Think Outside the Bun in the Fast Lane...

Buenos nachos,

As I was arriving home from a long day on the road last week, I realized I was hungry and remembered that besides some chip and dip and some condiments from food from a BBQ I hosted the past weekend, I had no food. So I decided to zip on up Rt 3 and had a craving for Taco Bell. Usually when I desire Taco Bell, I am one of two things: incredibly drunk or realizing I have only around $6 in my wallet. So I sped up the road and then I realized that there are two things that really piss me off. I decided to entertain you by writing about them.

1. Taco Bell Commercials. There are three fundamental reasons why any of us eat at Taco Bell: we are mesmerized and sucked into the perception that we can have a full meal from the money that is on the floor of our car, we are incredibly inebriated, or we have little or no standards to "Mexican" food whatsoever. Of course since one of those bean burritos for 79 cents won't fill up even the smallest child, we often go hog wild and order 4 regular tacos, 2 soft tacos, 3 bean burritos, several things we can't pronounce, and of course, a large diet coke. It still only comes to around $6 and we have the perception that we will be having a Mexican food feast only to realize that they use an eyedropper to put the "meat" into the food and exactly 4 minutes after the last bite of whatever you order, you begin the dreaded sport of projectile shitting.

The new commercials feature some asshole on an elevator who takes a bite out of what appears to be a giant cheese-filled sandwich from some douchebag stupid enough to open up his lunch in a crowded elevator. What pisses me off about this commercial is that you actually get angrier at that douchebag for not only opening his lunch in an elevator and then talking to people about his lunch but realizing he didn't immediately punch the other guy in the face the second he ate his food. I can only imagine how excited these two actors were to find out that they were in a commercial from a "major sponsor", read their script that called for acting like a total tool for Taco Bell, and then having to go through with it.

Speaking of Taco Bell, to this day I can not order the Nachos Bell Grande. When I was in college, one of my roommates came home from a long night at the bars, totally wasted, and of course carrying the overflowing bag of take-out Taco Bell (which smartly is open past 1am). Of course since I was such a great student, I was stone cold sober while studying for an important exam to help better my career aspirations. OK, so this whole story is a little embellished... anyway, as I proceeded to see him wolf down the entire bag in about 15 seconds while proclaiming after each bite that it was "the best __ ever", I went down the hall of my dorm to avoid getting sick to my stomach and about five minutes later, heard him running down the hall to the bathroom. Thinking he was throwing up, I felt compelled to follow him in (for some reason we used to do this a lot) only to see that instead he was there in the handicrapper, door open, laughing his ass off and taking what probably was the foulest smelling dump ever and them proclaiming that he was taking a "Beer Shit Bell Grande".

To add to the effect, I present to you... the Nachos Bell Grande. Bon appetit. Sorry, I should have warned you not to read this while eating anything.

Here's a picture of my dorm room during my junior year of college with my old roommate who took the aforementioned dump playing either Mario Bros or TechmoBowl on our No-Friend-O (I'm on the floor probably assembling a camera or some video equipment for my esteemed television career).



Yep, you guessed it: we got laid a lot. That's a fucking Flounder stuffed animal with a lei around it hanging from our ceiling which we thought would attract the girls and show how "sensitive" we were and the bottle caps on the ceiling would look like "stars in the sky" as we both enjoy post-coitus snuggling in our bunk beds. BUNK BEDS!! Of course all it really took was this secret potion I like to call "alcohol".

2. People who come to a complete stop in the "Fast Lane" on a highway. The whole reason to get a Fast Lane tag in your car is so you can avoid having to scrounge for change, roll down the window, pay a toll for a road that is probably long since paid for, and then moving along. Of course the line that you have to wait in to play the toll is bad enough; we have to slow down to PAY. I would gladly slow down if they were giving us something back. So, most states have this Fast Lane (some call it EZ Pass) designed to allow you to drive on through as the toll gets automatically charged to your credit card or bank account, softening the blow of realizing you're actually being charged and of course, allowing us free Americans to avoid as much human contact with strange toll collectors as possible.



Of course there's always some jerk who gets confused that they are in a Fast Lane and don't know what to do. You with these tags know what I'm talking about, they zip down the lane (because unlike the paying toll booths, there is no line), they slow down and then speed up, then slow down, then put the directional on, you honk, they try and back up, you don't let them, and they go through, hoping that they won't be charged a fine or get a letter in the mail with a camera picture of their car going through the lane with a comment that the toll-booth police were thoroughly enjoying the footage showing your confusion. By the way, do NOT let these people back up. You have to learn not to do it again somehow. Tough love, my friend.

But the worst are those people who slow down to nearly a complete stop and who DO know what they are doing. To those who do, here are some reasons not to: 1. They call it FAST Lane, not Slow Down to a Stop Lane; 2. Remarkably, electronics has progressed quite a bit since the card-reader machine and those scanners can pick up your car at remarkably fast speeds, like scanning food at a supermarket; and 3. You just suck if you do. I have determined that you can go through the Fast Lane at around 25-30 mph and not get caught speeding. Give it a try sometime.

So to make a long story short, I got home later than expected and enjoyed my chips with leftover dip, pickles and spicy mustard. Yo quiero Doritos.

Thinking outside the bun,
Mike