Gerald Ford and the Onion Futures Act

August 17, 2015 5:23 PM

By the mid-50s, onions futures contracts were the most traded product on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. In the fall of 1955, Sam Siegel and Vincent Kosuga bought enough onion futures so that they controlled 98% of the available onions in Chicago. As the growers began buying back onions, Siegel and Kosuga purchased short positions on a large amount of onion contracts, and driven the price of 50 lbs. of onions down from $2.50 to 10¢, cheaper than the actual bags. Then-congressman Gerald Ford sponsored a bill, known as the Onion Futures Act, which banned futures trading on onions.

The bill was unpopular among traders, arguing that onion shortages were not a crucial issue since they were used as a condiment rather than a staple food. The president of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Everette Bagby Harris described it as "Burning down the barn to find a suspected rat". It was passed, and President Eisenhower signed the bill 1958.

Why the craze about onions? Could it be their aphrodisiac and crazy qualities?

posted by atomicmedia (76 comments total)

So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time.
posted by limeonaire at 5:31 PM on August 17, 2015 [44 favorites]

The Great Chicago Onion Ring: Why Selling Onion Futures Is Against Federal Law

"Beyond its admittedly obscure nature, this law is significant in that it marks the first and only time in the history of the United States that futures trading in any commodity was banned."

What's the Only Commodity Banned from Futures Trading?

"Championed by a rookie Republican Congressman named Gerald Ford, the Onion Futures Act was the first (and only) time that futures trading in a specific commodity was prohibited, and the law is still on the books."
posted by blucevalo at 5:31 PM on August 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

Fifty pounds of onions would have me carmelizing for weeks.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:35 PM on August 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Now, what are commodities? Commodities are agricultural products... like coffee that you had for breakfast... wheat, which is used to make bread... pork bellies, which is used to make bacon, which you might find in a "bacon and lettuce and tomato" sandwich.
posted by infinitewindow at 5:36 PM on August 17, 2015 [36 favorites]

I just love that for a few weeks in 1955, you couldn't give away onions in Chicago, and you couldn't buy them anywhere else in the country. The invisible hand.
posted by mrdaneri at 5:40 PM on August 17, 2015 [22 favorites]

But on a more serious note, this is pretty amazing:

Kosuga sometimes used deceptive practices to manipulate the futures market. He once bribed a weather bureau to issue a frost warning in order to inflate the price of futures contracts that he owned. The weather bureau did issue the warning, though the temperature never fell below 50 °F (10 °C).
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:43 PM on August 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

The bill was unpopular among traders, arguing that onion shortages were not a crucial issue since they were used as a condiment rather than a staple food.

Except in those smelly "ethnic" cuisines, where they would most certainly be a staple.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:45 PM on August 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

What do you bribe a weather bureau with? Satellites?
posted by atomicmedia at 5:46 PM on August 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Commodities are agricultural products

Uhhhh... no. Commodities are items which are pretty much interchangeable no matter the supplier and directly compete on price. So long as an ear of corn meets a certain level of quality you don't give a shit whether it comes from Joe or Bob. So long as a kettle gets water hot and doesn't burn your house down in the process you don't give a shit whether it's Kambrook or Sunbeam. So long as the oil is light and sweet and arrives in Cushing you don't care if it came from California or Texas.
posted by Talez at 5:47 PM on August 17, 2015 [7 favorites]

What do you bribe a weather bureau with? Satellites?

You just tell them "Daddy's gonna make it rain."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:47 PM on August 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

What do you bribe a weather bureau with? Satellites?

Probably onions.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:47 PM on August 17, 2015 [12 favorites]

Ford's action was spurred by an attempt to corner the frozen concentrated onion juice market.
posted by delfin at 5:52 PM on August 17, 2015 [15 favorites]

Onion Rings

e.t.a. These guys are my friends, no longer together, I just like the song. Included it in Bigspaceship1.com many years ago.
posted by atomicmedia at 5:52 PM on August 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Talez, thank you for correcting my English which stinks! ;)
posted by infinitewindow at 5:53 PM on August 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

Now what are commodities?

