Rany on my Breakfast

If you don’t read Rany on the Royals, Rany Jazayerli’s intelligent, passionate blog about the Royals — whether or not you care a whit about the Royals — I don’t know why you bother having an Internet connection, because new entries over there are one of the Internet-reading-things I most look forward to.

One of the commenters on a recent post (scroll down to Kenneth) criticized Rany for being too negative. He’s absolutely negative a lot of the time, but these are the Royals, so how positive can you be? He’s negative when they deserve it, and they seem to pretty much always deserve it. That said, I thought it might be fun to imagine Rany… on My Breakfast. This is meant to honor, not to criticize. I love love love his blog, and I don’t care at all about the Royals.

I’ve argued for a while that I would accept eating cereal without milk, but it has to be a good cereal. One that makes up for the lack of milk with enough positive qualities — crunch, flavor, nutritional profile — that we could overlook the one big negative. I know that every breakfast has its plusses and minuses. Rationally, I know that. And I know that even the limited number of perfect breakfasts — challah french toast, smoked salmon on a bagel, Davey Johnson Flakes — aren’t always available when you need them, and may not always be the right fit for any given individual — but this morning, when Jeremy ate Trader Joe’s Bran Flakes, plain, in a bowl, with his FINGERS, I realized I can no longer stand by and support the lack of milk. There has to be milk. Next time he goes to the supermarket — or, really, anywhere that sells food — he has to buy milk, and he has to buy it for the express purpose of using it on his cereal. It’s been too long. It’s as simple as that.

Of course, I say that, and then I have to qualify it. It’s not as simple as that. Trader Joe’s Bran Flakes have been on the market for years and they’re just as dry as they’ve always been. I accept that not every cereal starts out perfect, but you have to see progress. And even if Trader Joe’s is insisting there’s an eight-year plan (which, of course, used to be a five-year plan, until it was a six-year plan, and soon enough it’s going to be a twelve-year plan), at some point you have to stop planning and see results.

Bran Flakes are EXACTLY THE AGE that they should be improving.

MILK IS AVAILABLE — and without giving up any prospects, of course.

You put it all together and you have to understand — nothing about this breakfast is acceptable. NOTHING. And I fear this won’t be the end of it. FEAR. END. NOTHING. BRAN. ROYALS. TERRIBLE. EXPLODE.