A Slight Delay

It’s one thing to have a craving for something you shouldn’t have. Bad enough, for instance, when you’re trying to lose a few pounds and a craving for fetuccine Carbonara hits.* But that’s nothing next to having a craving for something you literally can’t have. I’ll never have my grandmother’s fried fish or potato pancakes again, for instance, but I have intense cravings for both at least once a month.

This comes to mind because tonight, from out of nowhere, I had a craving for an Orange Julius. I can’t figure out why; they had the same watered-down hint-of-fruit flavor that you get from, say, Gray’s Papaya. Not exactly the stuff of which nostalgia is made. But all of a sudden, I had to have an Orange Julius. (more…)

I panic when I see the words “New and Improved!” or “Great New Taste!” on my foodstuffs. And it’s not just because I find the exclamation mark vaguely offensive, as if some guy from Marketing is screaming at me. It’s moreso that some person, or group of persons, has decided that what wasn’t broke needed fixing.

Probably the best example of this (or worst, depending on how you look at it) was New Coke. Some focus group decided that they wanted their Coca-Cola to taste more like Pepsi, and the folks at Coke apparently decided this was a good thing. New Coke begat a lot of pissed-off customers, which, in turn, begat Coca-Cola Classic, which was old Coke in new bottles. (more…)

Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar, and sometimes a scarf is just a damned scarf.

As if to prove her egalitarian bona fides, Michelle Malkin has added Dunkin Donuts to the list of proposed boycotts of chains for purely idiotic reasons.* Not content with mudslinging over the left and immigration (the columnist, born in the States to parents who were here on visas, believes that children born to noncitizen parents don’t deserve citizenship; when’s she going to revoke hers?) she’s now turned her attention to the purveyor of starchy goodness and cheap, high-octane coffee. She called for like-minded Americans (pause here and let that thought sink in… terrified? Good, let’s continue) to boycott the chain because to her, it appeared as though they decked Rachel Ray out in a black and white scarf that looked like something that Yasir Arafat would wear on casual Fridays.

Call me silly, but I don’t think that Dunkin Donuts is a hotbed of jihadi fervor. I could be wrong here, but it strikes me as difficult to sneak subliminal messages into an Old Fashioned. Or to hide an ayatollah in a jelly donut. I’ve seen scarves like that on mannequins, old ladies, and the occasional snowman. Unless Al-Qaeda is getting very desperate, I don’t think we have anything to fear here. I just can’t see them recruiting Frosty. I hear those Afghan summers are pretty brutal, besides…

Anyway. Perhaps the best response to this whole thing would be to drink Dunkin Donuts coffee by the gallon, and stuff your face with Boston Creme donuts ’til you puke. Better still, the French Crullers. That’d really piss her off.

Postscript: The story’s unhappy ending: the chain caved and pulled the ad.

*see also the Starbucks Mermaid story…