Yeah, what Talez said.

A key feature of commodities is their fungibility (i.e., one unit of yellow onion from state A is the same as the yellow onion from state B), in the same way that a barrel of West Texas Intermediate Crude is the same whether it's from Texas or Tennessee.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:54 PM on August 17, 2015

Hah. Totally missed the Trading Places joke.

Sigh.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:56 PM on August 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

Kettles are not commodities. It does matter where they come from and how they are made. Commodities are raw materials, agricultural or mineral usually.

Also, what sad, depressing culture considers onions a condiment instead of a core staple of any good meal? Seriously, is that just people trying to wriggle out from under a law they didn't like, or did people in the 50's really not eat many onions? A quick think-through of all my grandparent's basic meals includes none without onions, or at least a bowl of green onions to accompany, and they'd have been learning to cook in the 40's-50's.
posted by neonrev at 6:12 PM on August 17, 2015 [6 favorites]

Speaking of Trading Places and weather reports, up until 2010 it was actually legal to trade in the commodities markets using insider information.

The signing of Dodd-Frank in 2010 closed that loophole, and the specific rule (Section 746) became known as the Eddie Murphy Rule, although IMO calling it the Billy Ray Valentine Rule would have been a bit more correct (but a lot more oblique).
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:13 PM on August 17, 2015 [5 favorites]

There's a children's story written by C.N. Bialik, called "The Prince of Onions and the Prince of Garlic", that is of relevance to this story.
posted by ocschwar at 6:13 PM on August 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don't know why, but in really tearing up over this story.
posted by mfu at 6:19 PM on August 17, 2015 [6 favorites]

I have no words.
posted by thelonius at 6:20 PM on August 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

This is why we can't have nice things onions futures contracts.
posted by Naberius at 6:26 PM on August 17, 2015 [5 favorites]

So has an economist used this legal discrepancy to tease out some fact about futures trading? Surely, the price of onions must exhibit patterns that are different than those of future-traded vegetables.
posted by bruceo at 6:27 PM on August 17, 2015 [13 favorites]

I want to be as clear as I possibly can about this; I will not allow an onion deficit - not today, not ever.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 6:39 PM on August 17, 2015 [8 favorites]

Remember this story when people tell you that markets are efficient. They are highly efficient, but only an economist would tell you that efficiency means bankrupting onion farmers, leaving chunks of the country without onions, and making Siegel and Kosuga millions. Words in economics-land sound a lot like ordinary words, but usually have pretty different meanings.
posted by zachlipton at 6:39 PM on August 17, 2015 [32 favorites]

If I shoot someone to death, then I have efficiently killed them. But no one ever said that "efficiency" means killing people. The free market can be perfectly efficient at doing terrible things, and that doesn't mean that the word "efficiency" means something completely different from what we generally understand by the word.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 6:46 PM on August 17, 2015

"Beyond its admittedly obscure nature, this law is significant in that it marks the first and only time in the history of the United States that futures trading in any commodity was banned."

Not to be a pedant but, well, yeah I'm going to be a pedant. FDR's executive order prohibiting the ownership of gold effectively banned gold futures in the US for over 40 years.

Incidentally, the US President who signed the law that re-legalized gold ownership? Gerald Ford.
posted by Guernsey Halleck at 6:50 PM on August 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

This is hilarious. Some guys take over and crash the onion market so the response is to ban onion trading, as though it was some special property of onions and onions alone that made it possible. I'm surprised they didn't follow it up by combating fraud by banning money, or reducing traffic accidents by making it illegal to purchase gas.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 6:54 PM on August 17, 2015 [18 favorites]

Gerald Ford, eh? That's an anagram for "far red gold", meaning he received gold from foreign communists! It all makes sense! THE JIG IS UP
posted by J.K. Seazer at 6:55 PM on August 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

I wonder if it was more of a warning, saying in effect that we'll ban more things if you keep this up.
posted by dilaudid at 7:16 PM on August 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

Market manipulation, by definition, works to make markets less efficient in the economic sense of the word. Efficiency in a free market comes from transparency, where a willing buyer and willing seller have equal information.

