My Shame: Quik Trip Hot Dogs

There's a dieting maxim that applies to pretty much everyone, regardless of whether they're trying to lose weight: You should never get a meal at the same place that you fill your car with gas. I have a hard time with that one. Over the past couple of years, Quik Trip's provided me much late night/early morning sustenance, and I've grown rather fond of their selection of supremely junky, nasty food. Particularly appealing are the hot dogs, or more specifically, the jalapeno sausage dogs which, because of their jalapeno and cheese content, are both more awesome and actually more unhealthful than regular hot dogs! The convenience store/gas station as a restaurant: what a wonderful world we live in.

Not too long ago, I was returning from a short trip to a friend's home. While She lives only an hour away, we tend to lose track of time while watching movies, and I usually don't leave until after Craig Ferguson's monologue on CBS' "The Late Late Show." I was nearing home at that really weird time of night when you really want to do really weird shit. There's a reason why late night programming that isn't paid advertisements for phone sex, Girls Gone Wild, or get-rich-quick scams consists of stuff like Dave Attell's "Insomniac" and all those non-sequiter-a-minute shows on adult swim. Those of us who are up that late like to do weird shit, and if we can't do weird shit, we'll settle for watching it. For me, it's around midnight to four in the morning that I want to engage in or be engaged by stupidity, bad behavior, or just genuinely strange stuff. It's also the time when Quik Trip's jalapeno dogs start to sound really delicious.

On this occasion, I planned to get a couple of jalapeno sausage dogs and eat them in the parking lot of the local Wal-Mart before I went in for some good old fashioned people watching. (There's few things more amusing than a Wal-Mart that late at night, and probably not for any of the reasons you would think) But my plans were ruined when I walked into the Quik Trip and found no sausage dogs, and in their place some unnaturally red colored weiners turning over in the hot dog rack. Apparently, this was the new "spicy red dog." Hot dogs by themselves are nasty, especially if you know what they're made of. Even the all beef hot dogs are mostly comprised of scraps, fat, and stuff that likely isn't supposed to be in there, but the FDA has determined won't hurt you any more than the absurd levels of saturated fat of what is supposed to be in there. Take that and give it an outer casing that looks like glowing plastic doused in red 5, and you have yourself one of Quik Trip's new products that you're intended to put in your mouth, chew and swallow.

It was so depressing that I ate at Jack in the Box instead. I ate at Jack in the Box! My head hangs in shame at the admission.

I've a few idiosyncrasies, I admit. I enjoy listening to the local classical music station's "Romantic Hours" program. I loiter at Wal-Mart late at night when I'm bored enough. I actually enjoy games developed by Nihon Falcom, and nothing gets me more excited than a really obscure kung fu movie. But my greatest weakness is those jalapeno dogs. I eat those while I'm listening to "Romantic Hours," and when I people watch at Wal-Mart; I eat them when I play Vantage Master and when I watch movies like Young Flying Hero and Kung Fu Cult Master and Thrilling Sword. Hell, they're what I eat when I'm watching Lolita or Venus in Firs. (that was on Turner Classic Movies a couple of weeks ago, wtf?!) They are the calories I burn to fuel the majority of my shameful, geeky pursuits. In a lot of ways, they're responsible for much of the content on this blog.

I was about to give into my despair, resigning myself to either try and like the new spicy red dogs or just settle for the regular variety. Yet to my great surprise, they're back. The sausage has returned. Granted, it shares space with the awful red dogs, but at least they're available again. In fact, I'm eating one right now. It's processed cheese and saturated fat is filling my belly with more or less the same warmth as the canned taste of the jalapeno chunks in my mouth: The same feeling of warmth and satisfaction I get when I PK somebody in Diablo 2, or when I tell my brother that I have the remastered Mei Ah dvd of Days of Being Wild, but he can't borrow it because I know that he'll make a dvd-r, and I don't approve of theft. Thank you, Quik Trip, and please don't ever screw up so badly again. Kthnx.