What's that you're eating?

"What is it?"

"One of Green Lantern's giant, glowing balls."

No, seriously. This:



is food.

Last year, I read In Defense of Food, and one of the tips the book gave on eating better was not to buy or eat anything that your great-grandmother would not recognize as food. This snack cake, a marketing ploy between DC Comics and Hostess:



is probably that author's worst nightmare. Geeky internet readers, on the other hand, have been buzzing about these cakes for at least a week, and given:

1) My inherent geeky nature
2) My love of comics

and

3) My love of high fructose corn syrup I totally had to seek these out.

I finally found them tonight, and I brought a box home to photograph, dissect, eat, and judge. It's almost like I bought these for science, not just because I like cake and comic books and would jump at the chance to combine the two and shove them into my mouth. So, what did I learn?

Hostess GloBalls are disgusting.

On the plus side, they actually do look like something Green Lantern might create with his ring:



On the minus side, instead of being filled with Justice League members, the GloBalls are filled with a dry, stale cupcake beneath a layer of marshmallow that's roughly the consistency of rubber sealant:



As an overweight person with a lifelong history of eating junkfood and things that are bad for me, I can assure you that this was the worst snack cake that I have ever eaten. It doesn't even taste like anything! It's a flavorless mouthful of dry sawdust cake floating in squishy creme and surrounded by a hunk of equally flavorless marshmallow that you have to gnaw through and then somehow manage to grind to death between your molars just so that you can swallow it without dying.

I'm now trying to decide which of my enemies to give the rest of the box to.

busy week at school

It's been a busy week at school.

On Monday I had to stay really, really late at work to get a few hundred freshman contracts out. I was really cranky and ragey when I got home, but these things happen, and the next day I was perked up by the Spring Ceramic Sale:



Every semester the students have a sale to raise money for art scholarships, and usually I go over and look around without actually buying anything, but this time I saw the cutest little cup:



It matches some antique Asian ceramics I have on my bookcase, and it was only a few dollars, so I used some of my Easter money on it. (It's totally normal for people over thirty to still get Easter money from their parents. Shut up.) When I was paying, the girl who wrapped it up for me explained that she made it during her summer internship at Woodstock, and it was the only piece with that glaze that she was selling.

After I left she probably took another one just like it out from under the table and readied her story for the next rube. The cup was a few dollars, but my lack of faith in humanity is completely free.

The RA banquet on Wednesday night, though, made me smile again. Not only were there awards and clapping and hugging, but there was cake:



Delicious lemon and blueberry cake.

After the week I've had, that was enough to make everything ok.

our town

I'm currently stranded at my parents' house in upstate New York. I use the word "stranded" because I flew home instead of driving, which means I'm pretty much stuck at the house unless I can convince someone to drive me somewhere. While I'm here, though, I've been reminded by a discussion with Stan that I never finished talking about my June summer vacation, and now that I've got nothing to do but read and walk around the house taking pictures of normal objects on extreme closeup, I may as well address some of that.

(Stan is probably reading this and scratching his head, since the only discussion we had was whether or not "upstate NY" was the same town it had been in high school, but my brain took that and ran with it.)

My relationship with my parents' town, Philadelphia, New York (not to be confused with other, larger Phillies that may spring to mind when you hear that name) has always been sort of contentious, my impression forever colored by the one summer I spent there between freshman and sophomore years of college. That was the summer I tried to get a job in the village, and found out that the local gas stations, stores, and village summer recreation offices freely admit that they only hire females, relatives, or some combination of the two. Since then I've pretty much always viewed the town as a backward collection of prejudiced nepotistic inbreeders, and do my best to avoid interacting with actual townspeople whenever I happen to be here. I never spent a summer here again, and don't intend to.

Given that I view the village through a somewhat biased lens, it's surprising that I still find parts of it attractive. I have, for example, always been fascinated with the cemetary in the elementary school outfield:



It's not in the best repair:





I've always wondered why, since the cemetary seems like the oldest part of that area, the baseball field and the neighbors' backyards are pretty much right in it:



Wouldn't it have made some kind of sense not to build those things so close?

Besides my trip to the cemetary, I walked over to the boat launch, where I saw gorgeous views of the Indian River:



Not surprisingly, I also managed to find a hate crime:



I'd like to point out that, while I expect the village to be filled with hateful, small minded people, I totally wasn't looking for that. All I did was go out for a walk and there it was. Given that the paint doesn't look especially fresh, I can only conclude that a number of village maintenance workers have viewed that and either agreed or at least not been offended, but that's to be expected from people whose minimum qualification for hiring was "cousin".

To make matters worse, I realized when I walked down to the launch that there was additional anti-Jewish vandalism on the side of the bridge, in much plainer view:



You'll need to click the picture to see it, but all I had to do was stand on the dock and turn my head. Again, it's in a pretty visible location, and it's not a small swastika, so I can only assume that the town either condones it, ignores it, or is somehow incapable of removing or painting over it. It's still a nice view, though, if you stand so the tree blocks that part out:



I also saw a number of large tadpoles developing in the water, although my shadow kept scaring them:





At least the river isn't poisonous.

My trip this summer was also the first time in years that I was in town for Quaker Days, the annual (except for one year that my mom says they skipped) festival celebrating our founding:



The Quakers, apparently, were big fans of cotton candy, games of chance, and a flashy midway. The people of Philly, on the other hand, didn't seem very interested when I stopped by:



There were random collections of people at the rides, but it was mostly deserted:







Tiff and I were the only ones betting on the cake wheel:





And we still didn't win! Not that I needed a whole cake or anything, but it would have been nice to win just the same.

