Now, I know - as any reasonable person does - that not every single American is responsible for the downright strange Godawful abominable... how do you say... unique and unusual items found on the average supermarket shelf. It's in the hands of companies and CEOs and market researchers and other anonymous entities - high-ranking folk deciding that the good people of the USA really need convenience foods like frozen scrambled eggs, or salad kits in a box, or tiny, greasy vacuum-sealed jerky and cheese. Yet, for them to stay on the shelves, someone must be buying them. And I come to you as a foreigner still adjusting, after two years in the mid-South, to the wealth of inedible dreck imaginative items I encounter almost daily in my local Wal-Mart, to plead: why? Is there a reason? Do you buy them? And most importantly, would you eat them, even on a dare?

I know it's not nice to make fun of other cultures. But I've put up with enough kangaroo comments and "g'days" to think that I'm allowed my own fun.

On with the freakshow, Holmes!

[This is dedicated to the product that started it all: State Fair Pancakes n' Sausage On A Stick, described as a "pancake batter wrapped link sausage on a stick". I don't know who is actually responsible for a) creating or b) buying (and c) allegedly eating) these Frankenstein-like monstrosities, but in the interest of cheese: I salute them.]

[aw, shoot: main] . [my journal] . [main site]