Fuck EVERYBODY Running for Georgia's 6th Congressional District

Republican, Democrat, it doesn't matter - representative politics is a load of hooey, and nothing demonstrates that better than this Tuesday's congressional runoff.

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo___X

I hate politics. But as boring and annoying as international geopoliticking may be, at least at has some cool stuff in it, like laser guided missiles and bacterial warfare. Unfortunately, you won't find robotic death machines and empty threats to invade rival nations to loot their precious natural resources in state-level politics, and you sure as hell won't see 'em in local level politics. Instead, you'll just hear a bunch of bickering and bitchin' about zoning ordinances and millage rates - i.e., topics about as interesting as the prospects of waxing your big toe. 

I should know that better than anyone, since I spent a couple of years covering local level government when I was a shittily paid reporter back in the day. There's no real way to adequately describe how boring it is to sit in city hall for six hours watching a whole bunch of cracka' motherfuckas' take turns debating the merits of increasing business license application fees and applying for block grants. I guess it's kinda' like sitting in a REALLY boring church service, except worse because at least at church you get some songs and if you're lucky, a wafer and a cup of juice. But when it comes to the great secular worship service, the only thing you get is uncomfortable seating and so much hot air, you kinda' want to run your hands underneath the podium to dry 'em off. 

Which brings us to my home state's 6th congressional district runoff - i.e., the most annoying fucking thing that's happened in Atlanta all year, and considering that also includes the time traffic was slowed to a crawl for two months because a crackhead set Interstate 85 on fire, that's saying a lot. 

Here's what you need to know about the state's 6th congressional district (and trust me, there ain't a whole lot for you to learn.) It encompasses a swath of about 700,000 people over a suspiciously arbitrary sliver of four different counties. The district is overwhelmingly white (about 72 percent of the total populace is mayonnaise colored) and stinkin' rich (the average household income is $72,000 - the average for the rest of Georgia is just $50,000.) Since 2000, the district has been more or less owned by Republicans, with Johnny Isaakson (now one of Georgia's U.S. Senators) and Tom Price (now the U.S. Health Secretary) being the only two men to represent the district over the last 16 years.

So, yeah, basically, it's been totally unwinnable RINO territory for liberals. That is, until this year, when this young up-and-comer named Jon Ossoff entered the race as a democratic challenger and actually won 48 percent of the vote - thus, facilitating a runoff against leading republican challenger Karen Handel on June 20. 

We'll get back to the specific candidates in just a bit. But first, we've got to talk about the national resonance of this particular election, which is apparently is so strategically important that even the fuckin' President of the United States is tweeting about it. 

Now, it's kinda funny that nobody gave a shit about the 6th district until recently. Remember, I lived and worked in the damn place for the better part of a decade, and nobody anywhere considered it a nationally significant congressional district. But all of a sudden, the fact that a dimmicrat might actually win the whole kit and caboodle has all them politicos in D.C. in a tizzy. After all, this is solid red clay Republican soil, and the idea of some lanky liberal coming in there and wresting the territory away from the conservatives just HAS to be a proxy referendum on Trump and a sign that the rural hoi polli are finally shying away from the G.O.P., right? 

Don't believe the narrative, kids. The way the national media has spun it, you'd think Georgia's 6th congressional district was home to NOTHING but MAGA-hat-wearing N.R.A. members with 17 different rebel flags on their trucks. Well, take it from somebody whose actually paid taxes in the district - that ain't the kind of "deep south" we're talking about here. 

Georgia's 6th district is basically a lily-white suburban stronghold, predominantly populated by out-of-region transplants. These aren't guys named Clem and Cletus who work on trucks for a living and spit tobacco on their kitchen floor. The aggregate 6th district voter is some guy named Chad or Gerald, who works as a financial planner or I.T. specialist for one of them big tech firms in Atlanta. He drives an Audi, he has 2.3 kids, and he was probably born in Pennsylvania or New Jersey. If by some chance he actually was born in the region, he almost certainly went to a big name SEC school and his family's wealth can probably be tied to owning a plantation at some point in their bloodline. Yes, he's more likely to vote republican than democrat, but he's anything but a populist. He's a firm believer in status quo, establishment conservative politics and he probably jacks off thinking about open trade and globalization when his wife is shopping at the latest and greatest "mixed use development" shopping behemoth. He probably doesn't own a gun, but he's in bed with Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio and the rest of their ilk because they'll keep his taxes relatively low and provide him plenty of opportunities to offshore or outsource jobs to guys named Habib instead of paying a local worker to do the same job at double the cost. 

