An ivory tower that touches the moon

I realized tonight that I don’t really know what the fuck the word “gourmet” means.

My husband and I were grocery shopping, and at the conclusion of our food-purchasing sojourn we got some ice for like a buck from the front of the store. Much to our surprise, this ice is “gourmet” ice. It says so on the front of the bag. Gourmet. It must be extra special awesome ice or something?

My husband often comments that the word gourmet is used on pretty much everything from canned spaghetti to fast food rat on a stick. The word has really lost all meaning, I guess. I thought it meant something like, fancy sort of food, but I just figured these places were hyping up their food with an adjective that made it seem more fancy than it actually was. Until tonight–when I got the gourmet bag of ice.

That takes the fucking cake.

I brought my husband a glass of water earlier right before he was about to go to sleep and asked, “do you want some gourmet ice in your water?”

“I’d like some gourmet ice in my gourmet water!” He replied.

I brought back the water and said, “here’s your gourmet ice in your gourmet water in your gourmet glass! Now bend over for some gourmet buttsex.”

He thought “gourmet buttsex” sounded like something you’d find on a picture of a menu on engrish.com.

So, in my bewilderment over gourmet frozen water, I went to the illustrious dictionary.com to figure out what on earth it means when something is described as “gourmet.”

of or characteristic of a gourmet, esp. in involving or purporting to involve high-quality or exotic ingredients and skilled preparation

I wonder what high-quality and exotic water was used in that one dollar bag of ice. I don’t really know how much skill it takes to put water in the freezer and let the cold air cause it to become a solid. I should tell my mom all those times she froze kool aid in an ice tray with bear-shaped liquid-holdy-holes she was making an extremely gourmet dish–I mean, if regular old ice is gourmet, surely bear-shaped ice that tastes like artificial cherry goodness is extremely gourmet.

Ok the word gourmet just looks friggin’ weird to me now.