“I have too many dog photos.”
…said no dog owner ever! Consequently, I will subject you to a few more:
–Simon
Whippet Photos
Fast Food
Fast food occupies an interesting niche in American cuisine. Supplanting street food vendors and pre-made automat-type meals, it promised quick calories with consistent taste and a guarantee of food safety. Indeed, the OG of fast food is White Castle, because in a time of questionable food quality, no one trusted the hamburger – a skepticism that should be continued into present times, I might add. But White Castle ground their own meat on-site and in view of the customer (originally, anyway). Sanitation was prioritized, with everything from the wall paint to the employee uniforms being bright white so as to convey this. And to top it off, they pioneered the first version of the fast food assembly-line system adapted for use by all modern fast food. McDonald’s made it famous, but White Castle started it.
So fast food is clean and quick. But wait, there’s more: all kids love fast food because it’s food that mom didn’t make. And it’s food that a male figure usually promoted for consumption when mom wasn’t around, because it was easy to procure and relatively cheap (also food that mom wouldn’t approve of). What does this lead to? Nostalgia. My own Grandpa said that when McDonald’s first started, their burgers were terrible. But he loved shoveling his grandkids into that giant farm truck for a McDonald’s run anyway.
My point being: fast food is inherently American because it checks all the boxes that Americans value: quick, affordable, reliable, and nostalgic.
The internet would have you believe that fast food prices have not significantly outpaced inflation. And that’s because the internet lies. AI simply aggregates data and forms conclusions, but it’s not very good yet at vetting sources of that data. Yes, flagship menu items follow this rule, but value menu items do not. In 2005 I could get a .39-cent Taco Bell taco, which equates to .66-cents today. The cheapest option currently on offer? $1.29.
Still, fast food has cornered the market of the young and lazy, because: quick, affordable, reliable. Also the young haven’t figured out how to cook yet, or make good financial decisions. And they don’t suffer yet the digestive problems that fast food causes their elders. But this doesn’t stop fast food from continually trying to expand their customer base to older people. Because, as the one American value criteria not being satisfied by the young and lazy: nostalgia.
I admit – it’s satisfying to be pandered to. No wonder the boomers are so self-important, having received this most of their lives! And now it’s my turn. And in this case of nostalgia and fast food, I will call out two products from my time which have been rebooted recently: The Arch Deluxe, by McDonald’s; and the Chicken Twister, by KFC.
The Arch Deluxe was a failed burger from an attempted premium line of menu items. It included additional ingredients that I’d consider pretty basic for a bacon cheeseburger with lettuce and tomato, but that was enough for me to desperately want to try one. But even if mom were willing to buy one, they were never in our select market. Ultimately it died out, but I did manage to grab one once on a Boy Scout trip once. I remember the commercials for it being weirdly hostile towards kids, which might have had something to doom it when being offered from a company whose mascot was a clown encouraging kids to have a little fun. The Arch Deluxe is now the Big Arch, but I’d consider them more or less the same thing, aside from marketing. The former was meant to be a luxury option, the latter just a bigger option. As this is fast food, I say whatever. Same crap ingredients. (If they ever bring back the Angus Mushroom Swiss burger, however, then we’re on a different level.)
The Chicken Twister was just a couple boneless chicken tenders in a wrap with lettuce and some spicy sauce. It was great at the time because it was slightly cheaper than a sandwich and easy to eat while walking – perfect college requirements. I never did understand why it was discontinued, so it must have been company economics in this case rather than consumer perception. I had often declared that I’d get one the moment they were brought back.
So, how did they stack up to expectations? First, a bit of internet meme-ing is required. I encourage you to find the Chris Kempczinski video.
Found it? Good. Because that led to an additional experiment on top of whether these products were any good or not: Big Arch vs Whopper. Because that was Burger King’s response: at least pretend that you as a company executive actually enjoy eating the company offerings. We would take this opportunity to make a comparison ourselves.
The last time I had a McDonald’s burger, it was a quick grab on the road. It was the first time I used one of those kiosks they have now inside. Apparently, that wasn’t the standard procedure, as I received some weird looks from the staff. I’m uncertain as to why, but I’m guessing their usual demographic prefers to order via their mobile app, because…apps are cooler? Maybe coupons? Dunno. Whatever. The burger was the expected sponge-beef on a puffed cardboard bun. The Big Arch was, however, surprisingly good. A little heavy on the sauce, but they had apparently replaced the sponge and cardboard with actual bread and griddle beef like I remember from the old days. Of course, inflation-adjusted, it’s still overpriced, but it actually tasted like good ol’ McDonald’s.