So, in other words, most of the voters in the district are what we would call "elitists." They've got money, they've got wealth, they've got retirement plans and they're every bit as entitled and class-conscious as your average first-year liberal arts college social justice warrior. In that, it makes sense that so many of 'em would jump ship from the post-Trump G.O.P. and its populism uber alles message to the dimmicrats, whose anti-economic-nationalism platform is actually more attuned to their own financial wants than the republicans.

Then again, you might be wondering how some scrawny, Jewish, 30-year-old kid with a Brillo Pad haircut who's never held any kind of public office before could have ever been catapulted to take over Georgia's 6th congressional to being with. Well, there's a simple answer for that one: because a whole hell of a lot of democrats from out of Georgia are bankrolling him.

As in, the guy's received more than $8.3 million from liberal sympathizers, and just 5 percent of it came from in-state donors.  Irony of ironies, he doesn't even live in Georgia's 6th district and not only did he attend college out of state, he attended it out of country at the London School of Economics. 

Basically, he's the very definition of a neo-carpetbagger. He's LITERALLY being funded by democratic elites from the northeast and west coast to impose their political ideals on Georgia's native born (you know, the few left in the district who haven't been displaced by U.N.-approved ethnic cleansing "resettlement projects" and socially-engineered migration "cultural enrichment" programs.) His campaign is basically a putsch to enforce alien rule on a nominally sovereign community simply for the sake of bolstering the dimmicrats' voting power in congress. He has no idea what the needs of the community are and he doesn't care. He's just there as a liberal puppet, another warm ass in a seat in D.C. to help the dimmicrat agenda.

It's not surprising the attack ads against him have focused on that - something he hasn't even tried to refute in his own campaign clips. In one of the greatest things I've ever seen in my life, one anti-Ossoff ad brilliantly shows a whole bunch of stereotypical San Fran liberals talking at length about how happy they are to see Ossoff running in Georgia, complete with hippie chicks talking about how glad they are to see military spending cut because, in her words, "ISIS is overrated." There's also another good 'un showing Ossoff dressed up like Han Solo in college that busts his balls so hard that it's pretty much a guarantee that he's going to be pissing dust for the rest of his life. Needless to say, you need to see both of these things right fucking now:

The problem is, his opponent - 55-year-old, approximately 300-pound MIL-to-definitely-not-F Karen Handel - is every bit is annoying and full of dookie. If Ossoff is your dime-a-dozen liberal turd, Handel is the all-too-predictable republican counter-shit in the other stall that's just as damn stanky. 

Although Handel does have some experience in public office, it's not like her track record is that impressive. She's been Georgia's secretary of state and a member of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, and before that, she was a veep of public policy for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure "charity" until they decided to start giving money to Planned Parenthood (she even wrote a book about it, but fuck it, nobody's got time to slog through that mess.) She also ran for the U.S. Senate in 2014 but (obviously) lost. She also ran for governor in 2010, but lost there, too. Basically, Handel is a bitch that loses a lot, but because she has kind of a brand name, the Republicans keep propping her up as *their-girl*. So basically, she's kinda' like John McCain, except I'd prolly have an easier time fucking him than her wrinkled, flabby, whale-hipped ass. 

As for the Ossoff counter-attack, they're basically saying she's a self-centered fat whore who spends taxpayer dollars on chairs and her own SUV and that she would - and this is a direct quote from one of the commercials - "fit right in in Washington." Of course, the Ossoff campaign never mulled the idea that if D.C. is a haven for self-serving turdwads, what does it mean when THEIR candidate wants to go there so much - but hey, by now, nobody expects consistency or logic in politics, especially down here in Georgia. 

