I bought a sandwich the other day at Sainsbury's; you know, one of those that are packed in a triangular carton. Pondering my sandwich (BLT on granary, but that's by the by), I got to thinking about the process of making sandwiches for sale in triangular cartons. If you were making it at home, you would take a slice of bread, add a filling, add another slice of bread, cut it diagonally, and put one half on top of the other half. I don't think that's how they're made commercially though. I think they take a slice of bread, add a filling, add another slice of bread, then repeat all that so there are two sandwiches, one on top of the other. They then slice them both and put the left halves in one carton and the right halves in another. So I got to thinking; who has the other halves of my sandwiches?
A manufacturer could include a little slip of paper between the two sandwiches. It would have a unique identifier printed on it twice, in such a way that, after the sandwiches are cut and packed, one identifier would be in each carton. The purchaser could then enter the identifier and their e-mail address on the manufacturer's web-site, and when the purchaser of the other halves does the same, they could become life-long friends.-- angel, Nov 03 2010 somewhat similar Coffee_20with_20Strangers [simonj, Nov 05 2010] How assembly line sandwiches https://www.youtube...watch?v=HS_hnmHWEcgHow assembly line sandwiches are made. You were right! Or rights and lefts packaged together. [popbottle, Jun 17 2014] Quantum entanglement http://en.wikipedia...uantum_entanglement [hippo, Jun 17 2014] + and this way you both would know that you liked the same kind of sandwich!!-- xandram, Nov 03 2010 Imagine the loneliness if yours didn’t get matched.
I worked in a café once, making and packing this kind of sandwich by hand. I can’t remember if you are correct, [angel], or not. All I can remember was being taught to line up the ingredients along one diagonal, so that the cut surface looked bountifully full, while the tail end was bare.-- pocmloc, Nov 03 2010 how lovely!
now if only the package could *beep* if it came into proximity with the twin...-- po, Nov 03 2010 One could purchase a beeper unit, to be worn in your underwear so your groin area would beep when you found your sandwich mate.-- infidel, Nov 03 2010 we did custard filled knickers before - remember?-- po, Nov 03 2010 Lovely idea - the identifier should be printed on the bread though.("Oh my God! I'm so glad I found you! Standards of hygiene at the sandwich factory are slipping - I just found half a mouse in my sandwich!" - "Oh, I already ate my sandwich - eurgh...")-- hippo, Nov 03 2010 // line up the ingredients along one diagonal, so that the cut surface looked bountifully full, while the tail end was bare //
I have seen a few of those. Rather strange to eat. And packaged sandwiches are strange already.
// the identifier should be printed on the bread though //
That is well within reach of present inkjet technology. (By the way, some packaged sandwiches are cut in half by a water-jet cutter--very high-tech. (I haven't noticed that on any sandwiches, but I don't have to eat the damned things any more.))-- baconbrain, Nov 03 2010 <It all goes horribly wrong> [angel] receives a small jiffy bag in the post (that's a padded envelope, by the way). Inside is a folded serviette, with a message scrawled in blue biro:"I have your precious 2nd half. You will shortly receive a ransom demend that you will immediately pay... or else! No-pay means you will receive slices of gherkin in the post every day and you will see the 2nd half of the sandwich ever again..."
[angel]: "but this sandwich doesnt' contain gherkins...!?!?!"-- Jinbish, Nov 04 2010 "If you don't want to know what I did to the other half of the sandwich you just ate, mail money to ...."-- baconbrain, Nov 04 2010 Hi angel.-- blissmiss, Nov 04 2010 //we did custard filled knickers before - remember//
I'm feeling a little disturbed that you filled your knickers with custard. That's revealing information about oneself that many people would not really want to know.-- infidel, Nov 04 2010 good try! :)-- po, Nov 04 2010 Hi, [blissy].-- angel, Nov 04 2010 Filling them with activated carbon would be more useful.-- neelandan, Nov 04 2010 Cui bono ?-- 8th of 7, Nov 04 2010 The knickers. Not the sandwiches.-- neelandan, Nov 04 2010 Hi angel, Of course, this idea could also be used by the unscrupulous to a) identify who it is that keeps eating their favourite sandwiches and b) take steps to prevent them doing so in future. +-- DrBob, Nov 04 2010 Hi, [DrBob].-- angel, Nov 04 2010 hello john boy! :)-- po, Nov 04 2010 You step out into the northern winter, clasping your coat closed at the neck, protection against the chill smirr in the sky, to forage for a sandwich. You are successful: you buy, under dangling striplights in a CBD supermarket conversion, a grey and wholly unsatisfactory cheese and ham sandwich, aware that had your life followed a different path, your lunch would be brought to you, the plate laid upon thick tablecloth amid ranks of gleaming cutlery, wine gurgling into your crystal glass, poured by an admiring sommelier, and someone else - shareholders, or the government, it doesn't matter who, they're all the same - would be picking up the tab. Back at your desk, under striplights set into the suspended ceiling, far from natural light, you sit and munch without looking at your sandwich, noticing to only the most minor degree the crisp curl of the bread edges as they press upon your tongue, instead contemplating the grimly unchanging website, your ambition turned on the lathe of drudgery into the brittle desire for something catastrophic to happen somewhere in the world, so you can read the liveblogs. Toying idly with the packaging, you notice a code, something about a website, about your already forgotten sandwich? This relative excitment drags your curiosity a milimetre above velleity, and you head to your browser.
