2002 Crud

I wrote recently about the Krispy Kreme Bacon Cheeseburger and how it was just one extreme example of food you can find at carnivals and fairs. Not food exactly, Coronary Reaction Activating Product is more like it. CRAP. But that's too harsh a word. Back when I was growing up, instead of pronouncing the word the initials CRAP spell out, we used the euphemism "crud."
So I'm thinking, maybe we should encourage healthy food eating but calling all healthy food simply "food" and all unhealthy food "crud."
If we did so that Krispy Kreme Bacon Cheeseburger I saw at the Lacey Spring Fun Fair would qualify as super-crud.
"Junkfood" isn't harsh enough. It still includes the word food and that implies it's edible and by some stretch of the imagination good for you. If we just call it "crud" such implication disappears.
Likewise, if we only label healthy food "food" we'll eliminate the prissiness from the "healthy" food appellation. Putting health in a word or phrase makes it sound like it's approved by a sniffing set of schoolmarms nannyfying your steamed vegetables.
It's all about the psychology. When you go to the dentist, he doesn't say you're going to feel a prick or a little pain when he sticks the needle in your gums. He says you'll feel a little "pinch." At least he used to, now he says you'll feel a little "pressure." When my kid was born, he made my wife feel a lot of "pressure."
So to get healthy let's get rid of the "healthy" in food. Just call the two categories two different things. Food and crud. If you marry the two you can describe accordingly, and maybe eat better.
Because a chocolate-covered strawberry would be---
A strawberry covered with crud.
America, ya gotta love it.

2001 Donut Burger

It's fair season and that means one thing---lots of exotic food. Ever since the first World Fair, they’ve celebrated our ingenuity and the products of our hard work. And they've also celebrated our culinary achievements---pies, sausages, canned asparagus.
I saw an item at the Lacey Spring Fun Fair that captured that cultural inventiveness. I first saw it when a friend of mine, let's call him Graeme, showed me. Sort of. He was in the process of cramming it into his mouth. "I took one for the team," he said. "Someone had to make the sacrifice." And sacrifice it was, as he held the equivalent of a coronary in his fist.
He had a Krispy Kreme Bacon Cheeseburger.
Here's the deal, we had seen the banner on the front of their booth all day and were joking about how they didn't put a space between the words and it made it look like instead of Krispy Kreme Donuts and Bacon Cheeseburger separately it was Krispy Kreme Bacon Cheeseburger.
And it was!!
You start with a whole Krispy Kreme donut as the bottom half of your bun. Add two beef patties, three pieces of bacon, two slices of cheese, lettuce and tomato, (for health) and condiments. Then put another Krispy Kreme donut on as the top half of the bun. The only thing it needs is an automatic 911 beacon that engages when it detects you going suddenly supine.
I talked to Graeme the next morning. He'd survived to enjoy another day at the fair. As I said, fairs have always celebrated our hard work and ingenuity. That's certainly the case here. We are an inventive culture. We can put a man on the moon, create a heated barcolounger with cupholders.
And a Krispy Kreme Bacon Cheeseburger.
America, ya gotta love it.

2000 FGOTP

This is my two-thousandth essay. Hard to believe. Way back in 2005, when I started this series, I wasn't entirely sure there'd be enough material to keep it up day after day after day.
I shouldn't have worried. When your material is the changing culture around you, there will always be something to comment about. Back then, a local morning radio DJ scoffed at the idea of a daily commentary featuring the foibles of our fine way of life. He is no longer employed by the medium, and America Ya Gotta Love It continues to grow like a fungus, offering flaccid insights and mildly bland humor.
Like this fungal observation: I was driving down the road yesterday and passed a guy selling mushrooms. "Fresh Picked" said one sign. "Morel" said another. A little concerning. The "Morel" part of the sign was obviously slapdashedly covering over some other name.
And it was a very old and broken-down dirty truck. A truck that looked like it would be hard to trace should something go wrong. It was parked in a pretty scrabbly weed-overgrown lot. The kind of lot that doesn't even have an address.
So---I'm all for entrepreneurship---but is this a good idea? Buy mushrooms from a fly-by-night road vendor? It's not like Rainier Cherries or Walla-Walla onions. Fresh-picked mushrooms require some degree of expertise in the picking part. Morels particularly have been confused with False Morels. Notice the fact that they even have a False Morel. It's a toxic mushroom known to cause diarrhea, nausea, and um, death.
Which gives you two problems when it comes to complaining about buying a bad product. You can't find the guy who sold it to you.
And you're dead.
Two very good reasons not to buy your fungi on the prowl.
America, ya gotta love it.