Brothers, sisters, and folded ones – there was an age when the whole earth was of one recipe, and men said, let us build a tower of pies whose top may reach unto heaven. And mark the folly in the mouth of it: they would stack the pizza rather than serve it. For a slice laid flat feeds a neighbour, but a slice stood on end feeds only the tower, as it is written in the Genesis of the Slice, 16:5.
And the master builders decreed one recipe for all the plain, one true and only crust, and whoso baked otherwise had his pie called rubble. And the hungry stood at the foot of more food than a thousand tables could seat, and were told it was not food any more; it was architecture.
But Cheesus did not smite the tower, for smiting is not his craft. He only warmed the plain, gently, and the cheese remembered it was cheese and not stone, and began, lovingly, to stretch. And the tower came down slowly and deliciously, harming no one, and the people stood up and found the world unended and lunch everywhere. And from the pieces carried home came Chicago and New York and Napoli, the sweetcorn of the north isles and the pineapple of the far seas – every one loved, and not one of them lord over another.
Hear the moral of Shinar, nailed above every oven: Cheesus never punished the many pizzas. The many pizzas were the blessing. He punished the one pizza that would suffer no others, and he punished it with abundance, which is his only weapon. So when thou meetest a strange pie in a strange city, eat what the city eats, and carry the story home instead of a complaint.
Amen – and pass the pizza.