Now right here I could give you a quick rundown on where the two candidates stand on issues like health care, military spending and the economy, but a.) you already know what they're going to think based on their political affiliations and b.) like you'd give a fuck, anyway. I'd like to say one of them is the lesser of two evils, but here, each candidate is especially annoying and irritating in their own unique way. Ossoff is literally there just to shoot down everything the Republicans propose in Congress (and possibly social engineer even more native Georgian jobs out of the market to appease his liberal bed buddies), and Handel is just a hammy Republican broad that brings nothing to the table and is going to swallow whatever crap the rest of the Republicans in Congress shat out without ever giving it a second guess.

The sad thing you realize with this runoff is that the concerns of the people who actually live in the area the candidates are representing is literally the least important thing in the minds of either Ossoff the Jack-Off or Karen (the floor can barely) Handel (her weight anymore.) This isn't about giving native Georgians their voice in federal policymaking, it's about the republicunts and demofags marching into our backyard and shoving these two dildo queens in front of us and telling us we need to vote for one of 'em because they'll help carry the red or blue flag of the Great Ongoing Political Culture War in that big old Thunderdome in D.C.

I know it's a drum I've been banging for a long time, but shouldn't we be doing shit truly democratically instead of this Mandaean "representative" bull crap? There's 700,000 people currently residing in Georgia's 6th district, and instead of leaving it up to old Brillo-pad-head or Thunder-thighs, why can't they directly vote in federal referendums? Shit, we don't even need senators or congressmen - every month, we'll just march on down to the polling precinct and pick apart the a'la carte legislative issues and let it come down to good old fashioned majority rules democracy. If we just have to have senators and congresspeople, at least limit their ability to make decisions. Sure, we'll vote you in to make laws on our behalf, but before any of that shit is official let the VERY PEOPLE YOU ARE REPRESENTING have the final say on what Capitol Hill is pushing through the sausage factory.

Representative democracy is, has and always will be a crock of shit, whether it's on the federal, state or local level. It ensures that party politics will always trump regional need, effectively signing away citizens' rights to lobby for their own interests. What we call "democracy" in the States is hardly anything more than an electoral war between dueling oligarchies, and nothing demonstrates the abject sadness of the system more than the two twats duking it out for control of Georgia's 6th district. 

So fuck Jon Ossoff, fuck Karen Handel, fuck everybody who's voting for either one of them and double fuck anybody who actually gave them campaign contributions. Neither Turd A nor Turd B is truly going to represent the hearts and minds of the people, and at the end of the day, absolutely nobody - regardless of their status as "elected official" - should be considered a proxy for your own voice.

Nobody - not no liberal democrat Jew or no fat ass republican she-beast - should lay claim to representing you on anything, and in that, no matter who wins on June 20, Georgia's 6th is hosed. Like thermonuclear war or Tic-Tac-Toe, the only responsible choice on Tuesday is to not vote at all, and if you run into anybody wearing one of those stupid "I'm a Georgia Voter" sticker, you have the Constitutional right to sock their shirt over their head and give 'em a Terry Funk piledriver. 

Every ballot cast - whether it's for a municipal city council seat or President of the goddamn United States - is a vote for politics as is and a ringing endorsement for elitism uber alles. "Representative democracy" is a scam, a scheme, a ruse and a shakedown, and anybody who's proud to forfeit their right to home rule direct democracy in order to promote some counterfeit political savior and his or her dogmatic devotion to the party line ought to be ashamed of themselves.

And the fact that human sanitary napkins like Ossoff and Handel are deemed good enough to represent the public in federal policymaking should tell you all you need to know about the utter futility of politics in these United States, don't it?

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The 2014 Taste of Marietta Food Festival!

AKA, Sample Size-A-Palooza '14! Featuring  Lobster Nacho Dip, Indian Food off the Back of a Truck, Alleged Aussie Treats, DEEP FRIED BROWNIES and Arguably the Best Shrimp Anyone Has Ever Eaten, Ever!

When you are in your teens and early 20s, nothing is cooler than rock and roll concerts. You get to bang your head to music played at near supersonic jet volume levels while smoking the weed, drinking the beer, and possibly making out with the occasional pseudo-punk hoochie mama. Indeed, such as the veritable essence of youth, and for a few years at least, such is the only thing in life that matters.

But then, something happens. As you get closer to being 30 than 20, all of that rocking and rolling nonsense suddenly becomes a lot less fun than it used to. Seemingly out of the blue, you realize just how dumb it is to spend upwards of $100 American to stand out in a field with a bunch of chain smokers high on molly while bands you liked 20 years ago lifelessly trudge through all of the tunes you know they hate themselves for even writing for hours on end.