It is not surprising that Randroid traders would argue otherwise, though, because for them the market is actually a means to an end, not the actual ideal they claim to believe in. They profess those things solely because they enable them to get rich, not because they believe that free markets are the inherent good they claim.
posted by wierdo at 7:17 PM on August 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

it always makes me so sad when people don't recognize trading places quotes. why don't you love yourselves.
posted by poffin boffin at 7:17 PM on August 17, 2015 [7 favorites]

First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of purchasing an onion on the moon and returning him safely to my belt, as is the style. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.
posted by blue_beetle at 7:24 PM on August 17, 2015 [11 favorites]

Iirc it was only with Dodd-Frank that trading in commodities using information from an as yet unreleased government report became illegal. So while there were laws broken in obtaining the report on Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice, the actual trading floor scheme was totally legal at the time the movie was made.
posted by humanfont at 7:42 PM on August 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Shoot one, scare a thousand.

Going after onion trading was symbolic; this sort of chicanery would get shut down if attempted elsewhere.

The most efficient thing to do to markets is to close the market; if you want a free market, somebody's gotta keep it free.
posted by effugas at 8:00 PM on August 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Remember this story when people tell you that markets are efficient. They are highly efficient, but only an economist would tell you that efficiency means bankrupting onion farmers, leaving chunks of the country without onions, and making Siegel and Kosuga millions.

IANAEconomist, but I'd wager that most economists would tell you that the onion market in this case was not efficient.
posted by storybored at 8:26 PM on August 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

While only tangentially related to onions, the now closed Chicago Mercantile Exchange (where onion futures would have been traded) banned shoes with heels higher than 5cm in 2000 as part of trying to create a "level" trading pit. Taller traders had an advantage in being seen and having their orders filled, leading to the shorter commodity traders being the sad guys on the trading floor.
posted by autopilot at 9:01 PM on August 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

Mr.Encyclopedia as though it was some special property of onions and onions alone that made it possible

I know. I know. That's the part that I can't stop laughing about. Some 1950's economist guy sweating through his shirt, glasses askew: 'ITS IN THE ONIONS THEMSELVES!'
posted by mrdaneri at 9:12 PM on August 17, 2015 [6 favorites]

Most people don't recognize how important onions are to their food because they aren't up front and center and eaten in big chunks like potatoes or beans. People who cook obviously have a better grasp of things, but I'm gonna guess there weren't a lot of people in the 1950s who both had a say in public policy and cooked their own meals.

Also, it is kind of weird that only onions were targeted, but on the other hand, if that was such a shortsighted and easily-routed-around response, how come after the law was passed someone didn't immediately do the same thing with carrots or whatever?
posted by No-sword at 9:23 PM on August 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

Maybe we're just hardwired to go crazy speculating on bulbs.
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:27 PM on August 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

It didn't matter if the onion was a staple food or not, or if the traders thought it was or wasn't. They obviously picked a losing argument.
posted by Brocktoon at 9:29 PM on August 17, 2015

In the fall of 1955, Sam Siegel and Vincent Kosuga bought enough onion futures so that they controlled 98% of the available onions in Chicago. As the growers began buying back onions, Siegel and Kosuga purchased short positions on a large amount of onion contracts, and driven the price of 50 lbs. of onions down from $2.50 to 10¢, cheaper than the actual bags.

Sounds to me like you guys a couple of bookies.
posted by Drinky Die at 9:45 PM on August 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Seriously, is that just people trying to wriggle out from under a law they didn't like, or did people in the 50's really not eat many onions? A quick think-through of all my grandparent's basic meals includes none without onions, or at least a bowl of green onions to accompany, and they'd have been learning to cook in the 40's-50's.

