trainspotting but it's hot dogs

Paul told Margy, who told me and Alonso. When she said what it was, we said, "We will try this and probably like it."

I had never heard of it, which is weird because if it's processed and against the law in Europe, I've probably eaten it. So how had I grown up in the trailer-parkiest version of the American Southern states and never eaten Lit'l Smokies slow-simmered in Heinz Chili Sauce and Grape Jelly? It's a recipe that isn't cooking. It's tossing things into a Crock Pot, then garbage-dining.

Alonso has this thing, which I believe he stole from Roger Ebert, whereupon discovering that someone hasn't seen, say, The Gang's All Here, he says, "I envy you seeing it for the first time." Something like that. No one says that about Lit'l Smokies in Grape Chili Goo. They say, "I thought you were a real one. Guess not." It's quite a bit meaner than "Oh, never tried duck confit? I had it in Paris."

My mother was cautious with the food budget, and she didn't allow unrestricted access to too many weird snacks. There were rules. Then she ran away from home, and we were left with my father, who was not accustomed to grocery shopping, especially with young children tagging along demanding the worst possible items the supermarket had to offer. It was the 1970s so we requested, and received, Stouffer's Frozen Cupcakes, Libbyland frozen dinners, Screaming Yellow Zonkers, Pink Panther Flakes. All of it. That weird, clumpy, wad of cotton candy in the plastic bag.

I did not experience lasting damage from this. I mean, I guess. I assume the forever chemicals just lurk inside me, waiting. As an adult I taught myself to cook, and my friends tell me that I'm snobbish about organic produce and heirloom beans. Lucky them, they come over for dinner, so I'm literally MAHA-ing all of them against their will. [Note: fuck the MAHA people and RFKJr and wellness ghouls and that Mike Tyson-eats-a-goddamn-apple commercial-and-the-apple-is-probably-covered-in-Listeria-because-the-FDA-doesn't-bother-anymore-good-luck-everyone, the ad where the whole point is telling fat people they should drop dead.]

Back to me ingesting actual poison. Alonso took the three ingredients, combined the tiny logs and wet items and an hour later we beheld cancer snouts swimming in a thick slop reduction.

I tasted the miniature dog in its grape-blecch and thought, "Oh, no." Because at some point in history Nico tried heroin for the first time – maybe during half time on a Super Bowl Sunday – and this is what she felt, bliss with a perfect little interior lining of misery.

I'm not out to tell you "eat this, not that." I'm a cop about a lot of things, but food pleasure is not one of them. Enjoy it, because that's what life is for. There is no bad food; there are only choices and habits.

Except for this. This is true bad food. I'm too old to be putting it inside me. I can't touch it again or at least not until the next Super Bowl at which I will enjoy a tiny taste and then throw the rest out into the street where it belongs because if I do not then I will not stop eating it and my organs will electrocute me from the inside.

It's not for old people. It's for children with their entire lives ahead of them. The ones too young to know about Pink Panther Flakes. They deserve their own forever chemicals.