The Whopper, however, was a bland and dry basic burger. McDonald’s “wins”. I then spent the evening groaning and massaging my gut.
Would I buy the Big Arch again? Probably not. If I were in my 20s then yes, but if I were in my 20s it wouldn’t hold any nostalgic value. So, I call this a fail.
Moving on, the Chicken Twister. These things were so damn good and I couldn’t wait to try one!
Okay, so apparently someone failed to explain to staff that the tenders are supposed to be lined up the length of the tortilla, not thrown into one end. That, or whatever stoner assembled this just didn’t care. What’s wrong there, Chad? Overdue for your vape break?
In any case, some reassembly was required, negating the product’s convenience. As in, half the tortilla needed removing.
There we go. Once that part was corrected, it once again resembled two chicken tenders in a tortilla with some sauce and lettuce. It was…okay I guess. Even if it had been flawlessly presented at a reasonable price by a Chad without attitude, it still would have remained a lackluster attempt at a millennial throwback. Another fail.
There’s a few lessons from this experience:
- The overall quality in fast food has declined across the board, due to streamlining production methods and by reducing ingredient costs. Even if current products were made as they were originally, which they aren’t, they would still fail to live up to ingrained memory expectations.
- People with any sort of economic means don’t regularly eat fast food. Even Kempczinski could barely stomach the thought of eating his company’s flagship reveal. It’s simply just not good nutrition, nor good quality.
- The demographic trying to be captured here using nostalgia is a demographic who, through aging in general, has achieved economic means. And even the ones who haven’t are still…
- …old now, and can’t eat that crap food without painful consequences.
Conclusion: attempting to use nostalgia for marketing purposes in the fast food industry is dumb. You’ll get us to try things once, then we’ll laugh, poop, and never buy them again. But at least I had a fun time going down memory lane. You sold me that much at least.
–Simon
Four o’ Clocks
Being a 90s kid was no joke. If one had a mother with a propensity for drama, as I did, then prime time Television was her oyster. After the daily soaps concluded, it was off to “real” drama. There was 20/20, Unsolved Mysteries, and whatever Barbara Walters was going to indignantly talk about that evening. But Dateline was my crux.
Dateline, for the uninitiated, was an hour long show that took one news event and tried to squeeze it until tears came out. And it usually approached it with two messages: “men are evil and they will kill you”, and “your children aren’t safe and they’ll be abducted”.
Sadly, that unmarked van filled with candy and psychoactive drugs never appeared, but that didn’t stop mother from confining me to my suburban corral: the backyard, enclosed with a privacy fence.
The red box roughly highlights the back yard section. And if the satellite distance reference is accurate, I calculate my pen to have been about 3000 sq ft. Or ~0.07 acres.
As one might imagine, the mind of a child tended to wander in such a limited environment. And as the summers of my stunted social development compounded, I withdrew entirely and accepted the yard as my entire world. I became intimately familiar with every detail of that small space.
And in that space was a small patch of annuals. Specifically, four o’ clocks.
One day, I noticed that the spent flowers, which had dried on the plant, had an pleasant earthly tea scent. Further observation also revealed that the petals crumbled easily, and effused their aroma quickly into water, specifically a mug of water left out on the concrete patio in the hot Texas sun. Furthermore, the resultant tisane tasted delicious. I had stumbled upon something.
But the experiment was cut short when mother, having taken her usual Schindler’s List perch by the full-length backyard windows, witnessed my activities and intervened. The resultant lecture was less a cautionary lesson on knowing with certainty that a plant is edible and more a morality lecture on how my selfish and careless decisions impacted other people (her). I came out of that conversation with no additional scientific knowledge, but instead sobbing and begging for forgiveness – exactly what a Catholic mother wants. The overlord of morality had won again.
Fast forward to today and I was watching Netflix. And as with any Netflix show involving food, that Danish chef guy was there talking about his amazing restaurant and how he forages ingredients. But, for the first time, I noticed a certain flower being used as a garnish. Nasturtium flowers always show up, because they’re pretty and taste peppery. But this looked different. I swear it was a four o’ clock flower. This necessitated a quick internet search.
30 years later and I find out that not only are the flowers edible, but they’re specifically used in infusions: exactly what I was doing.
I get that information is much more accessible today, and that digging through encyclopedias gets tedious and that was a rabbit hole mother didn’t want to explore, but did every childhood mistake have to end with crying?