I don't know about the culinary situation in the 50s, but my Dad grew up in the depression and one of the meals he speaks of most fondly at the time is a tomato and onion sandwich. I think people in the 50s were probably pretty familiar with food. A lot of people were still employed in agriculture, food was cooked at home from scratch and you could see that happen even if you didn't help. It could be viewed as more of a condiment than any other vegetable.
posted by Drinky Die at 9:53 PM on August 17, 2015

Also, it is kind of weird that only onions were targeted, but on the other hand, if that was such a shortsighted and easily-routed-around response, how come after the law was passed someone didn't immediately do the same thing with carrots or whatever?

This is almost entirely speculation, but I'm guessing a fair bit of it comes down to the specifics of the plan. To make it work, you have to take physical possession of tons upon tons of whatever commodity and hold onto it for months. There's a fair bit of stuff that's just not feasible for because of spoilage (apparently they had to send some of their onions out of the city to be "reconditioned", whatever that means for a heap of rotting onions), or that would otherwise require means beyond your average crooked commodity trader. The other part of that is that, unlike virtually any other commodity trader by my understanding, they were actually taking possession of the goods, not just dealing in futures, so they had to rent however much warehouse space it takes to store 30 million pounds of onions, and that's just onions. I can't even imagine what a hypothetical guy trying to corner the corn market would have to do just in terms of finding space for all that corn.
posted by Copronymus at 9:55 PM on August 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Imagine a boot stomping on an onion bhaji forever...
posted by Purposeful Grimace at 10:49 PM on August 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Found the actual bill:

"7 U.S. Code § 13–1 - Violations, prohibition against dealings in motion picture box office receipts or onion futures; punishment"

(a) No contract for the sale of motion picture box office receipts (or any index, measure, value, or data related to such receipts) or onions for future delivery shall be made on or subject to the rules of any board of trade in the United States. The terms used in this section shall have the same meaning as when used in this chapter.
(b) Any person who shall violate the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction thereof be fined not more than $5,000.

Interesting...(my bold)
posted by atomicmedia at 11:09 PM on August 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

I don't know about the culinary situation in the 50s, but my Dad grew up in the depression and one of the meals he speaks of most fondly at the time is a tomato and onion sandwich. I think people in the 50s were probably pretty familiar with food. A lot of people were still employed in agriculture, food was cooked at home from scratch and you could see that happen even if you didn't help. It could be viewed as more of a condiment than any other vegetable.

I guess I don't see how anyone can possibly argue that onions are a condiment, especially if they're at all involved in farming or cook their own food. Both my sets of grandparents farmed, and cooked all their own food, and onions are up there with beef and potatoes as core facets of their diet. Not just in terms of how often they're used, but in volume too. I hate to get hung up on this, but it's as though someone today tried to argue that tomatoes are mainly a condiment because sometimes they are made into ketchup or are put raw onto tacos or what not. I don't see how anyone could make that claim and not immediately be laughed out of any room anywhere on Earth. I don't know of a single food culture (except serious Buddhists I guess.) that doesn't consider them a staple food. Even the English, and they know nothing of food or flavor. Just seems silly.

I spent much of the day picking, cleaning and storing my own onion crop (first full grown set of the year, one more to come. Onions all winter, man.) so maybe I've just got onions on the brain.
Also, an onion and tomato sandwich is still a perfectly acceptable meal. I was reminded and am eating one RIGHT NOW, with tomatoes and onions from the garden. Some mayo, some mustard, maybe a bit of lettuce to add some extra roughage in there and you are golden.
posted by neonrev at 12:02 AM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

It could be viewed as more of a condiment than any other vegetable.

