in praise of bad food and worse beverages

First, a word about me and food.

I have a deep-seated psychological terror of any food that was not a regular part of my diet by age six. And while, given the infinite nature of the human psyche, it may never be truly possible to uncover the deep-seated reason for my fears, if I had to sum it up in one sentence, it would be 'My mom worked nights.'

And so, until the age of 14 or 15, my dad was responsible for the feeding of his only child. And while I'm sure he didn't want to totally destroy up the one shot he had at retiring early on his offspring's dime, he is at the core a guy, and as such, his philosophy towards mealtime was 'as long as no one comes down with scurvy, I'm doing my job.'

So I grew up on a diet of exclusively microwavable foods that consisted of no more than three ingredients total. With salt and pepper counting as one each.

Even now that I'm a mature, tax-paying, college educated adult, my diet consists of basically three groups: the Death Starch Foods (bread, pasta, giant dandruff-style mashed potato flakes, violently neon orange crackers, etc) the Freeze-Pop group, and Comedy Food, which is not, in fact, for eating.

And since I get such entertainment out of this last group, I've decided to share my experiences with you, the bored nerd trying to avoid work. It's the least I can do.