If there was ever a concrete symbol of the passage from young adulthood to adulthood, it's the moment where you consciously realize that you enjoyed your pre-concert meal more than you did the concert you actually attended. My own spiritually transcendent epiphany, dear readers, was thoughtfully and eloquently spelled out for you last year. 

With nary a remorseful cell in my body, I can say with all authenticity that I much, much prefer events like the Taste of Marietta food festival to things like Music Midtown -- or the much-ballyhooed Counterpoint music fest, which, as fate would have it, was going on at the exact same time as the 2014 Taste celebrations. The leisurely pace, the fact that you're not being bombarded by loud noises, the ability to actually wind your way through the crowd, not to mention the fact that prevailing odors are actually pleasing scents as opposed to the B.O and Natural Light aroma of most concerts -- all aspects that CLEARLY make food festival forays much, much more enjoyable experiences in my humblest o' opinions. 

The 2014 Taste of Marietta Food Festival, you may be pondering? Well, it's an event not unlike the Street Food Festival that occurs annually in Atlanta -- except there's less people, more diverse food, no entry prices and you can actually buy dishes in convenient sample-sized form instead of being asked to shell out $10 for an entire taco platter. And also, they have gigantic cups of Greek Yogurt on display, too. 

There was also a giant inflatable bag of Nature's Choice bread, too, but alas, I never got around to snapping a pic. Hey, there was actual food to try out, and since my Gaelic genes only allow me to stay out in the sun for about an hour before bursting into flames, I suppose you understand its exclusion.

For those of you unfamiliar with Marietta, its a mid-sized city just outside of Atlanta. It's probably best known for being home to a gigantic chicken, although I always tell people it's the place where the T-1000 grew up. Such a tidbit, unfortunately, is regarded with far less enthusiasm from out-of-towners, so it seems. 

So, there's this thing in Marietta called "The Square," which is home to about a million billion restaurants and this old ass theater that sometimes shows public domain zombie movie marathons. It's also the alleged site of a Doobie Brothers mini-riot in the late 1970s, but for the sake of historicity, I cannot confirm or deny said allegation fully. Anyway, the Taste of Marietta festival was held in a gigantic, cordoned off block of the Square, where a good hundred or so vendors -- mostly, restaurants, but also a few weird ones, like a Harley Davidson booth, of all things -- were lined up like dominoes. And since it's an election year, there were a whole bunch of local politicians and their sycophants out in full force. Ironically enough, most of their makeshift gazebos were situated adjacent to a row of Port-a-Johns, but I digress. 

Of course, there was a lot of family-friendly (read: white people-centric) stuff going on, like a menagerie of inflatable kiddie attractions and a couple of high school garage bands, whom serenaded disinterested passer-byers with ancient Led Zeppelin and Van Halen numbers. So, yeah, like I was saying...plenty of whiteness going on today, for sure. 

Instead of giving you a standard photo essay, I reckon it would be easier -- and more informative -- if I just gave you folks a mini-review of each foodstuff I tried out. Break out the Maalox, amigos: reading this post from here on out may just give you a rad case of indigestion. 

First up, we've got this exquisite lobster corn cheese dip from Red Sky Tapas Bar, whose big claim to fame is that it's kinda' close by the neighborhood dollar theater. Or maybe they don't highlight that fact at all, but it doesn't really matter: this stuff is great, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Sure, sure, it looks like something a cat may have barfed on a Persian rug at first glance, but I assure you, this stuff is actually quite delicious. I don't know why, but it kinda' reminded me of a beef taco from Taco Bell; despite containing virtually none of the same ingredients (I'd imagine, anyway) the lobster queso spread was virtually identical in taste and texture to a pureed XL burrito. Oh, and the complimentary nacho chips, and the translucent, logo branded cup they gave me? Really, really nice touches, even though I ended up chunking the cup into a refuse bin five seconds after finishing the sample. Hey, forces of habit are forces of habit, after all. 

Though I suppose its only natural for one to have suspicions about the inherent quality of Indian cuisine on wheels, the Bollywood Zing! food truck actually had some pretty good food. There were only half a dozen or so trucks of the like at the festival, and this was far and away the most appetizing-sounding -- and on top of that, it's not like I'm likely to find that many other vegan-friendly dishes on display here or anything.