Meant to say couldn't be. Stupid edit window.
posted by Drinky Die at 12:03 AM on August 18, 2015

Well now I feel stupid.
posted by neonrev at 12:04 AM on August 18, 2015

Haha, didn't even get to your comment before I posted. Yeah, I agree with all you said. But I hate raw tomato, I prefer it in condiment forms, so no tomato on my sandwiches.
posted by Drinky Die at 12:06 AM on August 18, 2015

Ah, you need a real, fresh tomato. Store tomatoes are crap, off the plant they're as sweet/savory and crisp as can be. Eat 'em like an apple. Yum.
posted by neonrev at 12:13 AM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

Parents gardened them my whole life. *shrug*
posted by Drinky Die at 12:28 AM on August 18, 2015

Well, you're beyond help then. My deepest sympathies.
posted by neonrev at 12:32 AM on August 18, 2015 [5 favorites]

Heh, there are still 4 hot pepper plants in their garden that are all for me.
posted by Drinky Die at 12:51 AM on August 18, 2015

The problem here was not the existence of onion futures but the fact that a couple of guys in Chicago could corner the entire market in onions & have them all shipped to Chicago to sit in warehouses until they rotted.
posted by pharm at 12:56 AM on August 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

I was eating a bagel with tomato and onion and cracked black pepper on it a while ago. People thought I was crazy.
posted by gucci mane at 3:24 AM on August 18, 2015

Well, they certainly knew their onions!

(except for the bit about their commodity starting to rot.)
posted by scruss at 4:45 AM on August 18, 2015

Maybe we're just hardwired to go crazy speculating on bulbs.

It's an underground market.
posted by pracowity at 4:51 AM on August 18, 2015 [4 favorites]

Holy crap, gucci mane, some people just don't know what's good. Add a slice of lox to that and it's a little trip to heaven.
posted by GrammarMoses at 4:57 AM on August 18, 2015

Gerald Ford, eh? That's an anagram for "far red gold", meaning he received gold from foreign communists! It all makes sense! THE JIG IS UP

Commies? Pfft. It obviously means Ford was in the pocket of big tomato.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:06 AM on August 18, 2015

They are highly efficient, but only an economist would tell you that efficiency means bankrupting onion farmers, leaving chunks of the country without onions, and making Siegel and Kosuga millions

maybe they were just being ethical
posted by backseatpilot at 5:38 AM on August 18, 2015

Most futures markets are difficult to corner, and for the most part other traders won't let anyone accumulate enough to control any resource. As a last resort, restrictions on margin can be imposed, which is what happened when the Hunt brothers tried to corner the market in silver and wound up a highly leveraged position on margin in 1979-80. COMEX adopted "Silver Rule 7," restricting the use of margin to purchase commodities. It pushed the Hunts out, but also caused a panic in the silver market and required a large injection of financing to prevent collapse.
posted by krinklyfig at 5:41 AM on August 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

To make it work, you have to take physical possession of tons upon tons of whatever commodity and hold onto it for months.

I swear I've read stories on this very website about regular schmoes thinking they could start trading commodities and then getting phone calls from the rail yard telling them their 8 tons of coal are waiting for them and how would you like to pay for the storage fees?
posted by backseatpilot at 5:45 AM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

No contract for the sale of motion picture box office receipts

I wondered about that. It turns out it's never actually been a thing, since domestic box office receipts futures were banned by the Dodd-Frank Act before trading started.
posted by jedicus at 6:34 AM on August 18, 2015

I swear I've read stories on this very website about regular schmoes thinking they could start trading commodities and then getting phone calls from the rail yard telling them their 8 tons of coal are waiting for them and how would you like to pay for the storage fees?

“Uhh,” he stuttered, “wait. Are you delivering… coal? To… uhh, us?” “Well, yeah! Twenty-eight thousand tons of the good ol’ black gold!” The workman sarcastically furrowed his brow adding, “I mean, we did get the right address, har har. This is Æxecor? And this is Pier 53? And you are Brad, the fella who ordered it, right?” It was that moment that Brad’s palm almost immediately made contact with his forehead. He realized that something must have really gone awry: instead of virtually trading 28,000 tons of coal, Brad had somehow ended up with 28,000 tons of real coal.

posted by jedicus at 6:36 AM on August 18, 2015 [6 favorites]

Tulips, m'boy, that's the future.
posted by clvrmnky at 6:36 AM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

This is fascinating. So has anyone ever run an analysis of onions compared to comparable commodities that do allow futures trading? (potatoes, maybe?)

