Our futuristic adventure this week begins with a reflection on the fact that I can't do something as simple as take a field trip to federal court without almost being permanently relieved of my belt. But that's not what this week's strip is really about.
It's difficult for me to begin discussing my tragic encounter with cherry flavored donuts without getting emotional. I feel like I've been violated on a very personal, very fundamental level. Even in our mid-twenties, as we outgrow religion, come to terms with the humanity of our parents, and watch our childhood dreams collapse into dreary day jobs, there remain a few unassailable truths to which we can still cling. And for me, one of these truths has always been that donuts taste good. Accordingly, last week when I found that I had unwittingly purchased a box of cherry flavored donuts, I was nearly crushed under the weight of human existence once and for all.
Now let me just make it absolutely clear what we're dealing with here. These weren't cherry frosted donuts, or cherry filled donuts. No. The cherry flavoring was baked into the very cake of the donuts themselves. Imagine biting into what you expect to be a delicious chocolate-coated fluffy cloud of goodness and suddenly finding yourself with a mouth full of pink cake and chunks of crystallized cherry flavoring. So wrong.
The sheer profanity of cherry flavored donuts was further evidenced by the fact that I literally couldn't give these things away at school the following day. This is how it went down.
Me: Care for a donut?
Classmate: Ooh! Donuts!
Me: They're cherry flavored, though.
Classmate: Cherry flavored? That sounds disgusting.
Me: And how.
Classmate: Mmm... No thanks. I think I'll just go chew on this shoe leather over here.
I've written a letter to Ralphs Grocery Company detailing my disappointment with their culinary heresy and urging them to repent before they're damned for good. In the meantime, I'll be checking food labels for cherry flavoring as well as peanuts.
This from the guy who will eat donuts and coffee out of vending machines.
look, when you want the coffee to keep you up, it doesn't matter what it tastes like. it's like drinking pabst to get drunk. you do not savor the pabst. you do not even enjoy the pabst. but you enjoy the buzz. similarly, i'd rather get wired off of 75 cents worth of nescafe than savor a three-dollar starbucks latte. and now that the nescafe machine has pumpkin scones, well, i don't have to tell you what all.