Dorm Survival Foods: Part 2

Junk food is a necessary evil considering the food offered by my meal plan is pretty horrible. That being said Andy Capp's Hot Fries are one one of my all time favorite salty junk foods. For those of you not familiar with Andy Capp he's a classic comic strip character and a lazy couch potato who beats his wife (at least in the early comics). This obviously makes him the perfect mascot for a junk food product.

The fries themselves I guess are made out of the same kind of stuff as a cheese puff, I'm not entirely sure about that. Despite the name “fries” I'm pretty sure there's no potato going on here. The texture is completely different. It's like the people who designed this snack new how to make the perfect crunch, it's absolutely addictive no matter which flavor of fries you're eating. There's a few flavors but the most common are “hot” and “cheddar.” Cheddar is good when your stomach isn't in the mood for something spicy and has its own unique flavor (that doesn't taste like cheddar but it's good anyway).

The real star here however is the Hot Fries. I can't really describe their flavor other than it's absolutely delicious. There's nothing else like them out there. As for the heat it's not unbearable. I get mixed reactions from some people who say they're too hot for them to handle while others claim they aren't hot enough. I've eaten a bag of them without water but honestly if I'm going to dig in to some Hot Fries I want a drink to be nearby.

It's hard to eat them religiously because I get so addicted that I always have to finish an entire bag of them and afterwards I never want to see another fry for the next few months. That's fine, every now and then I get in the mood for them and they make a great occasional snack. You'll just never see a permanent supply of them on my shelf. Another problem is the mess. You will get greasy orange crap on your fingers so make sure you've got some paper towels ready. The Cheddar Fries aren't quite as messy but orange fingertips are the price you have to pay for the ultimate flavor.

If you see some Andy Capp's Fries sitting around and you haven't tried them before you're doing your taste buds a great disservice and you're denying yourself a unique experience. They're usually only a dollar a bag and are sometimes on sale for fifty cents a bag so you have no excuse. Go eat some Hot Fries.

9/10 (Point taken away for messiness and killing my stomach when I eat an entire bag.)

I Need to Vent

College campuses have recently been a hot-spot in the media thanks in part to Virginia Tech and other shootings or less drastic phony threats for shootings or bombings. Where there's media attention you're sure to draw wackos wanting to grab some of it for their own selfish purposes. My campus is no different. The week of the Virginia Tech shooting we were invaded by a fundamentalist group of born again Evangelical Christians, or as I like to call them "The Jesus Camp People." To make a long story short they were literally run off of my very liberal campus by a mob of angry students inciting a debate about freedom of speech and delivering the media attention that the group was looking for. To make matters worse that particular day was also the gay and lesbian day of silence and that was one of the issues that the Evangelicals were being very vocal about.

This year we already had one group of Christians with pictures of aborted fetuses that the women's center quickly responded to by standing in front of the images with umbrellas (to block the pictures). The "Repent America" group that showed up last year is scheduled to make a return next week. There's a lot of paranoia and preparation going on on both sides and any way you want to cut it it's an absolutely ridiculous waste of time. They want us to react, that's the reason they're coming. I know they're border-line retarded but I have a hard time believing they think they're going to convert one person to their hypocritical mess of a religious belief system. I don't think I need to spend any time explaining just how extreme and confused these people are. They just want to feel important, they want to feel like they belong to a greater whole and a greater good. Everyone wants to feel wanted and they enjoy the power to band together and bully people who practice things they find offensive or disgusting all the while acting as if they're the group that's being oppressed.

To them colleges are a cesspool of sin and liberalism making them feel as if they're some enlightened moral intellect in a sea of wrong-doing. If they followed what Christianity truly preaches then they wouldn't be harassing people. They're supposed to be in a religion of tolerance and forgiveness but in reality they're hateful bigots who aren't intellectual enough to question themselves. They've used circle logic to make themselves believe everything science has learned is wrong while they live comfortably in the technology driven United States leaching off the gifts of science which they do nothing but complain about. And it's not that they really, truly believe in what they're preaching either. They just want to be part of a group that makes them feel special and more important, especially important on a cosmic level. The belief comes later after they convince themselves with group think that they're the stewards of the undeniable truths of the universe. They have trouble understanding their own bible or text books not written for one of their creationist home-schooling programs so I highly doubt that.