And at around the same date, further south, in the nightime shallows of a motorway service station, a sales rep, far behind in his targets, stands, stretching the drive from his his back, in front of an almost empty chiller cabinet, ostensibly pondering which of the identical grey and wholly unsatisfactory ham and cheese sandwiches to buy, but actually running over in his head the decisions he made that brought him to this place, now nearly a whole calendar month since he had an interaction with a human being that wasn't, at its base level, predicated on the exchange of cash, and that's only counting the fight he thinks he had, drunk and lonely, in a chipshop in York, before that it was, he tries to remember, probably the text message he got from Donna, indicating that Donna - his sweet Donna, who used to laugh at his jokes - would be engaging the services of several guys from the pub to ensure that she receives no more phone calls from him. In the end he picks, pretty much at random, your sandwich pair and heads back to the tatty spartan motel room, where he keys the code into his laptop browser.
And you become life-long friends, even though you have nothing in common but your co-incident buttie purchases.-- calum, Nov 04 2010 for every sandwich choice we make in a parallel universe, there are worlds with different fillings ...-- po, Nov 04 2010 Isn't it a sort of...Club Sandwich?-- Ling, Nov 04 2010 A plaintive beeping drills its way slowly into your consciousness, driving a shaft of unwelcome clarity through the woolly clouds of the hangover brought on by last night's binge. You set the small part of your mind that is now conscious on an unsteady mission to find and destroy the source of irritation... your mobile 'phone.
Finally! Your hand has patted the carpet in a sweeping arc three times before you muster the energy to reach up onto the edge of the coffee table. There's a text message from Daniel. "Who the fuck is Daniel?" you think, the blear in your eyes making it almost impossible to read the cryptic message he has sent: "how ru this mng? still hard? can u cum 4 2nds :) ?" You read it again, struggling to apprehend the meaning of the note.
It creeps up on you like the tide... a slow realisation that the sandwich you had last night has come back to haunt you; the Quaaludes, coke, sildenafil and vodka are all taking their toll on your mind, in varing degree. Flashes of red sheets, the smell of shit and K-Y, the raw fire of Stolichnaya; they all run through your mind as wakefulness invades and turns the battle in its favour, taking 50%... 60%... 65% of the territory of your mind in a short, brutal encounter.
When you met the little bastard at the coffee shop outside the cinema it had never occurred to you his "friend" Andrei, the Russian bear, would be waiting at the twink's apartment with rapine design on your sphincter. "Come back to my place for a sandwich", Daniel had said. You had half-heartedly imagined it would be that kind of sandwich so you'd gone along with it. Never did it occur to you that you were to be the meat in that bareback sandwich. The big Russian had been too strong, too fuelled up on coke, too committed, for you to prevent him throwing you around like a stuffed toy before he'd finally stuffed you... like a tube of marine caulking compound into the coin slot of a parking meter.
"No more fucking sandwiches, ever", you swear to yourself. You throw the 'phone across the room and try to go back to sleep.-- infidel, Nov 04 2010 Have the voices in your head been particularly loud and insistent today, [infidel] ?-- 8th of 7, Nov 05 2010 This is lovely crazy. +-- nomocrow, Nov 05 2010 I will never look at sandwiches the same way ever again.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 05 2010 Me either. +-- blissmiss, Nov 05 2010 [ling] The first rule of club sandwich...-- fridge duck, Nov 05 2010 Sorry to those people whom I may have put off sandwiches for life.-- infidel, Nov 05 2010 [infidel], that was frighteningly funny.-- baconbrain, Nov 05 2010 that's o.k. UB.-- po, Nov 05 2010 I just re-read it, [bacon]. It's a little unsettling, isn't it?
Would you like me to pretend to be UnaBubba, just for you, every now and then [po]? I might get some of it wrong but I can probably muddle through the basics, I'm willing to try it because I can understand how surrounding yourself with familiar things might be a comfort in your paranoid state.-- infidel, Nov 06 2010 [fridge duck] Now, there's something...rules for club sandwiches. The mind boggles. I know the rules (procedure) for a Thai sandwich, but you've got me at a loss, I'm afraid.-- Ling, Nov 06 2010 Like a fortune cookie for two.
What if you pick an odd ball sandwich just to see what you get.
Twenty years later in a screaming fit she says:
"You never loved me, and furthermore I hate tuna fish sandwiches."
Ain't love grand.-- popbottle, Jun 17 2014 I was really only in it for the mayonnaise. [+]-- Grogster, Jun 17 2014 random, halfbakery