Ok, so it's a little bit too big to be described as a sample tray, but its definitely not a full restaurant-sized serving either. I'm not sure if I should give the truck operators bonus points for adding the extra grub or detract them from disobeying the "sample portions only" diktat, but at the end of the day? I got me some delicious chana masala, which in addition to being filling and flavorful, was given to me by a man with a very pronounced, albeit suspicious, Australian accent. If you think either of those things are negatives in my book, you haven't been paying  good attention to the blog, clearly. 

They really ought to give me a Pulitzer for this picture. If I had a million words to say about the Taste of Marietta food festival, and even the contemporary American South as a whole, I don't think anything would do as succinct a job of explaining everything you need to know than this solitary photograph. I mean, god-damn, would words even suffice regarding such a sight?

For those of you wondering, this is the brainchild of an organization called "Deep Fried Brownies" -- what they lack in creativity, I reckon they more than make up for in sheer descriptive accuracy. Indeed, the above picture is the eponymous foodstuff, a flash fried, chocolate square treat doused in confectioner's sugar -- and yes, you are not alone if you're thinking to yourself, "man, that thing looks a lot like Meatwad from 'Aqua Teen Hunger Force.'"

And here's the brownie circuitry that belies the carnival fair exoskeleton. It's pretty hard to describe what the actual dish tasted like, because it was comprised of such strangely parallel textures. The outer layer tasted more or less like your standard funnel cake, but the brownie itself -- perhaps inundated by the granules of powdery sugary, tasted almost acidly sweet, if that makes any sense. Don't get me wrong, it was delicious, but at the same time, it also tasted so gustatorily unusual. Indeed, my curiosity is piqued for their "Fried Oreos," and then some.

As a huge fan of marsupials and related marsupial iconography, I was really, really stoked to try out the Australian Bakery Cafe. That is, until we got to the booth, and we're told they we had to wait ten minutes at the least in order to pick up a warm entree. As such, me and Mrs. IIIA said "to heck with it, mate" and picked up their cheapest dessert item instead.

The above delicacy, I was informed, is something called a "Lamington." Basically, it's a chocolate sponge cake with a heaping dusting of coconut flakes atop it. As arguably the best Little Debbie snackcake Little Debbie never made, I had to give this one a big thumbs up...even though if they would've shape it like a koala, it would've been my favorite foodstuff ever.

And lastly, we come to this delicious offering from Seed Kitchen & Bar, which is one of the ritzier Marietta locales. Over the years, I've had some great shrimp entrees, but this tangy blend, with just a bit of an orange sauce taste and tincture, is quite possibly the single yummiest I've ever tried. And, because convenient allusions are the hot "in-thing," the name of the dish was "Tybee Island Shrimp" -- a locale long-time IIIA readers should be very familiar with. 

Needless to say, I motherfucking love events like this, and I'm sure my sardonic and profane celebration of its foodstuffs will be received warmly by the restaurateurs I've profiled and reviewed today. Indeed, they may even give me a discount pending I give their full offerings a try sometime, which I think we all believe they most definitely should, for sure. 

All kidding aside, I could've spent hours at this thing, just nibbling and gnawing away on the various, miscellaneous food items on display. Call me crazy, but I actually enjoyed this event more than the super-huge food truck gala held in Atlanta last-year -- of course, I'm sure the free parking and lack of an entrance fee plays some part in that opinion, but still. 

To summarize, I reckon? The Taste of Marietta Food Festival is awesome, there's apparently a ton of great eateries in the area, and if you like to nom on stuff and have at least $20 in your pocket, it's probably an event worth your time and energies.Well, as long as you live kinda' close by: I mean, it would just be stupid as shit to fly in from Montana just for this, after all.

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The Day I Ate Spaghetti from ALDI

One afternoon, I decided to make a pasta dinner consisting of NOTHING but items procured from America’s cheapest supermarket chain. The toxicology report will be posted shortly.

If you’ve never heard of ALDI before, rest assured, you most certainly WILL if the economic downturn continues.

