A Roundtable Discussion
May 4, 1997

This past week was a fairly busy one in the life of Feff as my second semester at college begins to come to a close. All those pesky papers and tests that seemed so far away when I first got my syllabuses in February, are now staring me right in the face. Thus it is hard to find time to do such extracurricular activities such as writing my Whack. But no matter how busy I get, I always have to take time to eat so I can survive and stuff. And meals are always the best time to see all my friends, who are just as busy. So since I didn't have time to think of a real topic for this week's Whack, I decided to share with you a typical conversation that seems to ensue when I eat lunch with some of my friends.

This particular one involves myself, my infamous roommate Scott Ikeda, and a mutual friend of ours, Pete Magyar. Enjoy:

Pete: What the hell is that crap?
Me: It's a dip for my fries, I haven't mixed it yet.
Pete: Can't you just use ketchup like a normal person?
Me: I don't like that ketchup. I prefer Heinz, and the ketchup here tastes too much like Hunt's.
Pete: You can't tell the difference between ketchup!
Me: Sure you can, and regardless, it's fun to make your own dip.
Scott: What did you put in it?
Me: It's a mixture of honey, honey-mustard, and ketchup.
Scott: Really, let me try.... This tastes pretty good.
Me: Yeah, but I think it is a bit too sweet. Next time I'll add less honey and more ketchup. Do you want to try it Pete?
Pete: No way, I'm not touching that.
Me: Fine. I think when I retire I'm going to open my own restaurant and just experiment and make all sorts of dips and sauces and what not.
Scott: Yeah, they have chefs like that who get paid just to develop stuff like sauces and dressings.
Me: That would be cool. Don't you think this would make a good special sauce?
Scott: Probably. You just need to add a little mayo to make it a bit thicker.
Pete: I think people in this society get carried away with food. You think people in Africa care about what kind of sauce they dip their fries in?
Me: No, but they eat bugs and shit. Their tastebuds aren't as highly evolved as ours are. Scott: That's so racist.
Me: No it isn't, it's true! I saw it on the Discovery channel. They showed these African tribal people eating bugs and what not.
Scott: So, that doesn't mean anything. Maybe they have the more evolved tastebuds and our tastebuds are too primitive to like the taste of bugs.
Me: That's bullshit! Apes eat bugs, and apes are more primitive than humans, so any human that still eats bugs is obviously less evolved.
Pete: What about that guy who crashed his plane over Bosnia, Terry Collins or something? He ate bugs.
Me: That's different, he ate it because he had to, there was no other food.
Pete: Well there's not much variety of food in Africa. You can't walk down the streets of Mogadishu and expect to find a Golden Arches.
Me: I'm sure they have other options besides bugs. They can eat a zebra or something. They just eat bugs because they want to.
Scott: That still doesn't mean that they're less evolved then we are. Everything always goes back to the basics. Maybe human tastebuds eventually evolve back to liking the taste of bugs.
Me: Are you basing your theory of evolution on an advertisement for vodka?
Scott: Hey, it works for me.
Me: That's nuts.
Pete: Both you guys are nuts. And you're missing the point I was originally trying to make. People like in Africa who are starving don't really care what their food tastes like, they just eat to survive. It's a survival instinct, no different from breathing.
Me: You can't compare breathing with eating. You don't get any pleasure out of breathing. Whether you use your mouth or use your nose, it is all the same. But eating is different, you can get pleasure out of eating. There are so many nerves or taste buds on your tongue, it would be a shame not to stimulate them all.
Pete: It's no use arguing with you, you'll never understand.
Me: What's there to understand?
Pete: You'll never understand what it is like to be starving like those people in Africa. You were fortunately born into a home that could feed you, and you could worry about petty stuff like how your food tastes.
Me: Well what about you? You didn't exactly come from meager beginnings.
Pete: True, but you lived a sheltered life, you've never even been out of the U.S. I've been to Africa, I saw what it is like there.
Scott: You've been to Africa?
Pete: Yeah, I've been to six of the seven continents?
Scott: Which one haven't you been to?
Pete: Asia.
Me: You've been to Antarctica?
Pete: Yeah.
Me: Shut up!
Pete: I did! We were at Australia, so we decided to go to Antarctica just so would could say we were there.
Me: What, did you stay at the Holiday Inn?
Pete: No, we were only there like three hours.
Me: What did you do for three hours? Stare at all the penguins?
Pete: I don't remember, I was like only six at the time.
Me: You parents were probably just playing a joke on you, you were probably really in Vermont.
Pete: Piss on you, I was in Antarctica!
Me: Prove it. Got any postcards? Souvenirs? T-shirts?
Pete: Shut up....

Well I think it is a good time to end this conversation for this Whack, so to conclude for this week, some ketchups do taste better than other ketchups; eating bugs is for the birds; and Antarctica is definitely no tourist attraction.

Now for this week's very special feature, Feff's top ten most common topics of lunchtime discussions with his friends:

10. Religion

9. Philosophy

8. Love

7. Mortal Kombat

6. Music

5. Television

4. Politics

3. Stanlick urinating on himself

2. The future

1. What exactly we are eating