I saw something today that has me very concerned for the direction our culture is headed in. I was strolling past the vending machine in our downstairs neighbor Crochet! magazine’s offices, which I do frequently both because I’m the only commune employee obscure enough to show my face down there without setting off an incident of feud-based violence, and also because the commune’s own vending machine has been stocked with nothing but ginger snaps ever since Omar Bricks pissed off the restocker by filling the entire machine with aerosol contraceptive foam last month.

As I was marveling at Crochet!’s wondrous selection of gingerless snacks, one in particular caught my eye. There they were, on the top row and in bold typeface: “Effin’ Crackers.” I couldn’t believe my eye, so I checked with the other one. Same result. Are we truly living in a society so rude that now even our snack foods are insulting me? I’m afraid so, occasional readers.

And when even your crackers are rude beyond the pale, you know you culture’s in serious trouble. I bought some of the offending snacks just to further investigate what they were all about. They didn’t taste especially offensive. They didn’t taste particularly like food either, but that’s to be expected of vending machine offerings. If you can’t taste the oxypropyl 13, Keebler’s not doing their job.

No, aside from the name these are your normal, everyday, run of the mill animal crackers shaped like midgets with a Victorian sense of fashion. At first, the midget shapes put me off a bit, but then I realized that you have to be pragmatic about these kinds of things. If I’m prepared to bite the head off an endangered panda or a tiny inch-tall camel coated in sugar, I’d be a hypocrite to beg off snapping a crunchy midget in half with my bicuspids. Animals are people too, you know. Well actually, they’re not, but neither are dwarves. So same difference.

No, the startlingly brusque moniker these chips bear is clearly just a marketing attempt to reach out to the youth of today, rude fuckers that they are. Teenagers who have grown up immersed in a briny, electrified soup of oversaturated media cacophony are growing more and more difficult to reach through traditional marketing channels, necessitating that companies cut loose with all-out profanity to shock these kids into addressing their mild hunger needs. “Eat it—You’ll like it!” and “The official snack cookie of the Bolshoi Ballet” just don’t cut it anymore, readers. These days, it’s “Here’s your effin’ crackers, jerkweed! What, do you got a poop in your mouth? Eat ‘em up!”

What this says about our parasitic marketing experts is one thing, and a sad thing indeed. But what this says about our very souls is the true pants-shitter. Have we really traipsed so eagerly down this road, on the way to the total annihilation of Western culture as we know it? Have we really missed all the neon-yellow signposts along the way, warning us to turn back before we devolve into utterly debased and wretched creatures?

Oh, wait. These say “Elfin Crackers.” Nevermind.