I handed him a dried cherry - a single one, and a small one - not immediately realizing the danger I had put myself in. (This was an admitted misstep on my part. It's astonishing to me that, at this stage, I have still not learned to sit quietly alone and think, for five solid minutes, about whether there are any possible exceptions Kierstedt may take to any food presented to him, OR SUFFER.) So a dried cherry, sweetened, true, sweetened and not organic, but Christ. He took it from me with a visible level of suspicion better suited to one who's half-considering hiring an unmarked "cab" in a sketchy Balkan neighborhood, say. "What're these sweetened with?" "Not sure, probably soaked in sugar syrup, maybe, but at any rate not meat, fuck." Just don't eat it, then, right, God, but he did, and listen it was like I tried to kill him, like I wanted him harmed, to hand him this cherry, he bellowed "Fuck, you can't taste the fucking corn syrup? Fucking corn syrup? These are toxic," in a tone of bone-deep outrage, sincere and imploring. "Toxic", huh; look I really must insist words retain some semblance of scale, of discrimination. If every single thing you dislike is either "fascist" or "toxic", I, it just seems a little exhausting, doesn't it?