For the uninitiated (oh, you ivory-tower dwellers, you), ALDI is the name of a branch of low, low, LOW budget supermarkets in the United States, with an absolutely amazing history.

ALDI was a German supermarket founded in 1961 by these two guys named Karl and Theo Albrecht, and their respective life stories are so amazing that it would be a disservice to the Internet if I didn’t go a little in-depth about their lives before segueing into my stupid little blog post about making spaghetti out of icky, bargain-basement foodstuffs.

To begin with, Theo (who died in 2010) was an absolute J.D. Salinger-level recluse, having exactly two photographs of himself made public between the years of 1971 and 1987 (and the first one only came about because he was kidnapped for a couple of days.) He was also, as the kids say, rich as shit, dying with a net worth of an estimated $16.7 billion. And because dualism is a real thing, the head proprietor of a shop dedicated to shoddy food items was also the founder of Trader Joe’s - an alternative grocery-store that caters to consumers with a taste for expensive, health-savvy products.

The benefits of Nazi technology.

The current head of ALDI is Karl Albrecht, who as you might have guessed, was Theo’s brother. While you’d think that selling crappy, knock-off food to the masses wouldn’t be the most lucrative of businesses, you’d be W-R-O-N-G, as not only is Karl the richest dude in Germany according to Forbes, he’s one of the ten richest human beings on the PLANET, with a 2011 net worth of more than $25 billion. And also, he was a Nazi. As in, a REAL NAZI, and not the allegorical kind most of us are used to hearing about.

While ALDI chains have been in the U.S. for quite awhile, I’ve noticed that their marketing presence has really ratcheted up since 2008. A decade ago, I’d say a good 99 percent of U.S. residents thought ALDI was an IKEA sister service - today, it’s one of the most popular grocery stores in the nation, amongst not only the downtrodden and starving, but peculiarly, the well-to-do and well-off, as well.

The plastic container has more flavor than what's inside it, though.

Going into an ALDI is such a bizarre sociological experience. The afternoon I waltzed into the chain, the parking lot was filled with about 50 percent people you knew were living below the poverty line, and the other half? They were rolling around in BMWs and Lexuses. Those crafty Krauts, I must say, have really found a way to successfully target the polar opposites of the American food chain, no doubts about it.

As you’d guess, the items at ALDI are…well, not exactly name-brand, to say the least. The really funny thing I observed was that, although all of the items seemed to have been made by ALDI’s in-house manufacturer (well, their AMERICAN in-house manufacturer, anyway), the packaging for the products were dead-on facsimiles of the stuff you’d find in an “actual” super market. Just cascading through the aisles, you’d never realize that the shelves are stocked with “Mountain Frost” and “Fruitee Pebbles.” To be fair, there are SOME name brand items laying around the place, but I think it’s safe to assume that nine times out of ten, you’re going to be staring at  an “original” product that looks oh-so suspiciously familiar, for some reason or another.

And also, for every minute you're in the store, you're charged an additional ten cents.

The business practices at ALDI are unfathomably ghetto. For one thing, if you want to use a shopping cart, you have to plug a quarter into the cart coral, and even worse, the dudes make you pay an extra couple of cents for the use of bags and sacks. You read that right, dear reader: ALDI CHARGES YOU FOR GROCERY BAGS. The only way these goose-steppers could find a way to bilk more money out of you is if they started charging parking fees (and let’s be honest, that’s probably next on their “to-do” list, anyway.)

Several challenges present themselves for shoppers at ALDI, the least of which is the fact that the give you surcharges for breathing in the building. While there is a lot of “fresh” produce to be found, you pretty much have to make-do with whatever non-perishable items are just lying around the building. That means if you want a box of spaghetti noodles, you have exactly ONE option for said noodles, and if it’s a five pound carton of angel hair when you wanted a one pound bag of gluten-free linguini, you’re just S.O.L, son.

Mmm...budgetary cutbacks. 

You may be asking yourself what on earth could have possibly possessed me to WANT to make a spaghetti dinner consisting of nothing but ALDI-bought items. Honestly, folks, I can’t give you an answer, other than the fact that I probably do EVERYTHING that pops into my head, no matter how asinine or absurd. I guess this idea was one of my milder forays - don’t start spreading any rumors, but I’ve wanted to do a live-action performance of Donkey Kong using my school’s giant-assed glass staircase for about three years now.

