Twinkie

It was 9:30am. I had been awake for nearly two hours, and I was starving. It wasn't just "any" kind of starving, either. It was the sort where one's metabolic functions look like a steadily plummeting barometer before one bitch kitty of a thunderstorm, except instead of atmospheric pressure dropping, it was my bloodsugar. I was on the road when the shakes started to kick in, and my stomach was staging a massive revolt whereby upon the absence of actual sustenance, it was beginning to consume itself while saying: "Feed me NOW, bitch!" I was determined to wait it out, to will away the demands of my most wayward organ, but there was no more waiting. It was either divert off the road to the nearest convenience store to grab something to hold me over, or vomit steaming bile in my lap. Not a good idea. I don't know why I let myself get to such a point of ravenous hunger. Call it thoughtlessness. Call it thinking (perhaps erroneously) that a girl of my size can perhaps stand to skip a few meals every once in awhile. There is also a bit of arrogance mixed in there. I'm "tough," dammit. There are full-grown adults who weigh eighty pounds who are still breathing. I think I can go 12 hours without a meal. Well, not this morning.

As I staggered through the doors of the neighborhood junkfood haven, I didn't really have a plan in mind. Actually there was nothing in my mind. I can't even tell you that I remembered parking the car. All I knew was I needed sugar or I was going to pass out. As is the case with any junkfood haven, sucrose, fructose, and every other compound ending in "ose" is available in outrageous supply, and I need not walk more than four steps before encountering some. So here is my big "Ah-HA" moment, for as I glance near the cash register (what I think of as the honey spot for all things fattening), I spy an array of Hostess snacks, you know, those things that are more a feat of engineering than actual food. I feel the back part of my mind groan at the sight of them. I've been culturally and scientifically engrained. As much as I love food that is bad for me, even I have a limit. But that back part of my mind also knows that it's not in charge at the moment. The feral little weasel in my gut is, and it needs to be assuaged forthwith. I step up to the counter and grab the first object it lands on: a package of Twinkies. I fumble my buck and a quarter out of my pocket and without even waiting for the change, I make for the exit, hoping that I'm staggering, and also hoping (needlessly so, thanks to the bitch that resides in the self-flagellating part of my brain) that the store clerk didn't think that the fat chick was having the physiologic meltdown that she clearly was having.

I tore into the package before I even got to my car and took my first bite of a Twinkie in at least half a decade. I had forgotten what they tasted like. The first Twinkie, I didn't even notice the flavor. I was more consumed with fixing the faltering machine otherwise known as my body. In fact, I think I nearly swallowed the thing whole while thinking to myself that this ought to do the trick. I should be able to make it home without fainting from a rare hypoglycemic spell.

And then the real taste kicked in as I started working on the second Twinkie, and the only word I could muster was "gack." Memories flooded me, ones that I were shocked were still a part of my internal hard drive. Memories of remarking to myself years ago that Twinkies are perhaps one of the most disgusting foods on the planet, those rare ingestible things that should fall under the category of: "Things People Eat When They Hate Themselves." Other players on the list would include Big Macs, Easy Cheese, Wonder Bread, and Dinty Moore Beef Stew.

There is just something so inherently "wrong" about a Twinkie. It's pure science. There is not a single ingredient in a Twinkie that by itself would allow you to survive in the wild, and in many cases would actually kill you on the spot if you ate too much of it. The overall texture and flavor of the "cake" is reminiscent of a Scotch Brite sponge soaked in anti-freeze. The filling tastes and feels like sugary lard with a metallic tinge that likely came from the machine that extruded it, and it coated the roof of my mouth like Vaseline. The overwhelmingly saccharine experience of it all burnt the back of my throat, and attempts at flushing it out with water were futile, as the greasy fat that was now lining my mouth acted like a water-tight barrier, barring my tastebuds from salvation.

To put it bluntly, my soul felt like it was raped after I ate a Twinkie, and I was left with the inalienable certainty that I was summarily subtracted two years from my life, one for each Toxic Deathcake I ingested in an attempt to recover my bloodsugar to an operable level.

And the kicker, as I now sit here comfortably in my home, thankfully not feeling the shakes but more like the shadow of death has moved ever closer to eclipsing my being (at least in the larger sense. I'm sure I've got some years left), I am hungry again. It's almost like in eating the worst food known to (and created by) man, I actually haven't eaten anything at all. It's like a cruel illusion, for I know the fetid residue remains.

Killing Me Sweetly Part II- Sugary Tooth Extractors

There are some things in this world that even when they are not all that good, they are still somewhat enjoyable. Examples would include pizza and sex. Even less-than stellar intercourse that does not result in multiple orgasms is still better than no sex. At least that's the way I feel. You would think candy should fall into this category. After all, it contains sugar, which is the universal feel-good compound that makes all the right chemicals surge through our beleaguered brains. Unfortunately, there are items in the candy world that take us down the road to saccharine perdition, and often times, that road is paved with the expensive dental work or cavity-laden molars of their victims.

