Phasers On Stunned

The Urge To Purge

Phasers On Stunned

Some of you will remember that television show called Star Trek. I believe there were three or four reincarnations of the original series.

In the show, they had some weird devices on the 24^th century starship, Enterprise. One of those devices was the "food replicator," which somehow had the ability to synthesize food and drink by magically turning energy into mass.

So, all you had to do was walk up to a kind of cubby hole in the wall and ask for whatever you wanted to eat and drink. In a matter of seconds, your entrée would be ready for you on a tray, and I don't believe a single case of dysentery or food poisoning was ever reported in the ship's log.

Yesterday, I was out and about, and on my way home, I decided to go to a 21^st century version of the food replicator, better known to most of you as the "drive-thru window."

The Drive-Thru

Here in North America, most of the fast-food chains have drive-thru windows. Without having to leave your car, you pull up to a two-way audio terminal, usually at the side of the restaurant, and you order what you want to eat from a disembodied voice, presumably belonging to someone inside the restaurant.

Then you pull your car up to a small window, usually at the back of the restaurant, and your food is waiting there for you. It's not quite as miraculous as the food replicator on Star Trek, but it's a fast and convenient way to skip cooking for yourself.

However, there is probably one important difference between the 24^th century and the 21^st century versions of instant cuisine. There is definitely no guarantee that today's drive-thru menu will be as nutritionally sound as you might hope. In fact, foraging for food from a window at the back of a restaurant usually finds me suffering from a plague of what I call "bowling ball malaise." Briefly put, "bowling ball malaise" is the sensation of having a bowling ball in your wee tummy after you have consumed any kind of fast food, a sensation combined with an urgency to roll that ball down the alley and into the gutter, if you get my drift.

OK, the truth is that, like most people, I get ridiculously hopped up on some kind of appetite overdrive when I am at that little box where you order food. Instead of ordering something sensible, I order two bacon cheeseburgers, fries, a milkshake, a couple of pie sticks, and so on and so on. I simply run down the menu sign, with its tempting photos of full-meal deals, and I keep requesting more and more food-addict combos until I have ordered a medley of synthetic fat-fusion, gourmandizing jazz. Should the voice on the other end of this fulsome communication offer to "super size" or "biggie up" my selections, I seem unable to say anything but, "Of course." As a result, when I get to the pick-up window, the attendant hands me enough food to feed the entire Iraqi Navy.

Matters go from bad to worse when I actually eat most everything I ordered, sometimes even pulling bits of this or that out of the bag during my hasty drive home.

Yesterday was no exception.

The reult? A severe case of bowling ball malaise, and a long night of sitting on the toilet, coaxing my gluttonous maximus to fire at will, all the while engaging in some kind of pseudo-prayer, as in, "Lord, lord, lord, bring on the transfiguration already, and purge me of my unyielding excesses."

I have never been a quick study, and it seems that my memory banks fail me time and time again when it comes to the consumption of fast food. I know better, and yet I continue to indulge in such a constipated ritual of self-abuse.

Sometimes I think that all this imprudent disregard for my well-being might simply have something to do my humanity, with humanity's reckless abandonment, you know, like that little aphorism from Star Trek, which encouraged all of us "to boldly go where no man has gone before."

Or maybe, a better motto might be that well-worn phrase, "you are what you eat." Maybe that is why, after every time I eat fast food, I feel like shit, which I must confess is both my undoing and my salvation.