Only In ‘Murrica

First I want to say thanks to Chris DeVoss and all the other awesome bloggers here on A Long Awkward Pause.  It’s always humbling to be invited to write by others, especially when they do it so much better than you.  Chris sent me my first topic: Twinkies.  My reply was something like, “WTF?” but here we are, and here we go.

What can you say about Twinkies?  I mean really?  Even before I transitioned to my rabbit food diet, I never liked the disgusting little turd-shaped… whatever they are.  The package says they’re cakes, but I’m not convinced.  Also, I have a problem with putting things in my mouth bearing the description, “cream-filled.”  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, just not for me.

I was suffering through my sentence in Kabul, Afghanistan, when the epic news of the demise of the Twinkie broke.  I watched with morbid fascination as people cleared the shelves of the cellphane-wrapped golden shitloafs, betting that the half-life (roughly 5.2 million years) of the ‘cakes’ would ensure their eventual fortune.  I bet they keep them next to their unopened Star Wars figures and Beanie Babies.

Only in America can people lose their rabbit-ass minds over the discontinuation of something that, like some elements on the Periodic Table, would never exist in nature.  In fact, I suspect Twinkies are actually made of some of them.  What the hell is polysorbate-60?  Did the 59 previous versions fail, or were they used in the 1970’s Twinkies?  Yikes.  And people are freaking eating them!

Somewhere, I read that it requires 38 different ingredients to make a Twinkie.  Holy chemical death, batman.  I love to cook as you all well know, and I can’t even make shit with that many ingredients.  I often imagine that if you ate just one Twinkie a day for your entire life, you’d completely eliminate the need for your family to embalm you when you died.  That point would likely be around 26 or 27 years of age, by the way.

But wait!  All hope is not lost here in ‘Murrica!  After months of tense union negotiations and bankruptcy administrivia, Hostess announced they’d resurrect the Twinkie – as if you can kill one.  And if that’s not awesomesauce enough for you, they’re extending the shelf life half-life of this pseudo-food.  Now assembled in Canada, we have something else to thank our cold friends to the north for in addition to the Beibs.

I watched this unfold from 8,000 miles away.  In my mind, I could already see the hordes in sleeping bags outside the doors of Wal-Marts and Piggly Wigglys from coast to coast, trembling with the jonesing for their chemical fix.  Serenity returned to ‘Murrica, and we shifted focus to spoiled starlets, Congress boning us down, and reality TV.

Related L.A.P. posts on Twinkies:

Omawarisan on Twinkies

Justin Gawal on Twinkies

Monk Monkey on Twinkies

Christopher De Voss on Twinkies

Mike Calahan on Twinkies

Chowderhead on Twinkies