I know the world is in the middle of many bad things that are happening all at once. But as the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once explained in his essay "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense," we, the lovers and fighters of truth, need to now and then take a break from it, and to instead consider the things that, to borrow the words of Depeche Mode, "make this life livable." Such a thing is solving the mystery of pineapple pizza. For me, the amazement is always that it even exists.

I, too, have loved ones who regularly order it and eat it with what looks exactly like enjoyment. And as they chow down a slice of this confusion, I invariably see myself as that man in an old Japanese kwaidan (weird) story who sees that their neighbor or good friend or beloved brother is under a spell that makes him believe they are kissing and making love to a beautiful noble woman, but are in reality kissing and making love to the putrid bones of a ghost. What kind of spell makes the pineapple pizza delicious?

Why do so many people eat something that makes nonsense of the senses? The salty Canadian bacon, the garlic in the red sauce, and the tropical sweetness of that yellow fruit? How is this possible? Or how did it become desirable? I think only Americans eat it; and my deep theory on the matter is that the pineapple pizza is something like the last ditch of an adult's childhood. This is where the grown man or woman goes for the final resistance against losing all that was once their childhood. You surrendered dipping french fries in ice cream. You will not (never!) do the same with the wacky pizza.

I have another theory. It comes from the cultural history of food. Did you know Europeans used to put sugar on everything, including meat? Sugar on beef. Sugar on peas. Maybe the pineapple pizza is a kind of reversion to this primitive palate.

But there is good news. I finally came across a video on Facebook that spoke to me directly. It was a relief to see that I was not alone in this here great US of A. There are others who are with me. Others who see what I see. The madness of the pineapple pizza.

Before you return to the daily business of cracking rocks with truth, I want to end this post with the opening lines of "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense":

In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the highest and most mendacious minute of "world history"—yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.

That opening is the background hum of my being.