And don't get me wrong, it's not as if atheists are any better. They've turned their hatred of religion and their own special blend of intolerance into a religion of its own. They have their own literature that they live and die by and conventions with buttons and fliers and of course they stage their own protests in front of people who don't give a flying-shit and would like to get on with their daily lives without someone telling them that God is dead every five steps. All they're doing is playing a game, out for group acceptance while getting off because they're part of a group of like minded individuals out offending people that they've all painted with the same brush. Both sides are crusading for a religion even if they don't know it or understand it themselves. They look at the whole world as being one extreme or the other because they lack the will to chose their own philosophies, instead gathering a circle of extremist friends to both form and validate their opinions on the inner workings of the universe. Nobody wins, ever.

If both sides would put this much effort into solving the world's real problems instead of waging a name-calling war like a bunch of elementary school twats then maybe they'd actually be able to help people. Nobody has the answers no matter how hard they want to believe they do. If we all started using a little common sense or at least stopped to listen what the other side has to say once in a while maybe we'd get somewhere. Even though we'd still disagree we can at least learn to respect ideas. Without our own thoughts we're not even human.

Dorm Survival Foods: Part 1

Living in a dorm for my fourth year, I've learned to subsist on foods that can be either eaten immediately, or are easy to prepare. Other factors are shelf life, and of course expense. Most but not all of the foods I'm going to feature have been procured from the dollar store.

I'd like to start off with an old standby. Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup, though any dollar store variant will suffice. I decided to choose this as the first entry into my college food collection because I still haven't been feeling all that well and it's been a little chilly outside as Fall is just starting to kick in. In both of those situations, nothing is better than a nice hot bowl of soup, and nothing is cheaper or simpler than chicken noodle. I'm a picky eater, and I'm not really fond of foods that are too complicated so I like to keep it simple.

The soup can be quickly and easily prepared in any microwave, just add water, and it really doesn't taste any different than if you cooked it on a stove top. My only real complaint is the sodium content though I'm not the kind of guy who drinks all of the broth so this rarely results in headaches. Like the old myth that it cures the common cold, I generally feel better after eating a bowl.

It can't really compete with non-condensed soups or the tastier and more exotic varieties of ramen noodles which we'll get to later in the semester, but when I'm feeling too sick to eat something complicated, it does the job well. For fifty cents a can at the dollar store it's also easy on the wallet. Unfortunately I rarely feel very full after eating it and usually have to supplement it with something else.

Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup gets a dorm-food rating of 7/10.

Week 1

So I've been back to school for a week and it's been a little weird. It's hard for me to decide whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. I haven't settled in as easily as usual which is a bit strange considering I'm a senior now. My brain just feels like I'm not quite back yet even though I've been through all of my classes now. I don't really hate my classes (with the exception of Spanish of course: my only remaining, stubborn, and evil gen-ed) , they're going to be challenging especially the high-level writing classes I now find myself in but they should also be pretty fun.

I've been socializing a lot which is strange for me, meeting a lot of new people even though I'll be kissing this place goodbye forever in a year. It's prevented me from doing a few other things I've wanted to do (like this blog) but I guess you've got to take the good with the bad. I keep waiting for things to die down and then return to my boring existence but so far that hasn't happened. I've been feeling obligated to be doing something constructive at all times.

Anyway, all I really have to complain about is my health. Anyone who lives in a dorm knows that Vitamin C should quickly become your best friend if you want to survive. I'm congested and have a bit of a cold and a constant headache and I've been over-all feeling worse and worse as each day goes by. I tried taking some allergy pills but so far no luck. I'm sure my diet of incredibly horrible dining hall food hasn't helped me either.