The Gouda today will chastise the candies that try hardest to keep the world's dentists in business:

Milk Duds and/or Riesen
JuJubes, Starburst, Now & Later

I mean... what the fuck? Where does the joy lie in rigid, sweet clumps of misery adhering to the cracks and crevices of one's chompers? These virulent rogues of the confectionary world violate the one rule I have for the enjoyment of any foodstuff:

If more time trying to get the crap out of my teeth or out of its natural encasement must be spent than actually chewing, swallowing, and enjoying said foods, it's not worth eating. Life is short, people. I'd rather spend it living off the nourishment I'm putting into my body than fighting with it before ingesting it. Other foods falling under this category include sunflower seeds in the shell, shellfish that has not been cracked open in advance, ribs, and corn on the cob. It's not that I don't eat these things, it's just not something toward which I tend to gravitate first. But let's save those offenders for another post and focus on the sweet stuff.

It's not that the above-mentioned candies don't taste good. I love the combination of caramel and chocolate. No- check that- I want to drown myself in it. I also enjoy the fruity fakeness of the Jujubes and Starbursts, although they don't really trigger in me the "I'm going to die from the sheer lust I'm experiencing from eating this" vibe.

So even if it tastes alright, the act of eating a piece of Riesen, for instance, is akin to using a pair of hedgeclippers to trim my fingernails. Why go to all that trouble and potentially disasterous result by eating that when I could so much more easily swoon myself into the titillating utopia of sucrose saturation by eating one or two (okay, a dozen) of something like, say, a Hershey's Kiss?

I do have a grudging admission, though. Maybe one good thing about candies like this is that by their very irritatingly laborious nature, they halt the tendency to binge. Of course, my tendency to binge (or eat, period) would also be halted if I had to make an emergency trip to the dentist to have the amalgam shoved back into my upper-right bicuspid. I'd rather just not go there.

I almost convinced myself to concede defeat on my own point, but not now!

No... no... Molar-adhering candies are officially dead to me, and I'm sticking to it, dammit!

Now... where are my Kisses?

Killing Me Sweetly Part 1: Circus Peanuts

Is that title not confusing enough?

I figured that there are several candies out there that need to die a painful death, and there are too many to fit in a single post. So Memoirs of a Gouda is pledged to do a multi-part investigation on Friday's Leave it Dead column on the legion of tooth-rotting gastronimic nightmares from our childhood. As opposed to the tooth-rotting, gastro-orgasmic treats of love that we want to keep.

What inspired me to go down this path, you ask? Well, as I was swooning through a mental climax that can only be inspired by creamy mashmallow covered with chocolate and cashews, otherwise known as a Rocky Road Bar, I found myself wondering what could possibly kill this moment.

And out of nowhere, a Circus Peanut popped into my head. You know what they are- the fake, foamy, formidably funknacious, fucking GROSS candies that look like this:


I know they aren't "dead" in the sense that my regular Friday entry typically requires, but I think I need to work this bit of mental anguish out. To not "leave it dead", but to once and for all make them "dead to me". I saw some of these disgusting capsules of evil dangling in a cellophane bag in the corner gas station just last night, and I had my typical flashback involving my first bite of the pugnacious puffy peanut. It was in the third grade, and the girl at the desk next to me asked if I wanted a piece of candy. Upon my eager nodding, as any healthy child in elementary school is wont to do, I accepted in my hand the finger-like, flesh-colored morsel and took my first bite, whereupon the dire urge to vomit assailed upon me like a pair of rough cops on Rodney King. I remember looking at my friend, grinning sheepishly, placing the entire peanut in my mouth, and feigning joyful chewing with all of the skill of a taster on the Iron Chef who has just sampled a spoonful of salmon roe ice cream. When she looked away, I immediately removed said peanut, now tacky with sucrose-laden juvenile saliva and tried to figure out what to do with it. In a fit of ingenuity that would only befit an 8-year-old, I plastered it to the underside of my desk, where I promptly squashed it with my fingertips, like a giant piece of chewed bubblegum. I flattened it as much as I could, and there it stayed for the remainder of the school year, and as far as I know, for years after that.

I imagine that desk now lies rotting in the bottom of some landfill, but that mutilated, petrified circus peanut remains as intact as ever, holding my DNA like a solid piece of amber, only it's been avoided by every specimen of bug, mold, and vermin that exists in such places. Nature will not reclaim what is not of this planet, I am convinced. And I'm also convinced that the Circus Peanut should forever reside in the Hall of What Should Never Have Been and What Never Again Will Be.

Stay tuned next week when The Gouda investigates another conspiracy likely cooked up by evil dentists. The Easy Tooth Extractors known as Ju-Ju-Bees and Milk Duds.