My Increasingly Philistine Stomach

As of this weekend, I have a new favorite restaurant: QuikTrip. For those of you who don't know, QuikTrip is a chain of service stations/minimarts. I generally try to get my gas there since it's usually a few cents cheaper than the other dudes, but I never really go inside. You pay at the pump, so why would you? However, the other day I ventured in as Ed gassed up while we were out driving around the sticks looking for a fucking couch for like the 17th weekend in a row. I figured I would get a bag of chips or something. However, in my giggly and hungry state (you try driving around Acworth, GA looking at couches for 4 hours while stone cold sober), I was drawn to the prepared foods section - a huge long table of those hot rolling metal rods on which sat various cripsy delights, and a wall of drink machines. They seriously had 15 kinds of soda on tap. About 7 minutes later and a mere $6 lighter, I emerged with three taquitos (2 chicken and one beef), a corn dog, and an HORCHATA SMOOTHIE, which was really more of a slurpee. This last item is seriously one of the most exciting things to happen to me in a long time. God bless the 800,000 illegal Cebntral Americans in Georgia who, despite a constant attempt by everyone but me to drive them out, have established themselves so much here that the QT has a special smoothie just for them. I LOVE horchata. To have it in giant slurpee form was almost too much for me to bear. So exotic and yet so mundane at the same time!!! Truly a symbol of the melting pot that is America. Horchata smoothies and taquitos and corn dogs rotating side by side (with egg rolls, but who wants those, R2?) - to quote John Cougar Concntrationcamp (a fellow John Edwards supporter, FYI): Ain't that America?

As if this new obsession weren't enough, I also discovered that I like Krystal. Krsytal is like White Castle down here - I have to say it's more like White Castle's poor hick cousin, with smaller, greyer, squarer, and altogether more frightening burgers. I have long protested any suggestion of going to Krystal, but the other night after the Black Lips show I had to take two hungry squawking drunks there and I tasted a burger and that was pretty much that. I also tasted this tiny little perfect chilli cheese dog and then that really was that, done, stick a fork in me and call me Krystal. I was back there again at 11:30 Saturday night, giggly and hungry and having just watched Spies Like Us (which I now own, awesome!).

White Castle is still better, by the way.