Kraft Dinner

There now: how many of the eyes and ears of my Canadian friends perked up at the mention of Kraft Dinner? Here in the States it's thought of simply as mac and cheese. Either way, it's sort of a staple, isn't it? My family ate a lot of it over the years.

I was on the road a long time yesterday, covering just over 700 miles between 2 AM and 5:30 PM. One of the nice things about being out and about often is that you can get whatever you want for your meals. Yet that has a down side. When you can routinely have whatever you want, the choices actually begin to lack. Arby's, Wendy's, or KFC (which we all still call Kentucky Fried Chicken despite it's attempted healthier sounding rebranding to KFC, as though we wouldn't still think of it as fried chicken) have all been had, and frequently. McDonald's, although I still eat too much of it, stopped being a real treat ages ago. To wax a tad philosophic, when you actually can get whatever you want the choices kind of dull, don't they? When you can get whatever anytime, freedom to choose loses luster.

So I was yesterday faced with that loss of luster. After having a couple frankfurters off the roller grill at a Love's truck stop at about four in the morning - hot dogs aren't just for breakfast anymore -  I went the rest of the day, starting around mid morning, wanting more to eat. But nothing appealed to me despite the plethora of options.

When I walked back in my front door in the late afternoon I was still hungry. I had not eaten anything after those red hots and had nearly abandoned hope of pleasing my picky stomach. Yet looking through the pantry I spied a couple boxes of Kraft Dinner. I honestly think it's been years since I enjoyed good old, plain old mac and cheese. I grabbed a box and fixed it up.

Tried and true Kraft Dinner hit the spot for me. You can't beat the classics.

Toddlers and Tiaras: Disgusting Television

A report on today's Huffington Post asks the question: has the show Toddlers & Tiaras gone too far? The answer ought to be so obvious as to make the question unnecessary. That show had gone too far once it was even being seriously discussed in brainstorming sessions. Let's face it: beauty pageants for 6 and 8 year olds, well, let's just say that what happens with them could be construed as child porn, at least arguably. There's something genuinely sick about dolling up toddlers as though they're college age beauty queens. But when we institutionalize it with TV shows such as the aforementioned Toddlers & Tiaras, we should not be shocked when young contestants blithely state (what can be safely taken as) ugly kids better not be put on display because they're losers. This says something about America today, and what it says isn't anything to be proud of. People who subject their own kids to such scrutiny need parenting classes. People who watch these shows need psychiatric care. To be fair, part of the interest is probably like watching the proverbial train wreck. At times, things are so outlandish that we can't believe our eyes, and that does make it a challenge to avert them. Still, what have we become as a nation when such drivel passes as entertainment on any level for any reason? The so-minded among us will comment that no one makes them do this, it's a free country, blah, blah, blah, none of which makes what's actually happening in this or any other arena right. The only reason to oppose censorship of such nonsense is the fear of what might happen if the wrong people control the censorship panels, because in a better world pageants for kids and television shows about them would be scornfully dismissed as the dangerous tripe they are. The whole thing is just sad. But that's the downside of the almost absolute freedom of expression which plagues the United States these days: it allows the ghouls as well as the sane their day in the sun.