When I was in my early teens in the 1970s, my family shopped at a San Francisco Bay Area grocery store that “was owned by the people.” It was called Co-Op. The workers were friendly; the men were often bearded and wearing survival gear from Co-Op’s “Wilderness Supply Store.” I would say the affable employees were all somewhere on the Hippy Spectrum. Co-op offered the first day care center for kids while the parents shopped and the first recycling center in town. In addition to organic wholesome foods, the store had a modest book section featuring Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Peter Tompkins’ The Secret Life of Plants, Erich Von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods, Laurence J. Peters’ The Peter Principle, and the store’s grand jewel and Vegetarian Bible–Frances Moore Lappe’s Diet for a Small Planet. The store had an ample supply of countercultural foods. You could buy carob honey ice cream, wheat germ, granola, alfalfa sprout home kits with mason jars, brown rice, Japanese yams, and tofu. With its book section of countercultural reading, organic ingredients, and wilderness store, Co-Op was more than just a store. It was a sanctuary for those rebelling against The Man. Eating heaping bowls of granola, wheat germ, and organic honey was not just a self-indulgence; it was a political statement. However, this self-righteous certitude also created a condition known as Granola Belly. Scarfing down calorie-dense granola, wheat germ, and honey throughout the day, these valiant warriors raged against corporate food tyranny, their bellies growing rounder with each virtuous bowl of granola and honey. As I shopped at Co-Op with my parents, I observed these granola-loving rotund revolutionaries as they waddled through the aisles, their expanding girth a testament to the blind spots that mar even the most well-intentioned pursuits.
Granola lovers of the Co-Op era were, without question, the spiritual forebears of Mope-a-saurus Rex—a species defined by the contradictory cocktail of high ideals and self-defeating habits. These self-proclaimed countercultural warriors strutted through the aisles of their people-owned utopia, scooping granola by the pound as if it were the holy grail of rebellion, all while sporting survival gear that screamed I’m off to fight the establishment…right after I finish this bowl of carob ice cream. The granola bowl was more than breakfast; it was a badge of moral superiority, a defiant middle finger to The Man served with a side of organic honey. But like all Mope-a-saurus endeavors, their noble intentions were undone by their own indulgence. They railed against corporate tyranny with their mouths full, their burgeoning bellies proof that even the most righteous ideals can be upended by an inability to count calories. Their expanding waistlines were not just ironic; they were emblematic of the Mope-a-saurus tendency to cling to virtue while ignoring inconvenient truths—because nothing says rebellion like eating your way to Granola Belly while preaching the gospel of moderation.
These rotund granola bellies introduce us to the lexicon term Granarchism–the performative fusion of political virtue and unchecked appetite, where one’s anti-establishment snacking habits are cloaked in ideological nobility. Granarchism is what happens when you rage against The Machine with a spoonful of organic cashew clusters, believing your overflowing bowl of hemp-seed muesli is a protest, not a calorie bomb.
Granarchists don’t count calories—they count causes. Every bite of honey-drizzled, brown rice-sweetened, sprouted oat goodness is framed as a moral stand, even as their bellies grow like utopian communes with no fiscal oversight. The Co-Op aisle becomes a battlefield, and the granola scoop is their weapon—except instead of overthrowing The Man, they’re just slowly replacing their belt loops.
In the land of Granarchism, tofu is resistance, wheat germ is policy, and every heaping portion of almond butter-stuffed dates is a political manifesto. The contradiction? The revolution isn’t televised—it’s metabolized.
Cinemorphosis 
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