I'll just hold that grudge against my town for a few years, too, in case I ever forget about that summer when no one would give me a job because I was from out of town.

life after sassyfins

Even with the loss of my goldfish, I have found amusement in the world. I’m like that, though, since I moved here from the soul-sucking vampire pit I used to work at.

For example, I found a streamer under my car tire the other day when I left work:



Was there a parade in the parking lot? Some sort of event no one told me about? Where do random parking lot streamers come from? And when they flutter away in the breeze as I drive away, where do they go?

Oh, wait, I know that one. Birds eat them and die.

I also fell in love with my immersion blender, using it to make apple and bleu cheese soup. My ingredients went from this:



to this:



without any hot soup exploding out of a blender like that time Martha Stewart and I got in a fight. I did manage to cut and burn myself, but at least I didn’t have to wipe down the kitchen again.

In other food-related amusements, Donna brought in this cupcake cake for Debbie’s birthday, and it was wonderful:



I liked it so much that I didn’t mention that spectrums go ROY G. BIV, not VIB G. YOR. People like you more if you keep your super-brain to yourself, which is why I won’t be calling Twisted Scissors at 588-2311 to tell them that I’d like to buy a vowel:



I before E and all that, except after C like in the word “receive”.

Or “recive”, if you prefer.

Independence Lunch

I had this plan today that, rather than sitting in my apartment reading, playing video games, and watching the “Twilight Zone” marathon on the Sci Fi Channel I was going to get out of the house for a little while. Every morning on my way to work I drive past this trail called the Greenway, and I see all these signs for it as it winds along the river, so I thought I’d go out, walk along the Greenway with my camera, and then go to lunch somewhere. I got my book, camera, and phone and got on the road.

Unfortunately I was unable to figure out where to park to get on the Greenway.

I looked online, and it said to park at Volunteer Landing. I’ve seen the sign for that, so I figured I could just drive down and be fine. Approaching, I saw a nice big sign that said parking was on the next left, so I took the left, but saw nothing that resembled parking. Determined not to give up, I circled back around and tried again, but still couldn’t find parking at the next left, so instead I got off at the sign for Volunteer Landing itself, but all the parking there was labeled for one of the restaurants.

Frustrated after almost an hour in the car trying to find a parking lot that needs better signage, I decided to just go downtown to Market Square and get lunch instead. Last time I was on Market Square, for the Dogwood Festival of the Arts, I didn’t notice the Women’s Suffrage Memorial, but there seems to be one now:



I guess seeing it and taking a picture fulfills my duty to celebrate Independence Day.

One of the things I like about Market Square is the wall of graffiti at one end. There is a block of boarded up buildings, and local artists started painting and drawing on the wood over the windows. When I first moved here, there was a lot of it, and it was very pretty to walk along and look at, like an outdoor gallery.





When I went past there a few months ago, though, all of that was painted over in flat black. I guess the flat black didn’t last very long, because when I went up today it was painted over in dark crimson, and the local artists were doing their best to protest:







While I really like the mailboxes one, this sad little vampire boy was my favorite:



It was painted by the same person who did the sad mandolin boy up above that I really liked. I kind of wish I knew how to find that person and that they painted on a smaller, more portable medium other than plywood, because I would actually buy a piece of that.

After I looked at the protest art and was asked for change I went to the Market Square Soup Kitchen for lunch. Last time I went there Nancy and I forgot to leave a tip on our table when we were done, and were both mortified, but no one seemed to remember that when I came in today. Settling in with my book, I ordered my favorite Southern classic sandwich, the Fried Bologna:



You might be thinking that it’s just a grilled cheese with bologna on it, but it’s completely different. The bologna is fried alone, and then put on untoasted bread with the mayo (and, of course, it’s real mayo; this is the South, after all) and cheese, and the hot bologna mixing with the cold mayonnaise is wonderful. If you’re not grossed out and want to try it at home, get your bologna cut thick at the deli, or else it will curl and wrinkle and be hard to evenly fry.

For dessert I had the coconut cake, which was decorated special for the holiday:



When I was done there was one little star stuck to the tines of my fork, and I was going to take a picture, but figured no one would believe I didn’t stage it.

On the way back to the parking garage I saw a really cool antique awning, but couldn’t get a really good picture of it without standing in the street. I tried anyway, but cars kept coming, so this is the best I could do:



All in all, it was a nice couple of hours downtown.

They're very American!

I was walking through Target when I spotted a wall of these, enough to cover an entire endcap in the Pantry section:



Good God, I thought. Is there nothing people won’t slap a flag on? And what kind of people buy these out of all the other cupcakes in boxes? Is there really someone who’s going to look at these and think, “I like Ho-Ho’s and all, but they’re not very, you know, AMERICAN. I better get these instead.”

On the other hand, perhaps they’re not so absurd after all. What could be more American than driving to a big box store in walking distance to buy 3000 calories, utterly devoid of a single vitamin and individually wrapped in non-biodegradable plastic, for a dollar and change?

I don’t know about the other nationalistic shoppers at Target, but that argument was enough to sway me. And there is something more American than buying them:



Eating them.

So many people have written over the years that America is a sham, an empty dream, all flash and no substance, an oddly tasteless snack cake with waxy frosting that looks interesting but leaves your mouth dry. Could it be that Little Debbie, far from being a jingoistic Americentric flag-waving baker is actually a subversive metaphorist? Is she making her own comment on the “Spirit of America” by embodying it in the form of empty calories in a pretty wrapper?

Probably not.

Sometimes a snack cake is just a snack cake.