I suppose one of the positives about spaghetti is that it’s pretty hard to mess up as an entrée. I mean, whatever you end up boiling, you’re just going to drench in tomato sauce and several bags of shredded cheese, so who cares what you throw in the pan, anyway?

Squash; like zucchini, only more respectable.

If you want to recreate this project at home, you’re going to need a few supplies (and it helps if you also have a blatant disregard for your own personal well-being, too.) To begin, we’re going to need at least two pots, and access to water. If you have that…congratulations, you’re better off than most college students these days.

In pot one, toss in some sliced up squash. If you have zucchini, that’s cool, too, although the produce section at ALDI is notoriously difficult to navigate and/or smell. It’s not much of a visual experience at this point, so instead, look at this picture of a giant assed mushroom I saw while hiking a few weeks ago.

...only instead of giving me a 1-up, it just made me go into convulsions for a couple of hours.

Once your squash is all nice and, uh, squashed, it’s time to break out the KNOCKOFF SAUCE. It’s a pretty simple process, really - just open the can, make the sign of the cross, dump it all over your veggies and simmer.

It's almost hypnotic, in a way...

Now’s a good time to collect your side items. Salads usually go pretty well with Italian food, and since synthetic Parmesan cheese was on sale at ALDI that afternoon…well, two and two still makes four, don’t it?

...but more stewed than hypnotic, I suppose. 

At some point, your tomato smothered squash will be really warm and steamy, and that’s your cue to turn off the stove/make amends to your creator. There’s really no turning back now, so if you’ve made it this far…congrats/my condolences.

I’m not really sure WHAT an ALDI Spaghetti dinner (henceforward referred to as SpagALDI) is supposed to look like, but this is what our final product resembles. All in all, it wasn’t bad, in most aspects, although the noodles had absolutely ZERO taste to them whatsoever. Additionally, it was probably the weakest Parmesan cheese I’ve ever sprinkled on anything, but the sauce, for all intents and purposes, wasn’t too shabby. Granted, this thing is no Spaghetti-Chili or Thai Pizza, but we all sorta’ figured that heading into the project, no?

I can’t tell you what I set out to accomplish with this recipe, but here it is, anyway. It’s far from the most appetizing “custom-food” I’ve built over the years, but much to my surprise, it was indeed edible (although something you probably wouldn’t want to whip up to impress a date, a dean, or somebody whom you owe a ton of money to, though.)

I guess I just wanted to eat SpagALDI, and live to tell the tale. And once the internal bleeding stops, I’ll let you know how the leftovers were...

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Del Taco: A Restaurant Review

Further proof that the worldwide economic recession is heading to an end: the resurgence of B-level fast food chains you thought went bankrupt in the 1990s!

Fate, clearly, is working against me. And worst of all, it’s doing so via Mexican fast food.

Earlier this year, I graduated from college, and for a good four years, my diet was relegated to vending machine produce and the periodic overpriced egg sandwich that was being huckstered for about three dollars too many in the liberal arts college lobby. The saddest thing is, the only fast food places within walking distance of the campus were a Waffle House (quite the den of quality foodstuffs, of course), and a gas-station Subway, whose $8.99 foot-long veggie subs were still cheaper than the bagels I could buy if I strolled on over to the business college.

And then…literally a week after graduation…a freaking Taco Bell opens up across the road. For a good two or three minutes, I was utterly outraged, until I drove past this little shopping complex (which, for some dumb ass reason or another, I never found fit to explore as a student) and realized there was a DEL TACO about a mile away from my school.

This is some “Twilight Zone” twist ending shit right here. I starved and jammed Pop-Tarts down my throat for almost half a decade, when if I had just walked in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION, I could’ve found an oasis of B-level fast food chains that I honestly thought went belly-up sometime in the 1990s. Shit, if I drove another five miles, I probably could’ve found the world’s last operational Burger Chef and Druther’s, too.

To the uninitiated, Del Taco is a fast food chain that specializes in food that overweight Americans think is authentic Mexican cuisine. In the 1990s, the establishment was quite commonplace in the metro-Atlanta area, if concentrated mostly in malls and school food courts. Legend has it that my alma matter even had one in its cafeteria - which, today, unfortunately, is home to a Chick-Fil-A.

