The Smug Scout is your navigator through the world of the correct, the complacent, and the superior. She will show you the Smug way to eat, drink, shop, travel, and even speak. She mocks the Smug as intensely as she lives it. See how your own Smug credentials measure up!
Smug Lexicon
Artisanal: appropriately, if absurdly, expensive and beautifully, if cynically, packaged to appeal to the Smug consumer
Backyard: unrelated to an actual yard, refers to anything you could make by hand if you didn’t prefer to pay someone an exorbitant amount to make by hand
Charred: artisanal black coating on bread, pizza, or vegetables, what you used to know as “burned to a crisp”
Cold-pressed: superior juices and oils because you do not abuse your vegetables with blades but rather with heavy granite millstones
Crafted: not necessarily artistic or creative or original, but a Smug human made it rather than a machine
Direct trade: farmed or crafted items from which a third world producer may actually eke out a miserly third world living
Fair trade: farmed or crafted third world items that force a poverty stricken craftsperson/farmer to share meager profits with exporters and a multi-tiered foundation
Farmers’ Market: any community’s Smug Epicenter, which will also be the only place you are allowed to buy produce if you are Smug
Foraged: slick new term for items, especially mushrooms, that have been picked from an outdoor location
Heirloom: the expensive, multicolored, premium tomatoes your grandparents just called “tomatoes”
Local: food some other people, probably a bunch of migrant workers along with a Simon Legree or two, drive up to eight hours to get to you
Local-Seasonal-Organic: Smug version of the Trinity and Smug Scout’s only connection with an organized religion
Market-driven: refers to a pricey menu that features produce too unusual and expensive to find in a supermarket other than a Whole Foods on the West Coast
Organic: an expensive certification process that essentially means that any animal feces residue will not kill you
Raw: the only “living” food vegetarians can eat
Reclaimed: some garbage put to another use
Repurposed: some random old useless object, not yet called garbage, put to another use
Seasonal: has never traveled in a container ship from South America or China
Single-source/single-origin: no race mixing in your coffee
Sustainable: you’re allowed to eat it/drink it/wear it without feeling guilty
Vintage: the stage before “repurposed”
Whole Foods: an amusement park for Smug shoppers (note: Smug Scout will never call it “Whole Paycheck” because high prices reflect quality and social justice)
