People expecting this article to be a whimsical and flippant one could not be more wrong; a crumpeteer does not conform to the petty confines of a “joke issue.” Rather, this article has a serious issue to bring to light. A grave and fearful symptom of societal malaise has come to my attention; one which I, as a radical crumpeteer, must do my best to treat by any means necessary. The problem is simple and grave: many Canadians do not know their crumpets from their scones!
For far too long I lived in denial about this. I always knew something was deeply wrong; I knew there was ignorance, intolerance, and injustice-and yet I did nothing. I kidded myself into believing there was little that one man could do to bring about the Crumpet Revolution. I doubted that I could achieve anything against supermarkets dominated by cohorts of bagels and pita breads, against a society intent on forgetting the visions of a crumpet utopia.
Everything changed last Halloween. I was dressed impeccably, but no one had the foggiest idea of what my costume was. Soon I lost my temper. I had spent a lot of time and effort creating my costume and people still could not figure out that I was, quite clearly, dressed as a “slutty crumpet.” Even when informed of what my costume was, they proceeded to make horrendously scandalous remarks, with one girl suggesting that I should have brought whipped cream. I bellowed back at her that she was thinking of scones, and that scones were better with clotted cream anyway, not whipped cream. I went into a frenzy-hurling the DJ off his decks, killing the music with a sharp rip, declaring ferociously to all before me that whipped cream on a crumpet is about as downright barbaric as maple syrup on a hotdog. It had begun: I had found my calling as a radical crumpeteer.
Any person lucky enough to have given their taste buds the honour and the privilege of a few tender moments of contact with a morcel of crumpet-that heavenly manna in earthly form-will say, with more jurisprudence than a supreme court judge, that a crumpeteer’s profession is a noble vocation. It is quite obvious that there is a conspiracy of English-muffinists, neo-croissantites, and sliced-breadians intent on keeping crumpets down. Crumpets are always stuffed on the bottom of the back shelves, oppressed by the baguettes, persecuted by the danishes. That is the real cause of our ignorance to the capricious wonders of the crumpet.
We must unite to crush this conspiracy, we must boycott baguettes and even waffles, we must seek out crumpets from their dark corners and buy them. There is no excuse for any of us not to. They are tax-free, delicious, and cheap; they take only a few minutes to make; they are vegan friendly (without the butter, of course), and they can come in gluten-free variety. They really are perfect. If Brad Pitt asked a girl who had tasted a crumpet if she would like to go back to his place “for a crumpet or two,” she would be more excited about the crumpets than anything else.
[Full disclosure: the author is the manipulative CEO of the conspiratorial international corporation, CP (Crum Petroleum)]