I guess she was worried that if the psychoactive drug van wasn’t showing up, I’d start randomly sampling plants to find drugs on my own. But as it turns out, my culinary curiosity led to foraging – something Netflix is now telling me is the mark of a genius chef. Who knew?
–Simon
Snowflake
I don’t want to post pictures from the holidays. I’m done with the holidays and want to move on. I’m middle-aged now and don’t find much magic in the rituals anymore. Any joy I had left was by proxy: watching my daughter enjoy them. But she’s a teen now and wants to distance herself from anything family-oriented. Plus it’s the age at which being overtly happy about anything just isn’t cool. It’s cool to be a cynic and hate.
So I’ll pass on the tree and house light photos this year. Instead, here’s a brief reflection on one of my own moments of lost magic. Here is a single snowflake, captured poorly with my aging phone camera:
It was cold enough that individual crystals were falling without clumping together. It reminded me of when I learned what they actually are.
Another consequence of a Texan upbringing, I didn’t see much snow. Some light dustings here and there, but rarely anything of consequence. So I knew snow mostly from movies. And there’s a particular scene in Disney’s Fantasia with fairies dancing in snowfall, using individual snowflakes as dresses. Granted I’d never seen a fairy before either, but my assumption was that they’re 6-12 inches tall. Representations in various media confirm this, probably because that’s a good size to work the physical world around. Any smaller and our existing environment wouldn’t scale well to make understandable films, any larger and they’re just small people. Ergo, I made the connection that a snowflake dress, presented as being as wide as the fairy was tall, would therefore be around 6-12 inches in diameter.
So you might understand my disappointment when, on a rare day of Texas snow, when my mother exclaimed “Snowflakes!” when glancing out the window, that I was greeted with the sight of tiny specks of white, and not gargantuan plates of ice crystals, floating gracefully to the ground. Such is life.
But still, on a micro level, individual snowflakes are pretty cool to look at.
–Simon
Rabbits and Rednecks
White trash is a derogatory term in American English for poor white people, especially in the rural areas of the southern United States. The label signifies a social class within the white population, especially those perceived to have a degraded standard of living.[1] It is used as a way to separate the “good poor”, who are “noble and hardworking”, from the “bad poor”, who are deemed “lazy, undisciplined, ungrateful and disgusting”. The use of the term provides middle- and upper-class whites a means of distancing themselves from the social status of poor whites, who cannot enjoy the same class privileges, as well as a way to disown their perceived behavior.
-Courtesy of Wikipedia (Above emphasis mine)
Operative words to consider: distancing, disown. Indeed, poor social graces do not necessarily tie oneself to a socioeconomic class, and a “peer” within that class who exhibits such traits does not need to be accepted as an equal on those grounds, either. Nor being of the same race. “Redneck” is an inaccurate term to use in this story, but it was alliterative and therefore made for a catchier title. No – this story involves unarguably: white trash.
And the reason I believe trash tends to hate me so much is due to this distancing and disowning. If you’re not in my honor circle, then it’s impossible for you to take any action or make any comment that offends me. A child might target me with profane comments, but they’re ultimately empty. I can’t seriously consider a child’s words to have any merit. Against my character, they’re meaningless. There’s little point to engage in a duel of honor and wits with an inferior. Children and trash rank similarly on this ladder. They know it, and I know it. And they hate it.
But that doesn’t stop them from trying.
So it was that, some years following my last trash encounter, a different one would give it a go. No doubt emboldened by their idol of such behavior – our current president – this one made an attempt, apparently not realizing that our president is a billionaire, while he’s just a guy who cuts grass in an Ohio town with a population of 400. Not exactly a model for comparison.
On this particular day, the day after Thanksgiving, my father-in-law had invited my father and I out for some rabbit hunting on his property. With 8 acres, rising to a hill abutting a cow pasture, with neighbors on the sides, and the highway at the front, it does pose some limitations in safe shot placement. But with the hill, there are safe zones – all of which I explained to my father, not that he needed the warning. He’s been hunting since the 50s. I’ve been hunting for 20 years myself. We’ve got this.
What followed was a grand afternoon of flushing rabbits out of brush and trying to get them safely positioned. My old man might be slowing down a little, but he did snag a squirrel. I managed two rabbits myself. It was a great hunting day! Even the cows came out to check on the commotion – ultimately concluding our ventures as they blocked the ridge. I had nice conversation with #64. Mooo. It trotted away indignantly.