Apparently, Del Taco’s parent company hit some tough times in the 1990s and had to close down a few of its chains. Honestly, I haven’t seen one in my neck of the woods for more than 10 years, so seeing that glorious, red, green and yellow signage on my way to a nice turnaround spot to get back on I-75 South was easily one of the greatest things that has EVER happened to me.

As you can see, the lobby of the Del Taco looks a lot like the lobby you’ll find at every other fast food outfit in the nation. Since the afternoon queue was so large, it gave me ample time to scout out the venue’s menu - and as one of the Western World’s biggest cheddar potato poppers AND plastic tyrannosaurus premium enthusiasts, I was rather impressed by the chain’s offerings.

I ended up picking up both an 8-layer burrito (which, apparently, is 1-layer more hardcore than Taco Bell) and a half pound bean and cheese burrito. The really nice thing about the second item was that it was being hawked at only 0.99 cents - needless to say, I have a firm idea of where all of my loose one dollar bills will be going for the foreseeable future. And in case you’re red and fry-colored color blind, yes, that IS a box of crinkle-cut potato sticks jutting off to the side of my tray, perhaps symbolizing a long overdue peace accord between the French and the Mexicans.

One of the things I absolutely LOVED about the restaurant was this hot sauce bar, which totally kicks Taco Bell square in its purple and yellow cojones. Not only did you get three samples each of both hot sauce and salsa, the items were, surprisingly, quite zesty and spicy. If nothing else, they were certainly worlds better than that crappy packet stuff you’ll find at the Bell, most definitely.

I ended up settling on the houses’ hottest sauce and it’s hottest salsa. As a general rule, the darker the sauce, the spicier and more flavorful the dip, and these sauces, especially for a fast food chain, were pretty darn good. The condiment bar may very well be worth a visit to Del Taco alone, if you ask me.

The important thing, I suppose, is whether or not the burritos were any good, or at least, on par with what Taco Bell offers. And to give you a truncated answer…well, sorta’.

First off, the tortillas. All in all, I’d say they are pretty comparable to what you would find at Taco Bell, as the tortillas are pretty doughy and get quite mushy when you load them with extras. The major positive here is that it gels really well with the sauces and salsas, which give the soft shells a nice complementary function. Additionally, these burritos are downright HUGE, probably the same size as the absolute biggest burrito on the Bell menu. If you’re really hungry (as in, Shaggy Rogers levels) and you’re broke as hell, this should REALLY give you an incentive to find the nearest Del Taco location around you.

There are things that I really liked about the bean and cheese burrito, and there were a couple of things that I didn’t like. For one, I really liked the cheese, which had this spiciness to it that the cheese at Taco Bell just doesn’t have. The problem is, the refried beans just weren’t fusing with the rest of the burrito, giving the offering a really watered down, pulpy taste that only gobs of salsa could overpower. It wasn’t necessarily bad, per se, but it was definitely lacking a few crucial ingredients that could have made it a real competitor against some of the Bell’s value menu stalwarts.

The eight-layer burrito, however, was freaking outstanding, and you need to try it.

Just look at that, kids. It’s not so much a burrito as it is a garden struck by a nuclear warhead. Cheese, tomato chunks, iceberg lettuce, sour cream and guacamole is wedged into the shell so hard that just poking the burrito causes bean fragments to squirt out of wrapper. It’s been quite a while since I’ve had a seven layer burrito from Taco Bell, but this Del Taco offering is definitely a worthy challenger to its throne - and since you can batter your burrito with salsa and sauce that’s actually worth a damn, I feel pretty confident declaring this 8-layer burrito to be a SUPERIOR offering to the much revered Taco Bell analog.

So, what are my final thoughts on Del Taco? It’s pretty awesome, and if you have an extra $10 in your pocket, it’s probably worth checking out. Assuredly, there are some complaints to be had (those mushy ass beans, primarily), but there’s just so much diversity and add-ons that it’s difficult to NOT recommend the chain to any fans of mass-produced Tex-Mex. Whether or not it’s AS good as Taco Bell, of course, is in the eye of the beholder; and in my salsa and lechuga-encrusted pupils, I’d say Del Taco is clearly worth your time, effort, y dinero, Holmes.

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