Economic theory tells us that futures trading keeps prices more stable, which means that onion prices should be more volatile, and onion farming likewise should be more risky. Is this actually true in the real world?
posted by Eddie Mars at 7:16 AM on August 18, 2015

Heh. Taking delivery of contract you hold.

I'm pretty sure there's a passage in Michael Lewis' The Big Short where he talks about the guys who founded Cornwall Capital being stuck, earlier on in their trading days, with tanker cars full of ethanol or something that they were forced to take delivery on because they ended up either having to ride the contract out to delivery or eat a huge loss. At least the physical shipment left them with something. I might be misremembering that slightly.

futures trading keeps prices more stable

Well, it's really more of an insurance policy against swings in prices, if you will. If you're a huge restaurant chain (The Onion Garden, lets say) that uses a gazillion pounds of onions a year, you want to lock in low prices to hedge against higher prices. That lets you manage the costs better because you know that, three months from now, your 90-day onion futures contracts will come due, and you can take delivery of those onions and use them at a price you've already budgeted for. This beats getting three months down the line and find out your margins are getting eaten by a sudden jump in onion prices.

If you're an onion farmer or distributor, you want to lock in high prices as the seller for similar reasons. You don't want to get to harvest season and find out that your margins have been blown out by a precipitous decline in the onion price.

So it's probably less the case that onion prices would be more volatile sans futures contracts (though I have no data to really back that up).

Instead, it's probably more the case that as an onion producer or buyer that your ass is hanging out in the wind more than it would be if you could hedge on price swings (using futures contracts that are no longer available).
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:25 AM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

Tulips, m'boy, that's the future.

I thought it was plastics.
posted by Melismata at 7:28 AM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

What is it about the lily family (Liliaceae) that causes such madness?
Tulip Mania.
posted by The Ultimate Olympian at 8:07 AM on August 18, 2015

I detect the pull of Big Onion. And you know where the biggest onions are? On the buildings in Russia. Hey? Heeeeeey?

Onions are odd. I believe - and this may be a half-remembered fact from threads past - that they're the only foodstuff in which all countries are self-sufficient, so they'll have an abnormal trading pattern anyway. The Economist could probably write one of its waspish yet informative one-pagers on that and the Ford act.
posted by Devonian at 8:11 AM on August 18, 2015

Wow. This story has so many layers. It's like... something... what's it like? It's like... It's like a parfait! That's what it's like! A parfait. I love parfait.
posted by The Bellman at 8:29 AM on August 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

Wholly inapt. More like an Oreo cookie tiramisu sandwich.
posted by rhizome at 12:15 PM on August 18, 2015

Eddie Mars: Economic theory tells us that futures trading keeps prices more stable, which means that onion prices should be more volatile, and onion farming likewise should be more risky. Is this actually true in the real world?

Economic theory assumes a spherical futures trader and an infinitely small onion.
posted by clawsoon at 12:37 PM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

Why were onions the most traded commodity on the exchange in the first place, I wonder?
posted by clawsoon at 1:00 PM on August 18, 2015

I have a coworker who hates onions. He detests them. He loathes them. He complains about how terrible they are anytime they're mentioned. He used to get a French dip sandwich from Arby's a couple times a week. He really loved those sandwiches. I found the seeming contradiction, between hating onions and liking French dip sandwiches, kind of odd, so one day I asked him about it.

Me: I thought you hated onions?
Him: Yeah. They're awful.
Me: But you like French dip sandwiches?
Him: Yeah. I love them. They're great.
Me: You do know that au jus is basically onion beef soup, right?
Him: No it's not!
Coworkers in chorus: Yes it is!
Him: Thanks a lot, guys. (Carries half-eaten sandwich and au jus to the trash can as if they were soiled diapers and gently places them inside.)

I felt kind of bad about that. I didn't mean to ruin the guy's favorite sandwich.
posted by double block and bleed at 6:58 PM on August 25, 2015