[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

Can you plagiarize yourself? This is the third time I’ve written down the recipe and step by step for this sandwich. The first time I called it an “ersatz Chic-fil-A” because in ninth grade I read Tom Robbins’s Still Life with Woodpecker and his main character used a baptismal candle as an “ersatz” sexual aid. Robbins was transgressive in way that didn’t hit you over the head with a sledgehammer. He drove the phonies nuts.

I tried to re-read one of his novels a few years ago and confirmed only good books grow up with you. Still, the word “ersatz” stuck in my head and I use it more often than I should. I like the sound and the memory of stopping to go to the dictionary. The word seemed arcane to me. Now I have problems with Robbin’s usage. He’s saying the candle was an ersatz ersatz?

I used “Chic-fil-esque” in that article, which was an unwitting segue into my second go at this sandwich, the second go being my first possible plagiarism. In that one I called it a Chic-faux-a, visually mimicking the emphatic syllable divisions in “Chic-fil-A”, but without the “L” sound the satirical similarity is reliant on a slanted assonant rhyme like this is some kind of folk or contemporary pop song and readers deserve better.