But somewhere in the midst of the excitement, I noticed a fog gathering. The fog turned out to be Trash Neighbor lighting his…trash. At that moment. On a windy day. He was, I assume, trying to smoke us out. A petty passive-aggressive attack, which I of course ignored and continued hunting.
And since being ignored reaffirms one’s lower social ranking (as previously mentioned), this enraged him. As I was retrieving my final rabbit from the brush, I heard yelling. But I was caught in blackberry thorns at the time, so whatever it was could wait. Of course, that gave me enough time to figure out the situation, so when I emerged triumphantly with my kill, I walked away and towards my dad to herald my prize. Ignoring the trash was also safety decision. I was overtly armed with my Remington 870, and I assumed Mr. Trash also had a gun.
I should also mention at this point that, some years back on an unsuccessful rabbit hunting expedition, he drove over to my in-laws to complain. There were no rabbits and I hadn’t fired, so his complaint was limited in nature: I was pointing my gun at his property and staring menacingly in his direction (I’m paraphrasing, since I wasn’t there to hear the accusation).
But now I had fired shots, and since I knew that he had lied before about trying to intimidate him with a weapon, I assumed any confrontation would lead to more lies, with the potential for a “defensive” need to pull a gun on me. There were a more than a few reasons to nope out of that situation. As a result, his initially neutrally-worded albeit aggressive hails turned into sputtering monologues of profanity. I had made the right call.
Unperturbed, I went about field dressing my rabbits, but first decided to call Liz and give her a heads up. Based on past events, I didn’t think Mr. Trash would let this go.
He didn’t. He spammed my in-laws’ phone, prompting them to block his number. That’s some next-level dismissive ignoring there! Your own neighbors in the country won’t even acknowledge you now. Take a hint, trash.
But the shriveled remaining vestiges of his geriatric masculinity overpowered reason, though on some level he still retained a sense of self-preservation and, deciding against a second attempt at direct confrontation, decided to call the sheriff instead. Big man.
Turns out, he upgraded menacing waving of a gun to dodging my shotgun pellets which were apparently coming towards him. That’s one hell of a ricochet. #6 birdshot bouncing 90 degrees from their path of flight and arcing over the hill into his yard by his fire pit.
Is it possible that a direct line of sight shot would have hit him? Yes. Is is possible that an arcing shot into the air above the ridge line would have hit him? Yes. Did I do either of those? No. The only explanations, therefore, are either a shot that defies Newtonian physics, or a lie. And while I often jest about my guns in video game multiplayer matches having phasic rounds, I’ve never seen my Remington pull that off.
The authorities, it would turn out, either agreed, or at least didn’t pursue the issue out of lack of evidence. That or a trash resident with a local reputation didn’t hold much credibility against a family of educated and productive members of society. (Some Facebook comments from locals also insinuated he might be suffering from Angry White Man syndrome and has a drinking problem.) Oh, and neither my dad nor I have warrants on us! Go figure.
It was a memorable Thanksgiving week, worthy of the family archives.
But wait, there’s more!
Seeing a recurring pattern with potential for future encounters, I began a dossier. Upon asking, the Clark County Sheriff’s Department turned out to be very accommodating with their records. I mean, they have to be cooperative in theory, but it was still nice that they didn’t fight me on anything or make the process difficult. Sadly, there was no 911 call or official police report – only the initial dispatch record:
Still good to get the official details. And amusing. Note that Mr. Trash, in his last pathetic vestige to appear as alpha male, said that I “took off running the other way”. Again, he couldn’t handle being ignored, so he fabricated an image of his imposing and intimidating manliness. I’ll wager he even truly believes it, too.
On the other hand, note that he thinks I’m in my mid 30s. Aww, thanks, Mr. Trash. It must be all that not smoking and not eating spam that’s maintained my youthful complexion.
It also turned out that I could request a copy of the body cam footage. There’s a fee to do so, as personal info has to be redacted and there’s no doubt some administrative work to go along with the video extraction, but I certainly couldn’t pass up that opportunity! I was hoping for some footage of Mr. Trash, but I don’t think the responders ever spoke with him directly. But I do get some amusing still-frames I can extract and print off for family gifts.
My dad likes to preserve notable memories with shadow boxes, and this gives me a lot of material to work with. So not only did I get to go hunting and spend some time with Dad, but I gave him a good story, too. And I now have another gift in the making for him come Christmas. All in all – what a great holiday!
Thanks, Mr. Trash.
–Simon