. But do I need my milk and soupspoon rubbed in it? Not on your Betty Crocker coupon I don’t!

And breakfast food is not the only thing that presumes to guide my behavior. What about television shows that pretend to purvey news? What about politically-motivated science that is neither scientific nor accurate? But is truly believed and consistent with some religious doctrine? What about Internet exchanges of would-be truth that are based on urban myth? What about a whole culture that depends upon reduction of complex problems and difficult ideas to a thirty-second summary?

Sound bites bite! Don’t you know it. Sound bites bite! Shout it out, now. Sound bites bite! A little louder. Sound Bites Bite!

You know, it’s amazing how ego-centric and irritable a little constant pain makes you. I imagine psychic or emotional pain is just as bad. Worse, maybe. Luckily, the physical therapy is working and I’ll be better soon.

But I won’t be improved by a slogan on a carton! Sound Bites Bite.